Commonplace Book

'Sometimes, when she had heard old people talking of their memories, of the landmarks in their lives, she was surprised at their public quality - the funeral of the Old Queen, Mafeking Night, the Armistice, the first motor-car, the last lamp-lighter. She thought they dissembled. It is never like that, surely? she wondered: not, at the end of a long life, to see other people's sadness and triumph as the key moments? Or do Mafeking Night and the rest stand in the place of the secret and personal, in the place of what cannot be told and must perish with us - moments when for no reason that we can understand - a warm evening, the scent of leaves, a cock crowing far away - all the air becomes distended with grief.'

from A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor (Part One, Chapter 2)