of Uruguay, tropical roses, nightingales, sea beaches, mermaids, and women drowned at sea. William was moving him aside.
Then came two elderly women of the lower middle class. The first woman stout and ponderous. The other woman was nimble. They scrutinized the old man’s back in silence. After that they went on their very complicated dialogue:
“Nell, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa, he says, I say, she says, I say, I say…”
“My Bert, Sis, Bill, Grandad, the old man, sugar,
Sugar, flour, kippers, greens,
Sugar, sugar, sugar.”
The ponderous woman looked at the flowers, with a curious expression. So the heavy woman came to a standstill opposite the flower bed. She ceased even to pretend to listen to what the other woman was saying. She stood there. She was swaying the top part of her body slowly backwards and forwards. She was looking at the flowers. Then she offered to have some tea.
The snail decided to creep beneath the leaf. There was a point where the leaf curved high enough from the ground.
Two other people came past outside on the turf. This time they were both young, a young man and a young woman.
“Lucky it isn’t Friday,” he observed.
“Why? Do you believe in luck?”
“They charge sixpence on Friday.”
“What’s sixpence anyway? Isn’t it worth sixpence?”
“What’s ‘it’—what do you mean by ‘it’?”
“O, anything—I mean—you know what I mean.”
Long pauses came between each of these remarks. They were uttered in toneless and monotonous voices. The couple stood still on the edge of the flower bed. They pressed the end of her parasol deep down into the soft earth. Who knows what precipices are concealed there? Who knows what slopes of ice don’t shine in the sun on the other side? Who knows? Who saw this before? She wondered what sort of tea they gave you at Kew. He pulled the parasol out of the earth with a jerk. He was impatient to find the place to have some tea, like other people.
“Come along, Trissie. It’s time to have our tea.”
“Wherever does one have one’s tea?” she asked.
There was the oddest thrill of excitement in her voice.
She was trailing her parasol, turning her head this way and that way. She was forgetting her tea. She was wishing to go down there and then down there. She was remembering orchids and cranes among wild flowers. She was remembering a Chinese pagoda and a crimson bird.
Thus one couple after another passed the flower-bed. Then this couple disappeared in green blue vapour. How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush hopped like a mechanical bird. It hopped, in the shadow of the flowers, with long pauses between one movement and the next.
Yellow and black, pink and white, men, women, and children appeared for a second upon the horizon. Then they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees. They were dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere. They were like thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices. They were breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire.
There was no silence. All the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels. They were changing their gear. They were like a vast nest of Chinese boxes. The voices cried aloud. The petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air.
Monday or Tuesday
Lazy and indifferent, the heron passes over the church beneath the sky. White and distant, the sky covers and uncovers. The sky moves and remains. A lake? A mountain? Oh, perfect—the sun! Ferns then, or white feathers, for ever and ever.
We are desiring truth. We are awaiting it. We are laboriously distilling a few words. A cry starts to the left. Another cry starts to the right. Wheels strike divergently. Ever desiring truth. The dome is red. Coins hang on the trees. Smoke trails from the chimneys; bark, shout, cry “Iron for sale”—and truth?
Men’s feet and women’s feet, black or gold-encrusted. This foggy weather, sugar? No, thank you. The commonwealth of the future. The firelight is darting. The firelight is making the room red. Black figures and their bright eyes. Outside a van discharges. Miss Thingummy drinks tea at her desk.
Leaves. Silver-splashed. Home or not home. Gathered, scattered, squandered, swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled leaves—and truth?
Now to recollect by the fireside on the white square of marble. Words are rising from ivory depths. They shed their blackness, blossom and penetrate. The book fell down. In the flame, in the smoke, in the momentary sparks, the marble square pendant, minarets beneath and the Indian seas, stars glint—truth?
Lazy and indifferent the heron returns. The sky veils the stars; then bares them.
An Unwritten Novel
Such an expression of unhappiness—and one’s eyes were sliding above the paper’s edge to the poor woman’s face. It’s almost a symbol of human destiny. Life is what you see in people’s eyes. Life is what they learn, though they want to hide it,—what? Life is like that. Five faces opposite—five mature faces—and the knowledge in each face. Strange, though, how people want to conceal it! Marks of reticence are on all those faces. Lips are shut. Eyes are shaded. Each one is trying to hide or stultify his knowledge. One smokes. Another reads. The third checks his pocket book. The fourth stares at the map. The fifth does nothing at all. That’s terrible. She looks at life. Ah, my poor, unfortunate woman, play the game!
She looked up. She shifted slightly in her seat and sighed. As if she apologizes and at the same time says to me,
“If you knew!”
Then she looked at life again.
“But I know,” I answered silently.
I was glancing at the Times.
“I know everything”.
‘Peace between Germany and the Allied Powers was yesterday officially ushered in at Paris—Signor Nitti, the Italian Prime Minister.
A passenger train at Doncaster was in collision with a goods train.’
We all know—the Times knows—but we pretend that we don’t.”
My eyes crept over the paper’s rim. She shuddered. She twitched her arm queerly to the middle of her back. She shook her head. Again I dipped into my great reservoir of life.
“Take what you like,” I continued, “births, deaths, marriages. The habits of birds, Leonardo da Vinci, the Sandhills murder, high wages and the cost of living. Oh, take what you like,” I repeated, “it’s all in the Times!”
Again with infinite weariness she moved her head from side to side. Then it settled on her neck.
The Times was no protection against her sorrow. The best thing was to fold the paper. It made a perfect square, crisp, thick, impervious even to life. I glanced up quickly. She pierced through my shield. She gazed into my eyes. Her twitch denied all hope. Her twitch discounted all illusion.
So we rattled through Surrey and across the border into Sussex. The other travellers left. Apart from us, only one of them stayed. Soon we were alone together. Here was Three Bridges station. We drew slowly down the platform. We stopped.
Was he going to leave us? At that instant he roused himself. He crumpled his paper contemptuously. He burst open the door, and left us alone.
The unhappy woman addressed me, palely and colourlessly. She talked of stations and holidays. She talked of brothers at Eastbourne, and the time of year. It was, I forget now, early or late. But at last she breathed,
“To leave home—that’s the worst thing.”
Ah, now we approached the catastrophe,
“My sister-in-law,” the bitterness of her tone was like lemon on cold steel, “nonsense, she likes to say—that’s what they all