Gerald was to die suddenly, following an operation, in April 1934. Daphne did not go to his funeral partly because, in her grief, she did not wish to admit he was dead. Almost immediately afterwards she began writing his biography, Gerald: A Portrait, bringing him back to life on the page.
But the point is this, monsieur,” explained the patron, “the reason why madame complains of you, is not because of the immorality in itself; but because, so she tells me, you make immorality delicious.
This, dear God, was his contribution to the universe. Take it or leave it. Not for Niall the joys of Paradise, perhaps; but at least not the pangs of Purgatory. A small place, possibly, outside the Golden Gates.
Witches were worse than wizards. Wizards were just old men with cloaks and a wand. But witches did not have to be old, they were sometimes beautiful, and then you could not tell until it was too late.
You forget, those things were easy for me. I belonged to both of them.” Niall pushed his cup back on the tray. “What a bloody thing to say,” he said, and he got up and lit another cigarette.
He argued the course of direction during the full seventy miles of the drive. The fact that his map was eighteenth century did not fluster him.
For myself, I could think of nothing more likely to cause panic and consternation among a crowd of women than to be shut up within a church without their menfolk, and to have the incessant clanging of that same church’s bell sounding its warning from the belfry above their heads.
I wrote better at fifteen than I do now,’ I grumbled in the diary, after glancing through some scraps that had not been lost. ‘Perhaps if I changed from fiction to sociology I should do better. A treatise on civilisation? It might be good practice for style if nothing else.
What is the truth?” I asked, in renewed agony of doubt – for had I, after all, done wrong in leaving my husband to his possible fate at le Chesne-Bidault? Were hordes of brigands even now setting fire to my home and everything I held dear? “The truth?” repeated Robert. “Nobody ever knows the truth in this world.
Perhaps we shall not see each other again. I will write to you, though, and tell you, as best as I can, the story of your family. A glass-blower, remember, breathes life into a vessel, giving it shape and form and sometimes beauty; but he can, with that same breath, shatter and destroy it. If what I write displeases you, it will not matter. Throw my letters in the fire unread, and keep your illusions. For myself, I have always preferred to know the truth.
Mander smiled: “A woman is as old as she looks, a man is as old as he feels, Sir Julius. You know the old saying?
Charles was nowhere to be seen. Maria had to go to look for him. Celia’s anxiety mounted. Pappy would never hang on until after six. He was like a baby with a bottle. He had to keep to his regular time for his whiskey or his whole system became disorganized.
There was no yesterday and no tomorrow; fear had been slung aside, and shame forgotten. We were all together – Pappy and Mama; Maria and Niall and Celia – we were all happy, with so many people looking at us, we were all enjoying ourselves. It was a game that we played, a game that we understood. We were the Delaneys. And we were giving a party.
Until the moment of that dismissal with its reason given, he had received out of anywhere – or was it out of nowhere in the morning – that love must suffer for loving; that, the deeper planted, the more it must suffer, in that all true passion of love at its highest force inevitably ends in tragedy: that no story of love between man and woman at its highest could ever come but to a tragic end; that no ending but disillusion can be invented for the illusion which is more than half of such love;.
Mournful, mournful. I wanted to be alone, but the others would laugh and talk. Always the past, just out of reach, waiting to be recaptured. Why did I feel so sad thinking of a past I had never known?
Where do they go, Sophie, those younger selves of ours? How do they vanish and dissolve?’ ‘They don’t,’ I said. ‘They’re with us always, like little shadows, ghosting us through life.
Perhaps losing my first child had made me hard. Nothing Robert could say or do would ever again surprise me. If he chose to leave us this way, although my heart yearned after him it was his choice, not ours.
She walked briskly, with the quick step of one who did not suffer, or perhaps refused to suffer, any of the inconveniences of old age;.
The great man made all sorts of tests with mysterious instruments, and finally told him there was very little wrong, merely a congestion of the retina, and gave him some drops for use every night and morning, and told him to go away for a few weeks to the sea, and he would be well by the end of the month.
Alas, the countless links are strong, That bind us to our clay, The loving spirit lingers long, And would not pass away.