THE GARMENT Motherhood is every woman's right and the natural outcome of a happy marriage. What then is the answer when a normal and beautiful young woman is forced to recognise, after two years as the wife of a country parson in the north of England, that her own marriage is a sham and will never bring her the fulfilment she desperately needs? Grace Rouse is faced by this situation and like many other women before her, she seeks to escape a mounting sense of frustration and despair by turning from the husband she has tried in vain to love to the comfort and release offered by another man. The final outcome, however, does not conform to pattern, and Grace is forced to wage a war between a man who can give her children and a man who passionately desires children but can only give them his name. SLINKY JANE In Battenbun, Northumberland, there live four Puddleton men - Grandpop, Old Pop, Pop and Peter. Three of them have two things in common: a cast in one eye and in the other, a glint for the opposite sex. Peter, his mother's only joy, has no cast and no eye for women either - until one day a customer calls at his garage on the edge of the village. The village hadn't seen anything like her before, and wasn't certain it wanted to, and from the moment of her arrival, things began to happen. An eel is found in a pond where never an eel has been known to visit. Men creep through the woods to find this Slinky Jane but which one, the eel or the strange girl?