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Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one saw. So now I think of the fire; the steady film of yellow light upon the page of my […]
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Before she went to Nigeria Julie bought twelve pairs of sharp dressmaking scissors. Good equipment showed respect. And buying things made it easier not to panic. She was afraid the women would resent her swanning in, setting herself up to teach them. She bought six pairs of pinking shears, ten packets each of needles and […]
At last the revenants became so troublesome the peasants abandoned the village and it fell solely into the possession of subtle and vindictive inhabitants who manifest their presences by shadows that fall almost imperceptibly awry, too many shadows, even at midday, shadows that have no source in anything visible; by the sound, sometimes, of sobbing […]
It was the middle of November when we arrived at Martingdale, and found the place anything but romantic or pleasant. The walks were wet and sodden, the trees were leafless, there were no flowers save a few late pink roses blooming in the garden. It had been a wet season, and the place looked miserable. […]
The alien parked its car across the street and came and sat down in the waiting room. He must have seen this happen, peripherally. But he was busy settling the bill with a middle-aged woman with curly grey hair and substantial, attractive clothes, to whom he’d taken an irrational dislike. Those who deal with Joe […]
“Good-bye, darling.” “Good-bye, sweetheart.” Alix Martin stood leaning over the small rustic gate, watching the retreating figure of her husband, as he walked down the road in the direction of the village. Presently he turned a bend and was lost to sight, but Alix still stayed in the same position, absent-mindedly smoothing a lock of […]
That year I spent the best two months of the dry season on one of the estates – in fact, on the principal cattle estate of a famous meat-extract manufacturing company. B.O.S bos. You have seen the three magic letters on the advertisement pages of magazines and newspapers, in the windows of provision merchants, and on calendars for next year […]
The object is a pillar of resin, 10 feet in height, four feet in diameter. It is glossy enough that if the light is at your back, you can see your reflection, but also translucent enough that if someone’s standing on the opposite side, their shape may blur into sight. It has three ridges, which […]
August 6th 1983 APRIL 25th 1982, DOWNING STREET: Announcement of the recapture of South Georgia, in the Falkland Islands. Mrs Thatcher: Ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary of State for Defence has just come over to give me some very good news … Secretary of State: The message we have got is that British troops landed on South […]
“All hunting stories are the same,” said Clovis; “just as all Turf stories are the same, and all–” “My hunting story isn’t a bit like any you’ve ever heard,” said the Baroness. “It happened quite a while ago, when I was about twenty-three. I wasn’t living apart from my husband then; you see, neither of […]
The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston—with seven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the gorse, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon, outdistanced it at a canter. A woman, walking up the railway line […]
This rock was perhaps an island once, but now all that is left is a dowager’s hump breaching the ocean sheer on all but one side and on that side it slopes so that you can bring a ship in close. I come here every year. At first we came for fish. Sometimes we came […]
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