Possession by A. S. Byatt

Possession by A. S. Byatt

Author:A. S. Byatt [Byatt, A. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9780679735908
Publisher: Vintage International; Random House
Published: 1990-05-08T22:00:00+00:00


She stood by the uncurtained window and brushed her hair, looking up at the moon, which was full, and hearing a few faraway airy rushings off the North Sea.

Then she got into bed, and, with the same scissoring movement as Roland next door, swam down under the white sheets.

Semiotics nearly spoiled their first day. They drove out to Flamborough, in the little green car, following their certain predecessor and guide, Mortimer Cropper in his black Mercedes, his predecessor, Randolph Ash, and the hypothetical ghost, Christabel LaMotte. They walked out, in these footsteps, to Filey Brigg, not sure any more what they were looking for, feeling it impermissible simply to enjoy themselves. They paced well together, though they didn’t notice that; both were energetic striders.

Cropper had written:

Randolph spent long hours poring over rockpools, deep and shallow, on the north side of the Brigg. He could be seen stirring the phosphorescent matter in them with his ashplant, and diligently collecting it in buckets, taking it home to study such microscopic animalcules as Noctilucae and Naked-eye Medusae “which are indistinguishable to the naked eye from foam bubbles” but on inspection turned out to be “globular masses of animated jelly with mobile tails.” Here too, he collected his sea-anemones (Actiniae) and bathed in the Emperor’s Bath—a great, greenish rounded hollow in which a legendary Roman Emperor disported himself. Randolph’s historical imagination, ever active, must have taken pleasure in this direct connection with the distant past of the region.

Roland found a sea-anemone, the colour of a dark blood-blister, tucked under a pitted ledge above a layer of glistering gritty sand, pink and gold and bluish and black. It looked simple and ancient, and very new and shining. It was flourishing a vigorous crown of agitating and purposeful feelers, sifting and stirring the water. Its colour was like cornelian, like certain dark and ruddy ambers. Its stem or base or foot held the rock and stood sturdy.

Maud sat on a ledge above Roland’s pool, her long legs tucked under her, The Great Ventriloquist open on her knee. She cited Cropper citing Ash:

“Imagine a glove expanded into a perfect cylinder by air, the thumb being removed and the fingers encircling, in two or three rows, the summit of the cylinder, while at the base the glove is closed by a flat surface of leather. If now on that disc which lies within the circle of fingers we press down the centre, and so force the elastic leather to fold inwards, and form a sort of sac suspended in a cylinder, we have by this means made a mouth and stomach.…”

“A curious comparison,” said Roland.

“Gloves in LaMotte are always to do with secrecy and decorum. Covering things up. Also with Blanche Glover, of course.”

“Ash wrote a poem called The Glove. About a mediaeval Lady who gave one to a knight to wear as a favour. It was ‘milky-white with seed-pearls.’ ”

“Cropper says here that Ash supposed wrongly that the ovaries of the Actinia were in the fingers of the glove.



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