Brett Young Quotes

An autumn garden has a sadness when the sun is not shining...

The longer one lives, the more mysterious life seems.

All primitive people are frightened of owls,' said Harley. 'The villagers here are scared to death of the gufo. Birds of ill omen. If they see one, they think they'll die. But they never do. See one, I mean, of course,' he added with a laugh.

Words, my young friend.  Words are all the power in the Universe.  It was by words God created the Earth, the heavens and Hell.  Is it any surprise that a book be the most powerful force in the world? 

This book is not for parents who want to raise a perfect child. You can probably make that kind of kid, but I don't think you should. I've met more than my share of young prodigies - kids who were pushed to skip grades, memorize Latin names for every insect, and greet all adults with firm handshakes. They're weird, and not in a good way, like a corgi wearing a tuxedo: sure it's cute, but does it truly know joy?

When termites start their assault on a structure, it shows no discernable signs of instability. Much was our relationship. It appeared stable. We were two young people trying to secure our footing in a wild love affair. But, as we all know, ignoring termites never makes them go away.

Hic Jacet Arthurus Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus Arthur is gone…Tristram in Careol Sleeps, with a broken sword - and Yseult sleeps Beside him, where the Westering waters roll Over drowned Lyonesse to the outer deeps. Lancelot is fallen . . . The ardent helms that shone So knightly and the splintered lances rust In the anonymous mould of Avalon: Gawain and Gareth and Galahad - all are dust. Where do the vanes and towers of Camelot And tall Tintagel crumble? Where do those tragic Lovers and their bright eyed ladies rot? We cannot tell, for lost is Merlin's magic. And Guinevere - Call her not back again Lest she betray the loveliness time lent A name that blends the rapture and the pain Linked in the lonely nightingale's lament. Nor pry too deeply, lest you should discover The bower of Astolat a smokey hut Of mud and wattle - find the knightliest lover A braggart, and his lilymaid a slut. And all that coloured tale a tapestry Woven by poets. As the spider's skeins Are spun of its own substance, so have they Embroidered empty legend - What remains? This: That when Rome fell, like a writhen oak That age had sapped and cankered at the root, Resistant, from her topmost bough there broke The miracle of one unwithering shoot. Which was the spirit of Britain - that certain men Uncouth, untutored, of our island brood Loved freedom better than their lives; and when The tempest crashed around them, rose and stood And charged into the storm's black heart, with sword Lifted, or lance in rest, and rode there, helmed With a strange majesty that the heathen horde Remembered when all were overwhelmed; And made of them a legend, to their chief, Arthur, Ambrosius - no man knows his name - Granting a gallantry beyond belief, And to his knights imperishable fame. They were so few . . . We know not in what manner Or where they fell - whether they went Riding into the dark under Christ's banner Or died beneath the blood-red dragon of Gwent. But this we know; that when the Saxon rout Swept over them, the sun no longer shone On Britain, and the last lights flickered out; And men in darkness muttered: Arthur is gone…

Where will we have lunch?” I asked Brett. The bar was cool. You could feel the heat outside through the window. “Here?” asked Brett. “It’s rotten here in the hotel. Do you know a place called Botín’s?” I asked the barman. “Yes, sir. Would you like to have me write out the address?” “Thank you.” We lunched up-stairs at Botín’s. It is one of the best restaurants in the world. We had roast young suckling pig and drank rioja alta. Brett did not eat much. She never ate much. I ate a very big meal and drank three bottles of rioja alta.

And as we stood there, a curious thing happened: a kind of window opened in the rain, just as if a cloud had been hitched aside like a curtain, and in the space between we saw a landscape that took our breath away. The high ground along which the road ran fell away through a black, woody belt, and beyond it, for more miles than you can imagine, lay the whole basin of the Black Country, clear, amazingly clear, with innumerable smokestacks rising out of it like the merchant shipping of the world laid up in an estuary at low tide, each chimney flying a great pennant of smoke that blew away eastward by the wind, and the whole scene bleared by the light of a sulphurous sunset. No one need ever tell me again that the Black Country isn't beautiful. In all Shrophire and Radnor we'd seen nothing to touch it for vastness and savagery. And then this apocalyptic light! It was like a landscape of the end of the world, and, curiously enough, though men had built the chimneys and fired the furnaces that fed the smoke, you felt that the magnificence of the scene owed nothing to them. Its beauty was singularly inhuman and its terror – for it was terrible, you know – elemental. It made me wonder why you people who were born and bred there ever write about anything else.

Polaroid pictures of them wearing bell-bottom jeans, leather vests, round lens glasses, and headbands.  They were in their teens when I was born and in the partying stage of their lives when I was young.  At the age of five, I opened my parents’ sock drawer.  Instead of socks, it was filled with dead plants.  I didn’t know what it was; I just knew none of my drawers were filled with that stuff.  I never saw my parents smoke pot or do any other type of drug, but I recognized changes in their behavior.  When they had friends over, I noticed everyone would regularly leave the living room and go into the kitchen, followed by an odd smell which permeated the room.  I didn’t know what was happening.  I just knew this only occurred when guests were

There is nothing I can salvage from this accusation, and the eyes pool, as I lose. From left side to right side, Queen’s Square’s bookends are the Bretts and the Blows, two overlarge and knowing Manchester families. Sitting on a thousand secrets, they are central to everything, vitalized and full of life – not rough, but happy – escapist and impossible to match. Both families welcome ours, the Dwyers, with doors always open in a way that modernists assume never actually happened. The Blows live at the end house in the square, rammed up against the high wall of Loreto, their annual November 5th bonfire drawing in all of the Square’s residents, unifying the leathery old with the darting young. Even Mr Tappley, who lives alone under his flat cap, creeps out to watch, determined to be unimpressed. Life

We’re taught from a very young age that to degrade the empire is to degrade the king, so saying the words out loud is treasonous.

Cooperages typically specialized in one or the other because they each had different customer bases and wood requirements. They were often located in major towns to be close to their customers. Slack cooperage demand was more fragmented than tight cooperage, and therefore had a more diverse customer base. While most of the industry was tight cooperage, Greif focused on slack, with the company having the most slack capacity of any player. The cooperage industry had grown increasingly concentrated over time, with the top four companies’ share of total production increasing from 26% in 1935 to 47% in 1947.66 John Raible acquired control of the company from the Greif brothers in 1913. Raible was a wealthy investor, not terribly interested in the cooperage business. But his leadership was valuable, helping the company grow revenue from $1 million when he took over to $10 million when he took Greif public in 1926. But Raible’s reign came to an end in 1947, undone by a fellow board member. John Dempsey, an accountant in his early 30s, had joined the firm as a director and company secretary in 1946. After Raible tried to buy shares held by Dempsey’s wife and mother-in-law at a price the young accountant thought too cheap, Dempsey accumulated enough voting shares to take control of the company. Dempsey, claiming to be motivated by Raible calling Greif ‘my wood company,’ purchased over 50% of the voting shares and made himself chairman.67

Union Street Railway was a New Bedford, Massachusetts-based bus company. With the equity trading below the net cash on the company’s balance sheet, Union Street was a classic net-net when Buffett bought the stock. This was a small, thinly traded company with a market capitalization below $1 million. The small float meant acquiring stock required a bit of work and persistence by the young, enterprising investor. Like the other stocks discussed so far, it was cheap. But in contrast to the previous investments discussed in this book, this one was actually losing money at the time of Buffett’s purchase. Yet this stock would be a huge winner for Buffett, yielding him a dollar profit worth more than 4.5x the average household yearly income at the time. After accumulating a meaningful stake in the company, Buffett took a trip to Massachusetts to meet with the company’s president. While he did not run a proxy contest or take aggressive action to prompt a capital return, the company paid a substantial dividend shortly after his visit.109 Union Street Railway was an early lesson in how positive changes in capital allocation can lead to windfall profits.

As anthracite production fell after the divorce from the railroad, P&R’s management raised debt to try and minimize the decay through capital investment, thinking new facilities could help the company remain competitive. But industry conditions worsened, and the Great Depression decimated economic activity, leading to significant losses for P&R throughout much of the 1930s. These results culminated in a declaration of bankruptcy in 1937.147 It took eight years for the company to emerge, but the reorganized firm possessed a leaner balance sheet, better prepared to withstand the declining market.148 Ultimately, it didn’t matter, as alternative fuel competition was simply overwhelming. As Figure 1 illustrates, production of hard coal eventually fell nearly 70%, dropping from 99.6 million tons from its 1917 peak all the way down to 30.9 million in 1953. Coal prices rose, mitigating the volume decline (as seen in Figure 2). But there was no hope that the industry would return to its former glory; anthracite coal was in an irreversible decline. This was the seemingly hopeless situation that confronted the young Warren Buffett, still in his early 20s, when he began looking at Philadelphia & Reading. Yet he started buying P&R stock at around $19 per share in 1952. When the stock soon plummeted to $9, Buffett, unphased by the decline, loaded up. By the end of 1954, he had invested $35,000 into the company, making it his largest personal position.149

Buffett had a strong view of how employees should be accountable to the business’s owners, and Marshall-Wells’ leadership did not seem to fit the bill. Management’s lackadaisical approach towards shareholders likely turned the young investor off. And he simply found other investments. At the end of 1950, Buffett owned stocks such as Parkersburg Rig & Reel and two closed-end funds: Selected Industries and U.S. & International Securities.40

It’s funny that because a lot of old jazz is being sampled now, you are finding a lot of young kids, a lot of scenesters and clubgoers, who are getting praise, laurels and dates with women because they listen to people like Herbie Hancock. In my day, listening to Herbie Hancock would have gotten you beaten up.

Overstreets’ wonderful phrase, a “parental orientation,” which they define as “the capacity to extend a warm, nurturing welcome to what is young and undeveloped in a fellow human being.

Her lids narrowed. “So, let’s spell this all out, shall we? You landed Brett fucking Young, my unicorn agent; Valerie Spears, the leading manager at his agency; and Dominick Dalton, my attorney.

You are an educated man, sir,” he said. “Possibly you have read Turgenev? He wrote a novel. Fumée. Smoke. That was his best title. Everything in Russia ends in smoke — like my poor manuscripts.” The waiter placed our cognac on the table; I handed my friend his glass. “Everything in Russia,” he repeated. “In smoke, like my poor manuscripts, or in liquor, like myself.

But Catherine — or rather the Catherine of happy memory — had so much more. Even in her present invalid state, she enforced her hard, brilliant personality with a definiteness that reduced little Daphne to the pallor of a still-life pastel beside a strongly-coloured portrait in oils.

Well, war, as I've told her a hundred times, makes strange bedfellows.

No doubt they were genuine Russian refugees. North Africa, from Cairo to Tangiers, was full of them. And these were like the rest; thin, indolent, with high cheek- bones, wide, supercilious mouths, and lank, ashen hair. Their manner cut them off from the rest of the people in the cafe as definitely as though they belonged to a distant and superior planet.

I want you to be my mistress.” Of course she had known what was coming; yet, when it came, some radical prudishness within her was offended by the word. She stifled its promptings vigorously. They were unworthy of her — unworthy of her fine, free, emancipated, passionate modernity. What would become of their frank and glorious equality, their high-flown theories, if she refused him? And yet...

We went to different schools, but none-the-less, he was my very first friend.

Inside I was freaking out! OMG! His hair is falling out! This just got real.

Depression set in. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, I couldn't concentrate at work. I didn't want to get out of bed.

Mrs. Teague, I am sorry, but you have metastatic Ovarian Cancer." After about a minute or two, I turned back to him and looked at him and said, "No, I have two small children!

I was given fluid and another blood transfusion, after which I felt like I could conquer the world! This process would become my normal: chemo, get horribly sick, trip to Assessment, fluid, blood transfusion, feel better.

I never let anyone see me cry or feel sorry for myself. Attitude and the will to live is so important during and after treatment that if you don't have a good attitude or a strong will to live, treatment doesn't work.

Cancer represents a very specific, emotional uniqueness of your body failing you, generally through no fault of your own. But please know that no matter how hard or bad you believe your situation to be, there is somebody out there who's got it worse.

I had been looking forward to actually beginning to fight this disease, this foreign invader that had kidnapped my spirit and ransacked my body )like the Dothraki in Game of Thrones would have certainly done.)

But every time I felt upset, depressed, or plain pissed off, I remembered a piece of advice a former English teacher had give me: "Why wait until tomorrow to feel better?" This made complete sense to me when I'd thought how many times I'd thought, "Well, tomorrow will be another day... a new day!" What's wrong with today? What's wrong with right now?

See, what had happened was that the Versed had caused retrograde amnesia, the side-effects of the Morphine disappearing caused my bowels to start moving again, and the alcohol I guess had just prevented my mind from appreciating these facts until the last possible second ...or not. Good times.

You must realize that having cancer affects not only you, but everyone who cares for you as well. I had realized this after only one year of treatment, but I don't think I've ever truly understood how hard the experience was for my family.

I want to show people that even a disease like this cannot break my spirits. In fact, I want to make people feel what I feel ...lucky to experience this day to day routine we call "life." I want to be a source of inspiration to people who think that life has dealt them an unfair hand. Because if you have your health as I will, then be thankful because not everyone has that luxury.

My name is Brett Cordes and I just want to let you know that I'm standing here right now because you saved my life 12 years ago." There. Was. Silence. "I know who you are," his voice quivered just above a whisper as he walked over to the bookshelf and grabbed my father's letter. "Your father wrote me this letter about a year after you finished treatment, and I've kept it ever since and show it to all my residents and fellows ...to show them why we do what we do.

It was in that moment that not only did I experience my lowest point through my cancer journey, but as I look back, I realize that I also experienced one of my most empowering.

As it turned out, everyone knew that I had cancer. That is, everyone except me.

To this day, one of my great regrets in life is that I did not deploy in 2013 with the group of men and women whom I spent so much time growing close to. I cherish the memories that I have while in uniform and have learned to understand that everything is in God's timing, not mine.

We were not mentally prepared for this option. It was overwhelming. What do we tell our boys, how will they react? You have a hundred thoughts racing through your head, and they are all maneuvering for the ability to create clarity amidst the confusion, but they cannot.

I always felt like it was out of place, kind of like the idea that you're sitting in jail and lean over and ask the guy next to you, "Hey, buddy...What are you in for?" The irony is, most of them ...maybe not all but most wanted to talk. They/we have a story to tell. It is our story of survival ...our story of fighting the great battle and hoping to come through victorious. -Kyle

This was not going to be an easy experience, but let me say this as clearly as I know how; nothing anybody says can prepare you for what lay ahead... nothing. I considered myself a tough human being. I was a soldier. Like, not a "No Limit" soldier or "soldier for life" ...like an actual United States soldier, for crying out loud.

Some of this is difficult to put into words and almost a little embarrassing, but can we became my identity for 18 months of my life. I didn’t have a conversation with anyone outside of my close circle of family or friends that didn’t revolve around having cancer or treating cancer. -Kyle

If I had to summarize it with one word it would be HOPE. Never lose hope.

Stephanie is my hero and we battled cancer together. It wasn't ever my victory or even our victory. It was God's victory and he allowed us to share it together.

She succumbed to the exact same cancer that I had been lucky enough to survive. Could this really be the only aspect of our experience that led to our differing outcomes...luck? My god luck? Her bad luck? Seems unfair, right? Well, it is.

Having cancer, fighting cancer, and beating cancer have been THE defining events in my life, and though it was the most terrifying, I know that it has changed me for the better, forever.

Fighting the disease is hard enough, even when you are completely focused on just that. Extra time and effort spent worrying about the situation can be detrimental to your body's physical health.

When I was initially diagnosed with cancer, I questioned God's reasoning for giving me such a debilitating disease. But then it dawned on me: He chose me to give this disease because He knew that I could handle it!

...the fact remains that, from the time when I could first walk until I adopted high heels, lipstick, and a pretence of helplessness, a muscle in the forearm was worth far more to me than any amount of brains in the head.

Old people and children know how to live. The folks who are the bookednds of life have the most fun. They don't care what anyone thinks. They're either too young to know better or too old to care.

Brett had proved once again that whenever a young Brett is born in these United States, born with a dream, that dream can truly come true. Yes, sir, if your baby Brett really puts his mind to it -- if he believes, if he has faith, if he is a he, and if he is called Brett -- he can do whatever it is he puts his mind to, and that goes double for all you Troys, Kips, Tripps, Bucks and Chads.

A young man went to the king to ask for his help. The king said that he will help the young man, but only under one condition. Two pieces of paper were shown to the man. Under one was the word “YES” and under other was the word “NO.” In front of a large crowd, the young man needed to pick the “YES” paper. The young man knew that the king was sly and that both papers contained the word “NO.” But, the young man still got the king’s help. How was he able to do that?

A young boy capitalized the first letter of a word and turned it from an object into a language. How did that happen?

Some people love me, especially those who are young. Other people dislike me, especially those who are old. I may be hard to forget, but I am sometimes hard to remember. If you do remember me, then you bring many people together to get to know me. But, whether you remember me or not, I am always present year after year. What am I?

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Eleanor plucked his sleeve. “But you know society just as I do. Blanche Harrington is one of the few genuinely nice women in town. There are so many vultures out there! I hated society when I was forced to come out. I can’t begin to tell you how many English ladies looked down on me because I am Irish. Worse, even though I am an earl’s daughter, the rakes in the ton were conscienceless.” She made sure not to grin, although she thought her eyes probably danced. He scowled. “I will protect Amanda from any rogue who dares give her a single glance,” he said tersely. “No one will dare pursue her with any intention other than an honorable one.” Eleanor tried not to laugh. “You do take this guardianship very seriously,” she said, maintaining an innocent expression. “Of course I do,” he snapped, appearing vastly annoyed. Then he nodded at the document in her hand. “Is that for me?” Eleanor simply could not prevent a grin. “It is the list of suitors.” Cliff looked at her as if she had spoken Chinese. “Don’t you want to see who is on it?” He snatched the sheet from her hand and she tried not to chuckle as his brows lifted. “There are only four names here!” “It is only the first four names I have thought of,” she said. “Besides, although you are providing her with a dowry, you are not making her a great heiress. We can claim an ancient Saxon family tree, but we have no proof. I am trying to find Amanda the perfect husband. You do want her to be very happy and to live in marital bliss, don’t you?” He gave her a dark look. “John Cunningham? Who is this?” She became eager, smiling. “He is a widower with a title, a baronet. He has a small estate in Dorset, of little value, but he is young and handsome and apparently virile, as his first wife had two sons. He—” “No.” She feigned surprise, raising both brows. “I beg your pardon?” “Who is next?” “What is wrong with Cunningham? Truthfully, he is openly looking for a wife!” “He is impoverished,” Cliff spat. “And he only wants a mother for his sons. Next?” “Fine,” she said, huffing. “William de Brett. Ah, you will like him! De Brett has a modest income of twelve hundred a year. He comes from a very fine family—they are of Norman descent, as well, but he has no title. However—” “No. Absolutely not.” Eleanor stared, forcing herself to maintain a straight face. “Amanda can live modestly but well on twelve hundred a year and I know de Brett. The women swoon when he walks into a salon.” His gaze hardened. “The income is barely acceptable, and he has no title. She will marry blue blood.” “Really?” His smile was dangerous. “Really. Who is Lionel Camden?

To Morton Stone, all those first weeks at Meerlust had a strange, dream-like quality. The contours and smells of the country, the odd style of the house’s architecture, the stinkwood furniture and ancient brass with which its rooms were furnished, had an exotic flavour that left him slightly bewildered. They didn’t, naturally, bewilder Catherine at all. She was rapturously recapturing the days when she and Hans had been children together. To Morton there was something beautiful, and at the same time pathetic, in the quickness with which she responded to each remembered detail: the bird-song, the flowers that now bloomed in incredible profusion, the smell of the veld, the soft accents of Cape-Dutch dialect. It was pathetic for two reasons. First because these memories, which he could neither share nor understand, increased the distance between them; once again, because all her rapture was shadowed for him by the gloom of an in- definite apprehensiveness. This very excess of happiness took it out of her. She wasn’t, as he could see, and as the Malans’ Dutch doctor told him, any better for the change. It seemed to spur her to a morbid restlessness. She was catching at every memory, within, or just out of reach, as though some inward consciousness told her that the time for its enjoyment was limited. It irked her to find him, as it seemed to her, dull and unresponsive. As for Morton, the sense of impending disaster never left him. He could have faced it more easily, he felt, at home, amid familiar surroundings, than in this strange, unreal oasis of beauty, five thousand miles from anywhere.

The night was still, of a milk-warm loveliness. Moonlight sprayed silver on the shining camphor- leaves; late orange-blossom swathed the cottage in a perfume so dense that it could almost be felt. The spirit of Meerlust had never been more subtly intoxicating.

It was past midnight when the doctor from Stellenbosch drove splashing through the drift. Warned by the beam of his car’s headlights, which dredged up, as it were, the white ghost of the house from depths of a dense, hot darkness, Hans Malan stalked out on to the stoep to meet him.

And he stayed. For three years he stayed in the shadow of Meerlust; a model of the uttermost devotion; a lost soul in purgatory. It would have been better, as the doctor had said, if Catherine Stone had died. Within twenty-four hours of the original disaster she recovered consciousness, lying, as the half-dead lie, with one side paralysed and without the power of speech. She could not speak, but she could see. Her eyes never stopped seeing. Through the long hours of day and night when Morton sat by her, watching in silence, those blue eyes dwelt on him. There was no bitterness, no accusation in them — only a supernatural power of penetration, terribly impersonal, which seemed to pierce through into the depths of his consciousness, stripping bare the pretences of tenderness, the realities of remorse with which he comforted him- self.He might easily deceive himself, but never Catherine’s eyes.

The police,” he said. “You can’t carry firearms in England without a licence. Just like dogs. You’ll be getting into trouble before you know where you are. Now look here, ma’am,” he went on, with increasing confidence, “you’d far better make a clean breast of it.” “A clean breast? What do you mean? Why do you pester me like this?” she cried, with sudden terror.

My wife will look after you, madam,” he said. “I hope you’ll be comfortable. Sleep well — pleasant dreams!” he added, with daring familiarity; then climbed the stairs slowly, feeling more like a slapped child than the hero of romance which he had imagined himself an hour before.

His self-esteem was a mass of smarting pin- pricks. Whenever he assured himself, as he tried to do, that he was the heroic victim of a grand and melancholy passion, the memory of some new and petty indignity stabbed him awake. “I’m darned if I’m going to put up with it,” he told Matilda that evening. “What I want to know is this: Am I the master of my own house?” Matilda only smiled. And so it went on. You might, Jimmy thought, have supposed that treatment of this kind would arouse the fair one’s pity, poor substitute as that might be for the warmer emotion which, by all romantic canons, she owed to her rescuer. In protest he adopted an air of injured tenderness and nobility. But Matilda soon knocked the bottom out of that. “Don’t take any notice,” she told their guest, “if he happens to touch your hand when he’s passing the butter. He’s quite harmless, is Jimmy, and even if he does like to dream he’s a Don Juan, that doesn’t take me in! I know him! We haven’t been married six years for nothing.” “Oh, haven’t we?” said Jimmy, darkly. ‘That’s where you’re mistaken! ” “Just listen to him!” laughed Matilda. “He hates you to think he’s been faithful. Isn’t he just a lamb?” And the object of Jimmy’s frustrated passion merely smiled. She was always smiling. The tragic figure of the Boulogne boat, the distressed beauty of the Customs House, the vision of pathetic loveliness whom he, James Marler, had swept off her feet with such manly magnificence, no longer existed. Those grave, impassioned dialogues which he had imagined taking place under the romantic towers of the Crystal Palace had never materialized. She was gay, she was childish, perhaps she was even more beautiful; but her gaiety, her childishness, her beauty were not for him.

His speech . . . well, she couldn’t be quite so sure of that. It certainly wasn’t the kind of speech to which she was accustomed} the vowels were either slightly foreign or slightly cockney. It was better, on the whole, to decide that they were foreign.

She had chosen the gallery because of its intellectual altitude; because she had heard it whispered that all the best people (in her sense, not in her mother’s) frequented it. She had chosen the gallery as a symbol of emancipation, of rebellion; its very discomfort was a psychological luxury. She had chosen it — most of all — because, if she had descended, in a physical and artistic sense, to her mother’s box, she would have been pursued and devoured all evening by the earnest, amorous, pale- blue eyes of her admirer, Lord Ledwyche (pronounced Ledditch) whom her family and his had decided she was destined to marry. Even in the country a little of Ledwyche went a long way. Against the highly sophisti-cated, intensely modern background of the Russian Ballet his presence was discordant. Not that Helena disapproved of discords. On the contrary, she adored them just as long as they didn’t happen to be generally admired by the wrong people, such as Charlie Ledwyche. If Charlie had been frankly eighteenth-century baroque she could have tolerated him; if he had been Cubistic, like a skyscraper, she could have been proud of him; but his style was all wrong — it belonged neither to the day before yesterday nor to the day after to-morrow; he was just the wrong period. Sham Gothic, like the Houses of Parliament, which he so decorously adorned.

When they crossed the street, he didn't even take her arm. Of course, a faun wouldn't.

Next time?" he smiled; his eyes brightened; he was no longer a divinely superior person, but an interested male.

This dark young man, on the other hand, was just what he should be — Charlie Ledwyche’s physical and temperamental opposite. There was something, she decided, elemental about him. When the lights went down again they danced “Apres-midi d’un Faune.” Shyly glancing at him, while the oboe reedily skipped and quavered above a shimmer of strings, she knew that — apart from the whiskers — there was something southern about his pale face. He was like a sleek-skinned faun himself. The light in those lazy, black-fringed eyes was undeniably pagan.

It was rather fun, as a matter of fact, to adventure into this world of make-believe; it gave her a feeling of rich, unexerted power; kept open a safe line of retreat with her boats unburned. His little, high-brow superiority was really comical — almost pathetic.

She was secure in the armour of her anonymity. Even if he did kiss her again, as he probably would, the person whom he kissed would be an imaginary person, a creature whom she had invented for her own amusement, not herself.

And all the time, as the train went whirling through reverberant tunnels, then out into the unspeakable' squalors of the East End — Bow, Stepney, Whitechapel, Barking — she was thinking how strangely unromantic this honeymoon journey was contrasting it, in spite of herself, with that other southward journey in the Blue Train with Ledwyche. She didn’t love Ledwyche; she supposed she did love Cyril. And yet, when she came to think of it, how safe she had felt with the other — how many essential, though trivial, things they had had in common! Trivial? Were they so trivial after all? Weren’t they, in fact, the whole basic structure of her life, her birth, her breeding? With Ledwyche, she knew just exactly where she was, while' 'with this dark stranger. . . . It came as a shock to her to remember that she didn’t even know his name, nor he hers. That, to begin with, was enough to make the' whole adventure unreal, unsubstantial, uncertain. Yet, hadn’t they agreed — oh, long ago! — that it was this very circumstance that made the affair so romantically thrilling? Eros and Psyche! . . . To question the illusion was to shatter it. And yet she knew nothing about him, nothing whatever, except that they shared a few tastes and theories. Why, for all she knew, he might even be a criminal, a murderer! “Well, here I am,” she thought. “Ca y est! I’ve got to go through with it.” And of course, to be logical, this journey had not begun at Liverpool Street that morning; it had begun at the moment when Ledwyche had shown her into the train at Cannes. It would end, God knew how, in some sordid lodging in Southend. “I’m a free woman,” she told herself. “Well, this is the price of freedom.

All the' expensive artificialities of life at Cannes, where one saw exactly the same people as at home in slightly thinner clothes, bored her equally. Their transplanted conventions made her feel a traitor to her kind. Her only relief from that hothouse atmosphere was to be found in the flowery foothills of the Maritime Alps, where she went for long, lonely walks, always thinking of Cyril, in a pagan setting that called for his faun-like presence.

All through the journey, except when she was locked in her sleeper, he did his manly best to entertain her with his rich store of personal and political gossip; but his best, alas, was far too manly for Helena.

Their friendship — they were both of them careful to insist upon that word — was a thing elusive and moth-like, an unreal emanation of the sweet London dusk from which any intrusion of the material, the physical, might brush the bloom. They were primarily concerned with each other’s minds and souls. This was, they assured each other, an intellectual comradeship in which two young, eager minds, with eyes wide open, were pre- pared to discuss any subject under the sun. With a cold and exalted detachment they debated not only the arts — which, naturally, were much more important than life — but problems of human conduct, such as Communism (they were both Communists, of course), prostitution, birth-control. At first these discussions filled poor Helena with confusion, for no living Pomfret had ever spoken of such things, but Cyril, when he saw her confused, became almost stern. To be capable of being shocked was a bourgeois trait; and when once she had got over her first awkwardness she found a certain elevated excitement in calling spades spades. Cyril noticed this, and approved. It was something of an achievement to have educated this little mouse from Clapham up to his own intellectual level. It made him ruthless, haughty, patronising towards her; and Helena didn’t mind. Indeed, she found an odd satisfaction in the docile humility with which she accepted his views on free trade, free verse and free love. [...] And the beauty of the whole thing was this: that apart from their meeting and parting kisses, which, occasionally, on his side, were disturbingly ardent, their relations, so far, had been rigidly Platonic. He had never, in a vulgar way, attempted to make love to her. They went floating, divided like another and undesirous Paolo and Francesca, through an intellectual heaven. Impersonally. . . . She sometimes wondered how long this blessed impersonality would last [...]

Through all that period my mind was absorbed, excited and entranced by a series of visions that remain with me to this day. Gibraltar, grey and monstrous against the dawn; the snows of Crete, flamingo-hued in the fire of sunset; Port Said, where first the smell of the East begins; pink mountains of Sinai in their lunar desolation; Colombo, sweltering under a vertical sun.

I think of him, in those days, as a remote figure — a square-shouldered silhouette posed motionless on the bridge against a background of burning blue sky.

Of course I knew what to expect. He told me the story of his reef. Very much as Blagden had told it. Shyly, at first, as though he felt I was too young to be interested, or, perhaps, that I was listening from the point of view of a mental specialist. Well, if that old man were mad, he certainly had a good excuse for his insanity. He spoke, as usual, with a simple, courtly precision; but it was his very directness that made that old horror live with a vividness that had never appeared in Blagden’s version. If I could have written it down, word for word, as he told it, you would have given me credit for an imaginative masterpiece. I can’t, alas! All that remains with me now is the incommunicable atmosphere of an actual, intense, lonely terror — so present and compelling that it swept all consciousness of my real surroundings, the whitewashed temple and the high festoons of exotic foliage, out of my mind. “At that point,” Shellis was saying, “I felt that the quartermaster and I were looking at each other almost greedily. We weren’t civilized human beings any longer — just hungry cannibals. I determined that if anybody were going to be killed and eaten I would rather it was I.” He told me these ghastly details with a detached and dreamy coldness.

It was quite common for households in towns like mine to have BB rifles, commonly called slug guns. These were air rifles that shot very tiny soft lead pellets called slugs. They weren’t that lethal unless you shot at very close range, but they could blind you if you got shot in the eye. Most teenagers had them to control pests like rats, or to stun rabbits. However, most kids used them to shoot empty beer cans lined up on the back fence, practising their aim for the day they were old enough to purchase a serious firearm. Fortunately, a law banning guns was introduced in Australia in 1996 after thirty-five innocent people were shot with a semi-automatic weapon in a mass shooting in Tasmania. The crazy shooter must have had a slug gun when he was a teenager. But this was pre-1996. And my brothers, of course, loved shooting. My cousin Billy, who was sixteen years old at the time – twice my age – came to visit one Christmas holiday from Adelaide. He loved coming to the outback and getting feral with the rest of us. He also enjoyed hitting those empty beer cans with the slug gun. Billy wasn’t the best shooter. His hand-eye coordination was poor, and I was always convinced he needed to wear glasses. Most of the slugs he shot either hit the fence or went off into the universe somewhere. The small size of the beer cans frustrated him, so he was on the lookout for a bigger target. Sure enough, my brothers quickly pushed me forward and shouted, ‘Here, shoot Betty!’ Billy laughed, but loved the idea. ‘Brett, stand back a bit and spread your legs. I’ll shoot between them just for fun.’ Basically, he saw me as an easy target, and I wasn’t going to argue with a teenager who had a weapon in his hand. I naively thought it could be a fun game with my siblings and cousin; perhaps we could take turns. So, like a magician’s assistant, I complied and spread my skinny young legs as far apart as an eight-year-old could, fully confident he would hit the dust between them . . . Nope. He didn’t. He shot my leg, and it wasn’t fun. Birds burst out of all the surrounding trees – not from the sound of the gunshot, but from my piercing shriek of pain. While I rolled around on the ground, screaming in agony, clutching my bleeding shin, my brothers were screaming with laughter. I even heard one of them shout, ‘Shoot him while he’s down!’ Who needs enemies when you have that kind of brotherly love? No one rushed to help; they simply moved to the back fence to line up the cans for another round. I crawled inside the house with blood dripping down my leg, seeking Mum, the nurse, to patch me up. To this day, I have a scar on my leg as a souvenir from that incident . . . and I still think Billy needed glasses. I also still get very anxious when anyone asks me to spread my legs.

Getting a nickname is a very common thing in Australia, and when your friends honour you with one, you don’t have a choice; you have to accept it. I knew a guy at school who was super thin, so he scored the nickname ‘Skin’, for ‘skinny’. My mother’s name is Shirley, but Dad only called her ‘Girl’ and hardly ever said her real name. Either it was because she always looked so young and pretty, or he was playing it safe to avoid slipping up and calling her by a different woman’s name when he was drunk.

The desert's illimitable freedom," the officer murmured, as he poured out Simon's whiskey. "It's not altogether her fault, Mr. Jackson. It's these damned novelists. Every novel written about the desert should be censored by the police.

It was true that the unexpectedness of the summons had rather taken his breath away. It had come as a laconic cable: Come Naples next boat if you want to marry. Cable reply. Agatha - which made him rub his eyes. But Simeon Jackson was a man of action, and his deep-rooted belief in the romantic waywardness of women had suggested to him that his little girl had been taught by the backwardness of Europe to realize the rock-bottom solidity of the American business man [...}

In the street of the perfume-sellers Miss Jenkins subsided on a settee like a fat bee drunk with essences, [...}

her mind was full not of facts, but of glamour;

Fortunately, also, that very night the wolfish English summer discarded its lamb-skins.

He prayed to goodness that the relationship might be reasonably remote. He remembered, anxiously, that a man may not marry his grandmother...

It didn't occur to him to make allowances for the long English twilight. That twilight gave to the landscape a curious effect of suspended life. It cast upon everything (or was that, perhaps, the beer?) an eerie, magical bloom. Every mile that he went - and now he was hurrying - he felt surer and surer that he was on the verge of some shattering experience.

Peaceful and lovely though his country seemed, there was nothing in it that clutched at his heart and dragged it out by the roots. He didn't belong to it, could never belong to it. He knew those picturesque cottages! It was probable that not one in five hundred possessed a bathroom, much less up-to-date plumbing or steam-heating or electric refrigeration. All this talk about "calls of the blood" was simply bunk. He had always described himself as a hundred-per-cent. American. At that moment the percentage had risen to a hundred and fifty. Probably, by the time he had got to Ludlow, it would reach two hundred.

He lived and moved in a curiously exalted, isolated world between his office on Fifth Avenue, which resembled a millionaire's apartment, and his bachelor apartment on Park, which resembled a business man's office. He moved in a vicious circle so rapid that he hadn't even time to realize how rich he was. It was only during his hurried passage between these two high perches [...] that Ludlow Walcot's feet had any contact with his mother earth. All day and all night (for not even his dreams were his own) his giddy brain was assailed by business details which hammered at it with the persistence of a riveting machine, his stomach insulted by snacks and patent nerve-foods, that jostled each other in competing for the attention of his bewildered digestion.

Gradually a change came over Willoughby. It showed itself first in a distinct gain of strength that overjoyed her. All his life, in the sodden midlands and in the clearer cold of Central Europe, Willoughby’s body had simply struggled for existence; whatever vitality he possessed had been poured out daily to nourish the pale, exotic flower of his music. In this blander climate, like a starved plant that rejoices in a genial soil, the musician became a man.

For the first time in her life she was aware of the man ’s potential strength; and it came as a shock to her, for, so far, she had merely been concerned with his physical weakness; and though she was flattered by this display of passion she couldn’t quite persuadeherself that it was seemly, or be sure that incidents of this kind wouldn’t interfere with his music. She could never really think of him as anything but the white-faced invalid whom she had rescued from the cinema. So, con- scientiously, and in spite of his irritation, she restrained these ardours. She couldn’t see that the man had been suddenly smitten with beauty, that the thawed blood was beginning to move in his veins, that love was a necessity.

His attitude towards her changed. When they had been settled for less than a month at La Fiorita, as their villa was called, they were sitting out one night in the belvedere at the end of their pergola watching the full moon climb above the mountains of Sorrento. The night was not chilly; but fearing that Willoughby might take cold, she came down the garden with an Alpine cloak that she had bought for him in Munich. She found him rapt, gazing at the snaky track of yellow moonlight on the water. Even before he spoke she was aware of something tense and emotional in the air; but when she threw the cloak over his shoulders he did not thank her as usual. He stood gazing down at her with a look in his eyes that she had never seen before except when he was playing. She felt herself blushing beneath his gaze. Then, clasping her in his arms, he kissed her lips. It was the kiss of a lover, the like of which she had never known before, and she, with her curious, spinsterly instinct, shrank from it. “What are you doing?” he cried. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t I kiss you?” “Julian, you’re so rough. I don’t understand kisses like that.” “Aren’t you my wife?” he said. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t love you?

How precarious that safety was, he didn’t realize. It was shattered, at last, by means of a trifling accident. Christmas had passed. By this time the sudden splendours of spring had waned. Now Meerlust lay like an island of heavier green in a tawny sea of veld that swept upward wave beyond wave to the arching sky. The rivers ran down to the sea in a gin-clear trickle. The scattered rocks of the wilderness radiated fierce heat.

They thought I was mad, and Russians are always sympathetic with mad men.

Of course, you could not say that a community with a Loblaw's that supplied Shakespeare was entirely devoid of culture. But damn near. Damn near.

Civilization, when it took you beyond the necessity to know how to snare a rabbit, moved you into an area where you fought for mental and moral survival. And whether or not you won this particular kind of battle depended to a great extent on where you fought it, and with what weapons. That is, if you fought at all. If you did anything beyond labelling yourself 'I, the victor'—while stripping cellophane from fresh-frozen rabbit beside a suburban barbecue.