Hissing of summer dark

I caught the 1055 bus to Alverhouse where I met Rob and Carol; they'd just seen Carol’s sister Lynne and niece Melissa onto the bus back to Brynmor.

It was another red hot day, hotter than it was in Watermouth. Both Carol and Mum are learning to drive and Carol drove the car back to Dearnelow, nervous because I was there. She trundled along at a steady 35-40 mph and stalled it just once.

A quiet day passed reading, C. washing in the kitchen, the cats—three years old now—came and went. Robert has enrolled for an M.Ed. course in the teaching of English which begins in October and so he read one of his course books, English As a Discipline of Thought by F. R. Leavis, while I read of Ball, Tzara, Heulsenbeck and co., Zurich 1916.

In the evening we played cribbage and I played Robert the cassettes we’d made at Borley. He told me about the inexplicable uneasiness both he and C. felt on some nights during their fortnight in Calverdale. Neither of them liked to admit their fears to the other. Carol described a sensation of overwhelming sadness and R. recounted how, on some nights as the sun set, they both felt the darkness pressing in on them from all sides. Yet on other nights they felt perfectly at ease . . . The hiss of the tapes brought back to me that awful pregnant silence lurking beyond that heavy wooden door, as if something was there, just beyond the level of human hearing . . .

I feel uneasy. . . .