The Apothecary Rose (38 page)

Magda Digby, Potter's mother, lives in a world of her
own. An old Viking boat from York's past crowns her
house. Her speech is the old speech. Magda is purely the
novelist's creation, and perhaps to me the character most
real. Like the juxtaposition of pagan and Christian England
in
Beowulf,
Magda encapsulates the past and present. She
is outside time, like the city of York, which is part Roman, part Viking, part medieval, part Victorian, part twentieth-
century tourist town. And therein lies the intrigue.