‘I won’t use your capital, and I won’t be helped by your relations. Do you know,’ he asked suddenly, ‘your grandmother offered to pay for a nurse for the children?’
I said:
‘I did not know.’
‘Yes,’ he said very bitterly. ‘She did, and I refused. I told her that you could manage without, as my mother had managed. I think I was rude to her. She was displeased with me.’
I wondered vaguely when all this had happened.
I thought:
‘How dear of Grandmother.’
We had stopped having lunch with her on Sundays. I had not seen her often since Rachel was born.
He got up again, abruptly, and left the room. I stayed alone and cried, and wished that I were dead.
Afterwards Walter was sorry.