you think Melissa is? asked Daisy.
But Angela had forgotten about Melissa completely.
Melissa stood on the corner, paralyzed. Where the fuck was she going to go? Dad wasn’t going to fork out for a plane ticket to Francewithout an explanation. Donna in Stirling? She looked around. A shop selling wind chimes. A shop selling green Wellingtons and crappy silk scarves like the queen wore when she took the corgis out for a shit. Scabby public toilets. People from London pretending to enjoy the countryside. She checked her wallet: £22.68 and a debit card that might very well get swallowed by the machine on the far side of the road. God, she was hungry.
Do you think Benjy’s OK? asked Daisy.
I think Benjy’s fine , said Angela.
He seems lonely .
He’s good at being on his own , said Angela. The little bus growled up a steep and sudden incline. A tiny church with a garden shed for a tower. A woman hosing a Land Rover down in a muddy yard. If you can’t be alone you join a gang, you drink instead of going home, you marry the first person who comes along because you’re scared of going back to an empty house .
Daisy thought of her mother as stupid. What other reason could there be for the constant friction? Then she said something like this and Daisy remembered that she was a good teacher, and what Daisy felt wasn’t admiration or guilt but fear, because if her mother was in the right then she was in the wrong.
The bus idled while a red Transit reversed into a driveway for them to squeeze past. Farmhouses with roses and swing seats. Farmhouses with chained-up dogs and rusted cars. A hunchbacked woman at the front of the bus, so old and ragged she must surely have come from a gingerbread cottage up in the hills.
Are you and Dad all right? She meant to sound caring but she wanted her mother to admit some small compensatory failure.
We’re … OK , said Angela gingerly.
And it came to Daisy out of the blue. Her mother was a human being. How rarely she saw it. She wanted to reach out and hold her and make everything good again but the intervening years seemed suddenly like a dream and she was five years old, going into town withMum to do the shopping. So she turned and looked out of the window and watched the bus rise above the trees and hedges onto a kind of moorland, the gray ribbon of the road and plantations of pine across the valley like scissored green felt.
I’m sorry about Richard , said Angela.
It’s all right , said Daisy. I can look after myself . This dance she and Mum did. Reaching out and pulling back. Stroking and snapping.
He was being a bully .
I can’t believe he’s your brother .
I’m having a bit of trouble myself in that department .
People counted Dominic as their friend but no one counted him as their best friend. Angela thought of it as cowardice, though she tried not to think of it very often. A failure to engage properly with the world. The mortgage arrears, the car being towed to a scrapyard. Nothing mattered enough (in the backseat, Benjy and Alex were playing Benjy’s version of rock-paper-scissors called wee-poo-sick). He thought of it as a blessing once, not being haunted by the terrible wanting that blighted so many lives, but he looked at Daisy’s screwed-up religion, Alex being carted away in an ambulance after that race, Angela trying to save some white-trash kid who’d end up in prison anyway, and he realized that all of them had reasons to be alive in a way that he didn’t.
Raglan Castle was built in the mid-1430s by Sir William ap Thomas, “The Blue Knight of Gwent,” who fought alongside Henry V at the battle of Agincourt … (Richard is reading the free information pamphlet thoroughly) … but the castle was undermined after a long siege during the Civil War and what remains is largely a picturesque ruin … Consequently it takes a dedicated historical imagination to stand on the mossy cobbles of the Pitched Court and conjure up the falconers and the
But Angela had forgotten about Melissa completely.
Melissa stood on the corner, paralyzed. Where the fuck was she going to go? Dad wasn’t going to fork out for a plane ticket to Francewithout an explanation. Donna in Stirling? She looked around. A shop selling wind chimes. A shop selling green Wellingtons and crappy silk scarves like the queen wore when she took the corgis out for a shit. Scabby public toilets. People from London pretending to enjoy the countryside. She checked her wallet: £22.68 and a debit card that might very well get swallowed by the machine on the far side of the road. God, she was hungry.
Do you think Benjy’s OK? asked Daisy.
I think Benjy’s fine , said Angela.
He seems lonely .
He’s good at being on his own , said Angela. The little bus growled up a steep and sudden incline. A tiny church with a garden shed for a tower. A woman hosing a Land Rover down in a muddy yard. If you can’t be alone you join a gang, you drink instead of going home, you marry the first person who comes along because you’re scared of going back to an empty house .
Daisy thought of her mother as stupid. What other reason could there be for the constant friction? Then she said something like this and Daisy remembered that she was a good teacher, and what Daisy felt wasn’t admiration or guilt but fear, because if her mother was in the right then she was in the wrong.
The bus idled while a red Transit reversed into a driveway for them to squeeze past. Farmhouses with roses and swing seats. Farmhouses with chained-up dogs and rusted cars. A hunchbacked woman at the front of the bus, so old and ragged she must surely have come from a gingerbread cottage up in the hills.
Are you and Dad all right? She meant to sound caring but she wanted her mother to admit some small compensatory failure.
We’re … OK , said Angela gingerly.
And it came to Daisy out of the blue. Her mother was a human being. How rarely she saw it. She wanted to reach out and hold her and make everything good again but the intervening years seemed suddenly like a dream and she was five years old, going into town withMum to do the shopping. So she turned and looked out of the window and watched the bus rise above the trees and hedges onto a kind of moorland, the gray ribbon of the road and plantations of pine across the valley like scissored green felt.
I’m sorry about Richard , said Angela.
It’s all right , said Daisy. I can look after myself . This dance she and Mum did. Reaching out and pulling back. Stroking and snapping.
He was being a bully .
I can’t believe he’s your brother .
I’m having a bit of trouble myself in that department .
People counted Dominic as their friend but no one counted him as their best friend. Angela thought of it as cowardice, though she tried not to think of it very often. A failure to engage properly with the world. The mortgage arrears, the car being towed to a scrapyard. Nothing mattered enough (in the backseat, Benjy and Alex were playing Benjy’s version of rock-paper-scissors called wee-poo-sick). He thought of it as a blessing once, not being haunted by the terrible wanting that blighted so many lives, but he looked at Daisy’s screwed-up religion, Alex being carted away in an ambulance after that race, Angela trying to save some white-trash kid who’d end up in prison anyway, and he realized that all of them had reasons to be alive in a way that he didn’t.
Raglan Castle was built in the mid-1430s by Sir William ap Thomas, “The Blue Knight of Gwent,” who fought alongside Henry V at the battle of Agincourt … (Richard is reading the free information pamphlet thoroughly) … but the castle was undermined after a long siege during the Civil War and what remains is largely a picturesque ruin … Consequently it takes a dedicated historical imagination to stand on the mossy cobbles of the Pitched Court and conjure up the falconers and the
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