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The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter
Plot Overview
In a basement with a kitchen and beds Ben reads a newspaper while Gus ties his shoelaces.
Gus walks to the kitchen door, then stops and takes a flattened matchbox out of one shoe, and
a flattened cigarette carton out of the other. He puts both items in his pocket and leaves for the
bathroom. There's a sound of the toilet chain being pulled without it flushing, and Gus returns.
Ben reports to Gus a newspaper article about a truck running over an elderly man. Ben orders
Gus to make tea. Gus hopes, "it won't be a long job." Ben reports on an article about a child
who kills a cat. Gus asks if Ben has noticed how long it takes for the toilet tank to fill.
Gus complains he didn't sleep well on the bed, and wishes that there were a window. He
laments that his life revolves around sleeping all day in an unfamiliar, dark room, then
performing a job, and then leaving at night. Ben tells him they are fortunate to be employed.
Gus asks if Ben ever gets fed up, but they soon fall silent. The toilet finally flushes. Ben
commands him to make tea, as they will go to work very soon. Gus asks Ben why he stopped
the car that morning in the middle of the road. Ben says they were early. Ben tells Gus they
are in the city of Birmingham. Gus wants to watch the Birmingham soccer team tomorrow
(Saturday), but Ben says that there is no time and that they have to get back. Gus speaks about
a Birmingham game they once saw together, but Ben denies it. An envelope slides under the
door.
Neither one knows what is in the envelope. Ben orders Gus to pick it up and open it. He does,
and empties out twelve matches. They are confused, and Ben commands Gus to open the door
and see if anyone is outside. With a revolver for protection, Gus finds no one. Gus says the
matches will come in handy, as he always runs out. Ben tells him to light the kettle instead.
They debate the phrase "light the kettle." Gus feels one should say the "gas," since that is
what is being lit, or "put on the kettle," a phrase his mother used. Ben denies this and
challenges Gus to remember the last time he saw his mother. After further arguments about
the phrase, in which Ben reminds Gus that he has seniority, Ben chokes Gus and screams
"THE KETTLE, YOU FOOL!"
Gus acquiesces and tries to see if the matches will light. They don't light on the flattened box,
but they work on his foot. Ben says, "Put on the bloody kettle," then realizes he has used
Gus's phrase. He then stares at Gus until he leaves. Gus comes back, having lit the kettle, and
wonders, "who it'll be tonight." He says he wants to ask Ben something, and sits on Ben's bed,
which annoys him. Ben asks Gus why he barrages him with so many questions, and tells him
to do his job and shut up. After Gus repeatedly asks who it's going to be tonight and a moment
of silence, Ben orders him to make tea. After he leaves, Ben checks his revolver under his
pillow for ammunition.
Gus returns and says that the gas has gone out and the meter needs to be refilled with coins.
Ben says they'll have to wait for Wilson. Gus says that Wilson doesn't always come—he
sometimes sends only a message. Gus argues that since no one ever hears anything, Wilson
must own all the places they go to; Ben says Wilson rents them. Gus also finds it hard to talk
to Wilson, and says he's been thinking about the "last one"—a girl. He remembers the job was
a "mess." He wonders who "clears up" after they leave. Ben reminds him that there are many
"departments" in their "organization" that take care of other matters.
They are interrupted by a sound from the wall. They investigate and find a box on a dumb
waiter (a small elevator used for conveying food and dishes between stories of a building).
Gus pulls a piece of paper out, and reads out an order for food. The dumb waiter ascends. Ben
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explains that the upstairs used to be a café, the basement was the kitchen, and that these places
change ownership quickly. The dumb waiter descends again, and Gus pulls out another order
for food. Gus looks up the hatch, but Ben pushes him away. Ben decides they should send
something up, but they have only a little food. They put everything on a plate, but the dumb
waiter ascends before they can put the plate on it. The box descends again with another order,
this time for "high class" exotic food. They put the plate on and Gus calls up the brand names
of the food. Ben tells him not to shout, as "It isn't done." Gus then discusses, without Ben's
answering, his feelings of anxiety about the job and Wilson. Another order comes down the
passage for more food with which they are unfamiliar. The packet of tea they sent up has also
returned.
Ben decides they should write a note telling them they can't fill the orders, but then they
notice an intercom tube. Gus yells into the tube that there is no food. Ben gives Gus the
instructions for the job. They must corner the target with guns when he or she enters the room.
Gus excuses himself to the bathroom, where the toilet again does not flush, and returns. He
asks Ben who is upstairs. They argue, and Gus wants to know why they have to play these
"games." Ben hits him twice on the shoulder. Another order comes, they fight again, and then
they retreat into silence, Ben reading his newspaper, as the dumb waiter goes up and comes
down again. Gus leaves to get a drink of water, and the speaking tube whistle blows. Ben
listens through the tube and confirms that it is time to do their job. He hangs up and calls for
Gus. He levels his gun at the door and Gus stumbles in, vulnerably stripped of some of his
clothes and his gun. He looks up at Ben, and they stare at each other through a long silence.
Clay
by James Joyce
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THE matron had given her leave to go out as soon as the women's tea was over and Maria
looked forward to her evening out. The kitchen was spick and span: the cook said you could
see yourself in the big copper boilers. The fire was nice and bright and on one of the sidetables were four very big barmbracks. These barmbracks seemed uncut; but if you went closer
you would see that they had been cut into long thick even slices and were ready to be handed
round at tea. Maria had cut them herself.
Maria was a very, very small person indeed but she had a very long nose and a very long chin.
She talked a little through her nose, always soothingly: "Yes, my dear," and "No, my dear."
She was always sent for when the women quarrelled Over their tubs and always succeeded in
making peace. One day the matron had said to her:
"Maria, you are a veritable peace-maker!"
And the sub-matron and two of the Board ladies had heard the compliment. And Ginger
Mooney was always saying what she wouldn't do to the dummy who had charge of the irons
if it wasn't for Maria. Everyone was so fond of Maria.
The women would have their tea at six o'clock and she would be able to get away before
seven. From Ballsbridge to the Pillar, twenty minutes; from the Pillar to Drumcondra, twenty
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minutes; and twenty minutes to buy the things. She would be there before eight. She took out
her purse with the silver clasps and read again the words A Present from Belfast. She was
very fond of that purse because Joe had brought it to her five years before when he and Alphy
had gone to Belfast on a Whit-Monday trip. In the purse were two half-crowns and some
coppers. She would have five shillings clear after paying tram fare. What a nice evening they
would have, all the children singing! Only she hoped that Joe wouldn't come in drunk. He was
so different when he took any drink.
Often he had wanted her to go and live with them;-but she would have felt herself in the way
(though Joe's wife was ever so nice with her) and she had become accustomed to the life of
the laundry. Joe was a good fellow. She had nursed him and Alphy too; and Joe used often
say:
"Mamma is mamma but Maria is my proper mother."
After the break-up at home the boys had got her that position in the Dublin by Lamplight
laundry, and she liked it. She used to have such a bad opinion of Protestants but now she
thought they were very nice people, a little quiet and serious, but still very nice people to live
with. Then she had her plants in the conservatory and she liked looking after them. She had
lovely ferns and wax-plants and, whenever anyone came to visit her, she always gave the
visitor one or two slips from her conservatory. There was one thing she didn't like and that
was the tracts on the walks; but the matron was such a nice person to deal with, so genteel.
When the cook told her everything was ready she went into the women's room and began to
pull the big bell. In a few minutes the women began to come in by twos and threes, wiping
their steaming hands in their petticoats and pulling down the sleeves of their blouses over
their red steaming arms. They settled down before their huge mugs which the cook and the
dummy filled up with hot tea, already mixed with milk and sugar in huge tin cans. Maria
superintended the distribution of the barmbrack and saw that every woman got her four slices.
There was a great deal of laughing and joking during the meal. Lizzie Fleming said Maria was
sure to get the ring and, though Fleming had said that for so many Hallow Eves, Maria had to
laugh and say she didn't want any ring or man either; and when she laughed her grey-green
eyes sparkled with disappointed shyness and the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin.
Then Ginger Mooney lifted her mug of tea and proposed Maria's health while all the other
women clattered with their mugs on the table, and said she was sorry she hadn't a sup of
porter to drink it in. And Maria laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her
chin and till her minute body nearly shook itself asunder because she knew that Mooney
meant well though, of course, she had the notions of a common woman.
But wasn't Maria glad when the women had finished their tea and the cook and the dummy
had begun to clear away the tea- things! She went into her little bedroom and, remembering
that the next morning was a mass morning, changed the hand of the alarm from seven to six.
Then she took off her working skirt and her house-boots and laid her best skirt out on the bed
and her tiny dress-boots beside the foot of the bed. She changed her blouse too and, as she
stood before the mirror, she thought of how she used to dress for mass on Sunday morning
when she was a young girl; and she looked with quaint affection at the diminutive body which
she had so often adorned, In spite of its years she found it a nice tidy little body.
When she got outside the streets were shining with rain and she was glad of her old brown
waterproof. The tram was full and she had to sit on the little stool at the end of the car, facing
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all the people, with her toes barely touching the floor. She arranged in her mind all she was
going to do and thought how much better it was to be independent and to have your own
money in your pocket. She hoped they would have a nice evening. She was sure they would
but she could not help thinking what a pity it was Alphy and Joe were not speaking. They
were always falling out now but when they were boys together they used to be the best of
friends: but such was life.
She got out of her tram at the Pillar and ferreted her way quickly among the crowds. She went
into Downes's cake-shop but the shop was so full of people that it was a long time before she
could get herself attended to. She bought a dozen of mixed penny cakes, and at last came out
of the shop laden with a big bag. Then she thought what else would she buy: she wanted to
buy something really nice. They would be sure to have plenty of apples and nuts. It was hard
to know what to buy and all she could think of was cake. She decided to buy some plumcake
but Downes's plumcake had not enough almond icing on top of it so she went over to a shop
in Henry Street. Here she was a long time in suiting herself and the stylish young lady behind
the counter, who was evidently a little annoyed by her, asked her was it wedding-cake she
wanted to buy. That made Maria blush and smile at the young lady; but the young lady took it
all very seriously and finally cut a thick slice of plumcake, parcelled it up and said:
"Two-and-four, please."
She thought she would have to stand in the Drumcondra tram because none of the young men
seemed to notice her but an elderly gentleman made room for her. He was a stout gentleman
and he wore a brown hard hat; he had a square red face and a greyish moustache. Maria
thought he was a colonel-looking gentleman and she reflected how much more polite he was
than the young men who simply stared straight before them. The gentleman began to chat
with her about Hallow Eve and the rainy weather. He supposed the bag was full of good
things for the little ones and said it was only right that the youngsters should enjoy themselves
while they were young. Maria agreed with him and favoured him with demure nods and hems.
He was very nice with her, and when she was getting out at the Canal Bridge she thanked him
and bowed, and he bowed to her and raised his hat and smiled agreeably, and while she was
going up along the terrace, bending her tiny head under the rain, she thought how easy it was
to know a gentleman even when he has a drop taken.
Everybody said: "0, here's Maria!" when she came to Joe's house. Joe was there, having come
home from business, and all the children had their Sunday dresses on. There were two big
girls in from next door and games were going on. Maria gave the bag of cakes to the eldest
boy, Alphy, to divide and Mrs. Donnelly said it was too good of her to bring such a big bag of
cakes and made all the children say:
"Thanks, Maria."
But Maria said she had brought something special for papa and mamma, something they
would be sure to like, and she began to look for her plumcake. She tried in Downes's bag and
then in the pockets of her waterproof and then on the hallstand but nowhere could she find it.
Then she asked all the children had any of them eaten it -- by mistake, of course -- but the
children all said no and looked as if they did not like to eat cakes if they were to be accused of
stealing. Everybody had a solution for the mystery and Mrs. Donnelly said it was plain that
Maria had left it behind her in the tram. Maria, remembering how confused the gentleman
with the greyish moustache had made her, coloured with shame and vexation and
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disappointment. At the thought of the failure of her little surprise and of the two and
fourpence she had thrown away for nothing she nearly cried outright.
But Joe said it didn't matter and made her sit down by the fire. He was very nice with her. He
told her all that went on in his office, repeating for her a smart answer which he had made to
the manager. Maria did not understand why Joe laughed so much over the answer he had
made but she said that the manager must have been a very overbearing person to deal with.
Joe said he wasn't so bad when you knew how to take him, that he was a decent sort so long
as you didn't rub him the wrong way. Mrs. Donnelly played the piano for the children and
they danced and sang. Then the two next-door girls handed round the nuts. Nobody could find
the nutcrackers and Joe was nearly getting cross over it and asked how did they expect Maria
to crack nuts without a nutcracker. But Maria said she didn't like nuts and that they weren't to
bother about her. Then Joe asked would she take a bottle of stout and Mrs. Donnelly said
there was port wine too in the house if she would prefer that. Maria said she would rather they
didn't ask her to take anything: but Joe insisted.
So Maria let him have his way and they sat by the fire talking over old times and Maria
thought she would put in a good word for Alphy. But Joe cried that God might strike him
stone dead if ever he spoke a word to his brother again and Maria said she was sorry she had
mentioned the matter. Mrs. Donnelly told her husband it was a great shame for him to speak
that way of his own flesh and blood but Joe said that Alphy was no brother of his and there
was nearly being a row on the head of it. But Joe said he would not lose his temper on account
of the night it was and asked his wife to open some more stout. The two next-door girls had
arranged some Hallow Eve games and soon everything was merry again. Maria was delighted
to see the children so merry and Joe and his wife in such good spirits. The next-door girls put
some saucers on the table and then led the children up to the table, blindfold. One got the
prayer-book and the other three got the water; and when one of the next-door girls got the ring
Mrs. Donnelly shook her finger at the blushing girl as much as to say: 0, I know all about it!
They insisted then on blindfolding Maria and leading her up to the table to see what she
would get; and, while they were putting on the bandage, Maria laughed and laughed again till
the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin.
They led her up to the table amid laughing and joking and she put her hand out in the air as
she was told to do. She moved her hand about here and there in the air and descended on one
of the saucers. She felt a soft wet substance with her fingers and was surprised that nobody
spoke or took off her bandage. There was a pause for a few seconds; and then a great deal of
scuffling and whispering. Somebody said something about the garden, and at last Mrs.
Donnelly said something very cross to one of the next-door girls and told her to throw it out at
once: that was no play. Maria understood that it was wrong that time and so she had to do it
over again: and this time she got the prayer-book.
After that Mrs. Donnelly played Miss McCloud's Reel for the children and Joe made Maria
take a glass of wine. Soon they were all quite merry again and Mrs. Donnelly said Maria
would enter a convent before the year was out because she had got the prayer-book. Maria
had never seen Joe so nice to her as he was that night, so full of pleasant talk and
reminiscences. She said they were all very good to her.
At last the children grew tired and sleepy and Joe asked Maria would she not sing some little
song before she went, one of the old songs. Mrs. Donnelly said "Do, please, Maria!" and so
Maria had to get up and stand beside the piano. Mrs. Donnelly bade the children be quiet and
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listen to Maria's song. Then she played the prelude and said "Now, Maria!" and Maria,
blushing very much began to sing in a tiny quavering voice. She sang I Dreamt that I Dwelt,
and when she came to the second verse she sang again:
I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
With vassals and serfs at my side,
And of all who assembled within those walls
That I was the hope and the pride.
I had riches too great to count; could boast
Of a high ancestral name,
But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,
That you loved me still the same.
But no one tried to show her her mistake; and when she had ended her song Joe was very
much moved. He said that there was no time like the long ago and no music for him like poor
old Balfe, whatever other people might say; and his eyes filled up so much with tears that he
could not find what he was looking for and in the end he had to ask his wife to tell him where
the corkscrew was.
Love on the Farm
What large, dark hands are those at the window
Grasping in the golden light
Which weaves its way through the evening wind
At my heart's delight?
Ah, only the leaves! But in the west
I see a redness suddenly come
Into the evening's anxious breast-'Tis the wound of love goes home!
The woodbine (1) creeps abroad
Calling low to her lover:
The sunlit flirt who all the day
Has poised above her lips in play
And stolen kisses, shallow and gay
Of pollen, now has gone away-She woos the moth with her sweet, low word;
And when above her his moth-wings hover
Then her bright breast she will uncover
And yield her honey-drop to her lover.
Into the yellow, evening glow
Saunters a man from the farm below;
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Leans, and looks in at the low-built shed
Where the swallow has hung her marriage bed.
The bird lies warm against the wall.
She glances quick her startled eyes
Towards him, then she turns away
Her small head, making warm display
Of red upon the throat. Her terrors sway
Her out of the nest's warm, busy ball,
Whose plaintive cry is heard as she flies
In one blue stoop from out the sties
Into the twilight's empty hall.
Oh, water-hen, beside the rushes
Ride your quaintly scarlet blushes,
Still your quick tall, lie still as dead,
Till the distance folds over his ominous tread!
The rabbit presses back her ears,
Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes
And crouches low; then with wild spring
Spurts from the terror of his oncoming;
To be choked back, the wire ring
Her frantic effort throttling:
Piteous brown ball of quivering fears!
Ah, soon in his large, hard hands she dies,
And swings all loose from the swing of his walk!
Yet calm and kindly are his eyes
And ready to open in brown surprise
Should I not answer to his talk
Or should he my tears surmise.
I hear his hand on the latch, and rise from my chair
Watching the door open; he flashes bare
His strong teeth in a smile, and flashes his eyes
In a smile like triumph upon me; then careless-wise
He flings the rabbit soft on the table board
And comes towards me: ah! the uplifted sword
Of his hand against my bosom! and oh, the broad
Blade of his glance that asks me to applaud
His coming! With his hand he turns my face to him
And caresses me with his fingers that still smell grim
Of the rabbit's fur! God, I am caught in a snare (2)!
I know not what fine wire is round my throat;
I only know I let him finger there
My pulse of life, and let him nose like a stoat
Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood.
And down his mouth comes to my mouth! and down
His bright dark eyes come over me, like a hood
Upon my mind! his lips meet mine, and a flood
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Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown
Against him, die, and find death good.
1. borostyán
2. csapda
D. H. Lawrence
The Prussian Officer and Other Stories
SECOND BEST
“Oh, I’m tired!” Frances exclaimed petulantly, and in the same instant she dropped down on
the turf, near the hedge-bottom. Anne stood a moment surprised, then, accustomed to the
vagaries of her beloved Frances, said:
“Well, and aren’t you always likely to be tired, after travelling that blessed long way from
Liverpool yesterday?” and she plumped down beside her sister. Anne was a wise young body
of fourteen, very buxom, brimming with common sense. Frances was much older, about
twenty-three, and whimsical, spasmodic. She was the beauty and the clever child of the
family. She plucked the goose-grass buttons from her dress in a nervous, desperate fashion.
Her beautiful profile, looped above with black hair, warm with the dusky-and-scarlet
complexion of a pear, was calm as a mask, her thin brown hand plucked nervously.
“It’s not the journey,” she said, objecting to Anne’s obtuseness. Anne looked inquiringly at
her darling. The young girl, in her self-confident, practical way, proceeded to reckon up this
whimsical creature. But suddenly she found herself full in the eyes of Frances; felt two dark,
hectic eyes flaring challenge at her, and she shrank away. Frances was peculiar for these
great, exposed looks, which disconcerted people by their violence and their suddenness.
“What’s a matter, poor old duck?” asked Anne, as she folded the slight, wilful form of her
sister in her arms. Frances laughed shakily, and nestled down for comfort on the budding
breasts of the strong girl.
“Oh, I’m only a bit tired,” she murmured, on the point of tears.
“Well, of course you are, what do you expect?” soothed Anne. It was a joke to Frances that
Anne should play elder, almost mother to her. But then, Anne was in her unvexed teens; men
were like big dogs to her: while Frances, at twenty-three, suffered a good deal.
The country was intensely morning-still. On the common everything shone beside its shadow,
and the hillside gave off heat in silence. The brown turf seemed in a low state of combustion,
the leaves of the oaks were scorched brown. Among the blackish foliage in the distance shone
the small red and orange of the village.
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The willows in the brook-course at the foot of the common suddenly shook with a dazzling
effect like diamonds. It was a puff of wind. Anne resumed her normal position. She spread her
knees, and put in her lap a handful of hazel nuts, whity-green leafy things, whose one cheek
was tanned between brown and pink. These she began to crack and eat. Frances, with bowed
head, mused bitterly.
“Eh, you know Tom Smedley?” began the young girl, as she pulled a tight kernel out of its
shell.
“I suppose so,” replied Frances sarcastically.
“Well, he gave me a wild rabbit what he’d caught, to keep with my tame one—and it’s
living.”
“That’s a good thing,” said Frances, very detached and ironic.
“Well, it IS! He reckoned he’d take me to Ollerton Feast, but he never did. Look here, he took
a servant from the rectory; I saw him.”
“So he ought,” said Frances.
“No, he oughtn’t! and I told him so. And I told him I should tell you—an’ I have done.”
Click and snap went a nut between her teeth. She sorted out the kernel, and chewed
complacently.
“It doesn’t make much difference,” said Frances.
“Well, ‘appen it doesn’t; but I was mad with him all the same.”
“Why?”
“Because I was; he’s no right to go with a servant.”
“He’s a perfect right,” persisted Frances, very just and cold.
“No, he hasn’t, when he’d said he’d take me.”
Frances burst into a laugh of amusement and relief.
“Oh, no; I’d forgot that,” she said, adding, “And what did he say when you promised to tell
me?”
“He laughed and said, ‘he won’t fret her fat over that.’”
“And she won’t,” sniffed Frances.
There was silence. The common, with its sere, blonde-headed thistles, its heaps of silent
bramble, its brown-husked gorse in the glare of sunshine, seemed visionary. Across the brook
began the immense pattern of agriculture, white chequering of barley stubble, brown squares
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of wheat, khaki patches of pasture, red stripes of fallow, with the woodland and the tiny
village dark like ornaments, leading away to the distance, right to the hills, where the checkpattern grew smaller and smaller, till, in the blackish haze of heat, far off, only the tiny white
squares of barley stubble showed distinct.
“Eh, I say, here’s a rabbit hole!” cried Anne suddenly. “Should we watch if one comes out?
You won’t have to fidget, you know.”
The two girls sat perfectly still. Frances watched certain objects in her surroundings: they had
a peculiar, unfriendly look about them: the weight of greenish elderberries on their purpling
stalks; the twinkling of the yellowing crab-apples that clustered high up in the hedge, against
the sky: the exhausted, limp leaves of the primroses lying flat in the hedge-bottom: all looked
strange to her. Then her eyes caught a movement. A mole was moving silently over the warm,
red soil, nosing, shuffling hither and thither, flat, and dark as a shadow, shifting about, and as
suddenly brisk, and as silent, like a very ghost of joie de vivre. Frances started, from habit was
about to call on Anne to kill the little pest. But, today, her lethargy of unhappiness was too
much for her. She watched the little brute paddling, snuffing, touching things to discover
them, running in blindness, delighted to ecstasy by the sunlight and the hot, strange things that
caressed its belly and its nose. She felt a keen pity for the little creature.
“Eh, our Fran, look there! It’s a mole.”
Anne was on her feet, standing watching the dark, unconscious beast. Frances frowned with
anxiety.
“It doesn’t run off, does it?” said the young girl softly. Then she stealthily approached the
creature. The mole paddled fumblingly away. In an instant Anne put her foot upon it, not too
heavily. Frances could see the struggling, swimming movement of the little pink hands of the
brute, the twisting and twitching of its pointed nose, as it wrestled under the sole of the boot.
“It DOES wriggle!” said the bonny girl, knitting her brows in a frown at the eerie sensation.
Then she bent down to look at her trap. Frances could now see, beyond the edge of the bootsole, the heaving of the velvet shoulders, the pitiful turning of the sightless face, the frantic
rowing of the flat, pink hands.
“Kill the thing,” she said, turning away her face.
“Oh—I’m not,” laughed Anne, shrinking. “You can, if you like.”
“I DON’T like,” said Frances, with quiet intensity.
After several dabbling attempts, Anne succeeded in picking up the little animal by the scruff
of its neck. It threw back its head, flung its long blind snout from side to side, the mouth open
in a peculiar oblong, with tiny pinkish teeth at the edge. The blind, frantic mouth gaped and
writhed. The body, heavy and clumsy, hung scarcely moving.
“Isn’t it a snappy little thing,” observed Anne twisting to avoid the teeth.
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Frances sharply.
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“It’s got to be killed—look at the damage they do. I s’ll take it home and let dadda or
somebody kill it. I’m not going to let it go.”
She swaddled the creature clumsily in her pocket-handkerchief and sat down beside her sister.
There was an interval of silence, during which Anne combated the efforts of the mole.
“You’ve not had much to say about Jimmy this time. Did you see him often in Liverpool?”
Anne asked suddenly.
“Once or twice,” replied Frances, giving no sign of how the question troubled her.
“And aren’t you sweet on him any more, then?”
“I should think I’m not, seeing that he’s engaged.”
“Engaged? Jimmy Barrass! Well, of all things! I never thought HE’D get engaged.”
“Why not, he’s as much right as anybody else?” snapped Frances.
Anne was fumbling with the mole.
“‘Appen so,” she said at length; “but I never thought Jimmy would, though.”
“Why not?” snapped Frances.
“I don’t know—this blessed mole, it’ll not keep still!—who’s he got engaged to?”
“How should I know?”
“I thought you’d ask him; you’ve known him long enough. I s’d think he thought he’d get
engaged now he’s a Doctor of Chemistry.”
Frances laughed in spite of herself.
“What’s that got to do with it?” she asked.
“I’m sure it’s got a lot. He’ll want to feel SOMEBODY now, so he’s got engaged. Hey, stop
it; go in!”
But at this juncture the mole almost succeeded in wriggling clear. It wrestled and twisted
frantically, waved its pointed blind head, its mouth standing open like a little shaft, its big,
wrinkled hands spread out.
“Go in with you!” urged Anne, poking the little creature with her forefinger, trying to get it
back into the handkerchief. Suddenly the mouth turned like a spark on her finger.
“Oh!” she cried, “he’s bit me.”
She dropped him to the floor. Dazed, the blind creature fumbled round. Frances felt like
shrieking. She expected him to dart away in a flash, like a mouse, and there he remained
12
groping; she wanted to cry to him to be gone. Anne, in a sudden decision of wrath, caught up
her sister’s walking-cane. With one blow the mole was dead. Frances was startled and
shocked. One moment the little wretch was fussing in the heat, and the next it lay like a little
bag, inert and black—not a struggle, scarce a quiver.
“It is dead!” Frances said breathlessly. Anne took her finger from her mouth, looked at the
tiny pinpricks, and said:
“Yes, he is, and I’m glad. They’re vicious little nuisances, moles are.”
With which her wrath vanished. She picked up the dead animal.
“Hasn’t it got a beautiful skin,” she mused, stroking the fur with her forefinger, then with her
cheek.
“Mind,” said Frances sharply. “You’ll have the blood on your skirt!”
One ruby drop of blood hung on the small snout, ready to fall. Anne shook it off on to some
harebells. Frances suddenly became calm; in that moment, grown-up.
“I suppose they have to be killed,” she said, and a certain rather dreary indifference succeeded
to her grief. The twinkling crab-apples, the glitter of brilliant willows now seemed to her
trifling, scarcely worth the notice. Something had died in her, so that things lost their
poignancy. She was calm, indifference overlying her quiet sadness. Rising, she walked down
to the brook course.
“Here, wait for me,” cried Anne, coming tumbling after.
Frances stood on the bridge, looking at the red mud trodden into pockets by the feet of cattle.
There was not a drain of water left, but everything smelled green, succulent. Why did she care
so little for Anne, who was so fond of her? she asked herself. Why did she care so little for
anyone? She did not know, but she felt a rather stubborn pride in her isolation and
indifference.
They entered a field where stooks of barley stood in rows, the straight, blonde tresses of the
corn streaming on to the ground. The stubble was bleached by the intense summer, so that the
expanse glared white. The next field was sweet and soft with a second crop of seeds; thin,
straggling clover whose little pink knobs rested prettily in the dark green. The scent was faint
and sickly. The girls came up in single file, Frances leading.
Near the gate a young man was mowing with the scythe some fodder for the afternoon feed of
the cattle. As he saw the girls he left off working and waited in an aimless kind of way.
Frances was dressed in white muslin, and she walked with dignity, detached and forgetful.
Her lack of agitation, her simple, unheeding advance made him nervous. She had loved the
far-off Jimmy for five years, having had in return his half-measures. This man only affected
her slightly.
Tom was of medium stature, energetic in build. His smooth, fair-skinned face was burned red,
not brown, by the sun, and this ruddiness enhanced his appearance of good humour and
easiness. Being a year older than Frances, he would have courted her long ago had she been
13
so inclined. As it was, he had gone his uneventful way amiably, chatting with many a girl, but
remaining unattached, free of trouble for the most part. Only he knew he wanted a woman. He
hitched his trousers just a trifle self-consciously as the girls approached. Frances was a rare,
delicate kind of being, whom he realized with a queer and delicious stimulation in his veins.
She gave him a slight sense of suffocation. Somehow, this morning, she affected him more
than usual. She was dressed in white. He, however, being matter-of-fact in his mind, did not
realize. His feeling had never become conscious, purposive.
Frances knew what she was about. Tom was ready to love her as soon as she would show
him. Now that she could not have Jimmy, she did not poignantly care. Still, she would have
something. If she could not have the best—Jimmy, whom she knew to be something of a
snob—she would have the second best, Tom. She advanced rather indifferently.
“You are back, then!” said Tom. She marked the touch of uncertainty in his voice.
“No,” she laughed, “I’m still in Liverpool,” and the undertone of intimacy made him burn.
“This isn’t you, then?” he asked.
Her heart leapt up in approval. She looked in his eyes, and for a second was with him.
“Why, what do you think?” she laughed.
He lifted his hat from his head with a distracted little gesture. She liked him, his quaint ways,
his humour, his ignorance, and his slow masculinity.
“Here, look here, Tom Smedley,” broke in Anne.
“A moudiwarp! Did you find it dead?” he asked.
“No, it bit me,” said Anne.
“Oh, aye! An’ that got your rag out, did it?”
“No, it didn’t!” Anne scolded sharply. “Such language!”
“Oh, what’s up wi’ it?”
“I can’t bear you to talk broad.”
“Can’t you?”
He glanced at Frances.
“It isn’t nice,” Frances said. She did not care, really. The vulgar speech jarred on her as a rule;
Jimmy was a gentleman. But Tom’s manner of speech did not matter to her.
“I like you to talk NICELY,” she added.
“Do you,” he replied, tilting his hat, stirred.
14
“And generally you DO, you know,” she smiled.
“I s’ll have to have a try,” he said, rather tensely gallant.
“What?” she asked brightly.
“To talk nice to you,” he said. Frances coloured furiously, bent her head for a moment, then
laughed gaily, as if she liked this clumsy hint.
“Eh now, you mind what you’re saying,” cried Anne, giving the young man an admonitory
pat.
“You wouldn’t have to give yon mole many knocks like that,” he teased, relieved to get on
safe ground, rubbing his arm.
“No indeed, it died in one blow,” said Frances, with a flippancy that was hateful to her.
“You’re not so good at knockin’ ’em?” he said, turning to her.
“I don’t know, if I’m cross,” she said decisively.
“No?” he replied, with alert attentiveness.
“I could,” she added, harder, “if it was necessary.”
He was slow to feel her difference.
“And don’t you consider it IS necessary?” he asked, with misgiving.
“W—ell—is it?” she said, looking at him steadily, coldly.
“I reckon it is,” he replied, looking away, but standing stubborn.
She laughed quickly.
“But it isn’t necessary for ME,” she said, with slight contempt.
“Yes, that’s quite true,” he answered.
She laughed in a shaky fashion.
“I KNOW IT IS,” she said; and there was an awkward pause.
“Why, would you LIKE me to kill moles then?” she asked tentatively, after a while.
“They do us a lot of damage,” he said, standing firm on his own ground, angered.
“Well, I’ll see the next time I come across one,” she promised, defiantly. Their eyes met, and
she sank before him, her pride troubled. He felt uneasy and triumphant and baffled, as if fate
had gripped him. She smiled as she departed.
15
“Well,” said Anne, as the sisters went through the wheat stubble; “I don’t know what you
two’s been jawing about, I’m sure.”
“Don’t you?” laughed Frances significantly.
“No, I don’t. But, at any rate, Tom Smedley’s a good deal better to my thinking than Jimmy,
so there—and nicer.”
“Perhaps he is,” said Frances coldly.
And the next day, after a secret, persistent hunt, she found another mole playing in the heat.
She killed it, and in the evening, when Tom came to the gate to smoke his pipe after supper,
she took him the dead creature.
“Here you are then!” she said.
“Did you catch it?” he replied, taking the velvet corpse into his fingers and examining it
minutely. This was to hide his trepidation.
“Did you think I couldn’t?” she asked, her face very near his.
“Nay, I didn’t know.”
She laughed in his face, a strange little laugh that caught her breath, all agitation, and tears,
and recklessness of desire. He looked frightened and upset. She put her hand to his arm.
“Shall you go out wi’ me?” he asked, in a difficult, troubled tone.
She turned her face away, with a shaky laugh. The blood came up in him, strong,
overmastering. He resisted it. But it drove him down, and he was carried away. Seeing the
winsome, frail nape of her neck, fierce love came upon him for her, and tenderness.
“We s’ll ‘ave to tell your mother,” he said. And he stood, suffering, resisting his passion for
her.
“Yes,” she replied, in a dead voice. But there was a thrill of pleasure in this death.
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16
Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)
Strange Meeting
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then ,as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.'
'None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
17
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now...'
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18
Wilfred Owen
Disabled
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.
About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,
— In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
All of them touch him like some queer disease.
There was an artist silly for his face,
For it was younger than his youth, last year.
Now he is old; his back will never brace;
He's lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,
And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.
One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg,
After the matches carried shoulder-high.
It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,
He thought he'd better join. He wonders why . . .
Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts.
That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,
Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,
He asked to join. He didn't have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.
Germans he scarcely thought of; and no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.
Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.
Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
To-night he noticed how the women's eyes
About the poet
Wilfred Owen
By the same poet
Strange Meeting
Greater Love
Apologia pro
Poemate Meo
The Show
Mental Cases
Parable of the Old
Men and the
Young
Arms and the Boy
Anthem for
Doomed Youth
The Send-off
Insensibility
Dulce et Decorum
est
The Sentry
The Dead-Beat
Exposure
Spring Offensive
The Chances
S. I. W.
Futility
Smile, Smile,
Smile
Conscious
A Terre
Wild with all
Regrets
The End
Related books
Wilfred Owen at
amazon.com
19
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don't they come
And put him into bed? Why don't they come?
Siegfried Sassoon
On Passing the new Menin Gate
by Siegfried Sassoon
Who will remember, passing through this Gate1,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,—
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.
Here was the world’s worst wound. And here with pride
‘Their name liveth for ever,’ the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.
Everyone Sang
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.
Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
--
William Butler Yeats
The Circus Animals' Desertion
20
I
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.
II
What can I but enumerate old themes,
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride.
And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.
And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.
III
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart
21
W H Auden
In Memory of Sigmund Freud
W. H. Auden
When there are so many we shall have to mourn,
when grief has been made so public, and exposed
to the critique of a whole epoch
the frailty of our conscience and anguish,
of whom shall we speak? For every day they die
among us, those who were doing us some good,
who knew it was never enough but
hoped to improve a little by living.
Such was this doctor: still at eighty he wished
to think of our life from whose unruliness
so many plausible young futures
with threats or flattery ask obedience,
but his wish was denied him: he closed his eyes
upon that last picture, common to us all,
of problems like relatives gathered
puzzled and jealous about our dying.
For about him till the very end were still
those he had studied, the fauna of the night,
and shades that still waited to enter
the bright circle of his recognition
turned elsewhere with their disappointment as he
was taken away from his life interest
to go back to the earth in London,
an important Jew who died in exile.
Only Hate was happy, hoping to augment
his practice now, and his dingy clientele
who think they can be cured by killing
and covering the garden with ashes.
They are still alive, but in a world he changed
simply by looking back with no false regrets;
all he did was to remember
like the old and be honest like children.
He wasn't clever at all: he merely told
the unhappy Present to recite the Past
like a poetry lesson till sooner
or later it faltered at the line where
long ago the accusations had begun,
and suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,
how rich life had been and how silly,
and was life-forgiven and more humble,
able to approach the Future as a friend
without a wardrobe of excuses, without
22
a set mask of rectitude or an
embarrassing over-familiar gesture.
No wonder the ancient cultures of conceit
in his technique of unsettlement foresaw
the fall of princes, the collapse of
their lucrative patterns of frustration:
if he succeeded, why, the Generalised Life
would become impossible, the monolith
of State be broken and prevented
the co-operation of avengers.
Of course they called on God, but he went his way
down among the lost people like Dante, down
to the stinking fosse where the injured
lead the ugly life of the rejected,
and showed us what evil is, not, as we thought,
deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,
our dishonest mood of denial,
the concupiscence of the oppressor.
If some traces of the autocratic pose,
the paternal strictness he distrusted, still
clung to his utterance and features,
it was a protective coloration
for one who'd lived among enemies so long:
if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd,
to us he is no more a person
now but a whole climate of opinion
under whom we conduct our different lives:
Like weather he can only hinder or help,
the proud can still be proud but find it
a little harder, the tyrant tries to
make do with him but doesn't care for him much:
he quietly surrounds all our habits of growth
and extends, till the tired in even
the remotest miserable duchy
have felt the change in their bones and are cheered
till the child, unlucky in his little State,
some hearth where freedom is excluded,
a hive whose honey is fear and worry,
feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape,
while, as they lie in the grass of our neglect,
so many long-forgotten objects
revealed by his undiscouraged shining
are returned to us and made precious again;
games we had thought we must drop as we grew up,
little noises we dared not laugh at,
faces we made when no one was looking.
But he wishes us more than this. To be free
is often to be lonely. He would unite
the unequal moieties fractured
23
by our own well-meaning sense of justice,
would restore to the larger the wit and will
the smaller possesses but can only use
for arid disputes, would give back to
the son the mother's richness of feeling:
but he would have us remember most of all
to be enthusiastic over the night,
not only for the sense of wonder
it alone has to offer, but also
because it needs our love. With large sad eyes
its delectable creatures look up and beg
us dumbly to ask them to follow:
they are exiles who long for the future
that lives in our power, they too would rejoice
if allowed to serve enlightenment like him,
even to bear our cry of 'Judas',
as he did and all must bear who serve it.
One rational voice is dumb. Over his grave
the household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved:
sad is Eros, builder of cities,
and weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
http://jrong.tripod.com/larkin.html
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
24
Church Going
Philip Larkin
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost newCleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
"Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognizable each week,
25
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation ?marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these ?for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round
(1971)
For more info, in connection with the authors, go to:
http://jrong.tripod.com/larkin.html
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/rananim/lawrence/
http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/
http://www.irish-society.org/Hedgemaster%20Archives/sean_o'casey.htm
26
http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/index.shtml
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hpinter.htm
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hpinter.htmhttp://web.ukonline.co.uknim/lawrence/
http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/
http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Conrad.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8103/
http://www.learmedia.ca/product_info.php/products_id/117
http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/dumbwaiter/context.html
http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc100.html