POST 21

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Constance and her cohorts went in search of Sarah in the darker spaces of the house.  Funny word, go.  Many opportunities for remembering how funny it really was these days.  She shivered in the sunless interior.  Sarah was nowhere to be found.  Constance felt keenly, in the absence of Sarah, the pointlessness just under the surface of everything in life as she looked into and studied every empty room.  She was enthralled by the ludicrous inequality between the persistence of the ancient furniture and the life-span of a young woman measured out in sunny Saturday afternoons and she rejoiced in her vision.  Rejoiced, really, in the limitless freedom of those powers of human invention that the vision showed her.  I am the centre of the universe and without me nothing has meaning.  One-sidedness would do.

         However, Loverdale House was decidedly not, had never been, her favourite place.  In all the years she had known it, it had been a closed house, rarely lived in.  There was no life here, no family, no servants, and only Mrs. Sage helping out at the two-day visits.  In Loverdale she liked to keep to the public rooms.  Even for one accustomed, as she was, uninvited and at the smallest opportunity to study in strange houses - for there is always in human arrangements something to learn - what must be considered the strictly private, such as closed bookrooms, bedrooms overlooking gardens, planning of bathrooms, ingenuity of airing cupboards, coolness of larders, inclusiveness of dressing-rooms, the ventilation mechanisms of roof windows, space on high landings, light and air wells, places where the guns and boots and bicycles are kept, outbuildings with or without livestock (habit picked up first in Ludlow), there was no sacrifice in keeping to the public and peopled rooms of this familiar old house.  Yet she went bravely on her way until she came to Philip's bedroom, the one he usually used, and here she sat on the bed and took up his reading, complete with notes.  She turned to the notes, all dots, dashes and flashes, idly at first, not recognising them for what they were;  and even when she did she went on reading.  There was a quarrel here with someone called Richard St. Ains, last week, and a letter to that gentleman no less;  she turned quickly on.  Philip's ideas about staying in the Army as an instructor and what he would teach, there was a great deal about taking Frances up a mountain, none of which she stopped more than a few moments to read, on the grounds that that might fairly constitute not reading any of it at all.  But she then came to a riveting bit about a Diary.  `A reminder and record, rarely referred to, of mental and physical events.'  Not my idea of a Diary.  She looked up from her reading.  She was being watched.

         She went quickly into the corridor.  Nobody.  As she turned at the door, the white and crimson tiles in the fireplace winked at her.  The old yew cupboard and chest, yellow and glinting;  what there was of daylight reflected off the polish of these objects all-seeing stares of blank white light.  I.  See.  You.  Even the heavy old crimson bedspread;  she stood there mesmerised before it;  faceted with sheened quilting, it was a mass of eyes, alert little bright eyes.  We.  See.  You.  Everything stood around her accusing.  The whole atmosphere, eyes, conniving with her sixth sense, the activity of which she was inclined to discourage in timid moments - this being one.  Wracked with guilt - nevertheless despite it - perhaps because of it - not to pay the price of guilt for nothing - she decided in a sudden inspiration - in the name of creative interference - to borrow a book! - any book - take it - she took - not the one being read - but another, without looking at it - take it and leave - No - put the notes straight - how were they? - Leave - and do what with the book? - Put it where? - How leave the house with it? - She put it back and hastily left the room.