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.Amy retired to bed early, before the old creaking grandmother went, and then Herbert would put his arm round his daughter's waist and draw her down to look at the ailing accounts of the shop; sometimes he gave the figures up altogether, sitting clutching the girl's hand and staring into her eyes.Once on these occasions, Joan said something in protest and pulled herself away as if she would leave the room.Herbert jumped up and caught her and kissed her as if to placate her, but when he got his arms about her, she slipped déxtrously away and ran upstairs.Herbert stood where he was a long while, at one point staring about him with an expression of fear on his face so ghastly that Bush also took fright, alarmed for a moment that he might through some magical agency have become visible to the man; but it was in Herbert Bush's own mind that the object of his fright lay.The boys grew more neglected, fishing in the stream or playing with other little hooligans in the gutter.Amy lived in her shop, often regarding her husband as if she had never seen him before.Prompted by Herbert's interest in his daughter, Bush recalled what someone had said long ago about incest: that the tabu on it which began primitive man's isolation from his fellow hominids had led to the growth of individual consciousness, from whence sprang all civilization.If endogamy had been still the rule in 1930, Amy and Herbert might have been first cousins, or perhaps even brother and sister, in which case a lifelong acquaintanceship might have made them less strangers to each other now.One outward cause of their trouble revealed itself on a day when Bush had been down at the lower end of Breedale.He now knew everyone by sight, and was interested enough in their affairs to spend much of the day moving in and out of their dwelling places, absorbing with equal relish both that which had a period and that which had an eternal flavor.Returning to the little grocer's, he saw the weekly wholesale delivery van standing outside it; by now he had been here long enough to recognize the name of the Darlington firm on its battered side.Entering the shop by the front door, Bush found nobody inside.He walked through to the back -- by now his identification with the era was so close that he no longer went through objects if he could avoid doing so -- and found Amy and Herbert closeted with a stranger, a plump man in a smart suit who was rising from the table, hat in hand, tucking some documents into an inside pocket.Bush did not care for the look of him, and noted that he was smiling in a strained way, whereas Amy had broken down on her side of the table and was weeping.Herbert stood helplessly behind his wife, clutching her shoulder.A legal document lay on the table.Bush glanced at it before Amy took it up.From the little he saw of it, he gathered that she had had to sell her business to the larger firm.Presumably they had grown too much in debt for her to take any other course.He looked down at Amy, feeling the shock and sorrow of it.The plump man found his own way out.Amy sat at the table and stifled her tears while Herbert paced about, two paces one way, two the other.Amy recovered herself and stood up, saying something to Herbert in a brusque manner.He replied, gesturing.At once, they were in the midst of a mighty row, perhaps the grimmest they had ever had.By her gestures, which included a lot of pointing down the hill, Bush gathered she was in some way including the mine in her abuse -- the mine that with its dark, closed alleys underground bulked large in all their lives.The row grew more violent.Amy snatched up a lesson book from the table and flung it at Herbert.She was too close in the tiny room to miss; it hit him in the corner of the mouth.He leaped at her, grasped her with both hands about the throat.Bush threw himself forward, fell through them with his hands waving, and struck his head a blow on the chimney breast.As he staggered to one side, Herbert threw Amy to the floor.Then he ran out of the back door, slamming it behind him.Bush leaned against the wall on which he had struck himself.It felt at once glassy and rubbery, like any object through the entropy barrier.He clutched at his air-leaker, breathing painfully.His head rang, but already he was glad he had jumped instinctively to the woman's aid.He opened one eye and gazed down at her.She was doubled up with the pangs of birth.Forgetting his own woes, he hurried out to the street.Nobody was about.The hour was two in the afternoon, when everyone sat in their parlors pretending they had lunched adequately or in the pub forgetting they had lunched inadequately.The Bush children had disappeared; nor was there any sign of Herbert.Nor -- he realized it almost as soon as the emptiness stopped him -- could he attract anyone's attention if he did see them.He located Tommy and Derek playing with a couple of fellow hooligans in an old derelict railway truck standing on the edge of the sidings.The smallest boy was nowhere about.Granny was sitting in a garrulous neighbor's kitchen.It was an hour before he found Joan.As he might have guessed had he not been in such a distressed state of mind, she was sitting in a little back room talking with two girl friends.He stood and looked.She was so meek, so unassuming -- and so far from guessing that her mother lay at home in agony.She and her friends went on talking and talking, their pale lips moving all the while; sometimes they smiled or frowned, occasionally aiding the meaning of what they said with a small gesture.And what were they all saying, so long ago, so hopelessly embedded in time? He knew her life through and through, had watched her in her bath, had seen her asleep, had spied on her first kiss.She had nothing to talk about, nothing worth recording even on such a dead afternoon.What was it all about?The question extended itself until it embraced all human history.It seemed to Bush that throughout his life he had asked it too often, while nobody else had asked it enough.His damned memory -- he recalled an ancient day far in the backlog of his own days.or a young day, whichever it should be, for he could have been no more than four.The dentist had built a little sandpit for his son to play in.Son had built a great castle and driven a tunnel through it.Son had flooded tunnel and moat with water from his (red, with yellow[?] handle) bucket.Conveniently, son had found beetle in nearby flower bed.Son had put beetle in toy boat with sail.With slight push, boat had ridden through great swirling cavern with beetle gallant in bows, looking every black inch a captain.Questions, then and now: What was beetle really? What was son really? What really determined their roles?And the "really"; evidence of some standard outside the consciousness? God in disguise? God like an all-consuming alien entity from another galaxy, digesting all beetles, flowers, worms, cats, Sons, mothers, so that it could greedily experience life through all their beings?Well, that was more or less the traditional answer to the question of the mystery of life in his part of the globe.Then there was the scientific answer, but after a while that too fetched up against the blank wall of God.There was the atheist answer, that it was all blind luck, or ill luck.And a hundred other answers
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