There were many things Viola could have said at this point. She had thought of all of them while gazing at the forest, the sacred river, the birds, ‘I’m sorry’ being foremost, but instead she told him about the dream. ‘And then you turned to me and you were smiling and you said, “We did it, Mum! Everyone got on the train.”’ ‘I don’t think it was about the train.’ ‘No,’ Viola agreed. ‘It was how I felt when you spoke to me.’ ‘Which was?’ ‘Overwhelmed by love. For you.’ Oh, Viola. At last. Bertie.
How many times would he disappoint you in a day if you were married to him? Ursula wondered. It seemed to her that in the search for arguments against marriage the existence of Maurice presented the very best one of all.
They’re definitely going to declare war tomorrow. In the morning. It’s probably timed so that the nation can get down on its collective knees in church and pray for deliverance.’ ‘Oh, yes, war is always so Christian, isn’t it?
Juliet sighed and wondered if one day she would think herself to death. Was that possible? And would it be painful?
Mr. Carver hadn’t been such a bad sort really. He had been very keen on Esperanto, which had seemed an absurd eccentricity at the time but now Ursula thought it might be a good thing to have a universal language, as Latin had once been. Oh, yes, Miss Woolf said, a common language was a wonderful idea, but utterly utopian. All good ideas were, she said sadly.
Now it would not be the geography of Empire that would make him, it would be the architecture of war.
There were different categories of friends in Vince’s opinion. Golf friends, work friends, old school friends, shipboard friends... but friend friends were harder to come by.
She didnt see the point of alcohol, or drugs. People had little enough control over their lives without losing more.
He loved Viola as only a parent can love a child, but it was hard work.
I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
She had never chosen death over life before and as she was leaving she knew something had cracked and broken and the order of things had changed. Then the dark obliterated all thoughts.
Her mother was still more of a presence than an absence in her life. Juliet supposed that one day in the future it would be the other way round, but she doubted that would be an improvement.
There were doorways between this world and the next, she said, but only certain people could pass through them.
Tracy thought she must be missing something, it felt like the same world as ever to her. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, kids everywhere falling through the cracks. The Victorians would have recognized it. People just watched a lot more TV and found celebrities interesting, that was all that was different.
Wronged wives were a law unto themselves.
Later, when she understood that it was the last time they would all be together, she wished she had paid more attention.
Parenting is like writing, most people just make it up as they go along.
Ursula found it very odd to think that up above them there were German bombers being flown by men who, essentially, were just like Teddy. They weren’t evil, they were just doing what had been asked of them by their country. It was war itself that was evil, not men. Although she would make an exception for Hitler.
Oh, how he missed his sister. Out of everyone, the legions of the dead, the numberless infinities of souls who had gone before, it was the loss of Ursula that had left him with the sorest heart.
Bridget wouldn’t let Trixie come to Mrs. Dodds’s house, she said she would never hear the end of it. “She doesn’t believe in dogs,” Bridget said. “Dogs are hardly an article of faith,” Sylvie said.