The Apricot Colonel

273 Pages·2016·0.68 MB·English

by  Halligan Marion

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Marion Halligan was born in Newcastle and grew up by
the sea. She is rather surprised to find herself living in
Canberra, instead of on the coast. She always believed she
was going to be a writer, though took a while to get
started. Halligan has now published some nineteen books
(including a children’s book, The Midwife’s Daughters)
and has written short stories, articles, book reviews and
essays for various publications. Her most recent book is
The Taste of Memory, a memoir about food and gardens,
travel and home. But she believes that it is fiction that
illuminates our lives, and for this reason she loves to read
it as well as write it.
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Also by Marion Halligan
The Taste of Memory
The Point
The Fog Garden
The Golden Dress
Cockles of the Heart
Wishbone
The Worry Box
Lovers’ Knots
Eat My Words
Spider Cup
The Hanged Man in the Garden
The Living Hothouse
Self Possession
The Midwife’s Daughters (for children)
Out of the Picture
Collected Stories
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First published in 2006
Copyright © Marion Halligan 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publisher. TheAustralian Copyright Act 1968(the Act) allows a
maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the
greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its
educational purposes provided that the educational institution
(or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to
Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Halligan, Marion, 1940-
The apricot colonel.
ISBN 1 74114 766 2.
I. Title.
A823.3
Edited by Rosanne Fitzgibbon
Text design and typesetting by Midland Typesetters
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For my beloved Lucy
who read this novel and asked excellent questions
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Man thinks, God laughs.
JEWISHPROVERB
It pleases me to think that the art of the novel came into
the world as an echo of God’s laughter.
MILANKUNDERA
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This story happens in that last overheated sinister summer,
in a space of time beginning with the fires that in a day
burned over five hundred houses and the Police Academy
and the animal hospital and the great telescope at Mount
Stromlo, so that for a short while people who lost their
houses were giddy with a strange excitement, that fate had
marked them but not for death, they were still gloriously
alive. It ends with the announcement that our country was
at war with Iraq.
From the sixteenth of January to the twenty-second of
March, in that year of little grace, 2003.
The summer is over now, the garden is sharp with
autumn, dry still, the sun benign and the air remembering
that frost will come. The cat has vomited up a fur ball and is
asleep in a warm corner of the wall as though it had never
been.
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