Commonplace Book

'There were times when she felt like someone who had chosen to pander to the whims of a despotic interior decorator. The propriety of taking part in the performance struck her as dubious. Minds operate on so many levels at once: there was a limit beyond which he might not go without destroying her feelings for him. Since she had somehow placed her life in him, the danger was great indeed. He approached her at night, but the essential grievance, he himself, remained under lock and key. She might have been a handsome woman whose geography he had grown used to in a brothel.

Across the table she glanced at him. Where had he gone, that lover, that loved one? She sat with Stephen's effigy. He was the tomb of them both. Like a wraith, she visited the stone images. Eating, they continued to skirmish, silently sustaining thorny scratches, haemorrhages, and blows of extreme subtlety and variety. Last night - reconciliation, now these calculating looks, and in each chest Zoe saw the grinding stones turn again, and the sharpening-up proceed. The stakes were so high, although occasionally they both forgot what they were, as generals in the midst of battle must have trouble recalling the philosophy on which the carnage rests.'

from In Certain Circles by Elizabeth Harrower (Part Three)