The scene shifted to the execution block and showed a large man in black who was wearing a black mask: he was carrying a huge axe in his hand. The wooden block lay below. She came forward and lay down as if she were a swimmer, her hair neatly tied. Her motion had an eerie aesthetic quality as if she were taking part in a ballet dance, swanning forward, the axe falling. As the axe cut the head from the neck there was a roar of applause from the people.
I turned towards her. She was looking very pale. ‘I don’t like these TV programmes,’ she said, and I switched it off. ‘They’re all so violent.’
‘I’d better be going,’ I said looking at the clock. ‘It’s getting late.’
‘Yes, I suppose you’d better,’ she said. ‘I enjoyed the dance.’
I went out into the darkness, at first unable to see, and closing the main door of the tenement behind me. Then as my eyes focused and the sky came into view and defined itself, I saw the white stars. They were like the bones the dog had been crunching.
I walked very carefully along the glassy road almost slithering at times.
Funny about the tall man with the mask and the axe. It had reminded me of something in its extraordinary blatant brutality. The axe and the wood. But the picture I remembered most clearly was that of Anne Boleyn in the sunlight looking out of the narrow barred window on to the lawn. I really hoped that she had meant it when she said that she wasn’t afraid. But she had certainly acted as if she meant it. And I was sure she did. For that particular moment in time she had meant it and that was something. One could not be expected to mean it for all moments, even on TV.
Mother and Son
His clothes were dripping as he came in. The water was streaming down his cheeks, a little reddened by the wind and the rain. He shook back his long hair and threw his jacket on the bed post, then abruptly remembering, he looked through the pockets for a box of matches. The house was in partial darkness, for, though the evening was not dark, the daylight was hooded by thick yellow curtains which were drawn across the width of the window. He shivered slightly as he lit the match : it had been a cold, dismal afternoon in the fields. The weather was extraordinarily bad for the time of year and gathering the sheaves into stacks was both monotonous and uncomfortable. He held the match cupped within his hands to warm them and to light his way to the box where he kept the peats. The flickering light showed a handsome face. The forehead was smooth and tanned, the nose thin though not incisive, the mouth curved and petulant, and the chin small and round. It was a good-looking face, though it was a face which had something childish about it. The childishness could be seen by a closer look, a look into the wide blue eyes which were rather stolid and netted by little red lines which divided them up like a graph. These eyes were deep and unquestioning as a child’s, but they gave an unaccountable impression that they could be as dangerous and irresponsible as a child’s. As the match flickered and went out with an apologetic cough, he cursed weakly and searched his pockets. Then he remembered he had left the box on the table, reached out for it impatiently, and lit another match. This he carried over to the lamp which lay on the table. The light clung to the wick, and he put the clean globe gently inside the brackets. When the lamp was lit, it showed a moderately sized kitchen, the walls of which were painted a dull yellow. The dresser was surmounted by numerous shelves which held numerous dishes, some whole, some broken. A little china dog looked over the edge as if searching for crumbs: but the floor was clean and spotless, though the green linoleum looked a bit worn. Along one wall of the room was a four-poster bed with soiled pillows and a coverlet of some dark, rough material. In the bed was a woman. She was sleeping, her mouth tightly shut and prim and anaemic. There was a bitter smile on her lips as if fixed there; just as you sometimes see the insurance man coming to the door with the same smile each day, the same brilliant smile which never falls away till he’s gone into the anonymity of the streets. The forehead was not very high and not low, though its wrinkles gave it an expression of concentration as if the woman were wrestling with some terrible witch’s idea in dreams. The man looked at her for a moment, then fumbled for his matches again and began to light a fire. The sticks fell out of place and he cursed vindictively and helplessly. For a moment he sat squatting on his haunches staring into the fire, as if he were thinking of some state of innocence, some state to which he could not return : a reminiscent smile dimpled his cheeks and showed in eyes which immediately became still and dangerous again. The clock struck five wheezingly and, at the first chime, the woman woke up. She started as she saw the figure crouched over the fire and then subsided: ‘It’s only you.’ There was relief in the voice, but there was a curious hint of contempt or acceptance. He still sat staring into the fire and answered dully: ‘Yes, it’s only me!’ He couldn’t be said to speak the words: they fell away from him as sometimes happens when one is in a deep reverie where every question is met by its answer almost
