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tempted to. If one were not tempted one would have to admit that the breath of truth had passed one by, in which case one would not even reach that zone of chaos in which everything might be understood.
    When I see a possibility of happiness coming to me I will not help to make it real, out of a fear that if I succeed I shall no longer have the moral stamina and rectitude to know that I am incapable of speaking the truth.
    Yet if I accepted the happiness that waits for me it would then cease to be the happiness I now imagine it would be, and I would still be armed and plagued with the necessity of searching for the truth.
    One must continually strive for happiness, because the unhappiness that comes with it will always be more fruitful than the unhappiness of non-endeavour one left behind. Paradise is a long way off.
    I try to get at the truth, as if to do so may bring a certain amount of happiness. At the same time I find myself utterly distrusting it. Sooner or later one must make up one’s mind.

13
    I was treated well by Burton because, apart from being able and willing to labour physically, I also bothered myself industriously with books and writing paper. I sat on a chair in the kitchen, by the light of an oil lamp shining from a hook above the table, reading or drawing maps, and I know that he looked at me strongly now and again because he had not seen the like of it before. Sometimes he passed the newspaper and asked me to recite the latest news from Abyssinia, where ‘that swine Mussolini was knocking people about’.
    When I walked in on Sunday afternoon after playing in the garden or along the lane outside, Mary-Ann and Emily would already be laying the tea-table and waiting for that peculiar authoritative stamp of Burton as he came downstairs in his stockinged feet.
    If he saw the cat in front of the fire he would kick it clear—though it was often alert and leapt out of sight before he came into the room. If the dog stayed there, being near enough human to hope for better things, he would usually move that away also. But if he was in an affectionate mood he would grip the dog around its long mouth and hold the jaws fast, an action which, as well as being painful, induced in the poor animal a feeling of claustrophobia and panic, so that it struggled to get free, much to Burton’s delight and the loud protests of his wife and daughters. It whined and wriggled until he let it go with as friendly a pat as he could muster under the thwarting circumstances, a gesture which was the nearest I saw him get to an expression of guilt.
    And so he came in for his tea, having taken care to re-establish his reputation in front of the family so that normal life could be resumed once more. There would be salmon and cucumber and jam-pasty to eat, a combined smell of fish and vinegar and new-baked dough which was enough to make anyone’s mouth water. But he never had much of it, not being a big eater, in spite of his work. He would pull on his boots and go into the yard or garden to busy himself for an hour before walking off for an evening bout at some pub or other.
    He lived close to Nottingham, a lifetime spent within a few miles of the Goose Fair and Market Place. Born and bred, married and buried at Lenton, he was to live ten years at Bridge Yard, and later for many more at a block of three cottages on Lord Middleton’s land that were shown by the Ordnance Survey maps of the late nineteenth century as ‘Old Engine Houses’, though they were always known locally as Engine Town. Demolished in 1939, a few months after water-taps and electricity had been put in, they made way for the spread of bungalows from Nottingham.
    The cottages were connected by a motorable high-hedged sunken lane to Radford Woodhouse—a compact settlement of three streets—beyond which one went by paved road to the city. But to other localities there were only tracks across the fields. To reach Aspley or Basford one