The small, ugly houses streamed past, backs turned to the train, stuck
together, rushing, rushing in from the country.
Grey streets, trying to cut across the stream, getting nowhere, carried
past sideways on.
Don't look at the houses. Shut your eyes and remember.
Her father's hand on her shoulder. His face, at the carriage window,
looking for her. A girl moving back, pushing her to it. "Papa!"
Why hadn't she loved him all the time? Why hadn't she liked his beard?
His nice, brown, silky beard. His poor beard.
Mamma's face, in the hall, breaking up suddenly. Her tears in your mouth.
Her arms, crushing you. Mamma's face at the dining-room window. Tears,
pricking, cutting your eyelids. Blink them back before the girls see
them. Don't think of Mamma.
The Thames. Barking Creek goes into the Thames and the Roding goes into
Barking Creek. Yesterday, the last walk with Roddy, across Barking Flats
to the river, over the dry, sallow grass, the wind blowing in their
faces. Roddy's face, beautiful, like Mamma's, his mouth, white at the
edges. Roddy gasping in the wind, trying to laugh, his heart thumping.
Roddy was excited when he saw the tall masts of the ships. He had wanted
to be a sailor.
Dan's face, when he said good-bye; his hurt, unhappy eyes; the little
dark, furry moustache trying to come. Tibby's eyes. Dank wanted to marry
Effie. Mark was the only one who got what he wanted.
Better not think of Dank.
She looked shyly at her companions. The stout lady in brown, sitting
beside her; kind, thin mouth, pursed to look important; dull kind eyes
trying to be wise and sharp behind spectacles, between curtains of dead
hair. A grand manner, excessively polite, on the platform, to Papa--Miss
Lambert.
The three girls, all facing them. Pam Quin; flaxen pigtail; grown up
nose; polite mouth, buttoned, little flaxen and pink old lady, Pam Quin,
talking about her thirteenth birthday.
Lucy Elliott, red pig-tail, suddenly sad in her corner, innocent
white-face, grey eyes blinking to swallow her tears. Frances Elliott, hay
coloured pig-tail, very upright, sitting forward and talking fast to hide
her sister's shame.
Mamma's face--Don't think of it.
Green fields and trees rushing past now. Stop a tree and you'll change
and feel the train moving. Plato. You can't trust your senses. The
cave-dwellers didn't see the things that really moved, only the shadows
of the images of the things. Is the world in your mind or your mind in
the world? Which really moves? Perhaps the world stands still and you
move on and on like the train. If both moved together that would feel
like standing still.
Grass banks. Telegraph wires dipping and rising like sea-waves. At Dover
there would be the sea.
Mamma's face--Think. Think harder. The world was going on before your
mind started. Supposing you lived before, would that settle it? No. A
white chalk cutting flashed by. God's mind is what both go on in. That
settles it.
The train dashed into a tunnel. A long tunnel. She couldn't remember what
she was thinking of the second before they went in. Something that
settled it. Settled what? She couldn't think any more.
Dover. The girls standing up, and laughing. They said she had gone to
sleep in the train.