In the story ‘At the Bay’, Katherine Mansfield continues her observations of the Burnell family, and also their cousins, friends, servants, all in a single perfect summer’s day. So much is captured in the colours and glimpses of life by the sea, the new people they meet, the conversations that conceal dangers beneath their sunlit surface. Even the most placid conversations and languid friendly encounters hold a power to corrupt the idyll.
“That’s right, breathed the voice, and it teased, You’re not frightened, are you?… She was terrified, and it seemed to her everything was different. The moonlight stared and glittered; the shadows were like bars of iron. Her hand was taken.”
First published in The London Mercury in January 1922, Collected in The Garden Party and Other Stories, 1922. Available to read online here
A Personal Anthology 