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When last we encountered Sir Edward Feathers (Old Filth in Jane Gardam's wonderful novel of that name, reviewed in these pages Jan. 28, 2006), he, his life and his character were being misunderstood by junior members of London's Inner Temple. Tragical, comical and autumnal (if not quite pastoral), Old Filth delineated with rare exactness a particular kind of man in a particular kind of world - British colonial - in its last days. And it did so with compassion, humour and a deep understanding of both opportunity and regret.

Sir Edward figures only in the first, and title, story of Gardam's collection The People on Privilege Hill. And what a marvel it is, and she is. Having turned 80 in July, Gardam, who didn't begin publishing until her late 30s, shows no sign of diminishing powers.

• The People on Privilege Hill, by Jane Gardam, Abacus, 213 pages, $16

This simultaneously melancholy and joyful new collection begins with ancient Filth (stands for Failed in London, Try Hong Kong) and his equally ancient rival in law and love, Judge Veneering (aside from the obvious implications of the name, it recalls a character from Dickens's masterpiece Our Mutual Friend), achieving an odd sort of rustic rapprochement. It's a very funny tale of three elderly judges, bound in the rain to a send-off for a "priest" destined for the monastery of St. Umbridge (the patron saint of malcontents, perhaps?). The lead role in the foray devolves to Filth, while Veneering shows an unexpected talent for piano blues. Delicious.

Although all 14 stories have this magical and antic quality, the emotional vibrations vary enormously. Befitting her age, Gardam more than teases at infirmity and death, but the prospect of morbidity is never morbid. This is an oddly cheerful collection, always hovering on the fringes of belief, with healthy doses of skepticism.

Learning to Fly is a three-an-a-half page story that encompasses fear, the likelihood of grief and the certainty of death. An old woman, visiting France, examines lifelines as a sort of hobby, but half-believes the bad news contained in them. "It's all nonsense," she thinks, not quite convincingly. Fire, falling and flying also figure prominently.

“ One is never quite sure if what's being perceived is real or imagined, wishful thinking or a face given to fear ”

The French setting is an exception, since Gardam's world is a largely rural England (visits to cities prove seriously disorienting) where elderly ladies prepare butterfly cakes for church events. And her eye is more upon what is past and passing than what is to come. In fact, there's something of a haunted Church of England cast to the entire book.

But the outside world impends, intrudes. In Waiting for a Stranger, Lizzie Metcalfe agrees to house an African bishop for a night. "I've never seen anybody black in the ... in the flesh," she frets. "Only on the telly." Lizzie's no racist, though, which cannot be said of everyone in her surroundings. In the event, she falls asleep during a dreadful storm, and the bishop appears. Or does he?

In The Virgins of Bruges, Protestant nun Ursule, trying to get to her grieving sister in England (her husband has died suddenly) at Christmas, comes across a church that is no longer a church and characters in serious need of whatever unction she can provide in a secularized Europe.

Things in Gardam are seldom as they seem; seeming, as we learned in Old Filth, is very far from being. Thus, these stories are full of misprisions, of characters taking one thing for another, dreams for realities, open gates for locked ones, the past for the present. They misunderstand events, gestures, emotions. One is never quite sure if what's being perceived is real or imagined, wishful thinking or a face given to fear.

In the wrenching The Latter Days of Mr. Jones, an innocent old man who enjoys watching children at play is taken for a pedophile in a world far less innocent, more intellectually corrupt, than any he's ever conceived of. In the moving The Hair of the Dog, Eleanor (Gardam's characters are always named), possibly bound for a wedding, and possibly in London, has a hard time negotiating her way, literally and metaphorically, between streets and memories.

Gardam's quality of attention is breathtaking: gestures, pauses, the way the headlights of a car approaching through hills appear sporadically and as annunciation.

The collection, opening with old men, closes with old women as four long-ago classmates attend a reunion on the eve of the destruction and removal of their old college. One, the supposed adventurous beauty, has early-stage Alzheimer's; another seems too slavishly devoted to husband and hearth; another is sick of the world and longs for home; and the last is a successful novelist, likely in the romantic vein.

The story is an unsentimentally nostalgic delight, remarkable for Gardam's ability not merely to observe and understand transience and loss, but to turn them into a surprisingly joyful apprehension of the universe. It is among many delights to be found in The People on Privilege Hill. I have commended Jane Gardam to your attention before (she came late to mine). I do so, unreservedly, again.

Martin Levin is the editor of Globe Books.