Taylor is a writer who could rightly be called the Jane Austen of her time – author of beautifully crafted narratives that pick out and play at the hidden tensions between characters, revealing layer upon layer of social and personal meanings, creating fully realised worlds of behaviour and feeling. I love this story for its portrait of an elderly inhabitant of what would today be called an old people’s home (a favourite literary haunt for Taylor) – his is an old rogue rendered helpless by old age and blindness, at the mercy of his well meaning carers, who inhibit every attempt of his to revive his old passions – which are mainly drinking, smoking and gambling. The ending quietly breaks your heart.
First published in Hester Lily and Other Stories, Viking, 1954. Taylor’s complete short stories are published by Virago
A Personal Anthology 