Free Rustication by Charles Palliser Page A

petals of a rose. My arms are around her.
    [A passage in Greek letters begins here. Note by CP .]
    We are in this room. I am lying with her on my bed holding her, with my mouth rubbing softly against her neck and my hands are stroking her and my hard thing is digging into her. She says What’s that? like a child finding a new toy and she reaches round and she feels my thing and she rubs along it with her fingers and I put my hands on her . . .
    Δ
    [The passage in Greek letters ends here. Note by CP .]
    1 o’clock.
    Strange how the barking of those dogs sounds so much louder across the snow.
    I’m sure the others are all asleep. I have waited long enough. I can wait no longer to transcend the limitations of our earthbound existence. The little ritual that Edmund taught me—he the officiant and I the acolyte—is a transmutation, a sacrament of the imagination. The little dark rubbery ball that I am about to melt with the flame of the candle and then drop into the bowl of my pipe, redeems the world. The first draughts seem to warm my whole body bringing a sense of peace and yet a thrilling awareness of infinite possibilities. I am not fleeing from daily reality but experiencing it more intensely.
    · · ·
    ∑
    2 o’clock.
    I can’t hear a sound now. Just the distant chafing of the waves against the shore. The unnumbered pebbles .
    ½ past 5 o’clock.
    I’ve just returned from the other side of Stratton Herriard. What pleasure to steal from a slumbering house and roam the countryside unseen. I walked through the silent villages. All the windows were blank. Night and darkness belong to me. While my neighbours dream, I come and go around their houses. Peer through their windows if they have a candle still flickering.
    I wandered across the unlit fields and marshes until I came to the edge of the land where the sea frets unrestingly. The moon hung like a golden ring that had been snapped in two while the ocean rippled like the back of a wrinkled old woman’s hand. I made out boats near the shore with lanterns gleaming through the mist and realised that fishermen were at work.
    I circled round and walked back along the muddy shore.

 
    Friday 18 th of December, noon.
    W oke up this morning with a thumping headache and found several inches of snow had fallen since I got home. The house lies under a great feathery muff. There are Siberian drafts under the doors and the ill-fitting windows are rattling in their frames. The roads will be impassable for a couple of days so that there can be no question of my leaving. I don’t know if I’m pleased about that or horrified.
    · · ·
    Mother suddenly asked me: Did I hear you coming in very late last night?
    Before I could think, I found that I had denied it.
    I was weak last night and I must not give in to temptation so soon again.
    4 in the afternoon.
    After luncheon I went and looked at the Monument. It is an octagonal tower about forty feet high and surmounted by an absurd cupola held up by a ring of classical columns.
    As I was crossing the path between the village and the shore, I spotted the Quance girls with their old cicerone. As we approached each other Guinevere stopped and said something. Her sister glanced in my direction and frowned. She made a moue of distaste. We had not been on a course to meet, but Guinevere led them towards me.
    Simply don’t know what to make of Enid. Was she teasing and mocking me by her silence? Does she have no idea how I feel about her?
    The old woman exclaimed: Master Shenstone and I are quite old friends .
    The girls exchanged glances. Oh yes, the famous tea which we’ve heard so much about , Guinevere said. She chattered away and gave me the chance to observe her properly for the first time. Pity she isn’t a little older. Even a year or two. She might be quite a beauty by the time she’s sixteen. She has a tiny dimple on her left cheek near her mouth which gives her a strange charm. She’s a teasing little vixen.
    She started