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and the table ‘silver’ was made into a ritual because it had to be done, and because nobody liked doing it. Ritual was easier than just plain work, and kept the house to a good standard for the family as well as Burton, though they would have felt happier doing it had he been less tyrannical.
    All visible metal had to shine and look presentable for a blacksmith, to be appeased by polish and work. Whenever his married daughters visited the house he would not let them help in this, and neither could the men do it. It was a job solely for the unmarried girls.
    Burton believed that, since he worked, everybody should work. He was the one who set me to labouring as a child, whereas my own father had not been able to succeed in it. It offended the sight of Burton’s good eye to see even a child idle, so that from being a spectator of his own tasks in the garden I was soon hauling a barrow, weeding, digging, getting in coal, chopping wood, cleaning out pigeon coops, or darting down the lane on errands.
    Work was a virtue, the only one. Even the straight way he stood when at rest proclaimed it. And while the better half of me agreed with him it must have been the other side that led me to become a writer.

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    Rather than write the truth I will work mindlessly in the garden or slump into a fit of sloth that lasts for days, or flee from it in the car as fast as the twisting lanes will allow.
    And coming back to it, as one must, I will versify, falsify, elaborate, and boast, but be careful not to tell a significant lie in case someone should indicate how near to the truth it is. For lies are as plain as footprints left on a beach still wet from the sucked-out tide. It is difficult to tell lies if one is facing the truth.
    The fear that reaching some form of truth will reduce me to silence is an unbearable thought, but it would only shut my organ-box for a time, for after a while even the most stunning truth no longer shines or intimidates because of the familiarity it has meanwhile gained. One then denies it, and looks for it once more.
    It is impossible to find. Vacillation is the blood of life. A mind made up is a dead mind. To decide is to act, and to act is to commit an injustice. To search for truth proves how fickle and disloyal one is, and untrustworthy to the earth. One is a member of the elect, in fact, a spiritual gypsy who must search for truth but be careful not to find it.
    At the same time one wants to tell the truth in a single sweep of speech or pen, just as one longed of old to give out a big lie that would flatten all others by its weight and precision, a manoeuvre of the subconscious, perhaps, that might have landed one at the threshold of truth but never did.
    The Big Lie consists of a million petty lies, and the Big Truth is made up of countless insignificant truths. All rules coalesce and ring true, and so are not to be trusted. Or maybe the Fat Complete Truth is merely a single unit of these myriad Big Truths, enlarged either by false brooding or grandiose boasting. The Big Lie can also be made out of innumerable small truths, and the most minute truth can grow from a million great lies.
    There is no set law of moral divination, no comfort to be offered. Truth and lies do not exist. One may get nearer to truth by approaching it as if there were no such thing, while taking care not to get too close and therefore be dazzled by it. The impossible task is to remove the important coal-burning Truth from the million Big Truths that are so insignificant they are not worth considering. It is a question of continuing a fruitless search that might lead around regions of madness, or staying in the comfort of half-truths with which one has managed well enough so far. Defeat is the only final truth one ever gets, though a search for truth promises the most valuable defeat because it has most to teach.
    Since everything is the truth, it becomes a matter of selection, and therefore distortion which, though it might