Lewis Percy Read Online Free PDF

man’s body. And the body remained very young, subject to the dissatisfactions of its unused state, subject also to the loneliness that had pervaded his adolescence. He thought, perhaps too frequently, of the years he had spent growing up at his mother’s side, with no father to take the weight of their survival off his hands. He thought of the unspoken consensus, largely emanating from his cousin Andrew, the civil servant, but present too in his mother’s mind, that he must be the man of the family, must ensure the continuity of their little household. This was not how heroes behaved. Heroes left home early, made good, fell in love and died, or, at a pinch, sent for their mothers later. He did not see why he should be denied this opportunity, although the details remained obstinately nebulous.
    ‘Have you thought of the future, Lewis?’ asked his tutor, a benevolent man on the verge of retirement. ‘I think you might consider some further work; you have managed very well, very well indeed. Of course, I shall be leaving in June. I shan’t be able to supervise you any longer. But I doubt if you will need any more supervision; you should be able to see things through on your own. Feel free to consult me at any time.’
    To Lewis, June was remote, a sunny upland almost out of sight of this winter landscape. And Professor Armitage, who had always been kind, and whose reference had secured him his scholarship, would, he thought, be there for as long as he needed him. After June, in the revivifying sunshine, he, Lewis, would be free to leave. He saw the whole enterprise reaching a natural conclusion, and this emboldened him. With this end in sight he resolved to be nicer to his mother.
    But how to please her, this modest timorous womanwho never went out, and from whom, despite his resolutions to the contrary, he had inherited just such a modest and timorous outlook? For as long as he could remember the high point of her day had been his return, from school, from university, from Paris, and now from the British Museum. His most persistent image of her was of a figure at the window, her hand holding aside the curtain, slightly gaunt and abstracted, but warming suddenly into animation as he came into view. Their two arms would lift simultaneously in greeting, as that brief joy of hers showed him the woman who must have existed in the early years of her marriage, before his father died, before he knew her. After the flash of her greeting she would subside into her natural or habitual mood, which was one of silent good nature, offering only lenient opinions, fearful of anything that disturbed the status quo. She was a good woman, he knew, although her fair-mindedness sometimes exasperated him. Of his cousin Andrew’s dreadful wife she would simply say, ‘Of course, Susan is rather dull. But she means well.’
    Meaning well was the paramount consideration. Evidence of malice made her ill, although she rarely noticed it. He sometimes thought that she had chosen so immobile a life in order to protect her innocence. She seemed entirely fulfilled in looking after him, devising his meals, ensuring his comfort. He knew that she would be perfectly happy to act as his handmaiden for the rest of her life.
    But he began to wish for her the kind of independence he wished now for himself. He began to see his task – one of his tasks – to be the fashioning of his mother into a different woman, bold, enterprising, viable, able to exist without him, or at least to forget about him from time to time. He wanted her to be smartly dressed: he wanted to take years off her age and to send her away on holiday. The humbly smiling acolyte in the print blouse and the navy blue skirt and cardigan, who spent her afternoons resting in her dark silent bedroom, and who was always at the window to greet him, touched hisheart with a mixture of pity and rage. Her sad but merciful smile when he made an unconsidered or harsh remark always covered him with