The Game by A. S. Byatt

know.’
    Simon said, ‘Here is a magnification of the things in the kind of water I just bottled. The kind of activity outside our normal consciousness. Outside our sense of proportion. Like the speed of grass growing. Or the spread of cancer. Things we have to make an effort to be aware of.’
    He peered at them for a moment almost crossly, as though troubled by his own natural inadequacy. A shot of the normal cloudiness of the glass beaker of water was followed by a microscopic expansion of it, a bursting open of vague specks into things alive, transparent, reticulated, shapeless, with waving tentacles and gaping mouths, which jumped and squirmed and floated and writhed across the scene. Something like a parasol, ribbed and frilled, ballooned gently down from the top right-hand corner to the opposite lower corner. Somewhereelse a strange string of long beads broke apart and reformed. A flabby blob of jelly made itself a long mouth, ingested a black speck and closed over it, swelling slightly, whilst the scar of the mouth opening slowly disappeared. For a moment Simon lectured them on the alien movements of this unfamiliar life; what was known about the pattern of it, what was not. He told them some names, and pointed out with elation nameless scraps of life. ‘No wonder we lose our sense of our own place,’ he said, reappearing, and fading. ‘We shall never know very much about all this: this is what draws us. As it should.’
    A large white bird strode through the water, peering elegantly this way and that, leaving behind it a trail of wavering liquid arrows, that lost their directness in the weeds at the water’s edge. Cassandra could almost feel the packed, silky texture of the feathers.
    Julia said, ‘Shall I turn it off?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I can’t
bear
the clergymen. Sorry, Cass – but I just can’t.’
    ‘You don’t have to.’
    ‘No. It’s been a – a funny day. Do you think it was a good thing for us – playing – and so on?’
    ‘We do the best we can,’ said Cassandra, dubiously.
    ‘Do we?’
    ‘Apparently. I don’t know what else we could have done.’
    ‘I’m glad we —’ Julia had been going to say ‘talked’ but they hadn’t really. ‘I enjoyed the Game. I hope.… We can have a long talk tomorrow?’
    ‘If you like. He must be waiting. Go to bed, Julia. I’ll lock up.’
    Julia thought of putting out her hand to Cassandra, but they had never touched each other. She said, ‘Sleep well, Cass,’ with warmth, and ran up the stairs. When she had gone, Cassandra rolled up the oilskin and packed away the pieces; when she had done this, she walked round the house, putting out lights, closing doors. In each dark corridor or room she listened for sounds, doing what she had to do with clumsyfingers. When finally she closed her own door, latch and bolt, she undressed without washing, slid into bed like a scared child, and held herself in a rigid ball, bony knees to chin, fists clenched. She was pleased with the effort she had made to walk about so calmly in the dark, but now she was paying. It was a long time before she went to sleep.

Chapter 5
    E LIZABETH C ORBETT would have chosen cremation, but this was out of the question since the snow was still deepening and the roads to the towns were blocked. Burial was delayed for some days by the hardness of the ground in the little orchard behind the Meeting-house, but Thor organized, shovelled, went down to the village, and finally something was done with a road-drill and picks. The post was erratic; distant members of the family could not gather; but in the end they found themselves following the coffin through elbow-high tunnels of scooped-out snow. No one particularly wore black. Cassandra was naturally sombre. Julia wore her scarlet and white, and looked, she thought, incongruously like Father Christmas where the snow had brushed against her. Mrs Corbett’s square body was bundled into her usual square grey tweed coat. She was pinched