Yarns Without Threads 

Topaz came downstairs just then, in her black oilskins, sou'wester hat and rubber boots, looking as if she were going to man the life-boat. She said her dyed tea-gown had shrunk so much that she couldn't breathe in it and Rose could have it. Then she strode out, leaving the door wide open.

"Don't swallow the night, will you?" Thomas called after her.

...

This time I spent my basking in thinking about the family and it is a tribute to hot water that I could think about them and still bask. For surely we are a sorry lot: father mouldering in the gatehouse, Rose raging at life, Thomas-well, he is a cheerful boy but one cannot but know that he is perpetually underfed. Topaz is certainly the happiest for she still thinks it's romantic to be married to father and live in a castle; and her painting, her lute and her wild communing with nature are a great comfort to her. I would have taken a bet that she had nothing whatever on under her oilskins and that she intended to stride up the mound and then fling them off. After being an artists' model for so many years, she has no particular interest in Nudism for its own sake, but she has a passion for getting into closest contact with the elements. This once caused quite a little embarrassment with Four Stones Farm so she undertook only to go nude by night. Of course, winter is closed season for nudity, but she is wonderfully impervious to cold and I felt sure the hint of spring in the air would have fetched her. Though it was warmer, it was still far from warm, and the thought of her up on Belmotte made my bath more comfortable than ever.

Miss Marcy came after tea, to hear all about the party. She told me Mrs. Fox-Cotton's photographs are very well known; they get reproduced in magazines. She particularly remembered one of a girl hiding behind a giant shell with the shadow of a man coming towards her. "And one got the impression that he was wearing-well, nothing, which surprised me rather because one doesn't often see photographs being as artistic as paintings, does one? But there, he probably had a bathing suit on all the time-it would hardly show on a shadow, would it?"

...

I retired to the attic and went on with this journal. When I came down to the kitchen again Stephen was writing on an opened-out sugar bag. He went scarlet when he saw me and crumpled the sugar bag up. Just then Topaz came in from the garden wearing Aunt Millicent's black cloak and no stockings or shoes. I guessed she'd had one of her nude sessions.

"Thank heaven Nature never fails me," she said as she stumped upstairs. When I turned round Stephen was poking the sugar bag down into the fire.

By ten o'clock I had finished all my jobs and was wondering what to do with the morning. I strolled round the garden, watched a thrush on the lawn listening for worms and finally came to rest on the grassy bank of the moat. When I dabbled my hand in the shimmering water it was so much warmer than I expected that I decided to bathe. I swam round the castle twice, hearing the Handel "Water Music" in my head.

While I was hanging my bathing-suit out of the bedroom window, I had a sudden longing to lie in the sun with nothing on. I never felt it before-Topaz has always had a monopoly of nudity in our household-but the more I thought of it, the more I fancied it. And I had the brilliant idea of doing my sunbathing on the top of the bedroom tower, where nobody working in the fields or wandering up our lane could possibly see me. It felt most peculiar crawling naked up the cold, rough stone steps-exciting in some mysterious way I couldn't explain to myself. Coming out at the top was glorious, warmth and light fell round me like a great cape. The leads were so hot that they almost burnt the soles of my feet; I was glad I had thought of bringing up a blanket to spread.

It was beautifully private. That tower is the best-preserved of them all; the circle of battlements is complete, though there are a few deep cracks-a marigold had seeded in one of them. Once I lay down flat I couldn't even see the battlements without turning my head. There was nothing left but the sun-filled dome of the cloudless sky.

What a difference there is between wearing even the skimpiest bathing-suit and wearing nothing! After a few minutes I seemed to live in every inch of my body as fully as I usually do in my head and my hands and my heart. I had the fascinating feeling that I could think as easily with my limbs as with my brain-and suddenly the whole of me thought that Topaz's nonsense about communing with nature isn't nonsense at all. The warmth of the sun felt like enormous hands pressing gently on me, the flutter of the air was like delicate fingers. My kind of nature-worship has always had to do with magic and folklore, though sometimes it turned a bit holy. This was nothing like that. I expect it was what Topaz means by "pagan". Anyway, it was thrilling.

But my front got so terribly hot. And when I rolled over on to my stomach I found that the back of me was not so interested in communing with nature. I began to think with my brain only, in the normal way, and it felt rather shut inside itself--probably because having nothing but the roof to stare at was very dull. I started to listen to the silence-never have I known such a silent morning. No dog barked, no hen clucked; strangest of all, no birds sang. I seemed to be in a soundless globe of heat. The thought had just struck me that I might have gone deaf, when I heard a tiny bead of sound, tap, tap-I couldn't imagine what it could be. Plop, plop-I solved it: my bathing-suit dripping into the moat. Then a bee zoomed into the marigold, close to my ear-and then suddenly it was as if all the bees of the summer world were humming high in the sky. I sprang up and saw an aeroplane coming nearer and nearer-so I made for the stairs and sat there with just my head out. The plane flew quite low over the castle, and the ridiculous idea came to me that I was a mediaeval de Godys lady seeing a flying man across the centuries-and perhaps hoping he was a lover coming to win her.

After that the mediaeval lady groped her way downstairs and put on her shift.