"Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal."

A portrait of a sheltered and uncultured butcher's wife exposed to a new tenant in the countryside — a flamboyant homosexual enthusiastic about decorating, cooking, and throwing large parties.

This picture of social change in post-war rural England takes its title from a Tennyson poem of the same name.

In Harper's Bazaar US (March, 1957), Argosy (January 1958), Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories/The Enchantress and Other Stories (1961), Seven by Five/The Best of H.E. Bates (1963), Love in a Wych Elm and Other Stories (2009).