his pretext and his cover. Thrilled, Ivy suggested they could go to the Buddhist retreat. â There are people wandering around meditating, and they wonât speak to you even if you ask them things.
â No, letâs go to the waterfall again. This time I want to actually see the waterfall.
Ivy turned on him, if heâd noticed it, a face that was clouded with complications and reluctance. She accepted stoically, however, that because she was only a child she couldnât determine where they went, could only adapt to what the others chose. Anyway, she half-desired to return to the scene in the cottage, even as she half-dreaded it.
â Will we go in that cottage again? Arthur asked her privately on their way down the field.
â What for? Weâve seen inside. Itâs only boring.
In the dining room Fran replenished everyoneâs cups with fresh coffee. They were using the good china from the sideboard, the cups weightless and fine, transparent. If you held them up to the light when they were empty you could see set in the base a picture of a womanâs head, strands of her loose hair blowing behind her â their grandmother had shown them this miracle when they were children. Alice, still in her dressing gown, was talking too much, leaning animatedly forward across the table among the ends of crust and pots of jam stuck with spoons, showing her cleavage, holding forth in one of her diatribes against modern life. She said everyone was losing the sense that everyday things could be substantial and beautiful. In the old days a peasant carved a bowl and a spoon out of a piece of wood, then used them to eat the food heâd grown in his own garden. â Now everything is banal, objects have no meaning, theyâre interchangeable.
â I wonder if thatâs what the peasant thinks, her brother said.
â Heâs better off carving bowls than working in a factory.
â Well, youâd better ask him.
Roland felt impatient with how Alice simplified â she wanted shortcuts, but the truth about these things could only be understood through a lifetimeâs intellectual endeavour. It wasnât possible for him to lay out in casual conversation all the complex hinterland to his conviction, his own formulations interwoven with the thoughts of others. â Iâm wary of your evaluative judgements, he said. â This is
good
and thatâs
bad.
The peasant might be better off in the factory and have more leisure time and disposable income. You have to factor that in.
â But is it always stupid, to see the value in other ways of life, and realise whatâs wrong with our own?
â You have to ask how you know what you think you know, about value.
â Itâs a bit late for peasants carving bowls, Alice, Fran said. â I donât think youâre going to get that particular genie back into its bottle.
â Not just peasants. Itâs the way that people lived more slowly, and kept the same things all their lives, and took care of them. Our whole relationship to the things we owned was different. I hate how we throw everything away now.
Alice was more of an actress in her private life, Roland thought, than she ever was in the years when she had tried to be one on the stage. She had so
wanted
to be an actress, always â yet in any role apart from her own, to everyoneâs surprise, her performances had been tentative and lacking in conviction. Roland knew his sister so well. When her words tumbled over one another in this self-dramatising way, he knew she wasnât faking or pretending, it was her real effort to communicate the truth. Pilar asked whether, if she didnât like modernity, she didnât want anaesthetics when she had an operation.
â Of course Iâm glad we have those modern things â medicines and sewage and hot showers and low infant mortality. Of course I am. With the treatments they have these days for
â No, letâs go to the waterfall again. This time I want to actually see the waterfall.
Ivy turned on him, if heâd noticed it, a face that was clouded with complications and reluctance. She accepted stoically, however, that because she was only a child she couldnât determine where they went, could only adapt to what the others chose. Anyway, she half-desired to return to the scene in the cottage, even as she half-dreaded it.
â Will we go in that cottage again? Arthur asked her privately on their way down the field.
â What for? Weâve seen inside. Itâs only boring.
In the dining room Fran replenished everyoneâs cups with fresh coffee. They were using the good china from the sideboard, the cups weightless and fine, transparent. If you held them up to the light when they were empty you could see set in the base a picture of a womanâs head, strands of her loose hair blowing behind her â their grandmother had shown them this miracle when they were children. Alice, still in her dressing gown, was talking too much, leaning animatedly forward across the table among the ends of crust and pots of jam stuck with spoons, showing her cleavage, holding forth in one of her diatribes against modern life. She said everyone was losing the sense that everyday things could be substantial and beautiful. In the old days a peasant carved a bowl and a spoon out of a piece of wood, then used them to eat the food heâd grown in his own garden. â Now everything is banal, objects have no meaning, theyâre interchangeable.
â I wonder if thatâs what the peasant thinks, her brother said.
â Heâs better off carving bowls than working in a factory.
â Well, youâd better ask him.
Roland felt impatient with how Alice simplified â she wanted shortcuts, but the truth about these things could only be understood through a lifetimeâs intellectual endeavour. It wasnât possible for him to lay out in casual conversation all the complex hinterland to his conviction, his own formulations interwoven with the thoughts of others. â Iâm wary of your evaluative judgements, he said. â This is
good
and thatâs
bad.
The peasant might be better off in the factory and have more leisure time and disposable income. You have to factor that in.
â But is it always stupid, to see the value in other ways of life, and realise whatâs wrong with our own?
â You have to ask how you know what you think you know, about value.
â Itâs a bit late for peasants carving bowls, Alice, Fran said. â I donât think youâre going to get that particular genie back into its bottle.
â Not just peasants. Itâs the way that people lived more slowly, and kept the same things all their lives, and took care of them. Our whole relationship to the things we owned was different. I hate how we throw everything away now.
Alice was more of an actress in her private life, Roland thought, than she ever was in the years when she had tried to be one on the stage. She had so
wanted
to be an actress, always â yet in any role apart from her own, to everyoneâs surprise, her performances had been tentative and lacking in conviction. Roland knew his sister so well. When her words tumbled over one another in this self-dramatising way, he knew she wasnât faking or pretending, it was her real effort to communicate the truth. Pilar asked whether, if she didnât like modernity, she didnât want anaesthetics when she had an operation.
â Of course Iâm glad we have those modern things â medicines and sewage and hot showers and low infant mortality. Of course I am. With the treatments they have these days for
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