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A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY
J L Carr
It was that kind of day
Then she turned and went across to the south
window. For a while she stood without speaking.
Then she said, "So Mr Moon found it after all?"
Oh, why not? I thought. It's going to be published
anyway. So I told her what he'd been doing and
leaned forward to point out the site of the Anglo-
Saxon chapel. She also turned so that her breasts
were pressing against me. And, although we both
looked outwards across the meadow, she didn't
draw away as quite easily she could have done.
I should have lifted an arm and taken her shoulder,
turned her face and kissed her. It was that kind
of day.
It was why she'd come. Then everything would
have been different. My life, hers. We would have
had to speak and say aloud what both of us knew and then, maybe, turned from the window and lain down together on my makeshift bed. Afterwards, we would have gone away, maybe on the next train. My heart was racing. I was breathless.
She leaned on me, waiting. And I did nothing and said nothing.
She drew back and said shakily, "Well, thank you for showing me. I shall have to hurry away; Arthur will be wondering what's become of me. No, please don't come down." -- p116
The English are not a deeply religious people
The English are not a deeply religious people. Even many of those who attend divine service do so from habit. Their acceptance of the sacrament is perfunctory: I have yet to meet the man whose hair rose at the nape of his neck because he was about to taste the blood of his dying Lord. Even when they visit their church in large numbers, at Harvest Thanksgiving or the Christmas Midnight Mass, it is no more than a pagan salute to the passing seasons. -- p 108
The way things were
We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever -- the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass. -- p 121
