the son.
So he comes in quietly to take away the tea things, knowing the discussion to be all but finished. Standing there, taking in with his eyes the rain-filled window and the two figures by it, Luke understands the embarrassment of the curateâs gesture, he already knows his fatherâs dislike of hands on arms and elbows. He sees his father in the window-light and listens to the opaque mystery of their conversation, the last soft wave of dialogue, those words of more than three syllables which characterise adult conversation for him, breaking to those pleasantries which for both of them signify an ending; though Luke doesnât grasp at the pleasantries but at the fading scent of the argument, at the curateâs round diction and his choice of words. The words are new to him and carry an exotic allure. He is a thin, erect child who holds himself rigidly, a little like an older man. Itâs only in late adolescence that he acquired the look of youth that Lili characterises as âslenderâ. Now he is thin and luminous, something aged about his silence, looking at his father and the curate, catching the drift of those ultramontane words. Their use is therapeutic for the curate, for whom the realities of parish life have formed a bitter contrast with his scholastic novitiate. They remind him of St John Lateranâs College in Rome, of his first love, theology, and of his present ambition, to unite the logic of belief with the logic of science. They would have carried to Luke the germ of that summa which every utterance implied. Standing there, waiting for the pressure of the curateâs warm hand on his fatherâs elbow to cease, for them both to turn with that sense of finality which would be the signal for him to pick up the tray with its cups and remaining sandwiches and carry them outside. And of course they turn and Father Beausang and Vance look at the tallish boy with the brown hair flat on his head, sharp stickles of a quiff on
the right-hand side of his parting which lend to the luminosity of his eyes an air of constant surprise. The curate thinks of his duty towards this child of a Catholic marriage, he probes the childâs features gently as if to find some air of loss, of deprivation there. He can find none, however, and so he stretches out his hand and feels the stickles of the quiff with his palm.
âI have something for you,â he says. His eyes shine. âIf your father doesnât object.â
James has his back turned, his face to the window. You stare from him to the curate, whose palm has stopped kneading your hair. He hands you the book.
âBless you.â
HE LEAVES, WALKS back out through the hall to the door and the rain on the promenade. The odd sense of maleness in that house, that hall, the rather bare order over everything, like a presbytery or bachelor residence, makes him feel heâs leaving one home to go to another. The house was cleaned, but never softened, by a combination of three maidservants. There was a hatstand near the front doorway. And a mural, running down the stairway, covering the left-hand wall.
IT WAS A moving picture, Lili tells me, a sprouting forest of the old manâs mental world. He works on it in bouts and then leaves, returns months later, having decided to change the theme. So stories run
through that wall in waves, conflict at each end and meet in the centre. Three muscular, bare-breasted women run downwards behind the stairway, over the peeling plaster, towards the front door. He has given the doll-like face of the local chemist to the one who stoops for the apple while she runs. He has put Grecian hills behind them, a Doric pillar, crumbling, in the left-hand foreground. But he must have changed in the course of it, switched his obsession, got afflicted with what Lili calls a âbout of Irishnessâ. He changes the background ruins into something like stone cottages. He adorns those hills with a necklace of
So he comes in quietly to take away the tea things, knowing the discussion to be all but finished. Standing there, taking in with his eyes the rain-filled window and the two figures by it, Luke understands the embarrassment of the curateâs gesture, he already knows his fatherâs dislike of hands on arms and elbows. He sees his father in the window-light and listens to the opaque mystery of their conversation, the last soft wave of dialogue, those words of more than three syllables which characterise adult conversation for him, breaking to those pleasantries which for both of them signify an ending; though Luke doesnât grasp at the pleasantries but at the fading scent of the argument, at the curateâs round diction and his choice of words. The words are new to him and carry an exotic allure. He is a thin, erect child who holds himself rigidly, a little like an older man. Itâs only in late adolescence that he acquired the look of youth that Lili characterises as âslenderâ. Now he is thin and luminous, something aged about his silence, looking at his father and the curate, catching the drift of those ultramontane words. Their use is therapeutic for the curate, for whom the realities of parish life have formed a bitter contrast with his scholastic novitiate. They remind him of St John Lateranâs College in Rome, of his first love, theology, and of his present ambition, to unite the logic of belief with the logic of science. They would have carried to Luke the germ of that summa which every utterance implied. Standing there, waiting for the pressure of the curateâs warm hand on his fatherâs elbow to cease, for them both to turn with that sense of finality which would be the signal for him to pick up the tray with its cups and remaining sandwiches and carry them outside. And of course they turn and Father Beausang and Vance look at the tallish boy with the brown hair flat on his head, sharp stickles of a quiff on
the right-hand side of his parting which lend to the luminosity of his eyes an air of constant surprise. The curate thinks of his duty towards this child of a Catholic marriage, he probes the childâs features gently as if to find some air of loss, of deprivation there. He can find none, however, and so he stretches out his hand and feels the stickles of the quiff with his palm.
âI have something for you,â he says. His eyes shine. âIf your father doesnât object.â
James has his back turned, his face to the window. You stare from him to the curate, whose palm has stopped kneading your hair. He hands you the book.
âBless you.â
HE LEAVES, WALKS back out through the hall to the door and the rain on the promenade. The odd sense of maleness in that house, that hall, the rather bare order over everything, like a presbytery or bachelor residence, makes him feel heâs leaving one home to go to another. The house was cleaned, but never softened, by a combination of three maidservants. There was a hatstand near the front doorway. And a mural, running down the stairway, covering the left-hand wall.
IT WAS A moving picture, Lili tells me, a sprouting forest of the old manâs mental world. He works on it in bouts and then leaves, returns months later, having decided to change the theme. So stories run
through that wall in waves, conflict at each end and meet in the centre. Three muscular, bare-breasted women run downwards behind the stairway, over the peeling plaster, towards the front door. He has given the doll-like face of the local chemist to the one who stoops for the apple while she runs. He has put Grecian hills behind them, a Doric pillar, crumbling, in the left-hand foreground. But he must have changed in the course of it, switched his obsession, got afflicted with what Lili calls a âbout of Irishnessâ. He changes the background ruins into something like stone cottages. He adorns those hills with a necklace of
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