the old ladies

The Old Ladies by Hugh Walpole, George H. Doran Co., 1924

An interesting and disturbing novel about three old ladies, all poor and alone, who live in three rented rooms on the third floor of an abandoned house in a provincial English city.  Our hero is Mrs. X (already forgotten her name), a genteel widow who has fallen on hard times, and whose son Brand (remember his name!) has disappeared in America.  Our villain is Mrs. Y (forgot her name, too), a fat, lazy, slovenly woman who is both a power-hungry sadist and a lover of brightly-colored and beautiful objects.  Mrs. Z (name forgotten), the third old lady,  moves into the cold, drafty house when she loses all her money to a silver-haired scam artist who tricks her into investing her small fortune with him.  Goodbye small fortune!  Her most precious remaining possession is a piece of golden-red amber given to her by her only friend, which Mrs. Y decides she must have, even if it means scaring poor Mrs. Z to death, which in fact it does.

It’s interesting to read a book set entirely in the world of these disenfranchised and desperate elderly women, a type of character not often encountered in fiction, and even more rarely exclusively and in  triplicate, even if their characters are broadly drawn and the action is melodramatic.  Brand, Mrs X’s long-lost son, returns to his mother in the nick of time, for at least one happy ending, but the strange and bitter taste of this macabre book lingers.