"The Fabulous Mrs. V."
A tale reflecting the Midlands in the 1920s, and thus bearing some similarity in theme and atmosphere to Bates's semi-autobiographical novel Love for Lydia. Baldwin (212) notes that the theme of a "repressive mother who turns her daughter into a wallflower while she shamelessly flirts" was explored more profitably in the novella Death of a Huntsman. The tale captures well the rapport between the narrator and his buddy and the stultifying atmosphere of country wealth and tennis matches; more significant is the narrator's awakening self-awareness as he distracts the mother with false attention, thus allowing the daughter to elope: "I felt I was the vain, impudent, contemptible cockatoo...I had never before seen anyone broken and dead in spirit. Nor had I even remotely suspected that I should one day match her in vanity and I could only stare mutely in return, watching her nurse, in shattered silence, her own private heart of darkness." In Woman's Own (April 27, 1963), The Fabulous Mrs V (1964).