This time the man confessed that there was slight detachment of the retina, and that Kicky must give up all thought of working for several months, and devote himself to the cure. He must have treatment at least once a week, continue with the ordinary bathing and poulticing at home, and put himself on a diet. He must, in fact, resign himself to being more or less of an invalid for the immediate future.
It all began to make sense. D as a child. Grandpapa – who died before Angela was born – with, D told us, a kind heart which made everyone love him, and a feeling for family that stretched to nephews, nieces, cousins and second cousins, so that any who needed help were not afraid to come to him, a man of very simple tastes unaffected by fame and fortune.
So dawned family interest, family pride, which was something quite other than clapping from a box in Wyndham’s Theatre when the curtain went up and D was standing there, smiling, bowing his head, looking from right to left and then up to the gallery, which happened at the end of the play. This was just part of something I had always known; it had nothing to do with us children but belonged to the audience, the people down there and all around, whom we should never know, who were not ‘us’.
Slaughter on a scale far greater than any attempted by the Paris mob was the portion of those village patriots who dared to resist them. Women and children were not spared, men were thrown, while still alive, into ditches piled high with corpses. Clergy who had sworn the oath to the Constitution were tied to horses and dragged on the dusty roads to a terrible death.
Charles said, “I haven’t looked at the Acrostic. A word of nine letters in the crossword caught my attention.” “Oh, what was that?” “An invertebrate animal preying upon the body of another animal.” Niall struck the first chord on the piano. “A parasite,” he said.
Soon we won’t be children anymore. We shall be like Them.
She does not know what is good for her, any more than all the so-called patriots in the country. Someone should have the nerve, and the power, to say ‘Enough.’ But they’re like a lot of sheep without a shepherd.
Sorrow for the men that mourn, Sorrow for the days that dawn, Sorrow for all things born Into this world of sorrow. And all my life, as far as I can see, All that I hope, or ever hope to be, Is merely driftwood on a lonely sea.
Carry must have been the germ that produced the ultimate Trilby, there can be no two opinions about it; she had the same camaraderie, the same boyish attraction, the same funny shy reserve. Kicky absorbed her, without realising it, and absorbed the game of mesmerising at the same time, so that the two things combined and became one at the back of his mind. He forgot all about them for nearly forty years – and then he wrote Trilby and made a fortune at sixty.
This is ours for the moment, but no more. While we are in it we bring it life. When we have gone it no longer exists, it fades into anonymity.
He realised now that there was no hope for his left eye; detachment of the retina was complete; and just before Christmas came again the oculist told him that there was a chance his right eye would also become affected. The shock was terrible.
I am considered silly, selfish and incredible by all concerned. No use in explaining. I prefer to live happily in discomfort here in beloved Fowey to living comfortably, query, and discontentedly in indifferent Hampstead. That’s all. I’m used to being alone. Why fuss? Why struggle? It’s funny that no one seems really to understand my craving for solitude, that I am sincerely, and without posing, happiest when alone. It’s my natural state.
The proprietor bowed, and walked with him to the entrance. ‘In Venice the whole world meets,’ he said smiling. ‘It is possible the signore will find his friends tonight. Arrivederci, signore.
But the people enjoy watching the dog,” he said swiftly, trying to divert Charles. “That’s why they go to the circus, for distraction. Maria supplies the same drug in the theater, and I give it in large doses to all the errand-boys who whistle my songs. I think you’ve got hold of the wrong word. We’re pedlars, hawking our wares – not parasites.
However demanding Pappy may have been, however tiring, however petulant, he was, in the true and deepest sense, her refuge. He shielded her from action. His was the cloak that covered her. She need not go out into the world, she need not struggle, need not face the things that other people face – because she looked after Pappy.
Yes, of course it was kind, but why must I be reminded of the fact, and would I ever write enough short stories to sell, and so make some money that would be mine, all mine, so that I could pay the cook and buy my own food, and keep myself and be truly independent? It just had to happen. I refused to be beaten.
Once a person gave his talent to the world, the world put a stamp upon it. The talent was not a personal possession anymore. It was something to be traded, bought, and sold. It fetched a high price, or a low one. It was kicked in the common market. Always, forever after, the possessor of the talent must keep a wary eye upon the purchaser. Therefore, if you were sensitive, if you were proud, you turned your back upon the market. You made excuses.
November 1929, and I was still pegging away at Part Three, with a lump on my third finger from holding my pen too tightly. A pity I didn’t own a typewriter.
So much laughter, so much gaiety, up in the wards there with the wounded men, and the same below, in the pillared hall, and out in the grounds too, where the more mobile would come rabbiting. Once only did I realise how the war must have touched them, and this was when a fresh entry of wounded came by ambulance to the entrance in the great hall.
Maria stepped out of the telephone box. A policeman at the corner was watching her. Caroline was still crying. Maria turned and pushed the pram in the opposite direction from the policeman. You never knew. It might be against the law to leave a child to cry.