Running to Paradise Read Online Free PDF

my head to hear the words.
    ‘ I had to distance myself from her,’ she said, ‘we all did.’ She was silent again. High above us a skein of geese flew towards the setting sun, the lights were coming on in Kensington Gore. Then: ‘It’s sad how families come to an end; ours has, I think. Mum was the only reason we kept in touch: now she’s dead there’s nothing to bring us together any more, no common link. The thing about Mum was she had this massive capacity for love, but it was always destructive and in the end became sterile and destroyed itself. Can you understand what I mean?’
    ‘ I think,’ I said, ‘you judge her a little harshly.’
    ‘ I don’t judge her, I’m simply stating a fact; it was how she was.’
    Tentatively I took her arm, she seemed, all of a sudden, so sad. ‘Come back and have tea. I bought crumpets this morning.’
    She looked up at me and smiled. A strand of dark hair blew across her face in a sudden gust of wind and she pushed it back under her fur hat. ‘Tempter! But no, I must get home and do some work.’ We walked in silence under the bare trees.
    ‘ How does it go?’ she said. ‘I’ve had the damn thing on the brain for days, but I can’t seem to get it right: that thing about golden girls and lads coming to dust?’
    ‘ Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
    Nor the furious winter ’s rages;
    Thou thy worldly task hast done,
    Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
    Golden lads and girls all must
    As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.’
    ‘ That’s it,’ she said. ‘How sad, how very, very sad.’ Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, her lips were icy cold and she smelt of roses.
    ‘ Goodbye, get on with your digging, dear old Guy. Who knows what you’ll find.’
    ‘ I’ll see you again soon? I need your help...’ But she’d gone, lost in the crowded pavements of early evening. It would be dark in a few minutes. I turned up my coat collar and decided to walk back to the flat: I’d leave the crumpets for another day. ‘Golden girls and lads all must — as chimney-sweepers, come to dust...’

 
    4
     
    “Miss Char, come back at once! At once, do you hear, it’s long past tea time.”
    So begins Char’s piece on her meeting with H. A. Elliott, the poet. She wrote it at my suggestion on the occasion of Elliott’s centenary, and we sent it in to the local newspaper. I well remember the excitement when we had their letter of acceptance — they even sent round a reporter for an interview — and the blood, sweat and tears entailed in its composition. Char persuaded me to write the biographical note on Elliott at the end, maintaining my literary style was more suited to such things than hers (her way of saying she couldn’t be bothered). Her account of her early childhood at Renton and the events leading up to the birth of her sister, Rosie, came much later, when Char was already in St Hilda’s. The former was also written at my suggestion and was intended originally to be much longer. I’d got both pieces out to lend to Sophia, then decided to re-read them myself first. Until Sophia asked about them, I’d forgotten their existence.
    My First Great Adventure by C. Seymour
    ‘Miss Char, come back at once! At once, do you hear, it’s long past tea time.’ The starched nurse seethed on the verandah steps. She was a jobbing nanny brought in while my Nanny was on holiday and she didn’t much like the place. A light, summer rain was falling and she wasn’t going to get her clean uniform skirt dirty for the likes of that one. Mr Osborn would be home from the City soon; let him give the child a walloping. That’s what she needed. But with Mrs Osborn’s potty ideas, she very much doubted if that’s what she’d get. Probably some daft stuff about God not liking her to be disobedient, and what had he got to do with it, she’d like to know. The nurse retreated into the shelter of the verandah which ran along the length of the house and was