Cherbourg?
The boat-train[208], the receptionist said and the line was cut before I could ask him what boat.
I feared then that my aunt had left me for good. She had come into my life only to disturb it. I had lost the taste for dahlias. When weeds swarmed up I was tempted to let them grow. Once I even consented, as a possible relief to my tedium, to attend, on Major Charges invitation, a political meeting: it turned out to be a meeting of British Empire Loyalists, and I supposed then that it was Major Charge who had given the organization my address for their pamphlets. I saw several of my old clients there, including the admiral, and I was glad for the first time that I was in retirement. A bank manager is not expected to have strong political preferences, particularly eccentric ones, and how quickly the gossip of my presence would have gone around Southwood. Now, if my old clients looked at me at all, it was with a puzzled expression, as though they were uncertain when it was we had met and on what occasion. Like a waiter on his day off, I passed virtually unrecognized. It was an odd feeling for one who had been so much in the centre of South-wood life. As I went upstairs to bed I felt myself to be a ghost returning home, transparent as water. Curran was more alive than I was. I was almost surprised to see that my image was visible in the glass.
Cherbourg?
The boat-train[208], the receptionist said and the line was cut before I could ask him what boat.
I feared then that my aunt had left me for good. She had come into my life only to disturb it. I had lost the taste for dahlias. When weeds swarmed up I was tempted to let them grow. Once I even consented, as a possible relief to my tedium, to attend, on Major Charges invitation, a political meeting: it turned out to be a meeting of British Empire Loyalists, and I supposed then that it was Major Charge who had given the organization my address for their pamphlets. I saw several of my old clients there, including the admiral, and I was glad for the first time that I was in retirement. A bank manager is not expected to have strong political preferences, particularly eccentric ones, and how quickly the gossip of my presence would have gone around Southwood. Now, if my old clients looked at me at all, it was with a puzzled expression, as though they were uncertain when it was we had met and on what occasion. Like a waiter on his day off, I passed virtually unrecognized. It was an odd feeling for one who had been so much in the centre of South-wood life. As I went upstairs to bed I felt myself to be a ghost returning home, transparent as water. Curran was more alive than I was. I was almost surprised to see that my image was visible in the glass.
Perhaps it was to prove the reality of my existence that I began a letter to Miss Keene. I made several drafts before I was satisfied with what I wrote, and the letter I am copying now differs in many small details from the one I dispatched. My dear Miss Keene, I can read in the draft, but I cut out the My in the final version, for it seemed to presume an intimacy which she had never acknowledged and which I had never claimed. Dear Miss Keene, I am truly distressed that you dont feel properly settled yet in your new home at Kofiefontein, though of course I cannot help feeling a little glad (I altered the I to a we in later drafts) that your thoughts still rest sometimes on our quiet life here in Southwood. I have never known so good a friend as your father, and my thoughts often go back to those pleasant evenings when Sir Alfred sat under the Van de Velde dispensing hospitality, and you sat sewing while he and I finished the wine. (That last phrase I cut from the next draft there was too much emotion in it barely concealed.) I have been leading a rather unusual life the last month, much of it in the company of my aunt of whom I wrote to you. We have even gone as far afield together as Istanbul, where I was a good deal disappointed with the famed Santa Sophia. I can say to you as I couldnt say to my aunt that I much prefer our own St. Johns Church for a religious atmosphere, and I am glad that the vicar doesnt feel it necessary to summon the faithful to prayer by a gramophone record in a minaret. At the beginning of October we paid a visit together to my fathers grave. I dont think I ever told you (indeed I only learnt of it recently myself) that he died and was buried in Boulogne by a strange concatenation of circumstances too long to write here. How I wish you were in Southwood that I might tell you of them. That sentence too I thought it prudent to eliminate. I am reading The Newcomes at the moment, but I dont enjoy it as I enjoyed Esmond. Perhaps that is the romantic in me. I open Palgrave too from time to time and read over my old favourites. I went on with a sense of hypocrisy: My books are a good antidote to foreign travel and reinforce the sense of the England I love, but sometimes I wonder whether that England exists still beyond my garden hedge or further than Church Road. Then I think how much harder it must be for you in Koffiefontein to keep the taste of the past. The future here seems to me to have no taste at all: it is like a meal on a menu, which serves only to kill the appetite. If you ever come back to England But that was a sentence I never finished, and I cant remember now what I intended to write.