Just what kind of a person are you, Miss Lea?” I fixed my mask in place before replying.
A few paces behind, I followed him.
I have written a number of short biographical studies of insignificant personages from literary history. My interest has always been in writing biographies of the also-rans: people who lived in the shadow of fame in their own lifetime and who, since their death, have sunk into profound obscurity.
But there was more. Did she know I had noticed? I had made no outward sign. But I had noticed. Today Miss Winter had said I.
It was Hester herself, made word.
And will you tell me the truth?” “I will tell you the truth.
The words from the letter were trapped in my head, trapped, it seemed, beneath the sloping ceiling of my attic flat, like a bird that has got in down the chimney.
That name was Adeline March.
Gone were her fiery orange and resplendent purple. She was dressed in a white long-sleeved chemise, and she was weeping.
We were both lone twins.
Thinking about it now, I realize that the mark had more or less the form of a Q, but at the time, in the shock of this unexpected and painful act of revealment, it had no such clarity, and it disturbed me the way I would be disturbed by the appearance on a page of English of an unfamiliar symbol from a lost and unreadable language.
Death might be a necessity in farming, but suffering? Never.
El silencio donde moraban sus demonios.
Her hair was a dirty color that was too dark to be blond, her chin was big and her eyes were small.
He was the first of my ghosts.
I left wide margins. In the left-hand one I noted any mannerisms, expressions and gestures that seemed to add something to her meaning. The right-hand margin I left blank. Later, rereading, it was here that I would enter my own thoughts, comments, questions.
As we drove into Harrow-gate, the atmosphere in the car was heavy with Miss Winter’s oppressive silence.
Adeline was made like a piece of wire with knots for knees and elbows.
There was nothing to see; the mist that hung in the air made everything invisible that was more than a short distance away.
You may not want to be my son, but I cannot help but be your father.