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the novelist (Obituaries, July 10). The writer states that the late Mr. Candless was employed as a journalist on the
Walthamstow Herald
in the postwar years. I was chief subeditor of that newspaper from 1946 until 1953 and can assure you that if that humble organ had been so fortunate as to number a graduate of Trinity and future world-famous novelist among its staff, this is not a distinction I would have forgotten. I am afraid you are in error when you name Gerald Candless as a
Walthamstow Herald
“alumnus.” I am, sir, your obedient servant, James Droridge.’ What’s an alumnus?”
    â€œSomeone who is a former student at a university.”
    â€œOh. Why did they say Uncle Gerald worked for that newspaper if he didn’t?”
    â€œI don’t know, Pauline. It’s just a mistake.”
    A burst of song from the kitchen heralded Daphne Batty’s arrival. Ursula carried out the coffeepot to the strains of Merle Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again.” Daphne had brought the
Daily Mail
with her, and while anxious for Ursula to read Mary Gunthorpe’s interview with Hope, she hadno aspirations to read it to her. It was titled “Oh, My Beloved Father! The Loss of Hope.”
    Ursula thought she might as well bow to the inevitable now. She remembered how Gerald had sometimes resolved not to read the reviews of his books in newspapers, but they had been impossible to avoid. Sooner or later, someone would ring up and tell him what was in them, or send them to him with passages underlined in red, or quote from them in letters. Daphne would leave the paper behind and Pauline would find it, and then she would be in for a worse ordeal. She began to read, with Daphne looking over her shoulder.
    He was a tall, burly man with big features and a wide, ironic smile. She is slender and rose petal–skinned, her dark hair long and softly waved, her eyes almost too large for that heart-shaped face. Yet Hope Candless is the spitting image of her father, the celebrated novelist who died two weeks ago. There is the same intelligence in those same brown eyes, the same penetrating glance, and the same musical voice.
    That voice has a catch in it now and those eyes are bright with tears. To her embarrassment, they spilled over as soon as she began to talk about him. Wearing a pink-and-white shirtwaister dress and white high-heeled sandals—impossible to imagine her in jeans and T-shirt—Hope, thirty, dabbed at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief. It was the first handkerchief I had seen since my grandmother died ten years ago. Hope’s had a pink
H
embroidered on it.
    â€œI miss him so much,” she said. “He wasn’t just my father; he was my best friend. I really think that if I could have chosen just one person in all the world that I’d spend my life with, it would have been him. I suppose you think that’s totally mad?
    â€œWhen my sister and I wrote that death notice that we put in the paper, we had to find an adjective that expressed what we felt.
Beloved
wasn’t strong enough, so we used
adored,
because we did adore him. And we had the lines from that Victorian poem because we really did tire the sun with talking.
    â€œIsn’t it funny? Each one of us firmly believes she was his favorite. But I think he really loved us equally and he had so much love for us.I’m sorry, you must excuse me, the way I keep crying. He bought me this place, you know, and he bought a flat for my sister, too.”
    â€œThis place” is the large, airy ground-floor flat of a house in Crouch End with a big patio and a garden full of fruit trees. The author of
Hamadryad
and
Purple of Cassius
bought it for Hope when she qualified as a solicitor seven years ago. She had come second in her year in the Law Society’s exams and before that had come down from Cambridge with a first-class honors degree. Her sister is Sarah, two years her senior, and a