Flame into Being by Anthony Burgess

Author:Anthony Burgess
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Galileo Publishing
Published: 2019-07-17T16:50:23+00:00

The women would pinch the thick, exquisite old chenille fringe, delicate and faded, curious to feel its softness. But they wouldn’t give threepence for it. Tapes, ribbons, braids, buttons, feathers, jabots, bustles, appliqués, fringes, jet-trimmings, bugle-trimmings, bundles of old coloured machine-lace, many bundles of strange cord, in all colours, for old-fashioned braid-patterning, ribbons with HMS Birkenhead for boys’ sailor caps – everything that nobody wanted, did the women turn over and over, till they chanced on a find.

This is Lawrence his mother’s boy, out with her on a Friday evening’s shopping. It is not like Henry James.

James Houghton’s ‘Manchester House’ decays, and Alvina the daughter, twenty-six years old, settles to being a drudge for her father, feeling ‘panic, the terrible and deadly panic which overcomes so many unmarried women at about the age of thirty. She would not care about marriage, if even she had a lover.’ But there is no lover, and Alvina’s brown hair shows signs of grey. Then Houghton starts a picture palace, with the cocky Mr May as manager, and she has to accompany The Silent Grip and Miss Poppy Traherne (‘a lady in unnumerable petticoats, who could whirl herself into anything you like, from an arum lily in green stockings to a rainbow and a Catherine wheel and a cup and saucer: marvellous, was Miss Poppy Traherne’ – the tone is almost Wellsian) on the pianoforte. The takings are counted, and Lawrence reveals his concern with the magic of specie, a man who does not think in terms of cheques:

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