Read Online Personal Pleasures by Rose Macaulay - Free Book Online

Candlemas picnic, which consisted of oranges, a few preserved fruits, dates and prunes, and fragments of rolls. This feast we took with us along the Savona or the Genoa road, or along the river, or up the hill path behind the house, that climbed, stony and steep, past the carob-tree to our rock houses. Arrived at these craggy piles and promontories, we sat down, lit our coloured candles, and stood them on stones. Rearing slim necks to heaven, they burned, frail and flickering golden buds, while we gnawed bread, sucked oranges, kept the exquisiteness of preserved fruits and French plums for the last
bonne bouche
, and, having finished all, but being still loth to cease, plucked myrtle berries and so prolonged the feast. Some of these were black and plump, almostsweet, others immature and sharp. At any stage, they were better than juniper berries, which dried the mouth.
    Thus we kept Candlemas, looking over a wide blue bay through a pink shimmer of almond blossom, while the town below made festa, and a procession wound, harshly chanting, through the deep and narrow streets to Santa Caterina’s pink church at the hill’s foot. In the still and resinous air our candle-flames burned like little tulips, the flower elongating as the stem dwindled. Thrifty, we would not unwind all the coils and burn them out. The feast done, we extinguished the tapers and put them by for future use. The Candlemas festa thus kept with pious rites, the rock houses became castles to be besieged.
    But we had an annual Candlemas difference of opinion with our father, for we thought Candlemas should be a holiday from lessons. Not so he; and he won. So Candlemas Day was wasted until the afternoon.

Canoeing
    A Great curve of smooth blue Mediterranean spreads between my frail bark and the distant line of shore. I slip down an azure orange, a swelling and limpid mountainside; I perceive about me what one has always heard, that the earth is indeed a ball. I can still just, when I turn my head and look, spy the bay, the shore, the town, the church towers, the house on the shore to the bay’s east, nestling beneath and in front of a jagged line of piney, terraced hills and of the wild running steeps of higher Apennines behind these. But a few minutes, a few strokes of the paddle, and all but the hills will be sunk, vanished, drowned below the rim of the round world.
    I turn again and look: the town, the shore, are gone; I am alone with a blue horizon ahead (beyond lies Corsica, but I shall not see that island), the mountain rim of the bay behind, a long jut of soft indigo grey (Savona) thrusting out into western sea and sky, the further and fainter blue point of Genoa lying twenty miles east, bounding the great bay, and beyond that Spezia, pale and shimmering as fairyland, for there, so one has been told, are marble mountains.
    On the ocean’s rim flies a far ship with spread sails, like a gull. I am alone; I navigate uncharted seas, wherethe known stars are laid asleep in Tethys’ lap; where neither birds can instruct to any near shore, nor any birds in the main Ocean to be seen; where without the compass all things are out of compass, and nothing but miracle or chance can save or serve. I am of the great company of hazardous mariners who brave the deep; I am Captain Cook, Columbus, Cabot, Magellan, Raleigh, Drake; I am Jack, Ralph and Peterkin exploring round their Coral Island; I am an officer of the Royal Navy, sent out on a lone mission to spy out slavers, pirates, French or Spanish men-of-war; or I seek treasure left absent-mindedly on a small island long since, and the secret chart, yellow with age, without which I can never arrive there, lies folded against my breast.
    I am the first that ever burst into this silent sea. Perils beleaguer me on every side. There a sharp fin pierces the smooth surface like a sail; a white belly gleams as a giant shark turns on its back. He rushes on me through the deep, with open jaws: one lurch of his