The Men and the Girls by Joanna Trollope Page B

way that talking to someone who’s brimming with ideas makes you have ideas too. I remember thinking that when I met you, I remember thinking that it was all right to think things that weren’t conventional.’
    â€˜And now you’re used to me.’
    â€˜Of course I am, in a sense, because you aren’t a stranger any more. What happened to this cushion?’
    â€˜It was the victim of a game. Don’t be cross with them.’
    Julia looked from the cushion to him. ‘I’m seldom cross with them. I explain things. Has anyone rung?’
    â€˜Not a soul.’
    Julia put the cushion down. She went over to Hugh and put her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes, behind her huge spectacles, were huge too, and serious.
    â€˜Darling Hugh, I know this is hard for you, I know it’s hard to change. But we’ve got to live, haven’t we? We’ve got to live and educate the boys and have the nice things we’re used to and the holidays and so on. I suppose it was inevitable that our roles would change a little, over time, that we would have to adapt, that the emphasis would shift. I can cope. I don’t mind shouldering more. I don’t feel any differently about you if I shoulder more. But I don’t think I can shoulder your resentment as well.’
    â€˜I’m not resentful. I’m simply in mild despair.’
    â€˜But why? You’ve had a wonderful career, you’ve been a household name, you’ve still got a very good job, why do you feel in despair?’
    Hugh took her hands from his shoulders and held them a little and then dropped them. ‘Because, my darling child, I am simply not effective any more. And when we cease to be effective, then it is that the iron enters into our souls.’
    While Julia was bathing the twins, and washing their hair which she always did on Thursdays, she remembered she had not told Hugh about seeing Kate. Kate, Julia thought, had not looked very well, she’d looked pinched and tired, though her manner had been as sweet as ever. Privately, Julia thought working in Pasta Please was a tiny bit affected, though she genuinely admired Kate’s voluntary work. Well, she would tell Hugh about Kate at supper, and then she would have a serious, constructive talk with him about things he could do in life which would restore to him this sense of being effective that he said was so vital.
    After supper at Richmond Villa, Kate’s friend Helen rang. Helen ran the home for battered wives. She spoke for a long time, explaining how the money-raising side was claiming more and more of her time and attention, and that she really did need someone prepared to help much more with the administration, though of course she couldn’t pay such a person more than pocket money, so it would have to be a person well circumstanced enough to feel they really owed it to society to do something difficult for nothing. Then she paused and waited for Kate to volunteer. Kate, winding her legs round the legs of the kitchen chair she was perched on, and feeling a rat, didn’t volunteer. Helen then admired Kate. She said she had such understanding and compassion and humour and that her days at Mansfield House (named after Katherine Mansfield whom Helen particularly respected) were days everyone there looked forward to. Then she stopped again, and waited.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ Kate said. She tried to say something else, she tried to say that she would love to help, and, even more, to mean that she would love to, as she would have done, she told herself, only recently, but nothing came.
    â€˜I’ve rung you,’ Helen said, not troubling to hide the reproach in her voice, ‘because I thought I could rely on you to see how I’m situated and to want to help.’
    â€˜I do want to, but I can’t.’
    â€˜Why? What’s happened?’
    â€˜There are,’ Kate said carefully, ‘a lot of changes