from the radio, taunting her with the empty echo of her own speech. At the same time, the spare room becomes tenanted; the same mockery greets her on the stairs. Muriel has a passion for giving objects the wrong name, even when she knows the right one; it is a technique of bafflement she is practising. She glances only surreptitiously around her, moving her eyes, never her head; she can see, for self-preservation she must see, but she is not sure that she is supposed to look. Once she watched in wonder Evelyn’s ritual with the milk-money. Nowshe has learned that coins pay for desires. She wonders about the changing face of the clock. Is it related to the lines on her mother’s face, her increasing deafness and feebleness, the accumulation of dust upon their lives? Is it possible that every year is not the same, not just the same? Hurry, hurry, Evelyn always says: or you will not be on time…Yesterday, she says, today, tomorrow. Without causality there is no time, and there is no causality in Muriel’s head. Evelyn’s speech is just a noise, like the clatter of dustbin lids or the crack of bone, the incessant drip of the guttering. Events have no order, no structure, no purpose. Things happen because they must, because they can. Each moment belongs in infinity, each infinity cherishes its neighbour like turtle-doves on a bough. Muriel’s heart is a mathematical place, a singularity from which, in time, everything will issue.
Mrs. Wells had a flute-like voice; it would have been suitable for opening Parliament, and it seemed a pity that she would never get the opportunity.
“Rejection after rejection,” she was saying, “until finally—” and she would go on to read her class the story of the wealth and acclaim that had come to some struggling author overnight. But they were not much encouraged, for it was always some American of whom they had never heard, with a wildly improbable name. Colin had long ago ceased listening. Classrooms do not smell like classrooms any more, he thought, where is the scent of dried ink and bullying, where is my childhood?
“I also write fairy stories,” said the man whose ears stuck out. Mrs. Wells stared at him glassily, at a loss.
And Autumn does not smell like Autumn, Colin thought; where is the woodsmoke and the russet apples packed in barrels, and what are russet apples anyway, a breed or only acolour? Where are the swallows twittering on the wires? What will the swallows do when we all communicate by telepathy? I have only seen one, this year, and it did not make a summer.
I will never be a writer, he thought, I will never learn it, just as last year I did not learn Russian, I will never do it, my mind runs to clichés like abandoned plots to seed.
“You have to give people what they recognise and understand,” Mrs. Wells was saying sweetly.
Autumn is only the wet lamplight on the black wet road, soup out of Sylvia’s packets, a splutter and a cough from the car engine at eight in the morning; kids whining and defaulting dragged by their scruffs from September through to Advent, transistor blah-blah, only two thousand shopping days to Christmas, blah-blah, God rest you merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.
“Mushrooms,” said Mrs. Moffat with pride. “I have sent an article to The Edible World on the cultivation of mushrooms.”
My vegetable love will grow, thought Colin, vaster than Empires and more slow.
“Do read it to us,” Mrs. Wells shrilled. “Could you, would you, read it to us, and we might help you with helpful hints. But first we must have our little assignment, shall we? ‘An Interesting Experience.’ Mr. Sidney?”
Colin grinned. “I’m sorry, I haven’t done my homework.”
“Oh, now, that’s a pity, Mr. Sidney.”
Her tone was light; if there was genuine grief, she kept it out of her voice. It is commendable, he thought, her restraint. A bare branch tapped and tapped against the window, dice in the evening’s pot.
“I
Mrs. Wells had a flute-like voice; it would have been suitable for opening Parliament, and it seemed a pity that she would never get the opportunity.
“Rejection after rejection,” she was saying, “until finally—” and she would go on to read her class the story of the wealth and acclaim that had come to some struggling author overnight. But they were not much encouraged, for it was always some American of whom they had never heard, with a wildly improbable name. Colin had long ago ceased listening. Classrooms do not smell like classrooms any more, he thought, where is the scent of dried ink and bullying, where is my childhood?
“I also write fairy stories,” said the man whose ears stuck out. Mrs. Wells stared at him glassily, at a loss.
And Autumn does not smell like Autumn, Colin thought; where is the woodsmoke and the russet apples packed in barrels, and what are russet apples anyway, a breed or only acolour? Where are the swallows twittering on the wires? What will the swallows do when we all communicate by telepathy? I have only seen one, this year, and it did not make a summer.
I will never be a writer, he thought, I will never learn it, just as last year I did not learn Russian, I will never do it, my mind runs to clichés like abandoned plots to seed.
“You have to give people what they recognise and understand,” Mrs. Wells was saying sweetly.
Autumn is only the wet lamplight on the black wet road, soup out of Sylvia’s packets, a splutter and a cough from the car engine at eight in the morning; kids whining and defaulting dragged by their scruffs from September through to Advent, transistor blah-blah, only two thousand shopping days to Christmas, blah-blah, God rest you merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.
“Mushrooms,” said Mrs. Moffat with pride. “I have sent an article to The Edible World on the cultivation of mushrooms.”
My vegetable love will grow, thought Colin, vaster than Empires and more slow.
“Do read it to us,” Mrs. Wells shrilled. “Could you, would you, read it to us, and we might help you with helpful hints. But first we must have our little assignment, shall we? ‘An Interesting Experience.’ Mr. Sidney?”
Colin grinned. “I’m sorry, I haven’t done my homework.”
“Oh, now, that’s a pity, Mr. Sidney.”
Her tone was light; if there was genuine grief, she kept it out of her voice. It is commendable, he thought, her restraint. A bare branch tapped and tapped against the window, dice in the evening’s pot.
“I
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