‘Oh, I can’t bear this!’ He trembled towards her.
She rose, to confront him with lustreless eyes.
‘Are you made of straw? Can you neither take me nor leave me?... Good-bye.’
‘God, how you hate me now!’ he murmured, as she swept past him.
She paused to say: ‘That should be nothing to you. But it’s not true. You have done me no harm. I had never known happiness before you came ... but,’ she added, with his child in her womb, ‘I shall soon forget, and you will have made no difference. None at all.’
She stumbled out into the hateful sunlight and went, half-running, towards the house.
3
In Edward’s house, and with Edward’s bored approval—for he was busy at the time on a scathing history of the Jesuits—Stephen’s child was born. And, in the triumph that followed agony, the spirit of Sheila rose from the dead. Four years later, determined to purge herself of bitterness, she visited the scene of her love. When she entered the paddock again, her silent but excited child at her side, her eyes filled with tears at the sight of the old romantic disorder that had once so charmed her. ‘These poppies,’ her heart said, ‘are children of flowers that witnessed our love.’ The paddock was shut in on three sides by a hedge of briar. In the long rank grass numberless weeds had rioted unchecked for many years, and the hand of the picnicker lay heavy on the land. A medley of docks, nettles, thistles, poppies, empty cigarette packets, paper bags, ginger-beer bottles, and corks, greeted Sheila’s eyes. ‘What a pickle!’ she said.
‘What a lovely pickle, Sheila,’ the little girl echoed. She began collecting corks with the solemnity of an elderly spinster gathering a cautionary nosegay for a drunkard’s grave. This was a simile that Sheila, gravely nonsensical, suggested to Rosemary, who with perfect dignity assented. ‘How fortunate that Edward isn’t here to be shocked by my vulgarity,’ Sheila thought.
Entering the house she found there matter for surprise: a greasy plate, a crust of bread, and a breakfast cup, caked with tannin, standing ankle-deep in a saucer half-full of spilt tea. The next moment Mrs. Boddy arrived, a little red berry of humanity to whom had been entrusted a duplicate key and the duty of preparing the place for habitation.