6 Quotes by Judith Kinghorn

A scream so loud it shattered and splintered into a dreadful chorus that rattled and shook my brain and bones and cells and soul. I grabbed the telegram from Mama’s hand, threw it on the fire, ran out of the room into the hallway, and then outside into the square, and I continued running, zigzagging down streets, through mews, and on and on, as though I could escape from that moment; escape my brother’s death and run back through time.

I was almost seventeen when the spell of my childhood was broken. There was no sudden jolt, no immediate awakening and no alteration, as far as I’m aware, in the earth’s axis that day. But the vibration of change was upon us and I sensed a shift: a realignment of my trajectory. It was the beginning of summer and, unbeknown to any of us then, the end of a belle époque…

All I could think was that he, too, was going to war; that he, too, was leaving Deyning, leaving my world. I’d only just found him, only just realized that the universe included someone named Tom Cuthbert and now he was about to disappear. It seemed already the war had found me.

Our adolescent conversation was still devoid of any faltering uncertainty, and we didn't stand on the brink, we ran along it,unperturbed by tremulous skies, sure of our footing and certain of sunshine, hungry for the next chapter in our own unwritten stories. For lifetimes - lifetimes we had only just begun to imagine - stretched out before us criss-crossing and fading into a distant horizon. And the future, all of our futures, lay ahead, glistening with promise, eternal with possibility.

It was a golden evening in August when my mother came untethered. And the river must have shimmered as she walked into it, under it. And the water must have soothed and washed away her pain. And as her life ebbed, before her heart stopped and the high tide carried her upstream, she must have thought of me, surely? For it was the same golden evening I was born.

But I recently celebrated my thirtieth birthday and became acutely aware of my age, and the passing of time.