THE PAMPAS CLUMP by L.P. Hartley

“Who can tell where it ends and you begin?”

A tale of an obsessive phobia, the nature of the eponymous clump, its feel of all ages in its striated colours, and its transparency at a distance and impenetrability when nearer, or is it vice versa in this story? Its overt softness made of razor-sharp leaves. And Thomas (who owns the house and its clump) and Fergus, his friend, entertain Julia and Hilary, the former a widow who has shed her now dead husband and thus regained her own character if still permeated with his! — and her new (Sapphic?) friend Hilary whom Thomas perhaps fancies, subject to the obsession that someone hides behind the clump, and they hold a sort of professional experiment or game that I cannot cover fully here … a bit of the Two Vaynes and the Travelling Grave, and who is it immolates himself on the clump? And because of what unrequited love? It was Fergus, though, I believe who loved himself! — and of all the many clocks in Thomas’s house, the one Fergus loves is the one that lags!
The story reveals everything and nothing, meantime. Impenetrable and transparent in one fell swoop, indeed.

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Full context here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/09/03/other-stories-by-l-p-hartley/