Flight written by Doris Lessing and Chemistry by Granham Swift. The writing style and the authors intention are similar in both stories.

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Flight by Doris Lessing Above the old man's head was the dovecote, a tall wire-netted shelf on stilts, full of strutting, preening birds. The sunlight broke on their grey breasts into small rainbows. His ears were lulled by their crooning, his hands stretched up towards the favourite, a homing pigeon, a young plump-bodied bird which stood still when it saw him and cocked a shrewd bright eye.'Pretty, pretty, pretty,' he said, as he grasped the bird and drew it down, feeling the cold coral claws tighten around his finger. Content, he rested the bird lightly on his chest, and leaned against a tree, gazing out beyond the dovecote into the landscape of a late afternoon. In folds and hollows of sunlight and shade, the dark red soil, which was broken into great dusty clods, stretched wide to a tall horizon. Trees marked the course of the valley; a stream of rich green grass the road.His eyes travelled homewards along this road until he saw his granddaughter swinging on the gate underneath a frangipani tree. Her hair fell down her back in a wave of sunlight, and her long bare legs repeated the angles of the frangipani stems, bare, shining-brown stems among patterns of pale blossoms.She was gazing past the pink flowers, past the railway cottage where they lived, along the road to the village.His mood shifted. He deliberately held out his wrist for the bird to take flight, and caught it again at the moment it spread its wings. He felt the plump shape strive and strain under his fingers; and, in a sudden access of troubled spite, shut the bird into a small box and fastened the bolt. 'Now you stay there,' he muttered; and turned his back on the shelf of birds. He moved warily along the hedge, stalking his granddaughter, who was now looped over the gate, her head loose on her arms, singing. The light happy sound mingled with the crooning of the birds, and his anger mounted.`Hey!' he shouted; saw her jump, look back, and abandon the gate. Her eyes veiled themselves, and she said in a pert neutral voice: 'Hullo, Grandad.' Politely she moved towards him, after a lingering backward glance at the road.'Waiting for Steven, hey?' he said, his fingers curling like claws into his palm. Any objection?' she asked lightly, refusing to look at him.He confronted her, his eyes narrowed, shoulders hunched, tight in a hard knot of pain which included the preening birds, the sunlight, the flowers. He said: `Think you're old enough to go courting, hey?'The girl tossed her head at the old-fashioned phrase and sulked, 'Oh, Grandad!''Think you want to leave home, hey? Think you can go running around the fields at night?'Her smile made him see her, as he had every evening of this warm end-of-summer month, swinging hand in hand along the road to the village with that red-handed, redthroated, violent-bodied youth, the son of the postmaster. Misery went to his head and he shouted angrily: 'I'll tell your mother!''Tell away!' she said, laughing, and went back to the gate. He heard her singing, for him to hear:'I've got you under my skin,I've got you deep in the heart of ...''Rubbish,' he shouted. 'Rubbish. Impudent little bit of rubbish!'Growling under his breath
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he turned towards the dovecote, which was his refuge from the house he shared with his daughter and her husband and their children. But now the house would be empty Gone all the young girls with their laughter and their squabbling and their teasing. He would be left, uncherished and alone, with that square-fronted, calm-eyed woman, his daughter.He stopped, muttering, before the dovecote, resenting the absorbed cooing birds. From the gate the girl shouted: 'Go and tell! Go on, what are you waiting for?'Obstinately he made his way to the house, with quick, pathetic persistent glances of appeal back at ...

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