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A long two years of ‘Shadows of the evening steal across the sky’; my mother felt it; I felt it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
My mother would caress my head with what seemed a new tenderness. Even my little sister seemed to become less of a bitch and more like a wide-eyed inhuman robot. Nobody knew why. Only I understood. It was like being in front of an inscrutable, patient schoolmaster. “Well”, he seemed to say, as if waiting for me to repeat my homework. “Well, what next?” Pause. And then as if recollecting something very difficult and painful and future, “In England …” “Yes, well, and then?” No good. “I don't know.” “Surely you haven't forgotten?” I had. “Think[”
My mother just stroked my cheeks and dreamt without fear but with sadness. I couldn't stand it.
“Moth-er! You aren't sad are you?”
“Sad?” She would laugh. “Of course not! Why should I be sad?”
Well, why should she be sad? I couldn't think. It was ridiculous. Sad? Of course not!
But she was.
Nicholson: Hodson of Hodson's Horse. Nickel Sehn – the Indians had such queer names! It made you laugh – like my mother. The Indians would laugh too if they knew that one of those cowardly little white brats was frightened. An Indian came into Nicholson's tent and he was so frightened he died of fright. Wasn't that splendid? No; it only made me die of fright, at night time when I could hear Nickel Sehn roaring in the forest, imperatively, with authority. And Arf Arfer. And then the bird with a cruel beak and saucer-like eyes would ring
a bell, for fun, because it scared the wits out of bloody little English brats. Mummy! Christ! Whoever was that screaming?