its own logic. She learned to adapt herself to it.
They got on well: they learned to get on better. They talked to each other a great deal about their work, a pleasure neither had ever before experienced, finding that with a little ingenuity their subjects could be made to have a considerable overlap. (After all, it was in a professional context that they had first met: it was Karel who had selected Francesâs name from a list of possible external lecturers.) They talked of students and colleagues, of history and progress; also of their children, and what was in the newspapers. They argued about Northern Ireland and over-population. It was a good time, for Frances. With Tizouk behind her and Karel before her, she felt herself a made woman, in every sense. Flattered and courted, she flourished and blossomed. She enjoyed the attentions of the public: she enjoyed even more her ability to live at last, in private.
It was so good that at times she would tell herself: I must remember, I must record for myself, how good it is, in case things go wrong again. But she knew in her heart that it was as impossible to recall the good times during the bad, as it was to recall the bad during the good. One moved from one state to another helplessly, in forgetfulness, with merely a dry shadowy knowledge of the other, as unlike the real thing as a dried hard seed pod, a hard dry brittle box full of small black seeds of forgetfulness, is unlike the living flower. At times, during the flowering, one could hear the dry seeds rattle, ominously: moods, depressions, meaningless distortions of consciousness. This was why she persevered, and tried to make a conscious effort to control the process, to remember moments, to store them and preserve them, as though she could in some way carry them with her through the dark winter when it closed in; like a talisman, a seed, a pledge of the unimaginable spring. For how had the first sowers ever learnt to trust the wheat to survive the winter? On such acts of faith has human life been built. And if the spring were never to come again, she told herself, I must at least know that it has been. I owe it to fate, to chance, to Karel.
Moments. The children in the garden on swing and seesaw (struck into silence by the harmony of the double glazing), herself watching from an upstairs room. A meal in the Poly canteen. A game of poker with Karel and the children. Bed, of course. One of the days that she remembered most often, in her effort to trick time (as she was later to remember the frogs in the pipe), was a day when she and Karel had been together in Surrey. It had been very early spring, her favourite season, the safest season. (A long time, till winter.) Karel had been to give a lecture in Farnham, she to visit a colleague to consult him about her Tizouk figurines. Karel had picked her up from her friendâs house, after his lecture, and they had chatted a while, all three, watching through the window the sunlight on the brown earth and the pale garden green of January, on a pink primula, a Christmas rose, and a little white honeysuckle, timorously blossoming. She liked the early plants of the year: her own garden had aconites, now. She and Jeremy Harding and Karel spoke of aconites a little while (she was proud of Karel, she liked to be with him in company), and then they declined a cup of tea, and set off home.
In the car, they agreed that they would have liked a cup of tea, really. They discussed why they had declined. To be together, they agreed, alone together.
It was early afternoon; the light was bright but fading. They drove through the suburban countryside, through the pine woods and the bracken, as the colour deepened. It was pink and silver, russet and coral, the silver birches pink in the faint premonition of a sunset, the bark of the pine trees darkening to a wilder Scots redness, a few leaves of last year pink and copper, but above all the bracken, the dead bracken, with its lovely,
They got on well: they learned to get on better. They talked to each other a great deal about their work, a pleasure neither had ever before experienced, finding that with a little ingenuity their subjects could be made to have a considerable overlap. (After all, it was in a professional context that they had first met: it was Karel who had selected Francesâs name from a list of possible external lecturers.) They talked of students and colleagues, of history and progress; also of their children, and what was in the newspapers. They argued about Northern Ireland and over-population. It was a good time, for Frances. With Tizouk behind her and Karel before her, she felt herself a made woman, in every sense. Flattered and courted, she flourished and blossomed. She enjoyed the attentions of the public: she enjoyed even more her ability to live at last, in private.
It was so good that at times she would tell herself: I must remember, I must record for myself, how good it is, in case things go wrong again. But she knew in her heart that it was as impossible to recall the good times during the bad, as it was to recall the bad during the good. One moved from one state to another helplessly, in forgetfulness, with merely a dry shadowy knowledge of the other, as unlike the real thing as a dried hard seed pod, a hard dry brittle box full of small black seeds of forgetfulness, is unlike the living flower. At times, during the flowering, one could hear the dry seeds rattle, ominously: moods, depressions, meaningless distortions of consciousness. This was why she persevered, and tried to make a conscious effort to control the process, to remember moments, to store them and preserve them, as though she could in some way carry them with her through the dark winter when it closed in; like a talisman, a seed, a pledge of the unimaginable spring. For how had the first sowers ever learnt to trust the wheat to survive the winter? On such acts of faith has human life been built. And if the spring were never to come again, she told herself, I must at least know that it has been. I owe it to fate, to chance, to Karel.
Moments. The children in the garden on swing and seesaw (struck into silence by the harmony of the double glazing), herself watching from an upstairs room. A meal in the Poly canteen. A game of poker with Karel and the children. Bed, of course. One of the days that she remembered most often, in her effort to trick time (as she was later to remember the frogs in the pipe), was a day when she and Karel had been together in Surrey. It had been very early spring, her favourite season, the safest season. (A long time, till winter.) Karel had been to give a lecture in Farnham, she to visit a colleague to consult him about her Tizouk figurines. Karel had picked her up from her friendâs house, after his lecture, and they had chatted a while, all three, watching through the window the sunlight on the brown earth and the pale garden green of January, on a pink primula, a Christmas rose, and a little white honeysuckle, timorously blossoming. She liked the early plants of the year: her own garden had aconites, now. She and Jeremy Harding and Karel spoke of aconites a little while (she was proud of Karel, she liked to be with him in company), and then they declined a cup of tea, and set off home.
In the car, they agreed that they would have liked a cup of tea, really. They discussed why they had declined. To be together, they agreed, alone together.
It was early afternoon; the light was bright but fading. They drove through the suburban countryside, through the pine woods and the bracken, as the colour deepened. It was pink and silver, russet and coral, the silver birches pink in the faint premonition of a sunset, the bark of the pine trees darkening to a wilder Scots redness, a few leaves of last year pink and copper, but above all the bracken, the dead bracken, with its lovely,
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