only between the claims of art and science I had to choose, being by nature a pioneer and fighter.' If Winifred Holtby was by nature a writer, then appropriately it is her novels which fight on as the lasting vehicle for her pioneering beliefs.

George Davidson, London, 1984

Opening Chorus

on that April evening, in 1929, the five-thirty train from King's Cross to Kingsport was half an hour late. Betty and Dorothy Smith, returning home from Caroline's funeral, had to scramble through luggage, porters and trolleys and run along the platform, nearly dropping their newly acquired parcels, in order to catch the last train out to Marshington. But their mother was waiting for them in the dining-room with sandwiches and tea; the fire leapt gaily; their father drifted in from the billiard-room professing indifference, but really agog for news, and the pleasant atmosphere of home-coming was augmented rather than decreased by the lateness of the hour and the precariousness of suburban connections.

'Tea?' Mr. Smith asked himself. 'Well, I wouldn't mind a cup as it is here. Now, girls, how's London? Have you got Caroline safely underground?'

'We have, we have,' laughed Betty, helping herself to a ham sandwich. 'We've buried her and, if you ask me, pretty nearly canonized her. What with a purple pall over the coffin, and the service so High that it nearly fell over itself backwards, and Uncle Ernest green in the face with trying to find his way among the prayers and things, it was the grandest funeral I ever saw.'

'And who is paying for all that, I should like to know?' snorted Mr. Smith. 'As Caroline's nearest relative I naturally have some feelings on the subject.'

'Well, you'll be relieved to hear that the actual Church service was all done free, so far as I can gather. That Father Mortimer Caroline was always writing about got his Church to do it.'

'Yes, and do you know,' interrupted Betty, 'he isn't old at all - he's quite young - young enough to be Caroline's son.'

'Grandson.'

'Son, anyway, and quite sweet. Not a bit like a curate, and a perfect lamb in his vestments, or whatever you call them.'

'A perfect scream calling him "Father." '

'I'm not surprised now that Caroline was a little dotty about him.'

'Now, Dorothy, you shouldn't say such things, really,' Mrs. Smith remonstrated, secretly enjoying every word spoken in Caroline's disfavour, but anxious to maintain her pose of broad-minded matron.

'Well, Mums, she was a bit queer, wasn't she? You ought to have heard the will."

'The will?'

'Oh, my goodness, I wish you'd both been there. You'd have died. I never saw such a scream. After the funeral Eleanor insisted on us all going back to Caroline's room -that awful little room in Lucretia Road. There was Mrs. Hales, the landlady - what a dragon! - all hymn singing and vindictiveness; but we let her help herself to Caroline's old clothes, so perhaps she's satisfied. And Eleanor, as queer as ever, in the same old tweed coat, not a stitch of mourning, looking about seventeen and very ill, we thought, and a queer old stick called Mr. Guerdon and Uncle Ernest and us. And then Eleanor read the will.'

'And you never smelled anything like that room, cluttered with fearful old papers and all the clothes we've sent Caroline for years.'

'Mr. Guerdon looked as though he'd like to drown us all.'

'He'd come from the Christian Cinema Company - you know - the thing she was always trying to get us to put money into.'

'But, my dears, the Will. Do you know, she left five hundred pounds each to Betty and me, and eight thousand to her dear young friend and kinswoman, Eleanor de la Roux, and twenty thousand - yes, twenty thousand, to the Rev. Roger Mortimer, Assistant Priest at St. Augustine's, in token of all that his help and encouragement had meant to her in her lonely life. Just think of it - she must have been a little bit potty, wasn't she, Mums, dying in an infirmary at seventy-two, and making a will like that leaving thousands of pounds, that she hadn't got, to people she hardly knew?'

'Well, of course, I do think that at the end she must have been a little odd. But what I do want to know is, did she really get that three thousand pounds out of Eleanor?'

'Well, Mr. Guerdon seemed to think that Eleanor had put all her money into the Christian Cinema Company, and of course as it went bust I suppose the money was lost, but we couldn't get Eleanor to say anything.'

'Monstrous, monstrous,' said Mr. Smith. 'I always blamed de la Roux.