Norman and Letty both felt the pull of the open air, Norman to take his mind off his teeth, and Letty because she had the slightly obsessive or cranky idea that one ought to get a walk of some kind every day. So they both made their way, separately and unaware of each other, to Lincoln's Inn Fields, the nearest open space to the office.

Norman gravitated toward the girls playing netball and sat down uneasily. He could not analyse the impulse that had brough him there, an angry little man whose teeth hurt - angry at the older men who, like himself, formed the majority of the spectators round the netball pitch, angry at the semi-nudity of the long haired boys and girls lying on the grass, angry at the people sitting on seats eating sandwiches or sucking ice lollies and cornets and throwing the remains on the ground. As he watched the netball girls, leaping and cavorting in their play, the word 'lechery' came into his head and something about 'grinning like a dog', a phrase in the psalms, was it; then he thought of the way some dogs did appear to grin, their tongues lolling out. After a few minutes' watching he got up and made his way back to the office, dissatisfied with life. Only the sight of a wrecked motor car, with one side all bashed in, being towed up Kingsway by a breakdown van, gave him the kind of lift Marcia had experienced on hearing the bell of the ambulance, but then he remembered that an abandoned car had been parked outside of the house where he lived for some days, and the police or the council ought to do something about it, and that made him angry again.

in Quartet in Autumn
Barbara Pym

"Often compared to Jane Austen, Pym is a realistic miniaturist, depicting a world centered on the ecclesiastical and secular intrigues of village life, matrimonial possibilities, and unrequited love. Her novels advocate an appreciation of life's small joys, absurdities, and ironies." (daqui)

Passei meses colada à Jane Austen e ao seu pequeno mundo. Quando anos mais tarde encontrei Barbara Pym, reencontrei o minúsculo mundo de Liliput. Uma Larkin de saias, um frio londrino, uma solidão total. Num impulso de caixote de segunda mão, arrebatei a obra quase toda faz uma década.