12 July

12 July 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

4p.m. injection at Harley Street.

More beautiful by far than a morning in Spring or Summer. The mist - the trees standing in it - not a leaf moves - not a breath stirs. There is a faint smell of burning. The sun comes slowly, slowly the room grows lighter. Suddenly, on the carpet there is a square of pale red light. The bird in the garden goes ‘snip - snip - snip' - a little wheezy like the sound of a knife grinder. The nasturtiums blaze in the garden; their leaves are pale. On the lawn, his paws tucked under him, sits the black and white cat.
As he sits, dumb, staring, there comes that weak light - autumn.
I cough and cough and at each breath a dragging boiling bubbling sound is heard. I feel that my whole chest is boiling. I sip water, spit, sip, spit. I feel I must break my heart. And I can't expand my chest - it's as though the chest had collapsed. Life is - getting a new breath. Nothing else counts. And Murry is silent, hangs his head, hides his face with his fingers as though it were unendurable. "This is what she is doing to me! Every fresh sound makes my nerves wince." I know he can't help these feelings. But oh God! how wrong are. If he could only, for a minute, serve me, help me, give himself up! I can so imagine an account by him of a "calamity"... I could do nothing all day. MY hands trembled. I had a sensation of UTTER cold. At times I felt the strain would be unbearable, at others a merciful numbness and so on. What a fate to be so self imprisoned!! What a ghastly fate. At such times I feel I never could get well with him. It's like having a cannon ball tied to one's feet when one is trying not to drown. It is just like that. [KM Notebooks]