![]() It’s rare: more so than you would think’. ‘I miss intelligent conversation, you know. Her thirst for company is such that even this young child is fascinating to her, She is marooned somehow as a senior servant in a country house where the air is ‘profoundly still’. ![]() Wheldon’s skill is to convey so much in so few words – I guess that is the essence of a short story! Mrs Lisle appears only for couple of pages but we feel so keenly her frustration and despair at her lot in life. Although at one point he says ‘ I don’t remember much about her – I only saw her once ‘ He later admits that she made a considerable impression upon him and that he never forgot her. The child observes her slim delicate hand, ‘ The hand of an educated lady’. She seems to recognise the boy and his family as kindred spirits and guesses that the obviously intelligent boy is a scholarship pupil at the local grammar school. Mrs Lisle is clearly an intelligent and educated woman who has found herself in a lower position in society than she expected. The first is Mrs Lisle, house keeper for the rich local family who own the theatre. In the course of the tale the boy encounters three female figures who all make a profound impression on him. The child lives with his parents, the caretakers of a rundown theatre in Somerset. It is dated 1905 and relates an episode in the life of the boy who, we presume, would later become that unfortunate soldier. The first page tells us that the manuscript of the story was found amongst the effects of a British infantryman killed in 1918. ![]() This Automaton by David Wheldon ( Nightjar Press) is a strange fragment of a tale.
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