come-these hopes so patently, defenselessly there that Roger even at his most cheaply nihilistic couldn't quite bring himself to take the pictures down, turn them to the wallpaper-"what do you all expect from me, working day in day out among raving lunatics," Jessica sighing oh gosh, curling her pretty legs up into the chair, "they believe in survival after death, communication mind-to-mind, prophesying, clairvoyance, teleportation- they believe, Jess! and-and-" something is blocking his speech. She forgets her annoyance, comes up out of the fat paisley chair to hold him, and how does she know, warm-skirted thighs and mons pushing close to heat and rouse his cock, losing the last of her lipstick across his shirt, muscles, touches, skins confused, high, blooded-know so exactly what Roger meant to say?
Mind-to-mind, tonight up late at the window while he sleeps, lighting another precious cigarette from the coal of the last, filling with a need to cry because she can see so plainly her limits, knows she can never protect him as much as she must-from what may come out of the sky, from what he couldn't confess that day (creaking snow lanes, arcades of the ice-bearded and bowing trees… the wind shook down crystals of snow: purple and orange creatures blooming on her long lashes), and from Mr. Pointsman, and from Pointsman's… his… a bleakness whenever she meets him. Scientist-neutrality. Hands that- she shivers. There are chances now for enemy shapes out of the snow and stillness. She drops the blackout curtain. Hands that could as well torture people as dogs and never feel their pain…
A skulk of foxes, a cowardice of curs are tonight's traffic whispering
in the yards and lanes. A motorcycle out on the trunk road, snarling cocky as a fighter plane, bypasses the village, heading up to London. The great balloons drift in the sky, pearl-grown, and the air is so still that this morning's brief snow still clings to the steel cables, white goes twisting peppermint-stick down thousands of feet of night. And the people who might have been asleep in the empty houses here, people blown away, some already forever… are they dreaming of cities that shine all over with lamps at night, of Christmases seen again from the vantage of children and not of sheep huddled so vulnerable on their bare hillside, so bleached by the Star's awful radiance? or of songs so funny, so lovely or true, that they can't be remembered on waking… dreams of peacetime…
"What was it like? Before the war?" She knows she was alive then, a child, but it's not what she means. Wireless, staticky Frank Bridge Variations a hairbrush for the tangled brain over the BBC Home Service, bottle of Montrachet, a gift from Pirate, cooling at the kitchen window.
"Well, now," in his cracked old curmudgeon's voice, palsied hand reaching out to squeeze her breast in the nastiest way he knows, "girly, it depends which war you mean" and here it comes, ugh, ugh, drool welling at the corner of his lower lip and over and down in a silver string, he's so clever, he's practiced all these disgusting little-
"Don't be ridic, I'm serious, Roger. I don't remember." Watches dimples come up either side of his mouth as he considers this, smiling at her in an odd way. It'll be like this when I'm thirty… flash of several children, a garden, a window, voices Mummy, what's… cucumbers and brown onions on a chopping board, wild carrot blossoms sprinkling with brilliant yellow a reach of deep, very green lawn and his voice-
"All I remember is that it was silly. Just overwhelmingly silly. Nothing happened. Oh, Edward VIII abdicated. He fell in love with-"
"I know that, I can read magazines. But what was it like?"
"Just… just damned silly, that's all. Worrying about things that don't-Jess, can't you really remember?"
Games, pinafores, girl friends, a black alley kitten with white little feet, holidays all the family by the sea, brine, frying fish, donkey rides, peach taffeta, a boy named
Mind-to-mind, tonight up late at the window while he sleeps, lighting another precious cigarette from the coal of the last, filling with a need to cry because she can see so plainly her limits, knows she can never protect him as much as she must-from what may come out of the sky, from what he couldn't confess that day (creaking snow lanes, arcades of the ice-bearded and bowing trees… the wind shook down crystals of snow: purple and orange creatures blooming on her long lashes), and from Mr. Pointsman, and from Pointsman's… his… a bleakness whenever she meets him. Scientist-neutrality. Hands that- she shivers. There are chances now for enemy shapes out of the snow and stillness. She drops the blackout curtain. Hands that could as well torture people as dogs and never feel their pain…
A skulk of foxes, a cowardice of curs are tonight's traffic whispering
in the yards and lanes. A motorcycle out on the trunk road, snarling cocky as a fighter plane, bypasses the village, heading up to London. The great balloons drift in the sky, pearl-grown, and the air is so still that this morning's brief snow still clings to the steel cables, white goes twisting peppermint-stick down thousands of feet of night. And the people who might have been asleep in the empty houses here, people blown away, some already forever… are they dreaming of cities that shine all over with lamps at night, of Christmases seen again from the vantage of children and not of sheep huddled so vulnerable on their bare hillside, so bleached by the Star's awful radiance? or of songs so funny, so lovely or true, that they can't be remembered on waking… dreams of peacetime…
"What was it like? Before the war?" She knows she was alive then, a child, but it's not what she means. Wireless, staticky Frank Bridge Variations a hairbrush for the tangled brain over the BBC Home Service, bottle of Montrachet, a gift from Pirate, cooling at the kitchen window.
"Well, now," in his cracked old curmudgeon's voice, palsied hand reaching out to squeeze her breast in the nastiest way he knows, "girly, it depends which war you mean" and here it comes, ugh, ugh, drool welling at the corner of his lower lip and over and down in a silver string, he's so clever, he's practiced all these disgusting little-
"Don't be ridic, I'm serious, Roger. I don't remember." Watches dimples come up either side of his mouth as he considers this, smiling at her in an odd way. It'll be like this when I'm thirty… flash of several children, a garden, a window, voices Mummy, what's… cucumbers and brown onions on a chopping board, wild carrot blossoms sprinkling with brilliant yellow a reach of deep, very green lawn and his voice-
"All I remember is that it was silly. Just overwhelmingly silly. Nothing happened. Oh, Edward VIII abdicated. He fell in love with-"
"I know that, I can read magazines. But what was it like?"
"Just… just damned silly, that's all. Worrying about things that don't-Jess, can't you really remember?"
Games, pinafores, girl friends, a black alley kitten with white little feet, holidays all the family by the sea, brine, frying fish, donkey rides, peach taffeta, a boy named
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