And soon she had flown off.

15

Mrs Mortlock would have felt relieved to find herself once more alone with her husband in the house she had grown used to, if her mother had not roused to rankling point what might otherwise have lain a dormant grudge.

In the circumstances she began to speak to her husband, practically without deciding, at breakfast, over some of the chops from the special-offer side of mutton it was their habit to buy.

‘There’s one thing I’ve been meaning to mention,’ the young woman said. ‘Although there were the clothes I brought with me when I came here – quite a wardrobe – when we were married – it is now five years.’ She began to feel foolish. ‘Certainly there were the one or two dresses I ran up myself, in between. But nothing to speak of.’

She was dwindling wretchedly. And he continued to masticate the cooling chop, the pleats round his mouth opening and closing.

‘Well?’ Hessell Mortlock asked.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘over and above the money you give me for housekeeping I have hardly a bus fare in my bag. I couldn’t go anywhere even if I wanted to. Or take anyone to lunch.’

Although he sat straight and square, very impressive for his age, she could sense that inwardly he was curving.

‘If you don’t allow me something to dress on, soon you will see me in rags,’ she told him.

He put down his knife and fork.

‘Nothing lasts for ever,’ she added, almost in anger.

Hessell Mortlock cleared his throat and went outside.

That evening, however, as she was putting the dishes away, he came to her without speaking, and slipped into her hand a five-pound note, new, and folded small. When he had done it he went again, steadying himself on the kitchen table. Seeing how he stooped, and his blotchy hand with its several patches of New Skin taut against the table, the anger which was rising in her became pity for this old man she had promised to cherish. While the dusk flowed down amongst the well-established evergreens, she was softly crying, she realized, for them both.

But at least she would breed a virtue with him, she decided, fiercely, remembering certain of her own mother’s attitudes. So she bought some tins of paint. She set to work to paint the kitchen and particularly the ceiling where the flies had spotted, which would prove her severest test. She stood on a table, and the paint fell into her hair and eyes.

Hessell Mortlock had to applaud his wife’s initiative and industry.

‘You’re certainly an energetic young woman, Anthea.’ He stood by, admiring as he looked. ‘You’ve got taste,’ he said; it cost him nothing.

‘Do you think I might set up in business?’ she asked fiercely plying the roller and bitterly enjoying the dribble of paint.

He laughed softly, not to disturb.

‘That might be carrying it a bit too far.’

16

Mrs Scudamore wrote less than before.