THE SWEETS OF PIMLICO
Evelyn Tradescant, not long down from Newnham, finds herself drawn into the orbit of an elderly German, Baron Dietrich Gormann, known to his friends as Theo. This mysterious figure, once, some suspect, a Nazi sympathiser, but recently an Aldermaston marcher, proves to have unexpected connections with her earlier life. He knows her handsome brother Jeremy, currently up at Magdalen. His best friend, John Price, a manufacturer of sweets, is an acquaintance of her former lover, Geoffrey. Theo seems to go out of his way to throw Evelyn and Price together. It emerges that Jeremy is bisexual, and has been Price's lover. Evelyn herself, in freakish mood, goes to bed with Jeremy. Price proposes to her, but she temporises. Her relationship with Gormann is daughterly rather than sexual, though it involves a thread of sexual feeling. He promises to revise his will so that his considerable fortune will be divided equally between herself and Price instead of going wholly to Price as had been intended. But before the change can be made Theo is maimed by a bomb while studying an allegorical painting in the National Gallery. Not long afterwards he dies, with the will still unaltered. Evelyn is left to make terms with Price if she so wishes.