pada giles ruffer
He is trying to find the words that were underlined in pencil. A drilling has started from somewhere and the inside of his head already feels like wet sand. He knows he has seen the words underlined in the book before. At the bottom of the page on the left, possibly continuing onto the next page. The book is musty, the pages clean, almost-‐cream and black. He goes front to back then takes his thumb and flicks the pages back to front, from page 259 to 64 where he finds it. It is not underlined like he remembered, but bracketed. The whole nature conveyed a feeling of hopelessness, of sickness; the earth languished like a fallen woman who sits alone in a dark room and tries not to think of the past; remembering spring and summer, it waited apathetically for the inevitable winter.
60