BOOK 1 SUNNY RIDGE¹
One AUNT ADA

Mr. and Mrs. Beresford were sitting at the breakfast table. They were anordinary couple. Hundreds of elderly couples just like them were havingbreakfast all over England at that particular moment. It was an ordinarysort of day too, the kind of day that you get five days out of seven. Itlooked as though it might rain but wasn’t quite sure of it.
Mr. Beresford had once had red hair. There were traces of the red still,but most of it had gone that sandy- cum- grey colour that red- headedpeople so often arrive at in middle life. Mrs. Beresford had once had blackhair, a vigorous curling mop of it. Now the black was adulterated withstreaks of grey laid on, apparently² at random³. It made a rather pleasant ef-fect. Mrs. Beresford had once thought of dyeing her hair, but in the endshe had decided⁴ that she liked herself better as nature had made her. Shehad decided instead to try a new shade of lipstick⁵ so as to cheer herself up.
An elderly couple having breakfast together. A pleasant couple, butnothing remarkable⁶ about them. So an onlooker⁷ would have said. If theonlooker had been young he or she would have added, “Oh yes, quitepleasant, but deadly dull, of course, like all old people.”
However, Mr. and Mrs. Beresford had not yet arrived at the time of lifewhen they thought of themselves as old. And they had no idea that theyand many others were automatically pronounced deadly dull solely⁸ onthat account. Only by the young of course, but then, they would havethought indulgently, young people knew nothing about life. Poor dears,they were always worrying about examinations, or their sex life, or buy-ing some extraordinary clothes, or doing extraordinary things to their hairto make them more noticeable. Mr. and Mrs. Beresford from their ownpoint of view were just past the prime of life. They liked themselves andliked each other and day succeeded day in a quiet but enjoyable fashion.

分享到：