The Beautiful Visit Read Online Free

though.’
    ‘Supposing you wanted them new at all costs? Surely sometimes anything different would be better?’
    ‘To think or to do?’
    ‘I can’t separate them,’ I said.
    He looked at me rather scornfully. ‘I don’t think you can. But don’t you see by renouncing anything blindly without substitute you expose yourself to any fool or
foolishness.’
    ‘But supposing you hate everything that is in you,’ I cried desperately, ‘and you’ve never had a chance to know anything else, you only know you must change, what do you
do then? You have to throw things away.’ A litter of fairy books and dolls’ clothes flung across my mind.
    ‘You can read can’t you?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘And talk to people. Learn, listen, and find out, and then choose.’ And he went on in stern little spurts of energy
and knowledge, serious, even sententious, but it didn’t seem that then; only marvellous and rather frightening that one could be my age and know so much, and then be so fierce, and excited
and serious about it.
    My thoughts were like shillings in a pool, glittering and blurred, shimmering to the groping finger and always deeper and more elusive, until you think that perhaps there isn’t a shilling
at all, it seems so far out of reach. I floundered and the words wouldn’t come. He forced me relentlessly into corners, and I felt the back of my neck getting hot, and warm little shivers
down my spine. I didn’t tell him about myself lest he should scorn what then seemed to me such childish endeavour. He raced on through religion, came triumphantly to blasphemous conclusions.
Education was stabbed with a ferocity I had never before encountered; until it lay a bewildered mess of Latin, historical dates and cricket stumps. And then the older generation was subjected to a
vitriolic attack: such remorseless contempt, such despairing anger, such a thunder of criticism was broken over their meek, bald and bun-like heads that I was dumb at the death of so large a body;
trembling with anxious rapture of choice and the still distance of freedom.
    He stared at the gravel, his talk calming. The kite lay between us on the bench, its paper stretched between the struts, breathing and rucked a little in the breeze. I had not attempted to argue
or deny, I was quite incapable of either; it just seemed to me that my solitude was at an end; and his talk, his spate of words were rushing, like liquid, into my mind.
    ‘What about your parents?’ he said, suddenly lifting his head.
    ‘Oh they – I have the same trouble.’
    ‘Do they stop you doing things?’
    ‘No, not exactly. There’s nothing for them to stop.’
    ‘What does your father do?’
    ‘He writes music.’
    ‘Oh, that should make it simpler for you.’
    ‘I don’t think it does. Anyway I don’t think he thought much about it being simple for anyone when he started. There isn’t much money and my mother’s always
tired.’
    ‘I’m cold,’ he said and rose to his feet. ‘You’re cold too,’ looking down on me. It was an impersonal remark but I blushed and rose with a murmuring denial.
It was blue grey, and the Gardens were nearly empty. We walked home almost in silence, and apprehension superseded the excitement I had known on the bench with the letter and the kite.
    Lights were showing from houses, but mine was dark. I noticed the paint bubbled and peeling off the plaster, and the windows powdered and dull with dust.
    We went in to tea.
    ‘Do you always keep your door open?’
    ‘Yes. It saves so much time.’ My teeth were chattering and I didn’t want to talk.
    ‘I like that.’ He put the kite on two chairs in the hall.
    ‘Do you want to wash?’
    He looked surprised, and urged me on down the passage. The dining-room was terribly near. I prayed that they wouldn’t all be there. They would put down their cups and their bread and look
up, all towards the door, at him, and at me, and back to him again, and there would be a stealthy