The Service Of Clouds by Susan Hill Page B

washed and put away. The kitchen, flooded with sunlight, settled again after his brief presence, and there was no disturbance there, no mark.
    If he had ever longed for warmth and grease and the clutter of old things discarded in corners, or for some animal, yeasty smell, he did not acknowledge it. He was conditioned to order and the cleanliness of things; silt and disarray troubled him. Yet in some cell of the honeycomb memory was a different way of living, richly, densely coloured, heaped up, a cave for him to return to, huddled together with the Florence Hennessy who had become his mother, Flora Molloy, and that was home.

Twelve
     
    The coals shifted and slipped, sending up a little puff of ash. Time passed. May Hennessy had not spoken again, and had not moved, only sat forward still, staring into the core of the fire.
    She is seeing the past there, Flora thought. And then, I will not love.
    For where had it led? The sad, grey man who had been her father had withered the love and the passion away. It had failed as his own health had failed – could never have been sustained. She had been born. He had died. (Olga did not come into it, Olga, born afterwards, and being the child she was, did not belong to the old life in any way at all.)
    I will not love.
    Flora looked round the room. The walls felt darker and pressed in upon her, the air was thick, with age and neglect. There seemed to be no energy here; the effort of living used it up and there was none to spare.
    Her mother’s confession had discomforted her, hinting as it did of experiences from which she was excluded. She had not existed then, and the idea of her own non-existence was terrifying, for she needed all the confidence and sense of purpose, the full assurance, that her own self-awareness could give her. She had come to know, very early on, that she would have no one and nothing else to rely on. Now, seeing her mother bent forwardsover the fire, she thought she saw the reason not to indulge in the weakness of love, for it had led May Hennessy here, to this state of defeated unhappiness. And what guarantee would there ever be that it would not let her down too, in some similar way? She could not have borne that, and the thought made her sit up suddenly, as if to shake off any possibility of it. As she moved, the picture came to her mind, of the young woman before the open window, the cool paleness of her clothing, the airiness of clouds, and it steadied her, and excited her too, symbolising and containing as it did her own visions of the future.
    What she had to say was said then. The words had been arranged ready for so long, it was easy, and soon done. She told of her plans and the cities she might go to, the colleges and where she might live, repeating Miss Pinkney’s words exactly. The speech lay as if unrolled between them for her mother to examine.
    The fire needed coal. It was dark and shrivelling into itself, and the cold crept in towards them from the edges of the room. Flora had not imagined anything beyond her own words, her confident statement of her intentions. There had seemed no need. She presumed that the arrangements would simply be discussed, and the details picked over; things would dispose themselves, if not now, then before very long.
    Otherwise, for the moment, the milk pan would be filled and the worn green tin of cocoa taken from the shelf. The maid Eileen had seen to the dishes, as she would see to the hearth early the next morning, before any of them woke. The maid was an invisible part of life, and unregarded. (But Olga loved her. With Olga, the girl shared laughter and furtive giggling conversations. Only Olga had been to the cottage in which her large family lived, close and foetid as a litter of puppies.)
    Flora would offer to make the drinks, and then, they would sit companionably. The fire would be pulled together and stirred into life again. There would be talk of London, Paris, Rome. She would tell May Hennessy what she had