“How Soon Can I Leave?” by Susan Hill
Number 27 of 27 Great British Short Stories
Premise: A woman wakes up to what she has(n’t) done. Sort of.
Review: Nicely done, ineffably sad. What else is there to say?
Outa ten: 9
Keywords: mothers, motherhood, time and tide
Quotes:
“As a girl, she had looked out at the world, and seen a signpost, with arms pointing in numerous different directions, roads leading here, or here, or there. She had been quite unable to choose which road to take for, having once set out upon any of them, she would thereby be denying herself all the others. And what might I lose, she had thought, what opportunities shall I miss if I make the wrong choice?” p.360
“Perhaps it was her forty-seventh birthday that jolted her into a renewed awareness of her situation. She looked into the mirror on that morning, and saw middle-age settled irrevocably over her features. She was reminded of her dependence upon Miss Roscommon.” P.362
“But when they had gone she stood in the darkening shop and saw that they had already placed ad dismissed her, that she did not belong with them and there was no hope left. She sat on the stool beside the till and wept, for the injustice of the world and the weakness of her own nature. I have become what I always dreaded becoming, she said, everything has slipped through my fingers. p.365
“For she had forgotten, in the cold, clear morning, the terrors of the previous night.” p.368
Words:
Marquetry – Marquetry (also spelled as marqueterie; from the French marqueter, to variegate) is the art and craft of applying pieces of veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns or designs. The technique may be applied to case furniture or even seat furniture, to decorative small objects with smooth, veneerable surfaces or to freestanding pictorial panels appreciated in their own right.
Look up: xx
Afterlives of the story/connections to other stuff:
That line in Julius Caesar about a time in the course of human events
Is it online?
marchudson.net 
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