Activity

Damp English day, in which I’ve thought persistently of Aurora. My recurrent images of women appear less like memories than a means of restoring life to what has mattered and was passingly eclipsed by war. It is ten years now since she and I first met and were lovers; six years since I last saw her…

Since the night of Gardiner’s death, the night of the twirling girls on Ita Jima, I rediscover memories distinct from war. Often of women, of my youthful loves—Aurora, Gigliola. Not so much Moira, perhaps because our story achieved, in London, that nearly ritual fulfillment. It is incompleteness th…

Up here in the hills, the officer in charge is a medical administrator from the Antipodes. He and his consort make a formidable pair. They have a frail and remarkable young son, and a little girl who is a changeling. Seeing these young people, I am thinking that a child can be born fastidious into …

[...] As Gardiner had said, the Driscolls were disquieting as a symptom of new power: that Melba and Barry should be in the ascendant was not what one had hoped from peace. It did not even seem a cessation of hostilities.

“Divorced, from a wartime marriage.” After a pause, he went on, “We were married in Cairo. Then I was off in the desert and she was posted to Colombo. Time went by, we could scarcely meet. She found someone else. So, for a while, did I. We assumed we’d grown apart—a usual thing. She wanted to remar…