Towards Another Summer Read Online Free PDF

essentially private ventures would in the end spread over most of her life, sink deeper and deeper, be absorbed as a poison which could be removed only if she swallowed a violent medicine which would force her to vomit her whole life - all her treasured experiences and dreams - and be left weak, unable to digest more of life, sitting, cramped with pain and lassitude, in a bed or wheelchair until she died and was buried here, in London, with a representative from New Zealand House taking time off to trim the frayed thread-dropping embarrassments of untidiness woven when a stranger without next of kin dies ten thousand miles from home.
    —Miss Cleave, are you trying to put across a message? It has been said, Miss Cleave, that you resemble . . . Could you tell us briefly the essential nature of your work . . . Do you think you will ever return to New Zealand?
     
    The interview was finished at last. Humiliated, inarticulate, Grace sat twirling her glass of water. Why couldn’t she speak, why couldn’t she speak?

    The producer came from the recording room, opened the door and looked in.
    —I’m sorry, Grace said.—I haven’t anything to say, I haven’t anything to say.
    The producer spoke crisply. She reminded Grace of the manageress of the dairy at the corner of the street near her flat: an efficient woman who knew which part of the refrigerator held the stale, and which the fresh milk, and who each time chose, automatically, the stale milk. There were stale biscuits too, and wrapped cakes and old pies arranged on the counter; the woman was surrounded by an array of yesterday’s and last week’s food and drink which had to be sold.
    —Quite good, the producer said.—We’ll make something of it. (This packet of biscuits is specially reduced - would you like to buy some?)
    —Yes, quite good. The silences were so effective.
     
    Grace ruffled her feathers, flapped her wings wildly, went hysterically out into the Strand, found a cafe where she sat on a tall revolving stool, ate bleached cod fillet with chips like a heap of thin twisted yellow nails, and bread brushed with a damp yellow sponge. Then she caught the bus to St Pancras Station. The freezing drizzle had changed to snow, big flakes too extravagant for city distribution, as big as the pages of a huge diary, a month to an opening, fluttering, drifting, the streets full of people hurrying in panic, fearful of burial. Grace almost ran from the bus and collided with a West Indian man standing calmly being snowed on, with a newspaper spread over his head.
    —Snow, he said.—Don’t you like it?
    Grace was ashamed. Of course she liked it, of course she hadn’t lost her feeling of wonder at the sight of snow - then why had she been running from it?
    —Yes I like it, oh yes.
    She pulled her rainhat closer to her head and hurried towards the station; convincing herself as she ran, It’s not real snow, it’s only city snow, but when you begin to make such distinctions doesn’t it mean that everything is lost?

    Grace couldn’t bear to lose things; her head was always dizzy with looking for the mislaid, stolen, concealed.
     
     
     
     
    At St Pancras Station, after inspecting the notices of arrival and departure and the chalked apologies for delays, Grace performed her usual ritual of waiting. She bought a midday newspaper but discarded it because it was filled with Greyhound News. She went to a lavatory and washed her hands, pressing her foot, as directed, on a lever which set free a spurt of hot air to dry her hands. She said No thank you when the attendant offered ‘A wash and brush up, fourpence.’ She returned to the Waiting Room, warmed herself by the radiator, then emerging into the stark open station she sat on a wooden seat, watching, listening, and it wasn’t soot in her eyes that almost drew tears, it was memories at the sight and sound of the grim blustering grunting panting steam-engines, uttering from time to time their triumphant prolonged