Fifth Business (Deptford Trilogy)

I refused to laugh at them, for I was jealous of anybody who was funnier than I.

I shall say little about the war, because though I was in it from early 1915 until late 1917 I never found out much about it until later.

“I have not forgotten your questions about the woman you keep in the madhouse, Ramezay. I have said nothing on that subject during our last few dinners, but it has not been absent from my mind, you may be assured. Invariably I come back to the same answer: why do you worry? What good would it do you if I told you she is indeed a saint? I cannot mak

But David astonished me. “Poor Mum,” he said, “I guess she’s better off, really.” Now what was I to make of that, from a boy of fourteen?

St Dunstan was a marvellous person and very much like you—mad about learning, terribly stiff and stern and scowly, and an absolute wizard at withstanding temptation. Do you know that the Devil once came to tempt him in the form of a fascinating woman, and he caught her nose in his goldsmith’s tongs and gave it a terrible twist?”

Indeed, the pretty face that had once ensnared both Boy and me became pudgy and empty. Leola had joined the great company of the walking wounded in the battle of life.

From two until three I sat in Willie’s room, reading, and between three and half-past I did what I could for Willie while he died.

a dead man without any of the panoply of death is a desperately insignificant object.

For me, Willie’s recall from death is, and will always be, Mrs Dempster’s second miracle.