The Gate of Angels
The Blue Flower
The Means of Escape
NON-FICTION
Edward Burne-Jones
The Knox Brothers
Charlotte Mew and her Friends
A House of Air: Selected Writings
So I Have Thought of You: The Letters of Penelope Fitzgerald
The Means of Escape
STORIES
PENELOPE FITZGERALD
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016
First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 2000
Copyright © the Estate of Penelope Fitzgerald 2000, 2016
‘The Means of Escape’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1993: first published in the anthology Infidelity, Chatto & Windus, 1993 and New Writing 4, Vintage, 1995; ‘The Axe’ © Jonathan Cape Ltd 1975; first published in The Times Anthology of Ghost Stories, Jonathan Cape, 1975; ‘The Red-Haired Girl’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1998: first published in The Times Literary Supplement, 1998; ‘Beehernz’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1997: first published in BBC Music Magazine, October 1997 and Fanfare, BBC Books, 1999; ‘The Prescription’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1982: first published in the London Review of Books December 1982 and New Stories 8, Hutchinson/Arts Council 1983; ‘At Hiruharama’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1992: first published in New Writing, Minerva/Arts Council 1992; ‘Not Shown’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1993: first published in the Daily Telegraph, 1993; ‘The Likeness’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1989: first published in Prize Writing, Hodder and Stoughton, 1989; ‘Our Lives Are Only Lent To Us’ © the Estate of Penelope Fitzgerald 2001, previously unpublished; ‘Desideratus’ © Penelope Fitzgerald 1997: first published in New Writing 6, Vintage/The British Council 1997; ‘Worlds Apart’ © the Estate of Penelope Fitzgerald 1983: first published in Woman magazine, 1989.
Preface © Hermione Lee 2013
Series advisory editor: Hermione Lee
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this collection
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover photograph © Mary Evans
Cover design by nathanburtondesign.com
These stories are works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in them are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental
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Source ISBN: 9780007105014
Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780007521418 Version: 2016-11-18
Contents
St George’s Church, Hobart, stands high above Battery Point and the harbour. Inside, it looks strange and must always have done so, although (at the time I’m speaking of) it didn’t have the blue, pink and yellow-patterned stained glass that you see there now. That was ordered from a German firm in 1875. But St George’s has always had the sarcophagus-shaped windows which the architect had thought Egyptian and therefore appropriate (St George is said to have been an Egyptian saint). They give you the curious impression, as you cross the threshold, of entering a tomb.
In 1852, before the organ was installed, the church used to face east, and music was provided by a seraphine. The seraphine was built, and indeed invented, by a Mr Ellard, formerly of Dublin, now a resident of Hobart. He intended it to suggest the angelic choir, although the singing voices at his disposal – the surveyor general, the naval chaplain, the harbourmaster and their staffs – were for the most part male. Who was able to play the seraphine? Only, at first, Mr Ellard’s daughter, Mrs Logan, who seems to have got £20 a year for doing so, the same fee as the clerk and the sexton. When Mrs Logan began to feel the task was too much for her – the