Behind the Scenes at the Museum

In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.

I have been to the world's end and back and now I know what I would put in my bottom drawer. I would put my sisters.

Patricia embraces me on the station platform. 'The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby,' she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. 'Nonsense, Patricia,' I tell her as I climb on board my train. 'The past's what you take with you.

Sometimes I would like to cry. I close my eyes. Why weren't we designed so that we can close our ears as well? (Perhaps because we would never open them.) Is there some way that I could accelerate my evolution and develop earlids?

Get down,' Bunty says grimly. 'Mummy's thinking.' (Although what Mummy's actually doing is wondering what it would be like if her entire family was wiped out and she could start again.)

The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.

As I watch, the sky fills with clouds of snow feathers from every kind of bird there ever was and even some that only exist in the imagination, like the bluebirds that fly over the rainbow.

Slattern! What a wonderful new word. 'Slattern,' I murmur appreciatively to Patricia. 'Yes, slattern,' Bunty says firmly. 'That's what she is.' 'Not a slut like you then?' Patricia says very quietly. Loud enough to be heard, but too quiet to be believed.

shop-bought cakes are a sign of sluttish housewifery.

But I know nothing; my future is a wide-open vista, leading to an unknown country - The Rest Of My Life.

words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.

When Lillian left work in the early evening the streets were slick and shiny with rain and the lamps flared yellow giving her the melancholy feeling that always came with the rain and the dark. She’d just struggled to push up her umbrella when the farmer from Saskatchewan came out of the shadows and tipped his hat again, very politely, and said could he escort her home? She put her small hand on his broad arm and held the umbrella over both their heads (he was very tall) and he walked her all the way back to her lodging-house where the landlady, Mrs Raicevic, looked after Edmund after school. By then, Lillian had learned the farmer’s name and she said, ‘Edmund, this is Mr Donner,’ and Pete Donner squatted right down and said, ‘Hello there, Edmund, you can call me Pete.’ Although he never did, preferring to call him ‘Pop’ almost from the day his mother married him.

The past is what you take with you.

I am a jewel. I am a drop of blood. I am Ruby Lennox!

They have no sense of humour whatsoever – even Bunty has a sense of humour compared with our hosts. They have united Prussian gloom and Presbyterian dourness in an awesome combination.

There’s too much history in York, the past is so crowded that sometimes it feels as if there’s no room for the living.

who is to say which of these is real and which a fiction? In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.

feeling that always came with the rain and the dark. She’d just