How strange memory is! When I close my eyes, I see three different castles — one in the sunset light of that first evening, one all fresh and clean as in our early days here, one as it is now. The last picture is very sad because all our good furniture has gone....We have been poor for five years now. (35)
I have rarely heard such rain as there was during the meal. I am never happy when the elements go to extremes — I don't think I am frightened, but I imagine the poor countryside being battered until I end by feeling battered myself. Rose is just the opposite — it is as if she is egging the weather on, wanting louder claps of thunder and positively encouraging the forked lightning. She went to the door while it was raining and reported that the garden was completely flooded. Father said, "Let me add to your simple pleasure in Nature's violence by reminding you that there will shortly be at least six glorious new leaks in our roof." (40)
Father had asked Mrs. Cotton — and Simon and Neil — to dinner next Saturday. "Mortmain, how could you?" Topaz simply shouted at him. "What are we to give them — and what on?" You know we haven't a stick of dining room furniture."
"Oh, give them ham and eggs in the kitchen, " said father, "they won't mind. And they've certainly provided enough ham." We stared at him in utter despair. It was a good thing Rose wasn't there because I really think she might have struck him, he looked so maddeningly arrogant....
In the end Topaz got Stephen to take the hen-house door off its hinges and make some rough trestles to put it on, and we pushed it close to the window seat, which saved us three chairs. We used the grey brocade curtains from the hall as a tablecloth... Our dinner menu was: Clear soup made from the second ham bone, boiled chicken and ham, peaches and cream (the Cottons sent the peaches, just in time), and deviled ham mousse. (167-8)
All the time I stood on the walls I was in a kind of daze, barely conscious of anything but the moving car; and when I pulled myself together enough to go in and undress, I deliberately held my thoughts away from me. Only when I lay down in darkness did I at last let them flow into my mind. And with them came nothing but happiness — like the happiness I felt when Simon kissed me. (223)
We both laughed and then he said that it was just as reasonable to talk of smelling or tasting God as of seeing or hearing Him. "If one ever has any luck, one with know with all one's senses — and none of them. Probably as good a way as any of describing it is that we shall 'come over all queer.'"
"But haven't you already?"
He sighed and said the whiffs are few and far between. "But the memory of them everlasting," he added softly. Then we fell silent, both of us staring at the fire. (235)
I found myself saying: "Sacrifice is the secret — you have to sacrifice things for art an it's the same with religion; and then the sacrifice turns out to be a gain." Then I got confused and I couldn't hold onto what I meant — until Miss Blossom remarked: "Nonsense, duckie — it's perfectly simple. You lose yourself in something beyond yourself and it's a lovely rest." (245)
But no sunrise I ever saw was more beautiful than when the thick grey mist gradually changed to a golden haze.
"That really is remarkable," Simon said, watching it. "And one can't actually see any sun at all."
I told myself it was symbolic — that he couldn't yet see how happy I would make him one day. "Could you fancy a sandwhich?" I asked.
I think he only took one to keep me company, but he talked quite naturally while we ate — about the difficulty of finding words to describe the luminous mist, and why one has the desire to describe beauty.
"Perhaps it's an attempt to possess it," I said.
"Or be possessed by it; perhaps that's the same thing, really. I suppose it's the complete identification with beauty one's seeking."
The mist grew brighter and brighter. I could have looked at it for ever, but Simon hid the sandwich paper neatly down the ditch and we drove on. (328)
