Down in the City Read Free Page B

the sea and sun in it, the wealth and glamour, the strength and fierceness of it.
    The city, to her, meant a few particular blocks—the best blocks—lying together in a neat rectangle, linked by arcades and department stores; three streets one way, cut by four at right angles, bounded at the top by gardens, self-enclosed at the bottom and either end.
    Three or four times a week she walked the streets of these blocks, smelt the coffee, the flowers, the rich expensive leather, the cosmetics. She looked through ruby glass in antique shops, and handled heavy satins from abroad. Sometimes when she had looked, she bought—perhaps a print, a piece of china, very often clothes, and she dressed well.
    She preferred to be alone, to linger when she chose, to weigh her purchases in silence; but occasionally Marion joined her, and, after he married, Hector’s wife, Angela.
    Esther was twenty-eight when Hector married, and it was later the same year that her father died. Neither event stirred the deep serenity of the big airy house that was her home. Its furniture gleamed; its vases were filled. On the hottest days its rooms were still cool, and fragrant with garden air.
    Incapable of responding to the suddenness of her father’s death, though not unfeeling, Esther felt nothing. What her brothers took to be admirable control, Marion more truly interpreted as something for which she was, perhaps, to be pitied, but which nevertheless made her, Marion, turn away in pain and anger.
    Soon, however, it seemed that nothing had altered: small changes of routine became established and time went on again. There was a movement of coming together to close the gap. There was even a new feeling of camaraderie, a new lightness, that gave these days an easiness the past had never had.
    Remote and unchanging, Esther spent her life in this way until she was thirty-three, when she married Stan Peterson, after having known him for two weeks.

CHAPTER TWO
    On a Tuesday night in early summer Esther sat alone by the open French windows in the drawing room. So that she might finish a blouse she was making as a present for Marion, she had persuaded her to take a friend to the ballet in her place, pleading a headache.
    Now, while her fingers stitched and her eyes stared at silk, a dozen vague impressions filtered through her mind: the scent of roses, a longing for a cigarette, the look and taste of the lemon soufflé Mrs Ramsay had made for dinner, the line of poplars at the end of the garden. She wondered when David and Clem would be home, noticed that her eyes were stinging a little with strain, and that the room was oppressively quiet. She thought that she must stop to switch on the lights and the wireless. But instead, almost at once, she retreated further into herself, blocked all impressions and continued to sew automatically, unconscious of herself, of time.
    Presently, though still in the same trancelike state, she threw down her sewing: it really was too dark to see now. She had gone on too long.
    Outside, a sky the pure silvery-blue of approaching moonlight changed as she watched, grew deeper blue, and stars appeared; grew black, and shadows fell across the lawn.
    Esther sighed and forced herself to rise: it was with a feeling of stone becoming live that her arms and legs obeyed her, moved across the room, switched on the lights.
    A blaring cacophony of mechanical noise burst from the wireless and splintered in the air; it was like being pelted with stones and ice, and was equally conducive to wakefulness. Even as she flew to silence it, Esther was grateful for the effect. For an instant afterwards it was very quiet; no city or suburban noises penetrated this tree-walled citadel: the house was a monument to peace. Then Mrs Ramsay, or the wind, banged a door and it was over. She started back to her sewing.
    Halfway across the room she stopped, surprised at the sight of an unfamiliar car swinging up the driveway—a long, heavily