It was on this return journey that Martin ran into a cow—a contributory reason for his dismissal a few weeks later. He did not understand the Daimler. But he understood my true status at Roses, and stayed long enough to see me established in it.35

I suppose there is an inherent servility in my nature. The barter of an unspoken for an outspoken contempt did not seem to me too high a price to pay for the relief of being on easier terms with the children’s grandmother, of having some claim on her affection, if only as her drudge. It was as though she would at last allow me to live again, after the long years during which I had been compelled to exist merely as a cipher. I took up my new life, and with the departure of my children to their boarding-schools I became the unmarried daughter. Living at her beck and call, submerged in busy economies that were to pay for the children’s education, assenting to her opinions and listening to her stories (told with as much spirit as ever, and for her own entertainment), I had no time for the speculations and ruminations of my cipher days. St Keul, that Dark Tower, was now the place where we bought sardines, and the problem of the reserve and detachment qualifying her love for the children—the problem, even, as to whether she loved them at all—was not even a problem. At first, she had disliked us, and gradually they had overcome her dislike—that, and no more, was the explanation.

It was not the explanation. I did not arrive at the truth until the day she lay dying, whirled away like a dandelion clock by a brief pleurisy. She had lain for some hours without speaking, and only from time to time stirring her impatient hand. I sat beside her, grieving perhaps, or perhaps grieving that I could not grieve more, and straining my ears for the noise of the car that should bring Paul home from college in time to do his part as the elder male of the 36family. Becoming aware that I was being looked at, I turned and saw her glance dwelling on me. Her eyes gleamed in their sockets; her lips were forming painfully into a smile of contempt. She struggled to raise herself, and writhed across the bed toward me.

‘Heh! You poor creature!’ she said, taking hold of my chin in a violent, shaking grasp. ‘Heh! You poor, luckless creature! You have not lost one of your children, not one!’

I thought she was raving, but her tone steadied, and there was the force of years of rational consideration in her voice as she continued, ‘So when you are old, you will not have a single child left you. Nothing but strangers!’

Those were the last words she spoke. Then, it was the disclosure of her hoarded malice that appalled me. Now I am appalled for a different reason. I am beginning to think that her words are coming true.