The Happy Prisoner by Monica Dickens Page A

that they ought to get married and had no difficulty in bringing it about. Soon after Violet was born, the two years’ grace which his English firm had allowed him being expired, he had come back to London to go on being a house agent in exactly the same way as before he went to America.
    He was a man who did not easily assimilate new ideas. He was non-porous to the changes of the world, and lived among them without absorbing them. Being country-bred, he had never absorbed London, and so, when the manager of the North Midland branch died, it was Mr. North who offered, without pushing himself, to go to Shrewsbury.
    The Norths had never worked the land at Hinkley. They had always rented the farm buildings and most of the property to a bad tempered man who had a stroke in the rick yard, andafter him to Fred Williams, who had been to an agricultural college and had progressive ideas. As a boy, Oliver had wanted to be a farmer, but he grew away from the desire. Mr. North was quite ready to believe that his son knew better than he about not wanting to be an estate agent and had remained until the day of his death uncomprehending and slightly dazed by the job into which Oliver had slipped through one of his Oxford friends.
    â€œDo you remember, Ollie, when this room was Daddy’s study? What did he study, I wonder, when he shut himself away in here? He can’t have been writing his book on Shropshire Seats
all
the time, because there was hardly anything to show for it when he died.”
    â€œHe probably wanted to get away from us.”
    The two sisters were sitting in Oliver’s room after dinner. Heather, in one of her qualms that she was not doing enough for Oliver, had brought in her mending, and Violet, looking in for a dog she had mislaid and sensing a promise of intimacy and comfort in the lamplit room, had stayed. She had put a cushion on the floor and sat with her head resting against the bed, her legs in a trousered position that was not doing the shape of her skirt any good.
    â€œHis desk was under that window.” Heather bit off a thread, nodding towards the east window which looked out on to the rose garden, with the yew hedge and tennis-court beyond.
    â€œWasn’t,” scoffed Violet. “It was between the fireplace and the wall. That table’s always been under that window.”
    â€œDon’t be more ridiculous than you can help,” said Heather, whose opinions were not tempered by the fact that she was invariably wrong about things like this. “I can
see
his desk under that window. And he had all his little pots of cactuses and acorns and things on the window-sill above it.”
    Violet snorted. “You are a futile ass.” Like her old clothes, she clung to the epithets she had acquired when schoolboy magazines were her favourite reading. “That was in London, in the dining-room. He never had his pots indoors here. What d’you think greenhouses are for?”
    â€œHe
did
.” Heather, getting cross, sewed faster, pricked her finger, said “Damn”, and shook it, saw a spot of blood on the baby’s nightgown, said “Damn” again, rolled up the nightgown and stuffed it in the work-basket, took out a vest and made a face at it, selected a piece of wool and a needle that was too small, sucked fiercely at the wool, scrabbled for another needle, threaded it, sighed and started to darn with jabs. Themutter with which she had accompanied these actions rose to the surface. “How could you know, anyway?” she asked. “You hardly ever came indoors except when you smelled food. He had his desk under that window. When you came in at the door, you could see the back of his head, with that bald patch he used to brush the hairs across.” She darned in silence for a moment and then added challengingly: “That table was in this window where Oliver’s bed is now.”
    Violet let out a loud hoarse laugh, kicked her heels in the