So, turning on what must remain her substitute for the great set speech, she bundled into the taxi, and was brought momentarily to her knees by bashing her forehead on some metalwork.

17

Mrs Mortlock could not afford a lengthy convalescence from her marriage, on account of the sale of her mother’s house, and the settling into a smaller one.

‘Do you think anyone will come to see us,’ Mrs Scudamore speculated, ‘in such a small house, so out of the way, and on top of Everything Else?’

Because, for decency’s sake, her daughter’s separation from her husband was now referred to as Everything Else.

‘What am I going to tell Them?’ Mrs Scudamore would repeat.

‘Tell them,’ said Mrs Mortlock with a tired simplicity, ‘tell them I have separated from my husband.’

But the idea of such candour made Mrs Scudamore screw herself up inside her cardigan. She preferred a mystery – which everyone might solve, provided it was not in her hearing.

‘My daughter is here on a visit,’ she said. ‘Well, she will be staying with me for quite some little time.’

Then Mrs Mortlock saw that something practical must be done. She said: ‘I am arranging to take a refresher course at Mrs Treloar’s School. Because I must get a job. It is necessary now. And you will be able to look after yourself, won’t you, Mummy? Provided I see to the shopping – early, or late. You will not be lonely, will you, out here at the end of the road? The view of the mountain is lovely.’

Whether lovely or not Mrs Scudamore had reached an age where she was glad to surrender her authority. If she pouted at times she secretly admired the officious motherliness of her child.

‘I can’t always rely on you, you know, to do what is best for yourself,’ Mrs Mortlock once heard her own voice.

She enjoyed it, too. Most of all she enjoyed ringing from the city to make sure her mother had started thawing the meat. Almost invariably Mrs Scudamore hadn’t.

And in far too short a time Mrs Mortlock had finished the refresher course at the School, and would have to take the position she began to dread looking for.

But before this she re-visited the island of her youth.

Val Tulloch explained to her husband: ‘I ran into poor old Anthea Scudamore – Mortlock, or whatever – looking so terribly downcast, that bastard can only have beaten or left her. Anyway, I’m giving her the key to the house. She can work some of it off on the Island.’

‘I still think Anthea will get what she wants,’ Gil Tulloch insisted. ‘Her voice is the echo of her awful mother’s.’

‘Poor old Anthea!’ said Val. ‘Not that she’s all that old. And her mother’s not all that awful. They’re both really a bit pathetic. I don’t believe either knows what she wants.’

‘They’re out to reach a state of impregnable negation,’ Gil Tulloch stubbornly claimed, ‘where there are no questions, only answers. No husbands, and no fathers. Bill Scudamore’s worst fault was to hint at the unanswerable question, all his life, most unforgiveably by his way of leaving it.’