at last coming to terms with life , the rawness of the jungle I mastered reduced the bible to a reassuring proportion in the perspective of my destructive activity ; and I was now fit for the cathedral of the stable &apos;s calm - the light splitting through the cracks in the door , the silence , and then the faint scratching that might be a mouse , a rat , or leaves idly swinging , or else imagination . after a time I heard the positive sound of my sister approaching , and then she stood in the doorway , looking for me in the shadows , not seeing me but knowing I was there , complaining to the darkness that I might have waited for her . but I was too busily engaged on the process of rehabilitation to want her company , and she was a woman - suspect as such , and further suspect owing to her happy association with holy writ that linked her with my father . it was not till the middle of the week that I began to welcome her , caring for her until Saturday night . then , with the sound of the first church bell on Sunday morning , all women were suspect again ; and as the hour in the box-pew remorselessly approached - the hour of avoiding looking at Milly , at the same time trying to reconcile her with my visual world - I knew it would only lead to the hour of afternoon when the sunlight froze on the tops of the trees , immobilized as I by the bible . sometimes , instead of to the stable , I went upstairs to my mother &apos;s room . as I opened the door I was aware of causing an interruption , for my mother had the faculty of gazing beyond people into space inhabited by other and more exciting ones than those who were actually in the room . these people , whom I knew by the names under drawings and verses in her autograph books - people my mother had met in the heaven of foreign hotels - dwelt with her in her loneliness still , so that the continued pleasure of their company was denied her by my entry ; or rather , I felt that if I had not banished them , both they and I had lost something of our corporeality by being in the room together . yet the sense of a romantic past my mother perpetuated in the face of the church peering in through the window , brought back colour which ( although it was divorced from any discernible form ) was more tangible than the bible I had escaped from . my father was disappointed with me , I reasoned , on purely technical grounds when he saw my failure to understand his teachings as a lack of spirituality ; whereas my mother found , not so much myself as my lack of years , a source of chagrin . for the two years which separated me from my elder brother were an insupportable barrier that gave him greater access to her mind . and I believed my brother somehow knew the members of the ski-ing party - the women in their large hats and veils , the men posed against mountains as immovable as their moustaches - that , in their passe-partout mount , broke the faded roses on the wall . as I approached my mother I wished the two dividing years could evaporate , and perhaps this afternoon I would get to know the far-off friends who hovered towards her , and whom I was ready to meet half-way . but although her recognition of me was moderately welcoming , she was still looking beyond me , and whom-ever she was considering appeared more like the gap between me and my brother than a real personage . what a ghastly thing was the length of a life , starting at random and never catching up with another life that also started at random . no life ever drew nearer another life , and the gaps between lives remained the same , inflicting , as far as I could see , endless childhood on me . there was no escape from age , and as my mother opened a book to show me the pictures in it , I decided to abandon the struggle to grow up . the book was always the same book . it was called alpine flowers and gardens . my mother so treasured it she would not let me look at it on my own , turning the pages over for me , protected by tissue paper . the plates depicted flowers , yet the artist had painted mountains , rocks , and glaciers behind some of them , and in one picture had even added a chamois in the middle distance . although it was interesting to reach the chamois , I found the introduction of this animal rather outr&amp;eacute; , for after all , the book , as it said on the cover , was on alpine flowers and gardens , which should have surely satisfied the artist . when we had passed the chamois , I wanted to tell my mother something of my defeat over the day of atonement or the parable of the mustard seed , but she did not pay attention as her whole mind was now focused on the Edelweiss , gentian , or Christ &apos;s thorn we had come to . so I too concentrated in forgetting my troubles in the flowers . or , as a substitute for alpine flowers and gardens , my mother would open a portfolio of water-colours and become lost in her former life - the full measure of a past that their contours described for her especially . here again I felt the presence of a veil separating me from them in the same way as from the photograph of the ski-ing party . the silver water of a lake caught in the shifting light of an anonymous morning , a chalet perched on a slope smothered in flowers , were fully credible - but the fact that my mother had actually stood by the lake , had actually climbed up to the chalet , made them entirely hers . and the countries her paintings translated into personal property were more remote than those in the atlas - described once and for all , and equally for everyone . on the whole I preferred looking at alpine flowers and gardens which mollified the remains of the afternoon for me , if not with the theatrical intensity of decapitating the cow-parsley that guarded the entrance to the stable . and although we sought different rendezvous - my mother hankering for the past , and I the future - there was a voiceless understanding , and also something conspiratorial in our activity . for my father treated my mother &apos;s horticultural interests with gruff contempt , and thus , as she slowly continued to turn the pages , the book seemed to speak for her , and to gainsay my father and his bible . yet the two books , although they suggested a clear-cut issue between my parents , in reality furthered my bewilderment . for why , I asked myself , since my father scoffed at my mother &apos;s interest in flowers , did he encourage mine in insects and birds . I was sure he had little concern for natural history himself , yet he made a special journey to Douglas to buy me books on the subject , and encouraged me to enter my observations in a notebook . I could only conclude he was so mystified I displayed any enthusiasm whatever that he welcomed natural history as a possible path to the salvation he desired for me . the grass in the top field was brittle and brown , silvered by a soft wind that went through it like a comb and made it nod and sway with the very essence of summer . it was summer at last , an endless summer of drifting pollen and gleams and flashes in lazy trees that surrounded the field and cast their jangled shadows , drowsy and unnumbered across it . a cloud stood in the sky , and there was no reason for it ; so it gently left it . the field spoke and murmured in its sleep , and the sharp cries of birds were reminders of things to do and things which could be just as well left undone , for the sense of time had stopped . my sister and I had given up looking for the corn-crakes whose tantalizing cries , sounding so near and so far , were deceptive as the grass itself and the tremors that turned it to a sea where the fins of fishes darted , hither and thither , confusing the whereabouts of the birds . so we sat on the wall at the top of the field , surveying this sea that hid their calls till they became but a part that accompanied the general noise of summer . the corn-crake was fabulous and its voice had ceased to issue from the throat of a particular bird , exactly and tersely described in the book of birds , with its name in Roman letters followed by its Latin name in italics . yet , the next morning the voice was still in the field and surely to-day we would see the corn-crakes . but we never did , and day after day the birds hid from view , and their voices tantalized . then on a Monday when the get ready gong had been forgotten and ( because it was Monday ) my father sat in double gloom , the corn-crakes - as though at the lifting of a magic wand - appeared in the garden itself . the male , barred with brown and buff ( correct as in the book ) , stood on a stump at the top of the daffodil bank , now sear and yellow with summer . the female and a family of chicks pecked in the grass below him , and , as we watched in silence at the window , there was something foreordained in the unexpectedness of their presence . the unfortunate meal was over , the plates had been cleared away ; and we became happy partners in a terrific conspiracy of silence , with the figure of the boy Samuel doing his best to suppress the ticking of the clock in the shadow at the back of the room . my father and mother stood at one side of the open window , and the rest of us at the other , grouped around my grandmother who was needlessly holding her finger to her lips . for our silence was natural , and we shared the easy attachment that united the corn-crake family . the naturalness had turned us into a picture opposite a picture , and our separate characteristics had ceased to exist , harmonized in a shared interest . it seemed to me rather like waiting for the Bishop , but now there was no sense of anxiety , and no sense of searching for spirituality - for the corn-crakes were beyond criticism . how long would this sublime moment last ? how long could the birds be undisturbed in their task of arresting time ? to-day was to-day , and yesterday was yesterday . yesterday had ordained to-day . I was with my father , walking to Mrs Kissack who lived in the farm beyond the fun-fair . she had broken her leg , and when we got to the farm my father went up the steps and I stayed in the road . gorse flared like the headlights of cars on the hills . a lark was singing high up , out of sight . there was cow-dung on the road , goose-dung in the yard . ( a flock of geese was a gaggle of geese . ) two dogs with their tongues out were lying in the shade of a wall where nettles sprang from the dust . a man in a brown waistcoat was working in a brown field . then he stopped working and the lark stopped singing , the world stilled to one piece - as now . then he spat on his hands and took up his scythe again , all of them busy again - the man working , the lark singing , the dogs panting . on the way back my father had said something about the harvest festival , but I could n&apos;t remember what &amp;hellip; . the male bird lifted his beak from his chest and cocked his head in the air . wind was ruffling the grass , and the corn-crakes ( as I knew they would have to ) sensed danger , and then scuttled into the field with the clumsy chicks tumbling over themselves as they followed as best they could . it was swiftly over . the garden , broken up into formal shapes and levels , was ordinary again ; and the church spire , coming to life as it jutted through the trees , frowned at the triviality of our preoccupation . 