I kneel up in bed and put on Rob's coat. Its thick, stiff wool
is becoming supple again from the heat of my body night
after night. I put the sleeve to my face and sniff. The smell
is still there, undiluted. The coat crushes my nightdress to
my body and prickles my breasts. I button it up the boys' way
and feel about on the floor for my slippers.
まずは、この中で、button it up the boys' way のところが
気になりました。確かに寒いので、男の子 Robのコートを
羽織っているのですが、なぜ、boys' way と書いてあるの
でしょう。男の子の服を girls' way でボタンをとめるなんて
ことはできるとは思えないのですが・・・。気にしすぎ?
考えすぎ?
I hold my hands to the flames as they begin to jump.
There is no wind at all in the chimney, and this has
always been an awkward grate. The flames lose heart
and shrink back into the wood. I spread out a double
sheet of newspaper and hold it over the grate to make
it draw. The paper sucks in and I plaster it tight against
the edge of the fireplace. In a couple of minutes the fire
stirs behind it and begins to roar. I wait until it glows
big and yellow behind the paper, singeing the newsprint
brown. It would be so easy to read what was written,
but I don't. Not one word. My fire is roaring like the
big range down in the kitchens, which is never lit now.
It has hunched there for months, dusty as winter soil.
No one has blackleaded it.
真ん中あたりの "make it draw" の draw の用法が
いまいちはっきりわかりません。これだけ多数の意味が
ある単語なので、こじつけるのも難しいです。
'I shouldn't care to be on my own in this great place
all night, the way you are,' she said to me yesterday,
planking down my mutton cutlet and gravy with her
big raw hands. She wants to come and live here again,
with Annie and Mrs Blazer and the others, the way it
used to be. But I won't let her. It is never going to be
the way it was. I tell her she ought to think of getting
a job in the new drapery at Over Loxton. There is
money there. They are setting up the shop in a big
way, hoping to catch trade from half the county.
Elsie could sit in a black dress behind the counter,
waiting for the little cylinders of change to whizz back
along the wire. But would they want Elsie with her
kitchen hands and easy way of talking? And Elsie
likes coming here.
The coloured cloth spines of our childhood books look at
me. Grimm, Hans Andersen, At the Back of the North Wind.
But to get something to read I'd have to skate across the icy
sea of oilcloth between me and the bookcase.