One response to “*”

1. nullimmortalis

   February 13, 2022 at 9:03 am Edit

   11

   “But it was the louche yellow dog from the lodge, intent on rabbiting. Soon a square black eye of the house [Danielstown] –“

   …with some telling echoes, too, from the previous chapters! That Yellow God, earlier, too?
   As Gerald walks through beech woods in what turns out to be a shower of big raindrops, expecting to find Lois at home (which she is eventually), his having been given an open invitation to drop in any time for lunch…

   “But she was nowhere; the place was cold with her absence and seemed forgotten. The tennis party became a dream – parasols with their coloured sunshine, rugs spread, shimmer of midges, amiable competition of voices. Something had now been wiped from the place with implied finality. Gerald told himself it was all very queer, quiet; that it was disappointing about Lois. […] The smell of sandalwood boxes, a kind of glaze on the air from all the chintzes numbed his earthy vitality, he became all ribs and uniform.”

   “But she [Lois] was his lovely woman: kissed.  He shone at her, she helpless. She looked out at the hopeless rain.”

   Lois is taken out of her comfort zone by the unexpected arrival. Where are the servants, where are the knives?

   “‘I can’t think why you are being so sudden all of a sudden, in every way: you never used to be.’ […] – to be enclosed in nonentity, in some ideal no-place, perfect and clear as a bubble.”

   She teases him about her loving a married man, but, accidentally, perhaps, she calls him ‘Darling’ just before the gong.

   “‘You know I’d die for you.’”
   Is that something that Gerald says accidentally, too?

   You know, I am getting fed up with talk of Marda’s suitcase! And the shifting positions of war views and politics take over, almost just as boring. Although Laurence’s ‘cigarette dance’ with Gerald makes the former seem Sinn Fein… and Gerald seems shocked that his night manoeuvres capturing a Peter Connor, Connor being a friend of the family now entertaining him!
   Small talk…
   “Lois tried to explain to Hugo about Augustus John.”
   Someone else talks of the Cork Militia.

   “But his kissing of her, his attack, were no longer part of him. He concentrated upon his raspberries, crushing them, on his cream with carmine beautifully folding through, on his flushing sugar.”

   Marda’s own ‘cigarette dance’, in turn, is co-opting Gerald away from a further test by Lois of his lips in a kiss…. (Significantly, perhaps, Marda’s ‘dance’ involves cigarette ash?)

   “; an exact and delicate interrelation of stresses between being and being, like crossing arches; […] Their minds remained cutting-books.”