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said ‘she’ in her mind, it was ‘it’. The body. Not their mother. Not Bertha.
    ‘I could come after milking.’
    ‘You do that, Colin, that would be best.’
    ‘I doubt if Janet can get away.’
    ‘No, no, she needn’t trouble. Just you.’
    ‘Right. Was it, you know, peaceful?’
    ‘Oh yes. Yes, very peaceful. She just drifted off to sleep. It was fine.’
    ‘Good. That’s good. So I’ll see you tomorrow, May.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘It’ll be mid-morning. Sometime mid-morning.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And you’ll ring . . . Berenice.’
    ‘Yes. I’ll do that now. She’ll come of course, but it will depend when she can get away.’
    ‘I suppose so. Yes.’
    ‘Goodnight, Colin.’
    ‘You sure you’re all right?’
    ‘I’m quite sure. Goodnight then.’
    Everything that could be said had been said. May knew that if she had needed him to come he would have driven over at once, but they understood oneanother well enough, she and Colin, she had spoken the truth in reassuring him and he knew it. She pictured him going to tell Janet, with small brown Eve listening, eyes bright with inquisitiveness, and Sara reading hunched in a corner of the sofa, not listening, not interested. Sara reminded May of herself in her youth, detached from everything going on around her. She had tried to talk to her sometimes, to show that they were on the same side, but Sara had recoiled into her privacy, looking at May with scorn.
    The house was so still. Even the wind had died down now as often happened here. A wind would blow for ten minutes or half an hour then drop, leaving the Beacon quite silent. At other times it would roar up the hill and settle to hurl round the chimneys and crash the gates for three or four days or more, driving them all mad.
    It was some time since she had eaten anything but she only wanted to drink cold water and when she did so strange thoughts came to her, that Bertha would never eat or drink again, that Bertha would never speak or sigh or smile again. That finally it was all over. Though she shied away at the last thought, fearing what might be to come, unhappy that the future she had longed for was now the present and she would not be able to live in it. It had happened before.

6
     
    M EMORY IS random. The time she spent at the university was a series of moments which were illuminated in exact detail set between stretches of total darkness, and the moments were not necessarily important or significant ones. They had been caught in the passing beam, that was all.
    In the final few days before she left the Beacon, John Prime had become almost entirely silent with her, not out of disapproval, she understood that, but from embarrassment that he had nothing to say about her future life, because he knew nothing. She might have been going to the moon. Bertha did not speak to her either but the reason for that was easy to explain. Bertha was envious and Bertha certainly disapproved. Bertha saw May escaping to somewhere of brightpromise peopled by those who would turn her daughter’s head and seduce her away from her family, causing her to look down on them and dissociate herself from everything to do with them and their life at the Beacon. She remained silent except when she let out short hissing remarks that darted in and out of her mouth like a snake’s tongue. If you missed them they were not repeated.
    From feeling sad that she was leaving and uncertain whether or not she was right to be doing so, May longed to go and ticked off the days in thick black ink on a little notepad beside her bed, leaving it out so that Bertha would see it.
    She went alone. Her trunk had gone on ahead by British Road Service and she had only a small linen bag embroidered with purple irises by some forgotten aunt. John Prime drove her to the station in the pickup and as they turned out of the gate, May looked back to see if her mother was watching and waving her out of sight. But she was not.
    Her father gave her a ten-shilling