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As Ted Tice saw, it was not a matter of conquering her objections. She herself required a kind of conquering. And he had begun with devotion. Her demands would before long be tested by experience, as principle is tested by adversity, and it might be that she would temporize; but for the present imagined herself transcendant over what she had not encountered.
She wished to rise to some solitary height. From ignorance she had an unobstructed view of knowledge--which she saw, on its elevation, stately, pale, pure as the Acropolis. It could not be said that hers was a harmless vanity: like any human wish for distinction, it could easily be denounced or mocked; and, in its present elemental form, was clearly short on pity. Yet, as pretensions go, it was by no means the worst.
Ted Tice already understood his attachment to Caro as intensification of his strongest qualities, if not of his strengths: not a youthful adventure, fresh and tentative, but a gauge of all effort, joy, and suffering known or imagined. The possibility that he might never, in a lifetime, arouse her love in return was a discovery touching all existence. In his desire and his foreboding, he was like a man awake who watches a woman sleeping.
"I've thought that too. I've thought there may be more collisions of the kind in life than in books. Maybe the element of coincidence is played down in literature because it seems like cheating or can't be made believable. Whereas life itself doesn't have to be fair, or convincing."
"I don't tell her a thing of that sort. It seems to recoil." Caroline Bell having discovered in childhood that achievements can be transformed to hostile weapons. ("Everything falls in your lap, why should you care about a life like mine?") A childish struggle between the wish to show, or tell, and the need to hoard silent strength had long since been resolved. She said, "I'm not sure I can explain that."
He had seen Caro from a distance and altered his course to intersect. Had observed, as he drew near, that her walk turned the progress of other women to a thump or shuffle. He would have said her delicate dark strength was virile--a sombre glow that might distinguish some young man. He remembered dark, vigorous young men who kept somewhat to themselves, yet retained this vibrancy of adventure. Then he thought how such youths often ended feebly, how quickly they grew sour or cautious, or became the foils of bitter women--their energies turned to blame or bluster, their pride morose. He had already seen that; and supposed that in the case of women such beings dwindled entirely, or at most passed some shred of their lost impetus to children.
Paul Ivory had also noted penalties of impulse. Had seen how men provide themselves, before their taste or character is formed, with wife and children--committed and condemned thereafter to the fixtures of an outgrown fancy. He was satisfied his own prospective marriage would preclude such dangers. An accusation of dispassion would not have troubled him. He was not convinced that passion was essential, or that the world had properly defined it.
the description of her
There was one thing. In his jungle prison Rex Ivory had, as before, composed poetrywhich he memorized there, since any scrap of paper was conserved for the coded casualty lists. An eminent publisher stood ready to sacrifice a portion of hoarded postwar paper to the awaited volume. None of this was unpredictable. What had not been expected was that the verses from the Malayan death camp, when transcribed, would be found to celebrate, exclusively and inexorably, the streams and hedgerows of Derbyshire.
There were other heroes by then, and other manuscripts. Public interest in Rex Ivory was waning, the paper shortage intensifying. At a top-level meeting held on a wet Saturday morning at the publishing house, it was felt that certain of the poemsin particular, one concerning a lapwinginvited critical derision. Availing themselves of an Act-of-God clause, the publishers withdrew from the contract. And The Half-Reap'd Field appeared, like earlier volumes, under an obscure imprint at the author's expense.
lmao
It had not occurred to Paul that Caro's influence might increase with her submission. Or that she would remain intelligent. When she leaned her head back to look at him, he was aware of her judgment persevering like a pulse--even forming the most tender, if least magical, part of love. He put a hand to her face, his own fingers trembling with a small, convulsive evidence of unfeigned life.
In a corner there was a wardrobe so heavy you thought at once of men who had heaved it up the stairs fifty or sixty years ago, grunting and putting their backs into it. [...]
Among the students, as with my colleagues here, there is often a background of poverty. There's no charade around this as in our countries--no dissembling by the poor, no fantasy of brotherhood on the part of the affluent. I remember the university people who used to come round Ancoats in my childhood, adopting our speech and clothes to show a kindred spirit--a sentimental condescension that does damn all for poverty. Membership in the proletariat doesn't come that cheap. What did it do for us, their guilt-edged security or the moral outrage they exchanged on their way home to their employed parents--and to their hot water and their books and music and savings-accounts, none of which they had immediate intention of sharing? What were their overalls to me, who'd have given anything to see my mother in a decent dress? In themselves, rags confer morality no more than they do disgrace.
The poor don't want solidarity with their lot, they want it changed.
letter from ted tice to caroline?
"Yes." A flicker over her stare was the facial equivalent of a shrug. "Now you have a wife to give you both."
They stood fronting one another. Paul removed his hand from the door. "Caro. For pity's sake."
The figure of speech appeared to move her, and for an instant it seemed she might laugh. Again he pressed what he took for an advantage: "Have a bit of mercy."
She herself leaned back on the chalky wall, and closed her eyes. "How should you hope for mercy, rendering none?"
"These walls are full of dirty quotations, one way and another."
There was silence while she leaned there, austere with her umbrella, sheathed and closed. She roused herself and did step past him, then, to pull at the heavy door.
From behind her, Paul said, "You've got white all over your back." And in the most natural way in the world brushed his hand down her coat. Then passed his arms about her waist and put his mouth to the nape of her neck, and said, "Almighty God."
He helped her on with her jacket. His conventional, unblessed touch was the true dismissal. Composure in others always thwarted him, and hers at that moment denied him the offence of a scene. That he had loved Caro more, and far more, than he had cared for anyone else gave her stature: she was either unique or an inaugurator. Paul resented this historic position she had established for herself in the momentum of his life, and because of it would have liked to see her broken.
oof