An interesting scene, the dinner, with its internal chatter, the unspoken thoughts, the private musings of all those seated around the table, but my mind, like Lily Briscoe's, kept returning to its mental note: the rooks, the rooks. Tomorrow Lily Briscoe will move the tree to the middle of her painting, and I will write of rooks, of old Joseph in particular.
Tomorrow however would not wait. I felt myself growing as irritated as Mr Bankes, impatient to be working. My fingers drumming, drumming, drumming on the table without a tablecloth. Alone, and comfortable, with a book, yet itching to write. The day was still young, though Mary and Joseph had gone to bed. Even now had their heads under their wings.
The rook, if likened to a gentleman, a seedy old gentleman (Mrs R makes that comparison), would be awake however. A top hat on his head outside a public house, playing a horn. An old man with top hat and umbrella looking at his watch. Another with the umbrella under his arm: It looks like rain. An old man with top hat and hands crossed. With top hat holding a cup, drinking coffee, eating from a plate, and standing near a stove to keep warm. An orphan man, a full-grown orphan man. A series of old rooks; a series of sketches by van Gogh.
Where can such old gentlemen be seen? Nowhere. There are no gentleman, young or old, to be had these days, with or without top hats, with the exception perhaps of theatre or ballet but then it's an act, an act of a few hours. No gentleman anywhere to give you their arms, unless you're old or in need of steadying. Have their wings been broken; have they been shot? Jasper, many Jaspers, have done away with them. Murderous little boys turn into men. Men who won't give you their arms, if you're not in obvious need of it, and even then you might have to ask, perhaps beg. 'Gentle' is unlikely now to put in front of man, though the same could be said of woman.
Old men, disreputable old birds. There Mrs R is wrong I think. Life has been lived, it shows.
They are nearing the end of the alphabet. Their youth has been drained, their strength has been given, their peak has come and gone. They are forced to play a balletic villain, a role which requires more exaggerated acting than muscular energy. Such is life.
Can an old rook be told from an old crow?
Is it the eyes, is it the nose? The shuffling gait, how he holds (and folds) the umbrella, or warms his feet by the fire? I do not know what makes rooks rooks and crows crows.
I only know old Joseph was a rook with half his wing feathers missing. Many men reach that sorry state. Pecked at. Worn down. Worn out. Old Joseph, in this case, (I speculate) does not rule the roost.
Mrs Ramsay does not see what she thinks she sees from her bedroom window, where in the glass she is looking at her neck and shoulders (but not her face) as Jasper and Rose select what jewels she should wear that evening. Which would go best with her black dress? Which might impress fifteen people? Choose dears, choose. As outside in the darkening light Mary, not Joseph, is scolding. Settle, alight, swirl, hover. Descend to rest in the topmost branches of a tree, side by side, or each perhaps in a different tree, to exchange a sharp word or two, then vexed (both with each other), flap wings and rise. Mary never satisfied with Joseph's choice, he with hers. Yet it's always Mary's tree they settle in, because (as I see it) from long habit Joseph gives in. Anything for a quiet night.
Since by day old Joseph needs to guard against little boys who want to break their wings and shoot them from their perches.
Picture credit: Old Man with a Top Hat, 1882, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt).
See: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
Written in lock-down, May 2020.
