A Change of Climate: A Novel

A CHANGE OF

CLIMATE

ALSO BY HILARY MANTEL

Every Day Is Mother’s Day

Vacant Possession

A Place of Greater Safety

Eight Months on Ghazzah Street

An Experiment in Love

The Giant, O’Brien

Fluid Giving Up the Ghost

A CHANGE OF

CLIMATE

HILARY MANTEL

Picador

Henry Holt and Company

New York

A CHANGE OF CLIMATE. Copyright © 1994 by Hilary Mantel. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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The lines from W. H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening” are reprinted from Collected Poems, by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson, by kind permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Designed by Paula R. Szafranski

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mantel, Hilary.

   A change of climate : a novel / by Hilary Mantel

        p. cm.

   ISBN 0-312-42288-1

   I. Title

PR6063.A438C44 1997            96-39843

823’.914—dc21                                  CIP

First published in the United Kingdom by Viking

First published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company

First Picador Edition: September 2003

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Jenny Naipaul

AUTHOR’S NOTE

All the characters in this book are fictitious, except that of the Archbishop of Cape Town, which is based on his real-life counterpart, Geoffrey Clayton. I have used some of his words, taken from writings and sermons.

The settlement of Mosadinyana is fictional. The township of Elim is invented too, but I am indebted to the memoirs of Hannah Stanton, who served in the township of Lady Selborne.

Cases similar to that of the Eldreds may be found in the Law Reports of Botswana.

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871:

“We are not here concerned with hopes and fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability …”

Job 4:7:

“Consider, what innocent ever perished, or where have the righteous been destroyed?”

A CHANGE OF

CLIMATE

1970

Sad Cases, Good Souls

One day when Kit was ten years old, a visitor cut her wrists in the kitchen. She was just beginning on this cold, difficult form of death when Kit came in to get a glass of milk.

The woman Joan was sixty years old, and wore a polyester dress from a charity shop. A