Backwater quotes

“Tell me. I shall like what you say.”

“Well, it’s because women can make fools of them whenever they like.”

Max laughed; a deep gurgling laugh that echoed back from the wall in front of them.

She tried once or twice deliberately to bring back the breathless moment standing still on a stair. Each time something of it returned.

“It’s me, me; this is me being alive,” she murmured with a feeling under her like the sudden drop of a lift.

But her thoughts distracted her. They were eagerly talking to her declaring that she had had this feeling before. She opened her bedroom door very quietly. The air of the room told her that Nancie and Beadie were asleep.

The children standing at ease, saying whatever occurred to them, even the snoring girl secured from ridicule by Miriam’s consideration of whatever was offered. Their adventure took them away from their subject into what Miriam knew “clever” people would call “side issues.”

“Nothing is a side issue,” she told herself passionately with her eyes on the green glare beyond the window.

The breaking up of Miss Perne’s class left the whole of the lower school on her hands for the rest of the morning.

She moved in her place by the window. The fly swept up to the ceiling, wavering on a deep note like a tiny gong. … Hot sunny refined lawns, roses in bowls on summerhouse tea-tables, refined voices far away from the Caledonian Road.

“Flies don’t buzz,” she said passionately. “They don’t buzz. Why do people say they buzz?”

The pain pressing behind her temples slackened. In a moment it would be only a glow.

She shut the little book and rose from her knees. Moving quickly about the room, she turned at random to her washhand basin and vigorously rewashed her hands in its soapy water.

The Englishman, she reflected as she wasted the soap, puts a dirty shirt on a clean body, and the Frenchman a clean shirt on a dirty body.

The only way was to give up your family and stay at your work, like Flora, and have a box of half-crowns in your drawer. …

Spend and always be afraid of “rainy days”⁠—or save and never enjoy life at all.

But going out now and again in the holidays, feeling stiff and governessy and just beginning to learn to be oneself again when it was time to go back was not enjoying life … your money was spent and people forgot you and you forgot …

Propped weak-limbed against the window open-mouthed for air she forced herself to hear, pressing her cold hands closely together. The gas light that had seemed so bright hardly seemed to light the room at all.

Everything looked small, even Grannie’s old Chippendale bedstead and the double-fronted wardrobe.

The girls were little monkey ghosts babbling together beside Eve’s open trunk. Did they see that it was exactly like a grave?

Everything looked small, even Grannie’s old Chippendale bedstead and the double-fronted wardrobe. The girls were little monkey ghosts babbling together beside Eve’s open trunk. Did they see that it was exactly like a grave?

The sun shone through the apple trees, making the small half-ripe apples look as though they were coated with enamel.

It was quite clear that if they did go away together, the four of them, she, Eve, Gerald and Harriett to Brighton or somewhere, they would be able to forget. You could tell that from the strange quiet easy tone of Harriett’s and Gerald’s voices.

How utterly silly. They did not see how utterly silly it was to make up your mind to “go to Ovingdean” and then go to Ovingdean.

How utterly silly everybody and everything was.

Eve looked very straight and slim and was walking happily, bending her head a little as she always did when she was listening. Their backs looked happy.

Lumpishly she had begun about the dullness of the beach and promenade on Sundays and the need to find something to do between dinner and tea—lies.

All conversation was a lie.

And somehow she had led him to his funny German remark.

It was either quite a nice name or pitiful; like a child trying to say sparrow. Did he know that to other people it was a strange, important sort of name, rounded like the padding in the shoulders of his coat and his blunted features?

Nobody knew him at all well. Not a single person in the world.

If he were run over and killed on the way to the station, nobody would ever have known anything about him. … People did die like that … probably most people; in a minute, alone and unknown; too late to speak.

Nobody knew him at all well. Not a single person in the world. If he were run over and killed on the way to the station, nobody would ever have known anything about him. …

People did die like that⁠ ⁠… probably most people; in a minute, alone and unknown; too late to speak.

Something was coming slowly down the middle of the roadway from amongst the confusion of the distant traffic; an elephant—a large grey elephant.

… line along the horizon were no longer gateways, but hard barriers, until by some chance one was tranquilly alone again—when the horizon would beckon and lift and the pathway of gold across the sea at sunset call to your feet until they tingled and ached.

Life was ugly and cruel.

The secret of the sea and of the evenings and mornings must be given up. It would fade more and more. What was life?

Life was ugly and cruel. The secret of the sea and of the evenings and mornings must be given up. It would fade more and more. What was life?

Either playing a part all the time in order to be amongst people in the warm or standing alone with the strange true real feeling⁠—alone with a sort of edge of reality on everything; even on quite ugly common things⁠—cheap boardinghouses face towels and blistered window frames.

Since Mr. Green and Mr.

During the evening, in a silent interval, just as the band was tuning up to begin its last tune, Gerald had said with quiet emphasis,

“Well, anyhow, girls, you mark my words the old man won’t make any more money. Not another penny. You may as well make up your minds to that.”

Then the band had broken into their favourite Hungarian dance. Three of them sat blissfully back in their deck chairs, but Miriam remained uncomfortably propped forward, eagerly thinking.

Now they were passing some kind of stonework things, reliefs, antique, roped off like the seats in a church. Just in front of them a short man holding the red cord in his hands was looking at a group with some ladies.

“Why,” he said suddenly in a loud cheerful voice, stretching an arm out across the rope and pointing to one of the reliefs, “it’s Auntie and Grandma!”

Miriam stared at him as they passed, he was so short, shorter than any of the ladies he was with. “It’s the only way to see these things,” he said in the same loud harsh cheerful voice. Miriam laughed aloud. What a clever man.

“I see. You’re afraid of the noise.”

“It isn’t fear⁠—I can’t describe it. It’s agony. It’s like pain. But much much worse than pain. It’s⁠—it’s⁠—annihilating.”

“I see; that’s very peculiar.”

She used to go on sneezing—twenty times or so. I was only six and I dreaded going to school just for that. Once I cried and they took me out of the room. I’ve never told anyone. Nobody knows.”

“It’s very interesting. You shan’t go anywhere near the fireworks.”

A large rosy flare, wavering steadily against the distant trees showed up for a moment the shapes and traceries of climbing plants surrounding their retreat.

“We’d better get on,” said Miriam trembling.

“Well, you’re very graceful at giving in,” remarked Mr. Parrow, handing her into the sled and settling with the man.

He got that sentence out of a book, thought Miriam wildly as she heard the man behind them say “Ready? Off you go!” … Out of a book a book a book—Oh—ooooh—how absolutely glorious, she yelled as they shot down through the darkness.

“Very well,” said Mr. Parrow, “but we must find our way off the grass and strike the pathway.” Drawing her gently along, he peered about for the track.

“Let me go,” said her hand dragging gently at his. “No” said the firm enclosure, tightening “not yet.”

What does it matter? flashed her mind. Why should I be such a prude? The hand gave her confidence. It was firm and strong and perfectly serious. It was a hand like her own hand and comfortingly strange and different.

“Let me go,” said her hand dragging gently at his. “No” said the firm enclosure, tightening “not yet.” What does it matter? flashed her mind. Why should I be such a prude? The hand gave her confidence. It was firm and strong and perfectly serious.

It was a hand like her own hand and comfortingly strange and different.

Gently and slowly he guided her over the dewy grass. The air that had rushed so wildly by them a few minutes ago was still and calm and friendly; the distant crowd harmless and insignificant. The fireworks were over.

Flora had gathered up her tray and disappeared, quietly closing the door. But Flora had known and somehow shared her triumph, felt her position in the school as she stood planted and happy in the middle of the Pernes’ hearthrug.

“An island is a piece of land entirely surrounded by water.”

Miriam kept automatically repeating these words to herself as the newly returned children clung about her the next morning in the schoolroom. It was a morning of heavy wind and rain and the schoolroom was dark, and chilly with its summer-screened fireplace.

Very often she was tired, feeble with fatigue and scamping all opportunities; this too they understood and never took advantage of her. One or two of them would even when she failed try to keep things going on her own method.

All this was sheer happiness to her, the bread and wine of her days.

But now and again, perhaps during the midmorning recess, this impersonal relationship gave way and the children clung fawning all round her, passionately competing for nearness, touching and clinging and snatching for kisses.

… them as equals and fellow-adventurers, giving explanations when these were necessary, as if they were obvious and might have been discovered by the children themselves, never as if they were possessions of her own, to be imparted, never claiming a knowledge superior to their own.

“The business of the teacher is to make the children independent, to get them to think for themselves, and that’s much more important than whether they get to know facts,”

she would say irrelevantly to the Pernes whenever the question of teaching came up. She bitterly resented their vision of children as malleable subordinates. And there were many moments when she seemed to be silently exchanging this determination of hers with her pupils.

They knew she had nightmares and sometimes cried out and woke them. But passing the open door late at night one could hear her moaning softly on every breath with closed lips. That was Julia, her life, all laid bare, moaning. …

She knows she is alive and that there is no escape from being alive.

But it has never made her feel breathless with joy. She laughs all day, at everybody and everything, and at night when she is naked and alone she moans; moan, moan, moan, heartbroken; wind and rain alone in the dark in a great open space.

That was Julia, her life, all laid bare, moaning. … She knows she is alive and that there is no escape from being alive. But it has never made her feel breathless with joy.

She laughs all day, at everybody and everything, and at night when she is naked and alone she moans; moan, moan, moan, heartbroken; wind and rain alone in the dark in a great open space.

She sometimes hinted at things, those real unknown things that were her own life unshared by anybody; in a low soft terrible broken voice, with eyes dilated and quivering lips; quite suddenly, with hardly any words.

… was, inside the great quiet steamy glasshouse, in the strange raw bitter scent of the great flowers, in the strange huge way they stood, and with all their differences of shape and colour staring quietly at you, all in the same way with one expression.

They were startling, amongst their grey leaves; and they looked startled and held their heads as if they knew they were beautiful.

The girls always hurried to get to the chrysanthemums and came away all of them walking in twos relieved and happy back through the cold park to dinner.