What would Gerald say, and Tommy, to all this—if they knew? Gerald and Tommy, who probably prized their bachelor existence with their father in that tumble-down country house swallowed up in the outskirts of Stockport. There was no garden except a few grimy shrubs round the warehouses of the mill. No place to amuse themselves except the mill reservoir, on which they had a punt. What would they say to a stepmother and the end of their outings to Manchester—for one couldn’t see Lily with them at the Midland, where Ram’s B put up his eyeglass at every pair of legs in the room——? And their whole life—breakfast at lunch-time, Ram’s B getting home from doing deals in Edinburgh or London overnight, having slept on the train, wrapped in newspapers, with a temper like a skinned snake, going out in pyjamas to have a row with a foreman, with a tea-cup full of whisky in his hand? What would she think of Gerald, who ran after every girl in the neighbourhood, though he was barely seventeen? They’d both got round their father to take them away from school. They told him some amazing yarn about their weak hearts. He was quite unable to deal with them. He yelled and cursed, and occasionally, when tight, would throw a bottle at their heads. Once they’d tied him to a chair—so they said—and left him to cool down. They seemed fond of him. Even Maurice had been slightly shocked at the way they stole money from his desk. They were hanging about the place all day long—except when they came to Gatesley—working in the mill when they felt like it—“learning the processes,” according to custom, before becoming partners, but more often being hunted from one floor to another by exasperated overseers—rigging up machinery of all kinds in their private workshop, amusing themselves with revolver practice in their bedroom, trying to learn the saxophone or the mandolin, riding their huge motor-bikes all over the town and being summoned for speeding or not having silencers—ten times worse when Maurice was with them; the corrupton was mutual. The first Mrs. Ramsbotham had died years ago. Mary had heard that she was a quiet woman, refined and gentle, the daughter of a clergyman.

And now Mary had to talk to Mrs. Cooper and Miss Townend and Mrs. Higginbottom. They wanted her to help again this year with the Girls’ School Outing.

“We thought of taking them by chara to Castleton to see the Caves,” said Mrs Cooper.

Mary loathed the Caves. She once bumped her head nearly silly in the Peak Cavern. In the Speedwell Mine Maurice had dropped a new wrist-watch Father had given him into the water. She said that Castleton would be splendid, and reflected that she needn’t go in. Some of the smaller children were always frightened and had to be stopped with outside.