わからない個所を教えてください。1
After a moment’s hesitation, he sits down on the flat rock beside me. ‘What were you thinking about?’
Now it is my turn to hesitate. I have become used to what to say to my parents, but perhaps this is not the right thing to say to Jamie. I look at him, and his brown eyes are interested, not suspicious. I say, ‘I was thinking with Lena.’ ‘Who’s Lena?’ (前回の終わりの部分です）
‘She’s our cook. And she looks after me, sometimes.’ He nods, and I am encouraged by the way he accepts what I’ve told him. ‘We’re going for a walk up that way, and we see a bridge, and a chapel where a man used to live. A hermit,’ I add. ‘He went away, though, into the hills.’
Jamie is frowning. ‘When?’
‘When what?’ ‘When do you go on the walk?’
I am thrown into confusion. I don’t want Jamie to know that I used to be a liar, but the conversation is becoming like the ones I used to have – back then, when I was a liar – with my parents. I don’t know what to say. But Jamie is still looking at me, his face open and waiting for me to say something, and in the end I just say it. ‘Just now.’
‘This morning?’
‘Just now. Before you came.’ Suddenly I want him very much to understand. ‘That was what I was doing. Staring into space.’
‘You mean you were imagining it?’
‘No …’
‘What, then?’
It is the tone of his voice that makes the difference: not impatient, just curious. I try to find the words. ‘You know when – you go somewhere—’
He nods.
‘And then you come back.’
Now he is looking puzzled. ‘What, like a walk?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Like that. That’s what I was doing.’
He is quiet for a time, then he says, ‘So you’d gone with Lena and then you came back and then you came here and I found you?’
＊That’s what I was doing.のThatは斜体になっています。
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主人公のAlexはartistで、展示会に備えるために、幼い頃過ごしたイタリアに戻ってきています。この英文は回想シーンだと思われます。
‘That was what I was doing. Staring into space.’
‘You mean you were imagining it?’
‘No …’
ここのやり取りの意味が掴めません。
「それは僕がしていたことだったんだ。空間を見つめていたんだ」
「それを想像していたっていうこと？」
「違うよ」
？？
教えてください。お願いします。
お礼
ご回答ありがとうございます。 that は I need your help.だったんですね！しっくりきました。 そのあとのwere going to sayは時制の一致で過去進行形になっているであっていますか？