Shrines of Gaiety

by Kate Atkinson

There was nothing wrong with having a good time as long as she didn’t have to have one herself.

At no point in the war or after, including the Armistice and the Peace, did Niven ever think anyone had won. He no longer had the patience for people’s foibles. No patience for people at all. No time for religion, no time for scruples, no time for feelings. Niven’s heart appeared adamantine, fired in the crucible of the war.

but Gwendolen thought that was the word men gave to women’s conversation. Men talked in order to convey information or to ruminate on cricket scores and campaign statistics. Women, on the other hand, talked in an effort to understand the foibles of human behaviour. If men were to “gossip,” the world might be a better place. There would certainly be fewer wars.

Lying came easily to Niven, he thought of it as a means of protecting the truth.

Life was for absorbing, not recording. And in the end, it was all just paper that someone would have to dispose of after you were gone. Perhaps, after all, one’s purpose in this world was to be forgotten, not remembered.

A woman in her sixth decade, dressed in everyday drab, is more invisible than a librarian.