Memory of the round white town in the round pit of the valley, shining, smoking through the thick air and the white orchard blossoms; memory saturated by a smell that is like no other smell on earth, the delicate smell of the Midland limestone country, the smell of clean white dust, and of grass drying in the sun and of mustard flowers.

Michael was in Cheltenham.

It was a matter of many unhappinesses, not one unhappiness.  A sudden intolerable unhappiness, the flash and stab of the beauty of the almond-flowers, seen in passing and never seized, beauty which it would have been better for him if he had not seen; the knowledge, which he ought never to have had, that this beauty had to die, was killed because he had not seized it, when, if he could but have held it for one minute, it would have been immortal.  A vague, light unhappiness that came sometimes, could not for the life of him think why, from the sight of his own body stripped, and from the feeling of his own muscles.  There was sadness for him in his very strength.  A long, aching unhappiness that came with his memory of the open country over the tops of the hills, which, in their incredible stupidity and cruelty, they had let him see.  A quick, lacerating unhappiness when he thought of his mother, and of the garden on the Heath, and the high ridge of the Spaniards’ Road, and London below it, immense and beautiful.

The unhappiness of never being by himself.

He was afraid of the herd.  It was with him night and day.  He was afraid of the thoughts, the emotions that seized it, swaying, moving the multitude of undeveloped souls as if they had been one monstrous, dominating soul.  He was afraid of their voices, when they chanted, sang and shouted together.  He loathed their slang even when he used it.  He disliked the collective, male odour of the herd, the brushing against him of bodies inflamed with running, the steam of their speed rising through their hot sweaters; and the smell of dust and ink and india-rubber and resinous wood in the warm class-rooms.

Michael was at school.

The thing he had dreaded, that had hung over him, threatening him for years before it happened, had happened.  Nothing could have prevented it; their names had been down for Cheltenham long ago; first his, then Nicky’s.  Cheltenham, because Bartie and Vera lived there, and because it had a college for girls, and Dorothy, who wanted to go to Roedean, had been sent to Cheltenham, because of Bartie and Vera and for no other reason.  First Dorothy; then, he, Michael; then, the next term, Nicky.  And Nicky had been sent (a whole year before his time) because of Michael, in the hope that Michael would settle down better if he had his brother with him.  It didn’t seem reasonable.

Not that either Dorothy or Nicky minded when they got there.  All that Nicky minded was not being at Hampstead.  Being at Cheltenham he did not mind at all.  He rather liked it, since Major Cameron had come to stay just outside it—­on purpose to annoy Bartie—­and took them out riding.  Even Michael did not mind Cheltenham more than any other place his people might have chosen.  He was not unreasonable.  All he asked was to be let alone, and to have room to breathe and get ahead in.  As it was, he had either to go with the school mass, or waste energy in resisting its poisonous impact.