ONE
Lasciò la macchina all’ingresso di
casa Ponting, con le chiavi
nel motorino di avviamento. Senza
nemmeno un’occhiata alla finestra di
Florence, si precipitò nelle vie
del centro con la valigia in mano, per prendere
il primo treno. Instupidito dalla stanchezza, percorse il lungo
tratto a piedi da Henley a
Turville Heath, avendo cura di evitare il
tragitto scelto da Florence un anno prima. Perché
ripercorrere le sue orme?Arrivato
a casa, si rifiutò di
dare spiegazioni al padre.
Majorie si era già scordato
del matrimonio del figlio. Le gemelle non facevano che tormentarlo con domande e ipotesi
acute. Edward le portò in fondo
al giardino e fece giurare
solennemente , a entrambe, prima Harriet poi
Anne, mano sul cuore, che non avrebbero mai più pronunciato il nome di
Florence.
TWO
When he thought of her, it rather amazed him that
he had let that girl with her violin go.
Now, of course, he saw that her self- effacing proposal was quite irrelevant.
All she had needed was the certainty of
his love, and his reassurance that there
was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience
– if only he had had them both at
once – would surely have seen
them both through. This is how the entire course of a
lifetime can be changed – by doing nothing. On Chesil Beach
he could have called out to Florence , he could have
gone after her. He did not know, or would not have cared to know, that
as she ran away from him, certain in her distress that she was about to lose him, she had never loved him more, or
more hopelessly, and that the sound of
his voice would have been a deliverance,
and she would have turned back.
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