Making It Up, Penelope Fitzgerald

From "The Mozambique Channel"

"She'd never had a conversation like this before. Not with a man. Part of her was embarrassed; another party was excited, all keyed up. It was as though she'd stepped aside from her ordinary, everyday self and become someone else.

[...]

And then he did this thing. He put his hand over hers. He wrapped it round hers, so that she felt the warm size of it, and her own fist curled beneath. The warmth seemed to rush through her whole body; she'd never felt anything like this, she didn't know what it was that she was feeling. It was as though she had discovered another sense, one of which she had known nothing."

From "The Battle of the Imjin River"

"He was twenty-one. He was interested in social justice, the music of Mahler, Newcastle United, girls, books, and argument. He had been reading his way through the Newcastle Central Library since he was fourteen. He played rugby, cricked, and the violin. He was a member of the Labour Party, the Youth Hostel Association, and the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society.

He owned a bicycle, a violin, a gramophone, three Beethoven symphonies and two of Mahler's, the Concise Oxford Dictionary, the complete works of Evelyn Waugh and eighty-nine other books, a compass, a map of the Lake District, and not much else."

From "Comet"

'The thing is that she is disappearing. Penelope. I have to struggle to remember her. I can see her face, hold it for a moment, and then it dissolves. Other times, I can't see her at all. But I have all these snatched scenes in which she features. I am there, she is there, Egypt is there loud and clear. And occasionally, I hear something else she said. The way words hang in the head for ever.

[...]

'But the other thing is--what I remember best is how it felt, back then. How I felt. Those moments of euphoria. They don't come so thick and fast, fifty years on. But they leave an aftertaste, believe me. You sail into the horizon, when you're young--you're unstoppable, and it's always going to be that way.

'And I was in love. Well, we've all been there--most of us, anyway. Well-trodden ground. But that doesn't make it any less--unique. Does it?'