《Sleep It Off Lady》Jean Rhys

Who Knows What's Up In the Attic?

But he went on singing.  He had a good voice.  How long was it since she had sat by a man driving fast and singing? Years and years. Or was it perhaps only yesterday and everything that had happened since a strange dream?

.
'Yes and it would be lovely, but it's quite impossible, I can't."
'Why not?'

Of course he must have seen perfectly well why not and if he didn't she was certainly not going to spell it out. That would have depressed her for days, for weeks. How few people understood what a tightrope she walked or what would happen if she slipped.  The abyss. Despair. All those things.

Not Shooting the Birds

There is no control over memory.  Quite soon you find yourself being vague about an event which seemed so important at the time that you thought you'd never forget it.  Or unable to recall the face of someone whom you could have sworn was there for ever.  On the other hand, trivial and meaningless memories may stay with you for life.  I can still shut my eyes and see Victoria grinding coffee on the pantry steps, the glass bookcase and the books in it, my father's pipe-rack, the leaves of the sandbox tree, the wallpaper of the bedroom in some shabby hotel, the hairdresser in Antibes.  It's in this way that I remember buying the pink milanese silk underclothes, the assistant who sold them to me and coming in the street holding the parcel.

I had started out in life trusting everyone and now I trusted no one.  So I had few acquaintances and no close friends.  It was perhaps in reaction against the inevitable loneliness of my life that I'd find myself doing bold, risky even outrageous things without hesitation or surprise.  I was usually disappointed in these adventures and they didn't have much effect on me, good or bad, but I never quite lost the hope of something better or different.