Читать книгу Journal of Small Things - Helen Mackay - Страница 15

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I keep thinking back over those last days of peace, that were so precious, and nobody knew.

The Sunday that was to be the last, what memories has it given the women to treasure, the men to carry away with them? Memories of such small absurd things have become sacred, or become terrible. The men may lose those memories in their great spaces of battle, but the women must stay with them in the rooms.

Against the great background of these days it is queer what small absurd things stand out. The greatest days of all the world—and how terribly worried we are that Louis has gone off without his little package of twenty-four hours' provision, the bread and chocolate and little flask. It was ready for him and on the table in the hall, and every one forgot it; and he was gone, and there it was, a ridiculous thing to sob over.

Those women who did not cry at the station, what absurd things they sobbed over, afterwards, at home—his golf sticks in the corner, his untidy writing-table, the clothes, all sorts, he had left flung about the room. How many of them will remember always that second pair of boots he had to take with him, that simply couldn't be got, that had to be hunted over Paris for, desperately, as if of utmost importance, all his last day? However could she have got through that last day if it had not been that she must keep up because of the boots?

In the afternoon, at the Rond Point of the Champs Elysées, my fiacre was held up for the passing of a regiment on its way to some station. A woman and a little boy were marching along beside one of the men, going with him just as far as they might go. The woman had no hat, and the sun was very hot. Her hair was tumbled across her eyes. The little boy was holding tight to the edge of his father's long blue coat.