PALOMA

A recall of the author's friends in The Green Park in London during the last years of the war centers on Paloma, whose pride, ruthlessness and incredible hints roused Madeleine's curiosity and won her friendship. From the Park meetings and mutual visits, Paloma's life -- as a peasant girl in Burgundy, the toast of the town as a Gaiety girl (""seventh in line counting from left to right""), as a wife -- and as an old lady -- is filled in, with flashing pictures of her Edwardian admirers, honest appraisals of her treatment of her family, and high-handed behavior to new and old friends. With the war's end, Madeleine, five year's later, made her visit to Burgundy and there met the people in Paloma's life, her sisters and her brother, the neighbors and the other relatives, and satisfied herself about the truth of Paloma's amazing past. A personality portrait well documented with the fine detail of intimate knowledge, this will give Madeleine's established audience a satisfying sense of gossip fulfilled.