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Perhaps it’s time you gave up manners as a way of life, Sophie had said to him as she walked beside him in the dawn.
Willing himself into a calmer state, Jonathan sat to attention on what felt like a cardboard crate and strove with all his might to make order of his life till now, a last tidying before he died: the good times he had had, the lessons he had drawn, the improvements he had wrought upon his personality, the good women. There were none. Times, women, lessons. None.
his life had consisted of a run of rehearsals for a play he had failed to take part in.
“He’s tempting God, is our Dicky. Everything God’s got, the Roper’s got to have two of, and it’ll be the undoing of him.”
It meant callow Yale fantasists in button-down shirts who believed they could outwit the worst cutthroats in Latin America and always had six unbeatable arguments for doing the wrong thing.
In every British organization there is always one man who makes an art form of going to the devil,
“I think he called her Jeds. Plural.” “He’s got names for everyone. It’s his way of buying them.”
But hate, like desire, seemed a lowly thing until it had a noble context,
Her large eyes were fixed upon him in the moonlight. She did not easily resemble a helpless woman grateful for his help. “You have so many voices, Mr. Pine,” she resumed, after too long. “I have no idea anymore who you are. You look at me, and you touch me with your eyes. And I am not insensitive to your touch. I am not.” Her voice slipped a moment; she straightened herself and seemed to regroup. “You say one thing, and you are that person. And I am moved by that person. Then that person is called away, and somebody quite different takes his place. And you say something else. And I am moved
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“And the divorce?” “That was all taken care of in England.” “By?” “Her. I left her the flat, all my money and whatever friends we had. She called that fifty-fifty.” “You left her England too.” “Yes.”
There’s no such thing as a decision. There never was. There’s whether you’ve had a good day or a bad day, there’s going forward because there’s nothing behind and running because if you stand still any longer you’ll fall over. There’s movement or there’s stagnation, there’s the past that drives you, and the regimental chaplain who preaches that only the obedient are free, and the women who say you have no feelings but they can’t live without you.
In the country, jokes fare best by repetition.
There are no trees in Espérance. With forests all around, the townspeople see open space as an accomplishment.
“You’re a lie,” she said, distractedly kissing him. “You’re some kind of lie. You’re all truth, but you’re a lie. I don’t understand you.”
They made love in an empty guest room while her mother was at the supermarket, and in the walk-in airing cupboard. She had acquired the recklessness of sexual obsession. The risk was a drug for her. Her whole day was spent contriving moments for them to be alone together.
She smiles all the time, he thought in alarm. She smiles like a television commercial. She’s afraid we’ll switch her off if she stops smiling.
Her wit and bad language have a hypnotic draw. There is something irresistibly funny to everyone, including herself, about her convent-educated English voice enunciating the vocabulary of a navvy.
minor British politicians and ex-diplomats terminally deformed by self-importance;
And she catches Jonathan’s eye again, causing serious mayhem. How does this happen? Who looks first? For this is not affectation. This is not just playing games with somebody her own age. This is looking. And looking away. And looking again.
And sometimes, Burr had said, just when you’re thinking God’s handed in His notice, He’ll turn round and slip you a bonus so big you’ll not believe your luck.
Guns have their own silence. It is the silence of the dead to come.
“It’s no good bolting, Jonathan. It doesn’t work. We both know that. You just meet yourself again in the next place.”
“You trek, you wear yourself out. Things pull you down, trip you up, you press on. And one day you get a glimpse of what you’re after, and if you’re bloody lucky you get a shot at it. The right place. The right woman. The right company.
Jonathan is rolling and spinning with them as his mind becomes a pageant of army memories from childhood till here. He is at parachute camp in Abingdon, making his first balloon jump and thinking that dying and getting divorced from Isabelle don’t have to be the same thing.
a man who is waiting without hope must have something to distract him, or he becomes too morbid for his health.
I mean, have we forgotten everything we talked about, Nicky? Has yesterday been declared a top-secret area or something?
