While Mother lived, though, it would never be too late for a change. And Marjorie knew she couldn’t depend on George and the children for support. Even George would surrender quietly to the invasion of his home by a mother-in-law, for it wouldn’t be he Mother would get up in the night to or nag about draughts and rheumatism and eyedrops and hot milk. He wouldn’t be expected to listen to interminable stories about what things were like in nineteen-ten, or be asked daily in a mournful tone:

‘D’you think I’ll see another winter out, dear?’

She had always, in spite of her seniority, been a little afraid of Pauline. As a child, her sister had been a very withdrawn person, spending long hours shut up in her bedroom. She had had an imaginary friend in those days, one of those not uncommon childhood creations – Marjorie’s own Susan had behaved in much the same way – but Pauline’s Pablo had persisted almost into her teens, and had always been put forward as the mouthpiece of Pauline’s own feelings. ‘Pablo says he doesn’t want to go,’ when some outing had been proposed on which Pauline herself didn’t want to go; ‘Pablo hates you,’ when there was a need to express Pauline’s own hatred. He had disappeared at Pauline’s puberty, and since then Marjorie couldn’t remember her sister once showing her feelings. No, not when Father died or Marjorie’s first baby was born dead. And when she had been told that the only alternative to Mother’s going into a sixty-pound a week nursing home was her abandoning her job and her home, she had said merely, with a blank face:

‘I suppose I’ve got no choice, then.’

Never once had she suggested Marjorie as an alternative. But the first time Marjorie called at the new Pauline-Mother ménage Pauline, who in the past had always kissed her when they met and parted, made a quiet but marked point of not doing so. And since that day they had never exchanged a kiss. Not when Mother had her second stroke; not when Mother was temporarily in hospital and Marjorie visited Pauline in Hightrees. No complaints about the arduousness of her duties ever escaped Pauline’s narrow set lips, nor would she ever protest to Mother herself, however exigent she might be. Instead, she would sometimes enumerate in a cold monotonous voice the tasks she had accomplished since the night before.

‘Mother got me up at midnight and again at four and five. But she still had a wet bed. I got everything washed out by eight and then I turned out the living room. I went down to the shops but I forgot Mother’s prescription, so I had to go back for it.’

Marjorie would cringe with guilt and shame during this catalogue and actually shiver when, at the end of it, Pauline turned upon her large glazed eyes in which seemed to lurk a spark of bitter irony. Those eyes said, though the lips never did, ‘To her that has shall be given, but from her that has not shall be taken away, even that which she has.’ Marjorie could have borne it better, have worried less and agonized less, if they could have had a real ding-dong battle. But that was impossible with Pauline. Apologize to Pauline for a missed visit and all she said was ‘That’s OK. Suit yourself.’ Tell her to cheer up and you got ‘I’m all right. Leave me alone.’ Offer sympathy combined with excuses about having your own family to attend to, and you got no answer at all, unless a stare of profound contempt is an answer. So Marjorie felt she couldn’t, as yet at any rate, tackle Pauline about her doctor friend.