I had just made up my mind to start getting ready when the tele-phone rang. Ellis – in that false over-polite way he had now said: “if it’s not too much trouble, Corda” – he over-enunciated the first syllable of my name in that American way he did now – “would you come and pick … Continue reading Headlamps (Part I)
I felt uncomfortable. The carriage was hot, and I was wedged in by the table. To get up then, to get my case from the rack above, to the bottle of water and the pills, well that would have caused a scene. So I sat and sweated, and worried, the whole three-and-a-half-hour journey. About this … Continue reading A Place For Everything (Part II)
Dear Alice, I’m writing this to you at your workbench, in your studio. It seemed the most fitting place to do so. I can feel my own eyes peering down from every almost-finished portrait. Remember when you told me, early on, that I had “a beauty that can’t be justified by paint”? At the time, … Continue reading A Place For Everything (Part I)
I awake to the sound of church bells; distant; discordant; dull. I go to the window. The service is over. Guests are decanting themselves into cars, and I can see only the edges of hats, or heads tipped forward, or the faint pink blurs of hands. I’m comforted by the thought that if I cannot … Continue reading The Gathering Storm
I have always preferred autumn. There is nothing to lose in autumn. In spring and in summer there’s a sense of impending loss that simmers beneath the surface. It lingers in the first buds of blossom, in the third warm dry day in a row. Because soon the blooms will die, the sky will cloud … Continue reading Fête
