I never met Betsy but in Querencia Stephen Bodio lets you see her plain. Steve was from a working-class area of Boston and of Irish-Italian roots, while Betsy was the late-life daughter of Bishop D. T. Huntington, forty years a missionary in China: ‘When I was born we converted the village; if I had been male, we would have converted the province.’ Betsy’s was a well-established New England family, with Mitfordian older sisters (who had founded a Trotskyite commune on Beacon Hill) and a useful family inheritance. Betsy took her money and ‘bought a Mercedes and drove at furious speeds through the Pyrenees, took at least one driving lesson from Juan Fangio, helped a boyfriend buy a Caribbean island, and met a parade of dazzling and dubious characters’. Although this approach would have been unlikely to be blessed by the Bishop, she settled down, put herself through university and made a living of sorts as a journalist. After all, if you have seen Noël Coward, naked, playing a piano in Jamaica, you are ready for anything . . .
Jeff Nicoll on Stephen Bodio’s Querencia (Issue 19)
