are flowers on the bedside table with a card by them which reads:
Get Well Sue
Love Joe
Aunt C told me that I was completely incoherent, and not only that: in a frenzy of fever I’d torn up the photo of the Toastie personnel which is the setting for Icarus’s eye. The remains are now sewn with used Kleenex under my bed. It is over.
I must have fallen back to sleep for the last couple of hours because I woke up again at lunchtime. I was just turning my damp pillow when I heard a voice outside my door.
‘Shall I take it in mom, or leave it here?’ It sounded like an American.
As the door opened I pretended to sleep, but I watched as someone came in with a tray. It was the nymph girl from the party. I hadn’t put two and two together until just now. It was Delia’s daughter with the fancy name. This was Loudolle, come from Alpen. Even in her lounge wear she looked amazing. With no make-up she was camera ready. But there were a couple of strands of her hair out of place, just entussled enough to look human.
She put the tray by my bed and then began a decisive snoop in my things, opening up my draws and fisselling, with a disdainful glance at my clothes. Then she stooped to look under my bed where the torn-up photo lay scattered among wet tissues. My heart was pounding, for I had not yet checked to see if Icarus’s eye was intact. She rifled through the fragments, making scuffling noises under my bed, before getting up and slinking out of my room.
As soon as she’d gone I plucked up the torn remnants, and found that Icarus’s eye had now become separated from everything else in the picture. I tried briefly to reinstate the eye in situ with the rest of the remains of the staff, before giving up and putting his lone eye under my pillow for safety. I couldn’t quite throw it away.
For some reason it didn’t seem odd that the nymph girl had frisked me, and I felt this in all six senses.
When the sun has gone and the night has come and the cold bites you and the rain wets you, you must stay still till it passes. I feel as though I am in a great earthen plot full of weeds and flowers together, but the weeds are choking out the flowers, strangling all their sweetness, and everything hurts.
Susan Bowl
Egham Hirsute Group
Green Place
Egham
Surrey
Sun 15 Feb 1987
Dear Mr O’Carroll
I hope you don’t mind me writing to you, but I am currently working through the coursework in your brilliant book The Dorcas Tree , and I wondered if you could help me with something important.
I have just lived through a great personal trauma and am desperate to hang on to the one thing I have left, which is my writing. The persisiant question that has been bothering me is thus: is it better for the fledgling writer to write from experience or from the imagination?
Until recently I have known little of romantic entanglements, but I now have had the misfortune to know more than was called for about heartbreak. However this ‘life experience’ has not affected my writing in a positive way as indicated by the poets and I would be introverted to know your response as I am more than confused and blocked.
You have many fans in Egham.
I look forward very much to your reply, when you are not overwhelmed by letters.
Yours truly
Susan Bowl
Sunday 22 Feb
It’s been a week since that night, the dashing of hopes and dreams. Each day I have been aware of nothing but feeling cold, and the smell of eggs from breakfast. But Aunt Coral has just told me something that has totally shocked me out of my sickbed.
At about four o’clock she tiptoed into my room, clutching an armful of papers and her Commonplace. I remember thinking it was an odd time for nostalgia as she put a cold hand on my forehead.
‘You’ll live,’ she said, before regret ran across her face, because jokes like that are no longer appropriate. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m much better, ready to get back in the saddle,’ I said.
‘Good,’ she said, ‘do you feel up to
Get Well Sue
Love Joe
Aunt C told me that I was completely incoherent, and not only that: in a frenzy of fever I’d torn up the photo of the Toastie personnel which is the setting for Icarus’s eye. The remains are now sewn with used Kleenex under my bed. It is over.
I must have fallen back to sleep for the last couple of hours because I woke up again at lunchtime. I was just turning my damp pillow when I heard a voice outside my door.
‘Shall I take it in mom, or leave it here?’ It sounded like an American.
As the door opened I pretended to sleep, but I watched as someone came in with a tray. It was the nymph girl from the party. I hadn’t put two and two together until just now. It was Delia’s daughter with the fancy name. This was Loudolle, come from Alpen. Even in her lounge wear she looked amazing. With no make-up she was camera ready. But there were a couple of strands of her hair out of place, just entussled enough to look human.
She put the tray by my bed and then began a decisive snoop in my things, opening up my draws and fisselling, with a disdainful glance at my clothes. Then she stooped to look under my bed where the torn-up photo lay scattered among wet tissues. My heart was pounding, for I had not yet checked to see if Icarus’s eye was intact. She rifled through the fragments, making scuffling noises under my bed, before getting up and slinking out of my room.
As soon as she’d gone I plucked up the torn remnants, and found that Icarus’s eye had now become separated from everything else in the picture. I tried briefly to reinstate the eye in situ with the rest of the remains of the staff, before giving up and putting his lone eye under my pillow for safety. I couldn’t quite throw it away.
For some reason it didn’t seem odd that the nymph girl had frisked me, and I felt this in all six senses.
When the sun has gone and the night has come and the cold bites you and the rain wets you, you must stay still till it passes. I feel as though I am in a great earthen plot full of weeds and flowers together, but the weeds are choking out the flowers, strangling all their sweetness, and everything hurts.
Susan Bowl
Egham Hirsute Group
Green Place
Egham
Surrey
Sun 15 Feb 1987
Dear Mr O’Carroll
I hope you don’t mind me writing to you, but I am currently working through the coursework in your brilliant book The Dorcas Tree , and I wondered if you could help me with something important.
I have just lived through a great personal trauma and am desperate to hang on to the one thing I have left, which is my writing. The persisiant question that has been bothering me is thus: is it better for the fledgling writer to write from experience or from the imagination?
Until recently I have known little of romantic entanglements, but I now have had the misfortune to know more than was called for about heartbreak. However this ‘life experience’ has not affected my writing in a positive way as indicated by the poets and I would be introverted to know your response as I am more than confused and blocked.
You have many fans in Egham.
I look forward very much to your reply, when you are not overwhelmed by letters.
Yours truly
Susan Bowl
Sunday 22 Feb
It’s been a week since that night, the dashing of hopes and dreams. Each day I have been aware of nothing but feeling cold, and the smell of eggs from breakfast. But Aunt Coral has just told me something that has totally shocked me out of my sickbed.
At about four o’clock she tiptoed into my room, clutching an armful of papers and her Commonplace. I remember thinking it was an odd time for nostalgia as she put a cold hand on my forehead.
‘You’ll live,’ she said, before regret ran across her face, because jokes like that are no longer appropriate. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m much better, ready to get back in the saddle,’ I said.
‘Good,’ she said, ‘do you feel up to
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