The Georges’ Wife

‘It isn’t a repetition,’ Mr George says when I meet him at the station, ‘It isn’t a repetition, is it, of that fellow Metcalf? This isn’t the same sort of thing is it?’

Mr George has come all the way from Scotland to the Midlands to ask me this question…I tell him of course it is different. I am older now…I am a doctor now and in my first resident appointment. I remind him that I am the mother of two daughters and that, above all, I belong to him, Mr George.

Vera and Mr George have made a new life together but Vera’s thoughts return again and again to loves and lovers, meetings and partings, the voices that echo in the mind like music.

What has she learned from the well-bred peace of the Georges’ household; the decadence and disorder of her friendship with Noel and Felicity; the fun and vulgarity shared with her ‘widow’ on the long voyage to Australia? Must she always repeat the past?

As in My Father’s Moon and Cabin Fever Elizabeth Jolley returns to the themes of discord and harmony between brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, friends and lovers. Her spare and sensitive prose is illuminated with compassion and understanding for the intricacies of human relationships.