Losses, speed and what comes after

But the mark may not be a nail at all. And, she thinks, once a thing is done, no one knows quite how it happened. Life is mysterious, and thought is never exact.

We control so little. She lists the things lost in one lifetime: book-binding tools, bird cages, iron skates, a coal-scuttle, jewels.

Life, she says, is like being blown through the Tube (the underground railway) at fifty miles an hour, and shot out at the other end at God's feet with nothing left, like a parcel sent down a post-office chute.

After death, perhaps we are born again: helpless, among great stalks of grass and blurred colours, slowly learning to see.

Or the mark might be a rose leaf, left by a careless housekeeper. She thinks of dust slowly burying ancient Troy, and longs to sink deep into quiet thought, away from the surface of things.