Less easily disposed of or assessed was his relationship with Eden. On the whole, he didn’t know her any more. Drawn out into an awkward shape, her wrists too long, her ankles, she sat sullenly withdrawn under an ugly schoolgirl hat. As if a lowering velour cloud had settled on the known face, masking its spontaneity. There were days when he hated Eden with all the intensity of this freshly developed emotion. Ignoring his own aptitude for silence, he hated her because she sat apart. She wore an aura of secrecy. She wrote letters, endless letters. She made mysterious visits to the chest of drawers, which she insisted was hers, emphatically, not in words, but by a soft approach. He hated all this, but perhaps he hated her most because she was his sister, because in this intimate relationship he failed to understand the paradox of distance.

Crossing a room she was less communicative than furniture.

Where are you going? he asked.

To post a letter, she said.

Evening made it whiten in her hand. There was no more significant object in the room. He felt himself resenting this.

Who’ve you been writing to? he asked.

Someone, she answered.

She held her chin up, white also, and sharp. She moved quietly in her flat shoes. He looked at the rest of her face, but it was shadow, under the ugly velour hat.

If I wanted to know who it was, he said, I’d ask.

But already she was gone, the door banged, already in his mind across the street, the stilted progress of the black stockings, passing between the taxi-cabs, on their secret errand to the pillar box. He got up and fiddled with the gramophone. The needle grated on the first bars. Then there opened out the little cheep cheep, the pointed, insinuating notes of the violin, too knowing, too cocky, with a sarcastic quiver borrowed from his own voice.

Soon it will be over, he said, soon we shall be going back to school.

Loathing turned to relief, and relief to loathing.

Later they sat with books, watching each other over books.

Why are you looking at me? she asked.

She could not read. He would not let her read. He sat lumped up across the room, and all the time she could feel his eyes.

Why should I look at you? he said.

Turning the page she almost tore, he could hear the sudden tear of breath.

Just because you’re older, just because you’re almost seventeen, you think you’re pretty clever, she said.

All right then, I’m a fool.

You needn’t tell me that, she said.

Oh, he said. Girls are generally obtuse.

But he felt pretty foolish, lumpish. He even had no pleasure from a vocabulary that might or might not impress. She sat with that over-virtuous expression on her face, protecting herself, forcing him out of the room with his own shame. Then the simultaneous turning of a page. The air was tense with futility.