Lamb in love

the long version

Lamb in Love is set in a rural English village and tells of two people surprised halfway through their lives by ... by what? passion? desire? love? Neither of them have the experience to quite identify it. Vida Stephen is forty years old, nanny for twenty years to the mentally handicapped son of a rich American widower. Every day, for almost her whole life, she's nodded to postmaster Norris Lamb when calling for her mail. Norris is, at fifty-five, a fussy, stamp-collecting bachelor and church organist who has fallen suddenly, amazingly, and secretly in love with Vida. Sometimes Norris offers pretty stamps to the boy. Witness to Norris and Vida's halting, sometimes embarrassing courtship is that boy, Vida's charge, Manford - mute and clumsy and yet possessed of a strange and gentle intelligence. It is through Manford, even thanks to him, that Norris and Vida finally come to recognize each other and themselves.