bloody awful and impossible they may be. You don’t give a damn whether I could possibly ever be happy with any of them, all you care about is that I should be married . Just because all your friends’ bloody daughters are married.
And now, to crown it all, you are hinting that Diana’s vulgar, chicken-brained boy-friend might turn out to be my Mr Right! You don’t know anything about him, and what’s more you don’t care! He could be Jack-the-Ripper, he could be half-dead of Aids, and you wouldn’t give it a thought! Just so long as I ended up married to him!
Can’t you see how insulting it is? All the needling and hinting about me not being married yet? Yes, I know all my old friends are married by now. I know that I’m twenty-eight, and that in less than two years I’ll be thirty. I can do sums, you know: I’m the one that got a starred ‘A’ for maths, remember?”
But of course she said none of these things. What would have been the use? The whole subject had by now become a no-go area between herself and her mother, and both instinctively drew back from any threat of direct confrontation. Time was – when Bridget was only in her early twenties and the subject had not yet built up a head of steam – when the two of them could discuss the subject almost rationally.
“I can’t understand, dear,” Bridget remembered her mother pleading rather pathetically, “I can’t understand what it is that has turned you against marriage like this. It’s not as if Daddy and I had quarrelled a lot or gotdivorced or anything. You had a happy marriage to look up to.”
Hard to explain that it had been her parents’ very contentment with their lot that had set their young daughter on so determinedly different a path. The prospect of dwindling into a person who could actually be happy in so narrow and restricted a life was appalling.
It had been impossible to explain this to her mother at the time: it was even more impossible now. Bridget racked her brain for some innocuous subject to which she could deflect the conversation, uneasily aware that her mother’s brain, across the tea-table from her, was engaged on a precisely similar quest. Two brains whirring in unison, scouring the ever-diminishing range of topics that were neither hurtful nor controversial nor intolerably boring.
It was her mother who spoke first.
“I thought perhaps this evening we might …” she was beginning warily: but before the uninviting project (whatever it might be) had been fully enunciated, there was a merciful interruption.
The telephone. It was the older woman, perhaps powered by more intense anxieties, who got there first.
“ Who ?” she said in bemused tones; and then “Yes … Oh, yes, of course …”; and then turning back into the room, rather wide-eyed:
“It’s for you, dear,” she said anxiously. “It’s Diana. She seemed … Oh dear, I do hope nothing’s hap pened !”
You mean nothing that will make me curtail my visit, Bridget commented silently, and picked up the receiver.
“Oh, Bridget! Thank goodness I’ve caught you! I wasafraid you mightn’t have arrived yet, and I couldn’t possibly have left a message, it’s just too awful. It’s Norah, you see, she’s had some sort of a brain-storm, it’s absolutely terrifying. I just don’t know what to do. I hate to ask you to cut short your visit, but I’m really scared, and Alistair says …”
Chapter 6
Lying in bed some hours later in her old room, where the Famous Five books and her collection of glass animals still adorned the shelves over the desk, Bridget wondered uncomfortably whether she should have responded more promptly to Diana’s urgent summons; should have snatched up her suitcase and dashed off to catch the next – and probably last – train to Liverpool Street. It would have been easier in a way, as well as kinder, because her suitcase hadn’t even been unpacked yet. And maybe it would have been no more distressing to her
And now, to crown it all, you are hinting that Diana’s vulgar, chicken-brained boy-friend might turn out to be my Mr Right! You don’t know anything about him, and what’s more you don’t care! He could be Jack-the-Ripper, he could be half-dead of Aids, and you wouldn’t give it a thought! Just so long as I ended up married to him!
Can’t you see how insulting it is? All the needling and hinting about me not being married yet? Yes, I know all my old friends are married by now. I know that I’m twenty-eight, and that in less than two years I’ll be thirty. I can do sums, you know: I’m the one that got a starred ‘A’ for maths, remember?”
But of course she said none of these things. What would have been the use? The whole subject had by now become a no-go area between herself and her mother, and both instinctively drew back from any threat of direct confrontation. Time was – when Bridget was only in her early twenties and the subject had not yet built up a head of steam – when the two of them could discuss the subject almost rationally.
“I can’t understand, dear,” Bridget remembered her mother pleading rather pathetically, “I can’t understand what it is that has turned you against marriage like this. It’s not as if Daddy and I had quarrelled a lot or gotdivorced or anything. You had a happy marriage to look up to.”
Hard to explain that it had been her parents’ very contentment with their lot that had set their young daughter on so determinedly different a path. The prospect of dwindling into a person who could actually be happy in so narrow and restricted a life was appalling.
It had been impossible to explain this to her mother at the time: it was even more impossible now. Bridget racked her brain for some innocuous subject to which she could deflect the conversation, uneasily aware that her mother’s brain, across the tea-table from her, was engaged on a precisely similar quest. Two brains whirring in unison, scouring the ever-diminishing range of topics that were neither hurtful nor controversial nor intolerably boring.
It was her mother who spoke first.
“I thought perhaps this evening we might …” she was beginning warily: but before the uninviting project (whatever it might be) had been fully enunciated, there was a merciful interruption.
The telephone. It was the older woman, perhaps powered by more intense anxieties, who got there first.
“ Who ?” she said in bemused tones; and then “Yes … Oh, yes, of course …”; and then turning back into the room, rather wide-eyed:
“It’s for you, dear,” she said anxiously. “It’s Diana. She seemed … Oh dear, I do hope nothing’s hap pened !”
You mean nothing that will make me curtail my visit, Bridget commented silently, and picked up the receiver.
“Oh, Bridget! Thank goodness I’ve caught you! I wasafraid you mightn’t have arrived yet, and I couldn’t possibly have left a message, it’s just too awful. It’s Norah, you see, she’s had some sort of a brain-storm, it’s absolutely terrifying. I just don’t know what to do. I hate to ask you to cut short your visit, but I’m really scared, and Alistair says …”
Chapter 6
Lying in bed some hours later in her old room, where the Famous Five books and her collection of glass animals still adorned the shelves over the desk, Bridget wondered uncomfortably whether she should have responded more promptly to Diana’s urgent summons; should have snatched up her suitcase and dashed off to catch the next – and probably last – train to Liverpool Street. It would have been easier in a way, as well as kinder, because her suitcase hadn’t even been unpacked yet. And maybe it would have been no more distressing to her
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