He didn’t say anything to that. It was a statement, anyway. And he had grown more silent. He felt happiest behind a closed door. There was no luxury so great as the privacy of an empty room. Round these rare islands flowed the school years. The formative years, said Uncle Stephen. The years of sports, and intricate, passionate snobberies, and physical violence, and mental barricades. It took a long time, a very long time. He found himself beginning to hate. When it was all over, Uncle Stephen decided on a year in Germany before Cambridge. It was a further fit of generosity that left you doubting your own capacity for gratitude. Events developed beyond your own will. You drifted on the wave of someone else’s decision. And behind it all there was still a suspicion that all this might be directionless. Was there a sudden and self-decisive, an undoubted moment of clarity?

In the meantime, he waited. He was always waiting. And the other people, the people he had known, drifting also in the wash of time, sometimes twitched feebly out of the past, pulling on the line of their relationship. There was the letter from Connie Tiarks, for instance.

Dear Elyot, [Connie wrote]

I expect you will have forgotten all about me. It is such a long time since I fell out of the mulberry tree!!! But I often wonder about you and Eden. I am now at school in Gloucestershire. I shall be fifteen at the beginning of May, so am feeling terribly old!! There are a number of girls I rather like, and several of the mistresses are sports. I usually manage to get home for the weekends, Mother is living in Cheltenham now, since Father died you know, or didn’t you hear? He had an attack of angina. Of course we miss him very much.

Last summer I went to Brittany with the people of a girl called Pamela Withers, who are awfully good to me. We went to St Malo, Rennes, Vannes, Quimper, Tréboul, Lannion, Dinan. It is really a quaint part of the world, and so full of historical interest. I have a piece of pottery that I bought in Quimper. I think I would like to collect pottery from all over the world, because I think it’s a good thing to collect something, don’t you?!

Do you like reading? I have just read Wuthering Heights, which is perhaps a little morbid!! I like Sir Walter Scott. We also go for walks. The country is very pretty, especially in the spring, and autumn tints.

Hope you won’t mind my writing to you like this!!

Love from

Connie (Tiarks)

Receiving this at school, it was the term he had been made a prefect, the large hand of Connie Tiarks, read furtively in the passage, then hidden in the pocket-book, was a constant source of embarrassment. More so the prospect of replying. As if he could write to Connie Tiarks, or what to write to Connie Tiarks. He composed letters in his head, the insipid statements that remained unwritten. The notepaper of Connie Tiarks smelt of some kind of innocent soap. It made him feel a pig, but at the same time he was unable to rid himself of this sensation. Finally he tore the letter, carefully, into little bits, and threw it down the lavatory. This relieved him of the source of embarrassment, if not the sense of shame. He continued to have this long after he had pulled the chain.