with moonlight and thought about the girl who had fainted in his class, her wooden body, her doll-like perambulation about the room, her thaw and resurrection.
He thought to himself, “I am changing. Something is happening to me. Something strange is happening to me. I’m not sure that it is a good thing. I don’t even know what it is.”
Vera’s face was turned away. In a sudden access of what might have been either affection or contrition he kissed her lightly on the cheek but he might have been kissing marble. She did not waken from what he knew was a pretended sleep.
Tom turned on his left side away from her, and so they slept back to back, he facing the open window, the draught from which slightly stirred the curtains.
Nevertheless something was happening to him, and it wasn’t anything he could precisely focus on or name. It was as if in a late revelation he was coming into the Vale of Soul Making, as if across a flat autumn field he was seeing a strange slightly ominous structure rising, an airy web. His bringing his mother to his house was the result not the cause of this feeling. He had taken to thinking of her as totally alone, and he had found the thought unbearable. But he was perceptive enough to realise that his mother’s loneliness—that perpetual image—was in a sense a displacement of his own loneliness, and when he saw her in his mind’s eye as perhaps knitting by a window or pacing about an empty house it was himself he was seeing. Even after he had brought her to the house he thought of her as alone, and before he went to school in the morning he would shout “Cheerio” through the shut door, not knowing sometimes whether she was awake or asleep. He knew that she was trying to be as little bother as possible, but her attempts to diminish herself only paradoxically magnified her presence.
Sometimes the terrible thought came into his mind, “Vera is not really the sort of person who knows about my mother. She needs someone less rarefied, more, in a sense, vulgar and cheerful.” But he did not blame Vera for being what she was. It was not easy for them to have their mother in the living room for after all they had preparation to do, and it would have been difficult for her to sit there in silence. Perhaps what they should have done was buy her a small house near themselves. But houses were expensive and scarce, and they almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to get a suitable one in their immediate area quite apart from the fact that paying a large mortgage they wouldn’t have been able to afford one. And there was no reason to believe that she would have liked to live in a house by herself in a strange town, not at least till she had grown used to it and liked it.
He wondered if Vera had really wanted his mother there in the first place and whether now that she had heard about Mrs Murphy she might not turn against her. But what Vera didn’t seem to realise was that though she herself had been used to loneliness and could exist on very little human contact his mother wasn’t like that. She wasn’t at all interested in books as Vera was, nor for that matter was she a devotee of television. She was in fact a very ordinary person without special gifts, without a high intelligence, though Tom was beginning to wonder about the value of intelligence even in his pupils. Surely it was more important to be “nice” than to be intelligent. In effect what world did
The Waste Land
reflect? For from day to day people lived in the world as it was, boring, dull, shot through with flashes of excitement and expectation, and at the end of it all a sort of white misty light as one might see sometimes between autumn trees.
One day he had a discussion about
King Lear
with his class, and it seemed to him that the play had taken on a new meaning for him, as if it were trying to teach him something. He found that for some odd reason his Sixth Year consisted almost exclusively of girls, which he didn’t
He thought to himself, “I am changing. Something is happening to me. Something strange is happening to me. I’m not sure that it is a good thing. I don’t even know what it is.”
Vera’s face was turned away. In a sudden access of what might have been either affection or contrition he kissed her lightly on the cheek but he might have been kissing marble. She did not waken from what he knew was a pretended sleep.
Tom turned on his left side away from her, and so they slept back to back, he facing the open window, the draught from which slightly stirred the curtains.
Nevertheless something was happening to him, and it wasn’t anything he could precisely focus on or name. It was as if in a late revelation he was coming into the Vale of Soul Making, as if across a flat autumn field he was seeing a strange slightly ominous structure rising, an airy web. His bringing his mother to his house was the result not the cause of this feeling. He had taken to thinking of her as totally alone, and he had found the thought unbearable. But he was perceptive enough to realise that his mother’s loneliness—that perpetual image—was in a sense a displacement of his own loneliness, and when he saw her in his mind’s eye as perhaps knitting by a window or pacing about an empty house it was himself he was seeing. Even after he had brought her to the house he thought of her as alone, and before he went to school in the morning he would shout “Cheerio” through the shut door, not knowing sometimes whether she was awake or asleep. He knew that she was trying to be as little bother as possible, but her attempts to diminish herself only paradoxically magnified her presence.
Sometimes the terrible thought came into his mind, “Vera is not really the sort of person who knows about my mother. She needs someone less rarefied, more, in a sense, vulgar and cheerful.” But he did not blame Vera for being what she was. It was not easy for them to have their mother in the living room for after all they had preparation to do, and it would have been difficult for her to sit there in silence. Perhaps what they should have done was buy her a small house near themselves. But houses were expensive and scarce, and they almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to get a suitable one in their immediate area quite apart from the fact that paying a large mortgage they wouldn’t have been able to afford one. And there was no reason to believe that she would have liked to live in a house by herself in a strange town, not at least till she had grown used to it and liked it.
He wondered if Vera had really wanted his mother there in the first place and whether now that she had heard about Mrs Murphy she might not turn against her. But what Vera didn’t seem to realise was that though she herself had been used to loneliness and could exist on very little human contact his mother wasn’t like that. She wasn’t at all interested in books as Vera was, nor for that matter was she a devotee of television. She was in fact a very ordinary person without special gifts, without a high intelligence, though Tom was beginning to wonder about the value of intelligence even in his pupils. Surely it was more important to be “nice” than to be intelligent. In effect what world did
The Waste Land
reflect? For from day to day people lived in the world as it was, boring, dull, shot through with flashes of excitement and expectation, and at the end of it all a sort of white misty light as one might see sometimes between autumn trees.
One day he had a discussion about
King Lear
with his class, and it seemed to him that the play had taken on a new meaning for him, as if it were trying to teach him something. He found that for some odd reason his Sixth Year consisted almost exclusively of girls, which he didn’t
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