ET DONA FERENTES
"I'll have a cigarette too, Mother" said Monica to Mrs.
Rackham "it'll help to keep the midges off. That's why I always hate
woods so. Oh don't worry, Elizabeth" she added as she saw her own
daughter's look of alarm. "That's why I
hate
woods, but there are
hundreds and hundreds of more important reasons why I
love
them
-especially pine woods. To begin with there's the scent, and
you
can say what you like, Edwin" she smiled up at her husband, who
was frowning as he cut inexpertly at a block of wood with a pocket
knife "about its being a hackneyed smell.
B~t
apart from the scent,
there's the effect of light and shade. The only time that you can
really see the sunlight out of doors is when it shines through dark
trees like these. When you're in it, you're always too hot or too dazzled
to notice anything. So you see, darling" she turned again to her
daughter "I
do
love pinewoods." For a moment she lay back, but the
smoke from her cigarette got into her eyes and soon she was stubbing
it out on the bed of pine-needles beneath. "How I
do
hate cigarettes"
she cried "and how I
do
hate hating them.
It
puts one at such a
social disadvantage. Oh! it's all right for you, Mother, everyone in
your generation smoked, and
smoked
determinedly; and it's all right
for Elizabeth, when she's eighteen-don't let's talk of it there's only
two years-nobody will even think of smoking, it'll be so dowdy; but
with women in the forties like me there was always that awful choice
-to smoke or not to smoke-and I chose not to, and there I am of
course on occasions like parties and things with nothing to do with my
hands. Now let's all lie back and relax for a quarter of an hour" she
went on and the nervous tension in her voice seemed even greater than
before as she said it "and then we can have a drink before lunch.
Don't you think it was clever of me to remember to bring gin? People
always
forget it on picnics and yet it's so lovely to be able to have a
drink without needing to be jolly. I hope nobody is going to be jolly,
by the way. I forbid anyone to be jolly," she said with mock stern–
ness and then turning to her son who was watching a squirrel in a
nearby tree "Richard, darling, take that knife away from your father
befqre he does himself an injury."
