SUMMARY
This is a love story between Henry (17) and Edna (16). They are very young, so we have to suppose very inexperienced about love,
but also very pure and innocent.
Henry is a clerk in an architect office, and he thinks
he’s great into books, although he hasn’t read many, and he doesn’t have many.
Edna is a student in a training college; she wants to be a secretary.
One day, at Charing Cross station, Henry almost misses
his train because, as it has a stop of ten minutes, leaving his hat and a
portfolio in his carriage, he gets off to look at the books in the station
bookstall and, when he is reading a poem from a book, he hears the station
master announcing that the train is leaving, and Henry has to hurry up. He runs
to the nearest carriage and dashes into it. But it’s not his, and he feels
embarrassed because there is another passenger, a girl, and he has not his hat
on. He notices the girl’s hair and falls in love with it. In the end, he gathers
courage to say something, and they begin a bit of conversation. And when Edna
points to the mark his hat has left on his forehead, he feels he’s definitely in
love with her. He asks her to meet again, and she tells him that she takes the
same train every day.
So they meet again, and they start a kind of love
affair, they tell each other about their jobs, their families… He asks her to see her hair, and reluctantly she takes off her hat, but she
doesn’t allow him to touch it.
And during their courtship, he can’t even go near her and, much less, kiss her.
However, Henry isn’t angry with her, he is patient and understanding and can
wait. Edna knows that he wants some more closeness and understands his desires,
but, at the moment, she can’t bear being touched. She prefers keeping some
distance between them, as if they were still children, and not already teenagers. But
they both dream being together, living together, and they imagine having a house
and behaving like husband and wife.
But after a time, Henry is a little tired of waiting for a kiss or a caress, he hungers for physical contact. One day, in an excursion, when they stop to have tea, the landlady offers them a cottage to rent. They go and see it, and they like it very much. They can figure it could be their home. Eventually, Edna lets him hold her, and tells him she has wanted all day to tell him that he could kiss her. They decide to rent the house.
But when Henry waits for Edna the day they have to begin to inhabit the cottage, she doesn’t come. Instead of her, there comes a little girl with a telegram for Henry. We don’t know what is there in the message, neither whose it is from, although we can imagine. He opens it, reads it, and the world around him gets wrapped in darkness.
QUESTIONS
-Why do you think the girl doesn’t want any physical
contact?
-In your opinion, a romantic mood, is it only possible
when you are young?
-Do you think love without sex is going to work? Or is
this idea sexist?
-What can be the meaning of the Swiss cow-bell, the
silver shoe and the fish hanging of Edna’s bangle?
-Why is hair so powerful a sexual symbol, according to
your view?
-“Have you ever been in love before?” is a very unusual
declaration of love. Do you know any other singular one? E.g., this one.
-Some people say love is a kind of illness that only
lasts three years. What is your opinion?
-Can children be in love, or is love something you
only find in teenagers and adults?
-When they are at the tea house in the country, and the
woman offers to rent a cottage, do you think Henry has planned it previously? (remember he
had been there often)
-And when the woman asked if they were brother and
sister, why does Henry answer yes?
-When they are in the cottage, do they really kiss?
Why do you think so?
-What does the telegram say? What is Henry going to do
now?
VOCABULARY
soot, spangle, pap, clutched, marigold, wreath, utter,
curb, training college, nests, loathsome, winding up, raked out, caretakers, heather,
jonquils, Bags I
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