The Dhow House

Grace Macaulay – in whose veins ran Essex rivers and Bible ink; in whose philosophy the devils of hell and the saints of Bethesda did battle with her reason and her nature – sat with her phone on the bare floor of a Hackney room and thought of Thomas Hart. Come home, he’d written, you wretched child, and I am wretched, she thought, and I think I’d

he wasn’t yet able to see Josie separately from the other humans, some of whom had angered him very much on account of their Pollution and inconsideration, and

Then he does mention home – he mentions his daughter, he implies a wife, and never names either – and this brings a grieving splitting sensation: there’s a whole life there she cannot see and will never occupy – a series of loves and languages all incomprehensible to her, she is absolutely peripheral, bolted-on, and the bolts are coming loose.