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notebook!) He threw a piece of stick at the slowly pacing birds. They rushed towards it, thinking it was something to eat.
He walked on. The profound shade of a giant ilex tree engulfed him. Like a great wooden octopus, it spread its long arms abroad.
“Under the spreading ilex tree . . .”
He tried to remember who the poem was by, but couldn’t.
“The smith, a brawny man is he,
With arms like rubber bands.”
Just like his; he would have to try and do his Muller exercises more regularly.
He emerged once more into the sunshine. The pool lay before him, reflecting in its bronze mirror the blue and various green of the summer day. Looking at it, he thought of Anne’s bare arms and seal-sleek bathing-dress, her moving knees and feet.
“And little Luce with the white legs,
And bouncing Barbary . . .”
Oh, these rags and tags of other people’s making! Would he ever be able to call his brain his own? Was there, indeed, anything in it that was truly his own, or was it simply an education?