Beowulf by Bryher

Author:Bryher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schaffner Press, Inc.
Published: 2020-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

ANGELINA FLUNG HER beret onto the hand-woven quilt. They had forgotten the curtains again. The war was a manifestation of governmental incompetence, but as a citizen she would cooperate with the blackout for it involved the masses as well as herself. There was “neither rhyme nor reason,” however, she quoted firmly, in darkening the room during the day. Just because she had forgotten to tie back the extra hangings, Ruby had left them shut. They were more trouble to fix in the evening but she wanted light, the whole world wanted light; if people were wise they would hoard every moment of it, as the silly bankers hoarded gold.

The window looked out over chimney pots to a plane tree and a square of grey sky. Oh dear, Angelina thought as she twisted the cord round the hook, there is going to be trouble with Selina. The old dear simply has no imagination. Can you believe it, Ella, she had said only yesterday at the meeting, my partner never stops working and she’ll listen to a hard luck story when I should bundle the miscreants out of doors, but she simply does not know what the word “vision” means. I cannot make her grasp the first elements of proletarian economy. “Liquidate her,” Ella always joked, but you could not do that with the Tippett. Selina was classless; it was just that you could not make her see anything that was not, literally, in front of her nose. “Beowulf is a symbol for us, colleague” (“comrade” simply didn’t suit Selina), but no, all the answer she would ever get would be “I’m afraid that plaster dog of yours will pick up a lot of dust.”

It would soon be time for their early cup of tea, the very nicest moment of the day, Angelina felt, after the dull routine of the morning was over and before they settled to the evening’s task. She looked up at the engagement list hanging over her chest of drawers, but there was nothing down until Saturday. She had always been what the French called “an amateur of meetings.” It gave her such an illusion of travel to hurry off, sometimes before supper, to a hall in some unheard-of suburb of London; you had little adventures, it was most instructive, and occasionally you made new friends. There was that nice schoolmistress whom Selina disliked so much, merely because the poor woman would drop in for tea whenever she was in their neighbourhood, and the extraordinary Czech, whose name they could never pronounce. It added such richness to life, making so many contacts, hearing and learning so many things even if occasionally something went wrong, like the night that odious lecturer had insisted upon coming back with her and they had had, literally, to turn him out at three o’clock in the morning.

“Come in!” That must be Selina with the tea. She would not say a syllable about being annoyed, but simply create a grey, fluffy atmosphere of rigid disapproval.

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