And I have wondered often, was I master in my soul, or did I become the slave of my own blade?
Do you have any idea how mortifying it is to have your own mother standing up in front of everybody, drawing pictures of penises?
At least we were not set upon by highwaymen, we encountered no wild beasts, and it didn’t rain. By the standards I was becoming used to, it was quite dull.
Dinna fash yourself, Sassenach. Ye canna say more than ye know, but tell me it all, just once more.
A conclusion is simply the point at which you give up thinking. He gave up, and as he rose stiffly to his feet, found that a conclusion had indeed formed itself in his mind, much as a pearl forms inside an oyster.
All over the clearing, the same thing was happening; the women gave not an inch, but their men stepped out before them. Anyone coming into the clearing would think that the women had melted into invisibility, leaving an implacable phalanx of Scotsmen staring down the glen.
Never give anything away for free – but sometimes it pays to oil the wheels a bit.
He said there was always an hour in the day when time seems to stop – but that it was different for everyone. He thought it might be the hour when one was born.
He smelt strongly of woodsmoke, blood, and unwashed male, but the night chill bit through my thin dress and I was happy enough to lean back against him.
We stood wrapped in each other’s arms, taking comfort from our family below, yearning for the others we might never see again, at once at home and homeless, balanced on a knife edge of danger and uncertainty. But together.
To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct.
In body or soul, somewhere he struck a spark, and an answering fury of passion and need sprang from the ashes of surrender.
Books that were used had an open, interested feel to them, even if closed and neatly lined up on a shelf in strict order with their fellows. You felt as though the book took as much interest in you as you did in it and was willing to help when you reached for it.
That Cherry Bounce must be good stuff.
Hell was full of clocks, he was sure of it. There was no torment, after all, that could not be exacerbated by a contemplation of time passing. The large case clock at the end of the corridor had a particularly penetrating tick-tock, audiable above and through all the noises of the house. It seemed to Lord John Grey to echo his own heartbeats, each one a step on the road towards death.
Frank made a face; an Englishman to the bone, he would rather lap water out of the toilet than drink tea made from teabags. The Lipton’s had been left by Mrs. Grossman, the weekly cleaning woman, who thought tea made from loose leaves messy and disgusting.
Movement at the door of the cabin, and a small figure that I recognized as Amy Higgins appeared. The tall woman pulled off her hat and waved it, her long red hair streaming out like a banner in the wind. “Hello, the house!” she called, laughing. Then I was flying down the hill, with Jamie just before me, arms flung wide, the two of us flying together on that same wind.
Jamie was real, alright, more real than anything had ever been to me, even Frank and my life in 1945. Jamie, tender lover and perfidious blackguard.
She said if ever I saw you again, I was to tell you two things, just as she told them to me. The first was, “I think it is possible, but I do not know.” And the second – the second was just numbers. She made me say them over, to be sure I had them right, for I was to tell them to you in a certain order. The numbers were one, nine, six, and seven.
I was in the heart of chaos, and no power of mind or body was of use against it.