![]() When Elna goes, the Conroys are thrown into a crisis of archetypal proportions: “They had all become characters in the worst part of a fairytale.” The children are left to the ministrations of the cook and housekeeper, a pair of warm-hearted sisters (though Danny, like a fairytale prince, doesn’t realise for a long time that his two watchful guardians have their own backstory). Insisting that she has “no business in a place like that, all those fireplaces and staircases, all those people waiting on me”, she flees to help the destitute in India. ![]() Elna’s disintegration, in all its flamboyant pathos and ascetic self-denial, is brilliantly handled. Their rags-to-riches move from a rental “the size of a postage stamp” to the Dutch House with its treasures spells the beginning of the end of the marriage. He acquires the house in 1946 when the Van Hoebeeks go bankrupt, taking possession not only of the building but of its servants and sumptuous contents, and installing his wife, Elna, and children, Maeve and Danny, in their ready-made new existence overnight. Cyril Conroy is a hard-up but ambitious property developer with a talent for life-changing surprises. ![]() It’s no coincidence Maeve has 'a stack of Henry James novels on her bedside table' – among them The Turn of the Screwįirst in line are the Conroys. ![]()
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