Ilse’s Reviews > In a Summer Season > Status Update

She refilled the glass and handed it to him, holding it carefully turned one way. He put his hands over hers and twisted the glass round so that he drank from the place her lips had touched.She hoped that he would not sense through her tingling fingers the embarrassment she was feeling, and raked her mind desperately for someting casual to say. Only the weather came to her rescue, as it always does to English people.

'What do we get out of it, I wonder - being parents?' 'It was great fun when they were little'.It was a memory of a memory by now - the hallmark of happiness, that scene.The sun had shone through the dazzling aigrettes of water and made rainbows, the breeze caught the the children and fanned them out. 'It's a pity about love', she said. 'The pain one pays for it with - children, or one's friends. It can't be helped.'

I hate self-made men. They think everyone else should slave as they have done. 'You missed the lot", I'll say to him one day."Grubbing about like that from morning to night, you never lived.What have you got?A great stack of money,a knighthood,the respect of your competitors,and that's about the lot.Not a moment's fun have you had.No one's ever been really pleased to see you and no one will give a damn when you die."