many hours' boudoir struggle by Mrs Gentle: a ravishing item made up of long-squirrelled-away remnants and the cut-up remains of what had once, in the good days, been Mrs Gentle 's not unstylish wardrobe.
Janice was astonished at its colourful variation and brightness. It made her think of Chaucer's Madame Eglentyne in her pretty cloak and her coral and green gauds. Generally clothes were not something which interested her, she being somewhat well-covered for mini-skirts. This, however, was a delight; it flared around her plumpness without feeling restrictive, and she slipped it on the very next night when she went out to her Literary Society. It uplifted her spirits. There was something jewel-like about it, something that made her feel she glowed like a detail from an illuminated manuscript, something altogether fitting to her ways. It continued to uplift her as she left the Adult Education Building to catch her bus home. It was a rainy February night, bleak and cold, dismal and forlorn, but Janice did not feel any of these things. As s he mused over Thomas Campion (1 567-1620) and his absurd notions of Astrophel and Stella and Sir Philip Sidney's even more conceited tribute to the starstruck pair (making a pun with his own name, of course - very Elizabethan to riddle-me-ree rather than delight in the distancing of self and controlling the form), she looked pink-cheeked and happy. There was something altogether delightful about being snuggled into this soft, bright stylishness. She looked quite radiant, like a beautiful feminine ball in her contentment. Such is the power of clothes.
Dermot Poll coming out of the Bell and Bugle public house stepped swaying into the drizzle and shivered. A young Irishman with a pale (despite the Guinness consumed), appealing face and damp black curls, he embraced the night in sentimental mood. His wife, somewhere behind those low lit windows of the hospital opposite, had just been brought to bed with his first son, and
Dermot Poll was prepared to be in Love with the World. Everyone in the Bell and Bugle had loved him and he had assuredly loved them. Now it was the turn of the rest of humanity to experience his emotional beneficence. It being rather a bad night, however, the rest of humanity seemed to have stayed indoors. Only one human figure graced the darkness. Janice. And when he saw her, head bowed against the rain, body glowing radiantly against the shadows of the street - Madonna, Life-Bearing Womanhood - he felt a rising desire to worship.
Janice, still mulling over Thomas Campion and whether his apologia for classical metre was a useful piece of information or not, was concentrating. As she tried to recall some lines of his Astropbel, and not muddle them with Sir Philip Sidney's, she was wholly absorbed and did not notice the approach of the rapt young Dermot. Concentrating was an attractive facial arrangement for Janice in those days. Her large, pale eyes, unseeing, had a misty quality, and the line of her mouth was puckered in a rather delightful way. In a low voice she att empted to recall the verse exactl y.
'Hark, all you ladies that do sleep;
The fairy queen Proserpina
Bids you awake and pity them that weep.'
Janice paused, unsure of the next line. Dermot paused, entranced. What better for a son of Erin, with a belly full of beer and his potency so recently made flesh, than to hear beautiful words in the night?
Janice recollected what she had forgotten, and continued.
'You may do in the dark
What the day doth forbid;
Fear not dogs that bark,
Night will have all hid.'
Dermot remained entranced. 'Night will have all hid .. .'
But not from Dermot Poll. He saw and he was conquered. Oh how he needed to worship. To worship was a requirement that was becoming acute. Woman. B irth-giver, God's unsullied cre ation. He fell to his knees before Janice and lifted up his shining, pretty face so that the light from a shop front near by illuminated him.
'Oh Queen of the Night,'
Janice was astonished at its colourful variation and brightness. It made her think of Chaucer's Madame Eglentyne in her pretty cloak and her coral and green gauds. Generally clothes were not something which interested her, she being somewhat well-covered for mini-skirts. This, however, was a delight; it flared around her plumpness without feeling restrictive, and she slipped it on the very next night when she went out to her Literary Society. It uplifted her spirits. There was something jewel-like about it, something that made her feel she glowed like a detail from an illuminated manuscript, something altogether fitting to her ways. It continued to uplift her as she left the Adult Education Building to catch her bus home. It was a rainy February night, bleak and cold, dismal and forlorn, but Janice did not feel any of these things. As s he mused over Thomas Campion (1 567-1620) and his absurd notions of Astrophel and Stella and Sir Philip Sidney's even more conceited tribute to the starstruck pair (making a pun with his own name, of course - very Elizabethan to riddle-me-ree rather than delight in the distancing of self and controlling the form), she looked pink-cheeked and happy. There was something altogether delightful about being snuggled into this soft, bright stylishness. She looked quite radiant, like a beautiful feminine ball in her contentment. Such is the power of clothes.
Dermot Poll coming out of the Bell and Bugle public house stepped swaying into the drizzle and shivered. A young Irishman with a pale (despite the Guinness consumed), appealing face and damp black curls, he embraced the night in sentimental mood. His wife, somewhere behind those low lit windows of the hospital opposite, had just been brought to bed with his first son, and
Dermot Poll was prepared to be in Love with the World. Everyone in the Bell and Bugle had loved him and he had assuredly loved them. Now it was the turn of the rest of humanity to experience his emotional beneficence. It being rather a bad night, however, the rest of humanity seemed to have stayed indoors. Only one human figure graced the darkness. Janice. And when he saw her, head bowed against the rain, body glowing radiantly against the shadows of the street - Madonna, Life-Bearing Womanhood - he felt a rising desire to worship.
Janice, still mulling over Thomas Campion and whether his apologia for classical metre was a useful piece of information or not, was concentrating. As she tried to recall some lines of his Astropbel, and not muddle them with Sir Philip Sidney's, she was wholly absorbed and did not notice the approach of the rapt young Dermot. Concentrating was an attractive facial arrangement for Janice in those days. Her large, pale eyes, unseeing, had a misty quality, and the line of her mouth was puckered in a rather delightful way. In a low voice she att empted to recall the verse exactl y.
'Hark, all you ladies that do sleep;
The fairy queen Proserpina
Bids you awake and pity them that weep.'
Janice paused, unsure of the next line. Dermot paused, entranced. What better for a son of Erin, with a belly full of beer and his potency so recently made flesh, than to hear beautiful words in the night?
Janice recollected what she had forgotten, and continued.
'You may do in the dark
What the day doth forbid;
Fear not dogs that bark,
Night will have all hid.'
Dermot remained entranced. 'Night will have all hid .. .'
But not from Dermot Poll. He saw and he was conquered. Oh how he needed to worship. To worship was a requirement that was becoming acute. Woman. B irth-giver, God's unsullied cre ation. He fell to his knees before Janice and lifted up his shining, pretty face so that the light from a shop front near by illuminated him.
'Oh Queen of the Night,'
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