Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

tight inside him. He would have suffered much physical pain rather
than this unreasonable suffering at being exposed to strangers,
to be accepted or rejected. Yet he chattered away with his mother.
He would never have confessed to her how he suffered over these things,
and she only partly guessed. She was gay, like a sweetheart.
She stood in front of the ticket-office at Bestwood, and Paul watched
her take from her purse the money for the tickets.
As he saw her hands in their old black kid gloves getting
the silver out of the worn purse, his heart contracted with pain
of love of her.
She was quite excited, and quite gay. He suffered because she
WOULD talk aloud in presence of the other travellers.
"Now look at that silly cow!" she said, "careering round
as if it thought it was a circus."
"It's most likely a bottfly," he said very low.
"A what?" she asked brightly and unashamed.
They thought a while. He was sensible all the time of having
her opposite him. Suddenly their eyes met, and she smiled to
him--a rare, intimate smile, beautiful with brightness and love.
Then each looked out of the window.
The sixteen slow miles of railway journey passed. The mother
and son walked down Station Street, feeling the excitement of lovers
having an adventure together. In Carrington Street they stopped
to hang over the parapet and look at the barges on the canal below.
"It's just like Venice," he said, seeing the sunshine
on the water that lay between high factory walls.
"Perhaps," she answered, smiling.
They enjoyed the shops immensely.
"Now you see that blouse," she would say, "wouldn't that just
suit our Annie? And for one-and-eleven-three. Isn't that cheap?"
"And made of needlework as well," he said.
"Yes."
They had plenty of time, so they did not hurry. The town
was strange and delightful to them. But the boy was tied up inside