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Peter gazes out of the window at the dark lough. At last he speaks, almost as if he were thinking out loud in an empty room, and he says, ‘A more cruel creature than you never existed.’
    ‘No,’ she says, in a voice as soft and disinterested as his own.
    ‘No, I don’t suppose they come much worse than me.’ There is another moment’s pause, and then they simultaneously look at each other and smile.
    But a short while later as they sit in the parlour drinking teashe thinks seriously, I am very cruel: I am . When she looks across at Peter she knows that she is guilty, and she wonders if he feels used. She wishes that she could feel a genuine interest in his life and well-being, wishes that she could bring herself to confide in him. It would be for his sake alone, not hers: such confidence would give him a sense of being trusted.
    But where to begin? With her mother? It would be good, she thinks, looking at him steadily, if she could bring herself to speak of the time of her mother’s death. Would he be shocked or sympathetic if she told him the truth? The death had been sudden, and for the first few days Sarah had been grieved and stunned. Every morning when she awoke the loss of her mother had been the first thought in her mind, and she now remembers how incongruous simple things had been: the sound of the wild birds crying out over the lough; the way the morning light lay dappled on the pillow and quilt; the sweet intimate smell of the sheets: to lie quietly in bed and think that these things, and that every other little thing in a house as familiar to her as her own body had not changed, but that one great change had been permitted – that her mother had died and would never be seen in the house again – had seemed shocking to her. It was an affront to reality.
    On those first mornings she lay and felt grief descend like a great weight upon her heart and mind, and she knew that throughout the day ahead that grief, that heaviness would still be there, made worse by the sight of her father’s suffering. He could hardly bear the loss of his wife, and it frightened Sarah to see him suffer so much.
    And then, amazingly, on the fifth day after the death, she awoke in the morning to the exact converse of these feelings, for she felt relief and a great sense of lightness, as though some terrible constraint had been lifted from her. Rolling over in bed, she had whispered into the pillow, ‘Thank God she’s dead.’
    Throughout the following day she could scarcely hide her happiness, and Catherine was shocked when she found her sister humming pleasantly to herself as she sifted through the letters of sympathy. After that, Sarah had tried to be more discreet, but she found it difficult to contain these feelings, andshe tried to explain them to herself. ‘I did love Mama,’ she thought, ‘I did, I did.’ But only now when her mother was safely dead could she admit to the knowledge which qualified that; she had been afraid of her too, and had often even hated her for her cold self-possession. She had been quietly scornful of anyone who fell short of her own level of self-sufficiency. Against the sadness of loss Sarah had to set the honest relief of knowing that her mother would never again sit there, pretending to read or knit or do a crossword, while secretly watching every move her daughters made, watching and silently judging. All her life, Sarah now saw, had been an unconscious struggle against her mother, for she had been afraid that she would grow up to be just like her: just as cold, just as calculating and just as self-contained. Perhaps if she had lived she would have beaten Sarah and made of her what she wanted; but her death was her failure, her death gave victory to her daughter. Sarah could not feel or even imagine her mother’s spiritual presence after her death, nor did she want to. She even found it hard at times to take seriously the great grief of her father and sister and often she wanted to say to