A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor

Author:Elizabeth Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590178492
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2015-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

The letter came flying through the Cazabons’ door soon after tea. In that hall, the heavy chairs, the carved table seemed to crouch in darkness all day long, each tick of the clock sounded as if it would very likely be the last, and smells of English dinners drifted through a pair of plush curtains hanging in an archway. It was so much a house which had been taken over half-furnished from previous owners, and only a gathering shabbiness had been Beth’s contribution; for she, often observant of detail, so that her characters might move in significant and vivid atmospheres, quite oblivious of her own surroundings, saw nothing of the sum-total of drabness, was never afflicted by ugliness nor irritated by disorder. When she tripped over the threadbare rugs, she patiently straightened them; pictures remained crooked until Robert set them right, and the books on the shelves were in no more order than the vast jumbles of underclothes and woollies in her chest of drawers, or that surrealist collection in the attic, where waves of rubbish had now reached forward to the door, so that it could scarcely be opened for all the gymnastic apparatus, cracked mirrors, mounted antlers and dressmaker’s dummies which arose before it.

The folded sheet of paper fluttered into the darkness and came to rest against the umbrella-stand. Each time a door opened or a skirt brushed by one of its halves lifted and quivered slightly like the wing of a dead butterfly.

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