Katherine had used her stick all that autumn and the men in light blue trousers burning fires and bending in the smoke seemed part of that slow time. She had read little, written fitfully, spluttering out stories that stood as shakily as she on frames too shiny to be inevitable. They were cheap imitations of the stories she wanted to write; she was just forcing them free, making them work at her idea. And perhaps that was the problem( and she took a sip of tea) there was this cleverness that insinuated itself where abstinence or dilution should have suggested what her stories needed to know, indirectly….but then she had felt in all honesty that she might die and that pressure to leave more than mere pale traces was hard…
He was back, whistling something he had probably heard in London and still looking at her kindly, would she like this or that, could he carry anything…and then he sat down again and picked up his book. Charming perhaps in his own way, but secretly she hated him of course. She was waiting for his insincerity to seep out, her eyes were beadily fixed on him whilst pretending to be elsewhere. , He would unravel one day, and she hoped she would be there to watch, for then she would be free. His was a coward soul, Lawrence was right after all.
