Death of a Radical

by Rebecca Jenkins

  EPILOGUE

  Mrs. Adley never liked Jarrett’s portrait of her son. There was something about the eyes, she said. Mr. Adley donated the picture to his son’s college where it was hung over the fire in a junior fellow’s study. The new French tint, Dumont’s Blue, recommended by Field, the colourman, proved fugitive. The colourman cut it from his lists that same year. As the months passed, the summer sky Jarrett painted to shine down on Grub turned black in the acid smoke of the coke fires. The lights dimmed until only a pale face and hands glimmered out of the dark. But Favian Adley was not forgotten. Jarrett remembered him each time he opened his paint box, and Book Boy was the toast of the Red Angel song club every Wednesday night for many a year. And, throughout a long life, Lally Bedford never forgot the gentle, eager youth who once held her close to his heart.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writers aren’t supposed to work in real time, but, due to the vicissitudes of life, this book has taken almost the length of Jarrett’s foreign campaigns to complete. It owes its existence to the patience and indulgence of many. I am deeply grateful for the financial support of a New Writing North Writers’ Award provided by the Leighton Group, the Society of Authors and the Royal Literary Fund. Thank you too, to Quercus and my admirable editor, Charlotte Clerk; and, of course, Caroline Montgomery—it could not have been done without you.