04 July

4 July 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

By Moonlight.
(From The House in The Sun.)

Aren't we alike said Laurie.
Yes but you've got much better eyebrows, said Laura. I'm still rather sparse & when I was a baby, ong dit I hadn't got any at all - not a brow to bless myself with, said Laura. Mother was terrified. She used to pat them on with feather dipped in train oil - olive oil, I mean. Oh whoever told you such a story! cried Laurie to that laughing face in the glass. I don't know dear, said Laura. One of the servants - Lizzie I believe it was. Do you remember old Lizzie? Well, said Laura quickly, she came after Jane & she was followed by Rose Spiers. But why I remember her so particularly is that it was in her time that that policeman came to the front door & rang the bell.
My God! said Laurie. He plumped down on Laura's bed. I never shall forget that. The sheer horror of it! I thought everything was over for us, didn't you. Oh absolutely. And the worst of it was Meg was practising. She'd just begun earning the piano, you remember. She was playing Rousseau's Dream.
I thought that would make him even more furious. Stop that piano barked Laura - like a furious policeman.
Did you always feel that there was something awfully mysterious about the dining room.
Always.
When one went into it in the afternoon for a dish for Cook it was so dark & so dead quiet & then the sideboard. You remember the strange winey & [...] smell & how funny one's face looked reflected in the sideboard glass, with little fern fronds round one's head. And did you awfully feel that the selzogene was like a very proud but also awfully indignant bird. [. . .] [KM Notebooks, undated]