If that blue could stay for ever

“If that blue could stay for ever” is the recurring phrase that gives Finch’s message to Violet its longing for permanence and makes her reply, “Stay,” both intimate and painfully insufficient. Drawn from a passage in The Waves, the words return as Violet drives to find him, binding a remembered moment of brightness to the scene in which she sees Little Bastard on the roadside.

The passage in Finch’s message

After learning that Finch has sent an email to his family, Violet logs onto Facebook and finds a new message. Its words are drawn from The Waves: “If that blue could stay for ever; if that hole could remain for ever; if this moment could stay for ever.… I feel myself shining in the dark.… I am arrayed. I am prepared. This is the momentary pause; the dark moment. The fiddlers have lifted their bows.… This is my calling. This is my world. All is decided and ready.… I am rooted, but I flow.… ‘Come,’ I say, ‘come.’” The passage gathers the blue, the hole, and the present moment into a wish that they might remain unchanged, then shifts from shining and pause toward readiness and decision.

Violet’s answer

Violet writes the only response she can think of: “Stay,” I say, “stay.” The brief repetition answers Finch’s quoted invitation with a direct plea for him to remain. She checks for a reply every five minutes, calls him, and finds that his voicemail is still full; then she calls Brenda, who says she has also received a strange email from Finch. The phrase therefore sits inside an exchange marked by a widening inability to reach him: Violet can answer the message, but no answer comes back.

The phrase’s return

Later, as Violet drives to find Finch, she recalls, “If that blue could stay for ever; if that hole could remain for ever.” The repeated words now accompany movement toward him rather than a message read at home. Violet believes he left because she told her parents about him and feels responsible for his leaving the closet; she also thinks he would want her to be the one to come. Immediately after the phrase returns, the narration states, “There was nothing to make him last.” Violet then sees Little Bastard parked partly on the embankment. The recurrence places the hope of preserving a moment beside the approaching evidence of loss, turning the phrase from Finch’s language of suspended time into Violet’s expression of a wish she cannot make permanent.