Cotter's England by Christina Stead

Barry, my husband. He was more like a best friend. I was very happy. I knew the risk I was taking coming home."
    She paused and Nellie waited. Caroline continued, "We live through everything. Sometimes I think life is a strange disease that attacks different people in different ways; and at different ages it attacks you differently."
    "Aye, but with a true friend you can fight off that disease; you can hold on to the true solution, the cure."
    "What's the cure?" Caroline laughed sadly.
    "There are two, sweetheart: love, and death."
    "Oh, both those are diseases, too."
    "Ah, you're depressed, love. You see, you never understood what friendship is. The friendship at school and at church, that's good; but it's the loaf of bread; it's not the wine."
    "My parents loved me. They couldn't understand why I left home.- I heard Mother saying one day, with such an undertone of joy, that their dear daughter had never been able to bear leaving her own home, where she was so loved. I had already secretly begun to save up to come away."
    Nellie said, smoking and drinking, "Yes, family love is painted as a smooth green shallow valley of comfort and it's full of abysses; you've got to watch your step not to slip in. But pity is the answer, Caroline. We're responsible for them, their failures and pitiful disappointments. They were young things when they had us, ready for life and we were the first burden on their thin young shoulders. I don't understand those who don't feel this terrible tender guilt towards their parents. It's a crushing burden, darling: it is. It breaks many people; but we have known life and love and it was denied to them."
    "I am sure my parents love each other. I even wondered how they could see me there without a life of my own."
    Nellie said excitedly, "But isn't that the proof? That they never knew the complete perfection and joy which our generation knows ought to be marriage? Of course, chick, it's rare even with us, a rare, rare flower, shy and difficult. Ah, darling, when I think of my poor grandmother, uncomplaining, a splendid human being who showed us the stuff of life, taught us what a woman could be, held our hands spiritually and physically through our hungry thirsty youth! When we wanted knowledge and were looking for it in all directions, cheeping pitifully like young birds, she fed us from the spring of life, she taught us, a noble human soul, enduring, closest to us all, a noble wife and mother—to think she never knew the meaning of sexual pleasure! Such people, generous and fine, miss the grandest thing of all, for they sacrifice out of ignorance of self, out of goodness. Sacrifice must be done, darling! But pain goes with it. Discovery is the keyword: the world is there to be found. Self-denial is not the modern answer. To know all and to understand all, the good and the evil alike, that is the modern answer. And to pity all. We do not know what lies under the actions of the just or the unjust. Not scorn but pity. All suffer, but the criminal suffers more; all his life is suffering. And one must know joy too, otherwise the crown of perfection is missing. I often wonder at my strange fate to be born into the first generation that understood humanity's birthright, the perfect consummation. If a woman has that with a man, darling, then you can't ask more from life."
    "But the classics are full of it. I was interested in love always."
    Nellie scowled, "I left the university, pet, because of teachers abruptly enlightening the young, ignorant, questioning minds; that is the reason for many distorted lives. A teacher there— what she said combined with what we knew—and the classics! The Rape of Lucrece, and Venus and Adonis—it was a crime— the corruption of youth."
    Caroline looked at her thoughtfully, did not know what to say. Nellie went on in a sweet thin craven tone, asking if Caroline thought they could be friends.
    "You're missing something if you haven't a friend."
    "But we are friends, aren't