Sentence view
Universal Dependencies - English - LinES
Language | English |
---|---|
Project | LinES |
Corpus Part | test |
Annotation | Ahrenberg, Lars |
showing 1 - 100 of 121 • next
[1]
tree
s-1
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5123
We lived in a big light spacious well-windowed generous house, designed by Lutyens.
[2]
tree
s-2
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5124
My father had bought it for my mother in a grand gesture of love and pride.
[3]
tree
s-3
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5125
Not for her a poky terrace with a dog kennel and an outside toilet.
[4]
tree
s-4
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5126
The garden shrubbed and green had a noose of trees all round it and in the centre of the rolled lawn was a Victorian sun-dial of granite and slate.
[5]
tree
s-5
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5127
At the bottom of the dial was the hooded figure of Time scything the hours, but at the top, over the position of the twelve was an angel with a trumpet bearing the inscription 'Aliquem alium internum'.
[6]
tree
s-6
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5128
I did not know what this meant and when I was able to translate it I did not understand it.
[7]
tree
s-7
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5129
Later it came to mean a great deal to me but that is not yet.
[8]
tree
s-8
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5130
His own family were Liverpool limeys; had always worked the docks, the boats, in the Navy or as Merchant seamen.
[9]
tree
s-9
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5131
The women had worked in the clutter of cargo offices up and down the quays.
[10]
tree
s-10
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5132
His mother, my grandmother, had been the Official Polisher of Brass Plaques and some said that when she had finished her Friday round the shine of it was so bright that it tipped the waves like a skimming stone and could still be seen in the harbour of New York.
[11]
tree
s-11
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5133
'The other way round.'
[12]
tree
s-12
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5134
He had been made a Director of the Line.
[13]
tree
s-13
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5135
Yes. No. The clock ticking and the smell of buttered kippers.
[14]
tree
s-14
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5136
The young man out of his mother's body and wearing his father's clothes.
[15]
tree
s-15
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5137
Be someone. Be someone.
[16]
tree
s-16
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5138
Redeem history.
[17]
tree
s-17
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5139
Make our lives not an endless sacrifice but a gathering of energy, the strength to jump, but we fall, until you who leap and do not fall.
[18]
tree
s-18
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5140
Then we see what we were for, the single stuttered words gain the momentum of narrative.
[19]
tree
s-19
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5141
This is the story of a humble family who became a name.
[20]
tree
s-20
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5142
My son David whose father grandfather and great-grandfather unto the sixth generation worked the docks.
[21]
tree
s-21
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5143
My son David, rich, respected, powerful, a man.
[22]
tree
s-22
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5144
My son David whose eyes have the shine of them.
[23]
tree
s-23
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5145
My son David pulling history home.
[24]
tree
s-24
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5146
When she was eleven, Papa died.
[25]
tree
s-25
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5147
Within three months Mother in a little black suit, child in black warm coat, took ship to Hamburg and re-settled in Berlin.
[26]
tree
s-26
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5148
The books and the bookshop had been sold and the secret room was empty.
[27]
tree
s-27
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5149
My grandmother was singing a hymn, essentially praising God but effectively preventing my father from hearing what was happening.
[28]
tree
s-28
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5150
It was a quick birth and when I was laid on my mother's breast, my grandmother ate a sandwich and went to tell my father that he had the pleasure of a daughter.
[29]
tree
s-29
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5151
It was what Jove had said a few months ago when he had been holding my wrist, too tightly, across a restaurant table.
[30]
tree
s-30
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5152
She was still holding my hand and what I did was outside of anything I had imagined I would do.
[31]
tree
s-31
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5153
I leaned across the narrow table and kissed her.
[32]
tree
s-32
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5154
My head was engaged and I was pushing out of my mother's chthonic underworld into my father's world of difficulty and dream.
[33]
tree
s-33
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5155
I never expected to go back down again.
[34]
tree
s-34
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5156
When she ate her scones she left a snail-trail of soot along her upper lip.
[35]
tree
s-35
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5157
Her neighbour called her 'Blackmouth'.
[36]
tree
s-36
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5158
My grandmother called her neighbour 'Stinkpad' but otherwise they were friendly, exchanging handkerchiefs and soap at Christmas.
[37]
tree
s-37
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5159
Cowardice bedshares with arrogance.
[38]
tree
s-38
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5160
I was afraid and I wanted to bluff my way out.
[39]
tree
s-39
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5161
The kiss was a smoke bomb to cause confusion and distract attention.
[40]
tree
s-40
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5162
I thought she might slap me.
[41]
tree
s-41
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5163
I thought she would rush away.
[42]
tree
s-42
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5164
In fact she did nothing.
[43]
tree
s-43
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5165
Asked her question and did nothing.
[44]
tree
s-44
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5166
I started to re-eat my cold pasta.
[45]
tree
s-45
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5167
I would have been glad to climb into the plate and cover myself in clam sauce.
[46]
tree
s-46
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5168
I was at the age of making lists but the lists I made were correspondences, half true and altogether fanciful, of the earth the sea and the sky.
[47]
tree
s-47
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5169
Perhaps I was trying to hold together my own world that was in so much danger of falling away.
[48]
tree
s-48
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5170
Perhaps I wanted order where there was none.
[49]
tree
s-49
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5171
As the QE2 floated so confidently on the waters I thought of the Titanic, ghostly and abandoned beneath, and somewhere above, in the secretive blackness, the Ship of Fools navigating the stars.
[50]
tree
s-50
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5172
Was it the comet?
[51]
tree
s-51
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5173
Accordingly, my father put on his Jolly Jack Tars and my mother wrapped herself up in her mink coat.
[52]
tree
s-52
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5174
In those days their car was a three-litre Rover, really, a leather three-piece suite and cocktail cabinet on wheels.
[53]
tree
s-53
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5175
My father purred down to the docks looking like a criminal, while my mother fixed herself a strictly forbidden gin and tonic in the back.
[54]
tree
s-54
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5176
Page of Cups.
[55]
tree
s-55
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5177
Young hopeful of the Tarot deck.
[56]
tree
s-56
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5178
My identity card.
[57]
tree
s-57
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5179
When Stella kissed me I remember thinking, 'This is not allowed.'
[58]
tree
s-58
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5180
I was glad of the fog and the dark because I knew that if anyone saw us, the totality of our lives; history, complexity, nationality, intelligence, age, achievement, status, would be shrunk up to the assumptions of our kiss.
[59]
tree
s-59
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5181
Whoever saw us would say, 'There's a couple of ...', and this kiss, tentative, ambivalent, would become a lock and key.
[60]
tree
s-60
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5182
'David,' she said.
[61]
tree
s-61
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5183
She was wearing a black oilskin that had been her husband's.
[62]
tree
s-62
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5184
It hung on her from head to foot, so much so that she seemed less to be wearing a rainproof than to be in the grip of a monster from the Deep.
[63]
tree
s-63
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5185
She and I would be approaching the place from opposite ends of town.
[64]
tree
s-64
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5186
I imagined her, angry, confident, ready to match me and beat me at my own game.
[65]
tree
s-65
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5187
This was the big fight and Jove the prize.
[66]
tree
s-66
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5188
When I told him she had written to me he had decided to visit friends for the weekend.
[67]
tree
s-67
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5189
At the same time I realised that I would like to do much more kissing if it were not so complicated.
[68]
tree
s-68
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5190
So complicated.
[69]
tree
s-69
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5191
My first serious emotion was for a married man.
[70]
tree
s-70
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5192
My first experience of authentic desire was with a married woman.
[71]
tree
s-71
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5193
You see, I did want to kiss her.
[72]
tree
s-72
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5194
That was what surprised me most of all.
[73]
tree
s-73
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5195
As he gossiped and lounged the noise of the Remington stopped.
[74]
tree
s-74
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5196
His secretary came out from the low line of offices that huddled to the waterfront.
[75]
tree
s-75
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5197
There was an urgent call for him.
[76]
tree
s-76
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5198
Would he step inside at once?
[77]
tree
s-77
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5199
My father loved the sea and should have been an active seaman but there were more opportunities indoors for a bright boy who had a way about him.
[78]
tree
s-78
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5200
He compensated by wheedling his way onto the tugs, and because there was still an apprenticeship mentality about the Company, his oddity was tolerated.
[79]
tree
s-79
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5201
What harm could it do and wasn't all experience useful?
[80]
tree
s-80
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5202
Besides, he did it in his own time and it made him popular with the men.
[81]
tree
s-81
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5203
Meanwhile, in a maze of soggy sheets and copies of Woman's Weekly, my father speared my mother on his manhood.
[82]
tree
s-82
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5204
It was a shining morning, he was leaning on the harbourside rail, watching the cranes load the ships.
[83]
tree
s-83
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5205
The world poured through his fingers; spices, wine, tea, green bananas, coconuts, American golf clubs, blankets made of wool with satin hemmed round the edges.
[84]
tree
s-84
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5206
Today they were loading nylon stockings, Monroe look-alikes stamped all over the cardboard boxes.
[85]
tree
s-85
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5207
'I came here to meet ...'
[86]
tree
s-86
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5208
He had risen in the world and now he was going to prove it.
[87]
tree
s-87
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5209
On board my grandmother unpacked her carpet bag.
[88]
tree
s-88
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5210
She set out a pile of clean rags, the ones she used for polishing the brass plaques, a bottle of cooking brandy, a bottle of iodine, a primus stove, a cylinder of water, a kitchen knife, a packet of sandwiches, a little blanket from the dog's box, her spectacles and the Bible, now open towards the end of the Psalms.
[89]
tree
s-89
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5211
This done, she took off her oilskin and pegged it over the hatch.
[90]
tree
s-90
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5212
I had her letter in my pocket.
[91]
tree
s-91
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5213
The careful handwriting.
[92]
tree
s-92
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5214
The instruction to obey.
[93]
tree
s-93
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5215
'I will meet you on Wednesday the 12th at 6:30 p.m. in the bar at the Algonquin Hotel.'
[94]
tree
s-94
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5216
He knew the gangmen and the loaders and the truck drivers and the harbour pilots, and as he leaned on his rail, watching, sometimes waving, other men joined him, lit a cigarette, told him the news and with a slap on the back, moved on.
[95]
tree
s-95
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5217
The easy fraternity of working men was comfortable to him.
[96]
tree
s-96
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5218
No one here asked him what school he had attended.
[97]
tree
s-97
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5219
'Is something wrong?' said my father.
[98]
tree
s-98
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5220
My father used to tell me I had an octopus-complex.
[99]
tree
s-99
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5221
'Must you try and do eight things at once?'
[100]
tree
s-100
en_lines-ud-test-doc8-5222
I used to imagine that there was an octopus, hooded, ancient, floating in the limp waters of my body, reaching out, dark and blind, using the tentacles to probe what stood outside it.