Episode 2: Naomi Alderman and Phillip Hensher
Here are this week's readings for the Line by Line Podcast. The episode will soon be available on your podcast platform of choice.
Passage One
He opened the door to her and took her coat and complimented her upon her string of pearls, as if he could not think of anything else to say. To her disappointment, there was suddenly an air of constraint between them. She touched the pearls from nervousness, went over to the gas-fire and chafed her hands, though she was not cold. He watched her. Veins the colour of pewter branched over the back of those transparent hands. He took in every detail of her while she bent there before the fire — her heavy rings, the neatly-pleated handkerchief tucked in her cuff, folds of skin about her jowl, hanging loose. She had taken age as it came, and it had come apace. She felt him looking at her, and straightened her back, with a creaking, uneasy sound, like an old tree in a high wind. His gaze at once slithered away, and he began to touch things on the table, rearranging what he had already set out — plates (there was nowhere to warm them, she realised, save on the floor before the gas-fire), odd knives and forks, two Kleenex tissues for napkins. He had gone to some thought and trouble; had perhaps become a little fussed. There was also a half bottle of Mateus Rosé; one glass, and a yoghourt carton in place of the second.
‘There was no time to get the silver from the bank,’ he said, standing back and surveying the table.
‘This is fun for me,’ she said. But is it? she wondered. Having said the words, she dared not dwell on them
Passage Two
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Passage Three
And she was old. My grandmother was not a woman given to excesses of any kind, and so her ageing, as it became advanced, was rather astonishing. True, she was straight and brisk and bright when most of her friends had bobbling heads or blurred speech or had sunk into wheelchairs or beds. But in the last years she continued to settle and began to shrink. Her mouth bowed forward and her brow sloped back, and her skull shone pink and speckled within a mere haze of hair, which hovered about her head like the remembered shape of an altered thing. She looked as if the nimbus of humanity were fading away and she were turning monkey. Tendrils grew from her eyebrows and coarse white hairs sprouted on her lip and chin. When she put on an old dress the bosom hung empty and the hem swept the floor. Old hats fell down over her eyes. Sometimes she put her hand over her mouth and laughed, her eyes closed and he shoulders shaking. In my earliest memories of her my grandmother was already up in years. I remember sitting under the ironing board, which pulled down from the kitchen wall, while she ironed the parlour curtains and muttered “Robin Adair.” One veil after another fell down around me, starched and white and fragrant, and I had vague dreams of being hidden or cloistered, and watched the electric cord wag, and contemplated my grandmother’s big black shoes, and her legs in their orangy-brown stockings, as contourless, as completely unshaped by muscle as two thick bones. Even then she was old.