The surname of the image-boy-man was part of the title of the book mentioned earlier, and the boy who had read the book several times always considered the image-boy-man the chief character of the book. Sixty and more years after he had last read the book, and when he better understood the workings of books of fiction, the man who had been the boy-reader understood that the chief character of the book was he who was denoted by the second word of the title. This character was an image-boy no older than the boy-reader himself had been while he was reading. The narrator of the book reported many of the images that appeared in the mind of this image-boy and many of his image-feelings but nothing of what took place in the mind of the image-boy-man who employed the chief character as his fag.
The chief character was reported as first disliking and fearing his employer but later admiring him — disliking him because the boy-men, his employer’s classmates, all disliked him and shunned him; fearing him because he spoke always sternly to the chief character; admiring him because he seemed not to care that his classmates disliked him and shunned him and because he went on reading or writing in his study every evening in such a way that he, the chief character, could never suppose what his employer might have seen in his mind, much less what he might have felt; admiring him also because he trained during many an afternoon for a certain long-distance race conducted by the school and later came from far back in the field and won the race.
The boy in the classroom mentioned earlier seldom recalled any character from any book. In the books that he read were too many so-called adventures. The characters in those books took part in one after another so-called adventure whereas the boy wanted to read about male and female characters falling in love with one another. The boy himself often fell in love — mostly with girls of his own age but often with young women and sometimes with young men. A few months before he had begun to read for the third or the fourth time about the image-boy-man whose surname was part of the title of a book of fiction, the boy had fallen in love with the girl in whose mind, so he supposed a few months later, was an image of a marble statue. Sometimes the boy wished that he could write books instead of merely reading them. The girl-characters or the young-women-characters in his books would understand why the boy-characters had fallen in love with them, but the boy could never have found the words for writing about such a matter. Nor could he have found the words for writing about boy-characters or young-men-characters who were able to prevent other persons from knowing what images they, the characters, saw in their minds or what feelings those images gave rise to, although he sometimes wished to write about those matters also.
The boy reading in the classroom wanted to conceal his thoughts and feelings from the girl who was looking into the volume mentioned earlier. A few days before, the boy had given the girl to understand that he had fallen in love with her, but he was still waiting to learn what this had caused the girl to think or to feel.
When the boy had taken from one of the shelves in the classroom the book about the fictional character whose fictional feelings remained unknown, the girl had taken from another shelf a certain volume of an encyclopedia. The older children knew that the volume contained illustrations of statues of naked men and women. The boy himself sometimes looked at the image-breasts of the image-women and at the smooth image-places between their image-thighs. The boy could not recall the girl’s having previously looked into the volume, but while he was reading that a fictional boy-man sat reading or writing in his fictional study he suspected that the girl was looking at the image-details between the image-thighs of the naked image-men.
Two patches of dried gum lay on a mostly white page. The patches had formerly held in place a coloured reproduction of a painting. The title of the painting and several other details were still printed at the foot of the page. The man remembering these details could not recall the title of the painting but he recalled that its subject was a group of naked women beside a pool in a large room with a tiled floor and marble columns. The man could not recall any detail of any of the images of the women, but he recalled that he had stared at detail after detail on many an afternoon from his eleventh to his fifteenth year.
On each of the afternoons mentioned, the boy had found the reproduction mentioned in a book containing numerous reproductions of paintings but only one in which were images of naked women. He had then looked at the images of the women for as long as he had dared before he replaced the book and then reached for the book of fiction that he was presently reading during each afternoon. This book was one or another work by a famous author of fiction who had been born in England one hundred and twenty-seven years before the boy had been born. The boy had first been recommended to read these works of fiction by an aunt who was one of his father’s unmarried sisters and after he had boasted to her that he, the boy, was capable of reading the books that adults read. His aunt had told him that the famous author had not belonged to their church but that his books of fiction would be safe to read. She had then given the boy permission to take down one or another of those books from the tall glass-fronted bookcase in the parlour of the house where she lived with her two unmarried sisters and their unmarried brother.
The house mentioned was a farmhouse surrounded by mostly level grassy countryside. The view of countryside ended in one direction in a distant line of trees and in another direction in a line of cliffs overlooking an ocean. During each of the years mentioned earlier, the boy had spent several weeks of his summer holidays in the house. During each of those weeks, he had read often from one or another book of fiction by the famous author mentioned and had looked often at the reproduction of the painting mentioned earlier until the day during the summer holidays of his fifteenth year when he had found, on the page where the reproduction had previously lain, only the two patches of dried gum mentioned earlier.
Thirty and more years after he had found the two patches mentioned, the man who had been the boy mentioned was standing on one of the cliffs mentioned and was trying to remember what he had read about in the many books of fiction by the famous author mentioned, none of which books he had read since the summer holidays of his fifteenth year. The man had brought his wife and their two children to the cliffs during their summer holidays. While the man was standing on the cliff, his wife and their children were scrambling down a steep path into a bay or cove where waves broke against a strip of sand at the foot of the cliff. Before the man had turned to look across the grassy countryside towards the nearest farmhouse and to try to remember what he had read about in the parlour of that house more than thirty years before, he had been pleased to hear his wife and their children calling to one another and laughing on the steep path. During the previous year, his wife had been often ill and had spent several periods in one or another hospital.
While the man looked towards the nearest farmhouse, there appeared in his mind an image of a sailing ship lying on a reef within sight of cliffs. Tall waves were breaking against the ship, and the wind had torn the sails from the masts. Groups of people were huddled on the deck of the ship. Other people were trying to launch lifeboats. Noticeable among these people was a man who was taller and more enterprising than his fellows and who helped to launch several lifeboats and to guide people into the boats.
The man standing on the cliff took an interest in the few details that he seemed to remember from books that he had read. He had been trying for some years to complete the final draft of a long work of fiction, although he had excused himself from writing during the previous year on account of his wife’s illness. While he stood on the cliff, he seemed about to learn something that would be of much use to him as a writer of fiction but he was not observant enough to notice such a detail in his mind as that the image of the wrecked sailing ship in his mind was not an image of any sort of nineteenth-century vessel. Not until twenty years later would the man notice that the details of the imageship were those of a line drawing of a Portuguese caravel from the fifteenth century. The man knew hardly anything about any sort of ocean-going vessel, but in his twelfth year he had copied into a school exercise book as part of a so-called project a line drawing of a caravel. As part of the same so-called project, he had searched several pages in his atlas for places bearing names that seemed to be Portuguese. One such place that he found was the island named Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic Ocean, which island his teacher had not previously known about and which she supposed at first to be a fictional island in some or another book of fiction that the boy had read.