These Butlers Are Neither Carson Nor Hudson

At the Richardson house were overstuffed sofas so deep you could sink into them as if into a bubble bath. Credenzas. Heavy sleigh beds. Once you owned an enormous chair like this, Pearl thought, you would simply have to stay put. You would have to plant roots and make the place that held this chair your home.

A hotel might once have been a metaphor for the body, for purgatory, for any transitory site. Muffled hallways. The repeating pattern of low-pile carpet. Sconce lighting. Echoing emergency stairwells that smell vaguely familiar. The sound of doors closing. Plastic ice buckets. Theft-proof hangers without hooks. Drawers no one ever uses. Perfect. An

‘Books should be beautiful,’ Seredith said. ‘No one sees, that’s not the point. It’s a way to honour people – like grave-goods, in olden times.’

Plucking chrysanthemums along the eastern fence, gazing in silence at the southern hills, the birds fly home in pairs, through the soft mountain air of dusk. In all these things there is a deep meaning, but when we’re about to express it, we suddenly forget the words.