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igenlodeRight, I've finished Chapter probably-the-14th-and-last (unless I lost count somewhere or other along the way) of "An Outsider and a Foreigner", on Hertha's forlorn sentiment that she can't possibly tell Raoul how she feels about him. I hope her motivations for this are sufficiently clear; I'm not at all sure that they are. But I couldn't seem to fit the extra explanation in to the prose for the ending (I had enough difficulty steering a way to the ending at all), which means that it's only covered in her dialogue with Christine several pages earlier on, and in a couple of fragmentary sentences at that: "And hurt us both all the more? I don't want his pity. [...] He has the right to be left in peace -- by both of us."
No, I'm really not sure that's enough :-(
I mean, it seems to me painfully obvious that a one-sided confession, especially under these circumstances, is just going to make things exquisitely uncomfortable for both of them and imperil the relationship that they do have -- speaking from bitter experience -- but Hertha doesn't explicitly address that anywhere...
I'm also very much in two minds about whether I'm actually going to write the planned epilogue at this point. As things have turned out, I've sort-of wrapped up the Graupmann family plotline in the last couple of chapters and sort-of-adequately wrapped up the baby plotline in the course of this one, at least to a degree where it wouldn't be absolutely weird to leave it at this point (simply by tying in "At midsummer there would be a child" as part of the "we would go on as good companions" train of thought, and tying it back to Hertha's pre-marital, pre-engagement speculations about the role of men as incidental to the important business of having children).
I don't have any very clear plans in mind, other than the general idea of having the baby be a boy and naming it after Rudi. On the other hand my new pen filler has just arrived, and it would be a bit ironic for me not to have any use for it :-p
I need to remember that I never did sort out the Beauvais issues one way or the other.
I've almost completed the sides-to-middle operation on the sheet -- I thought I had, but annoyingly I discovered some more holes near the top edge. They are small rips in otherwise sound fabric, dating back to the era of the rats and caused by climbing up the corner of the bed, and I never bothered with them while they were near the hem of the sheet and always securely tucked in. But turning the worn centre to the outside has unfortunately turned out to result in bringing all those little crescent-shaped tears to the centre of the 'new' sheet, and in a prime location for me to catch a big toe in them and rip the whole thing to shreds :-(
So each one needs a flat darn, taking up to an hour each. Which is what I've been doing since finishing the hemming and the centre seam -- mainly while watching TV programmes in a desultory way (e.g. Phileas Fogg), as you really can't darn without close examination of the fabric.
I was quite pleased by the way that the very worn fabric went through the Edwardian hemmer attachment; I was rather doubtful whether it would have enough body to 'roll' properly at all. Hemming sheets etc. is of course exactly what those attachments were intended for, since they can't be used close to the end of the cloth and take a fair few inches to get going properly -- they're meant for creating a straight even hem along yards and yards and yards of plain fabric rather than for finishing off tailored garments.
And those sheets really did seem to go on for ever. I think I may have been using too short a stitch length, but since the machine doesn't have a marked adjuster and I can't remember whether you move the lever up or down to increase the length(!), I'm always reluctant to fiddle with it when not absolutely necessary :-p At any rate, I wound a full bobbin before starting the first seam, and it ran out three-quarters of the way through the last one. It might just have been sufficient if I hadn't had to redo the second set of hemming; the first one went so unexpectedly well that I was a lot less cautious about going dead slow on the second, and as a result it took rather too much fabric into the foot and started rolling in the middle and leaving a frayed edge sticking out, instead of rolling the edge!
No, I'm really not sure that's enough :-(
I mean, it seems to me painfully obvious that a one-sided confession, especially under these circumstances, is just going to make things exquisitely uncomfortable for both of them and imperil the relationship that they do have -- speaking from bitter experience -- but Hertha doesn't explicitly address that anywhere...
I'm also very much in two minds about whether I'm actually going to write the planned epilogue at this point. As things have turned out, I've sort-of wrapped up the Graupmann family plotline in the last couple of chapters and sort-of-adequately wrapped up the baby plotline in the course of this one, at least to a degree where it wouldn't be absolutely weird to leave it at this point (simply by tying in "At midsummer there would be a child" as part of the "we would go on as good companions" train of thought, and tying it back to Hertha's pre-marital, pre-engagement speculations about the role of men as incidental to the important business of having children).
I don't have any very clear plans in mind, other than the general idea of having the baby be a boy and naming it after Rudi. On the other hand my new pen filler has just arrived, and it would be a bit ironic for me not to have any use for it :-p
I need to remember that I never did sort out the Beauvais issues one way or the other.
I've almost completed the sides-to-middle operation on the sheet -- I thought I had, but annoyingly I discovered some more holes near the top edge. They are small rips in otherwise sound fabric, dating back to the era of the rats and caused by climbing up the corner of the bed, and I never bothered with them while they were near the hem of the sheet and always securely tucked in. But turning the worn centre to the outside has unfortunately turned out to result in bringing all those little crescent-shaped tears to the centre of the 'new' sheet, and in a prime location for me to catch a big toe in them and rip the whole thing to shreds :-(
So each one needs a flat darn, taking up to an hour each. Which is what I've been doing since finishing the hemming and the centre seam -- mainly while watching TV programmes in a desultory way (e.g. Phileas Fogg), as you really can't darn without close examination of the fabric.
I was quite pleased by the way that the very worn fabric went through the Edwardian hemmer attachment; I was rather doubtful whether it would have enough body to 'roll' properly at all. Hemming sheets etc. is of course exactly what those attachments were intended for, since they can't be used close to the end of the cloth and take a fair few inches to get going properly -- they're meant for creating a straight even hem along yards and yards and yards of plain fabric rather than for finishing off tailored garments.
And those sheets really did seem to go on for ever. I think I may have been using too short a stitch length, but since the machine doesn't have a marked adjuster and I can't remember whether you move the lever up or down to increase the length(!), I'm always reluctant to fiddle with it when not absolutely necessary :-p At any rate, I wound a full bobbin before starting the first seam, and it ran out three-quarters of the way through the last one. It might just have been sufficient if I hadn't had to redo the second set of hemming; the first one went so unexpectedly well that I was a lot less cautious about going dead slow on the second, and as a result it took rather too much fabric into the foot and started rolling in the middle and leaving a frayed edge sticking out, instead of rolling the edge!
