The Go-between
(Leslie Poles Hartley)
Leo Colston, a man in his sixties, finds himself, in the middle of the last century, going through some old belongings and reliving the past. Particularly, one summer, in 1900, when he got an invitation from a school friend?s parents to spend most of July with them in Norfolk, at Brandham Hall. There he would meet Marcus, his friend, and the rest of the family: Mr. and Mrs. Maudsley, the parents; Denys, the elder brother; and Marian, the sister. In a boylike exploratory excursion around the surroundings of the Hall, Leo met and talked to Ted Burgess, a neighbouring farmer, who asked Leo to hand over, in secret, a letter to Marian. That was the first of many messages Leo would take for them from one another. Although both Ted and Marian had told him those were business letters, Leo was still intrigued by them and, on one occasion, he read a few words showing in an unsealed letter, but enough to understand Ted and Marian were in love. That came as a shock to him, because Marian was supposed to marry Lord Trimingham, a Viscount. It was her mother?s wish. On the day they were celebrating Leo?s thirteenth birthday, Marian was late for the party, which made her mother take Leo with her to go find Marian. And they did find her: making love to Ted. After that, Leo loses his memory, seeming only capable of grasping one thing more: that Ted ended up killing himself, later on, in his house.Wondering what had happened next, and in the last fifty years, the old Leo returns to Brandham Hall to inquire and find out Trimingham had died ten years later, but not without having married Marian and accepting as a son a child who wasn?t his, but Ted?s. Leo actually talks with Marian, who?s still alive.More than the story, the book lives of the faithful portrait of a young boy?s impressions. That?s what gives testimony to children?s innocence, frailty, impressionability and sense of life, especially when confronted with the lies, the cunning, the deception of the adult world.
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