I took the red dress down and put it against myself. ‘Does it make me look intemperate and unchaste?’ I said.
I hope that gay gentleman will be safe.
I had had the job for three weeks. It was dreary. You couldn’t read; they didn’t like it. I would feel as if I were drugged, sitting there, watching those damned dolls, thinking what a success they would have made of their lives if they had been women. Satin skin, silk hair, velvet eyes, sawdust heart – all complete.
Justice’, she said. ‘I’ve heard that word. It’s a cold word. I tried it out’, she said, still speaking in a low voice. ‘I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.
That was when it was sad, when you lay awake at night and remembered things. That was when it was sad, when you stood by the bed and undressed, thinking, “When he kisses me, shivers run up my back. I am hopeless, resigned, utterly happy. Is that me? I am bad, not good any longer, bad. That has no meaning, absolutely none. Just words. But something about the darkness of the streets has a meaning.
If I could choose I would rather be happy than write.
Just you touch me once. You’ll soon see if I’m a damn coward like you are.
Left alone, Miss Verney felt so old, lonely and helpless that she began to cry. No builder would tackle that shed, not for any price she could afford. But crying relieved her and she soon felt quite cheerful again. It was ridiculous to brood, she told herself.
There is no control over memory.
I have a lot of writing to do and not as much time as you’d think. I do it at night now and look a bit haggard afterwards.
I prayed, but the words fell to the ground meaning nothing.
A vague procession of towns all exactly alike, a vague procession of men also exactly alike. One can drift like that for a long time, she found, carefully hiding the fact that this wasn’t what one had expected of life. Not in the very least.
There was a vase of flame-coloured tulips in the hall – surely the most graceful of flowers. Some thrust their heads forward like snakes, and some were very erect, stiff, virginal, rather prim. Some were dying, with curved grace in their death.
The prayer ended, ‘May Almighty God defend us.’ And God who is indeed mysterious, who had made no sign when they burned Pierre as he slept – not a clap of thunder, not a flash of lighting – mysterious God heard Mr Mason at once and answered him. The yells stopped.
She is Creole girl, and she have the sun in her. Tell the truth now. She don’t come to your house in this place England they tell me about, she don’t come to your beautiful house to beg you to marry with her. No, it’s you come all the long way to her house – it’s you beg her to marry. And she love you and she give you all she have. Now you say you don’t love her and you break her up. What you do with her money, eh?
She found pleasure in memories, as an old woman might have done.
The house was burning, the yellow-red sky was like sunset and I knew that I would never see Coulibri again. Nothing would be left, the golden ferns and the silver ferns, the orchids, the ginger lilies and the roses, the rocking-chairs and the blue sofa, the jasmine and the honeysuckle, and the picture of the Miller’s Daughter. When they had finished, there would be nothing left but blackened walls and the mounting stone. That was always left. That could not be stolen or burned.
Well, there you are. It’s not that these things happen or even that one survives them, but what makes life strange is that they are forgotten. Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies. This is what makes life so droll – the way you forget and every day is a new day, and there’s hope for everybody, hooray...
I was thinking, ‘I’m nineteen and I’ve got to go on living and living and living.
I don’t say I don’t believe, I say I don’t know, I know what I see with my eyes and I never see it.
I stopped going out; I stopped wanting to go out. That happens very easily. It’s as if you had always done that – lived in a few rooms and gone from one to the other.