Free Devil By The Sea by Nina Bawden Page A

awareness. In a little while she would, if she remembered, be ashamed of behaving
     like this before the child. Just now, she was absorbed in her spirit’s cowardice and her body’s failure. She dreaded Alice’s
     anger. When you were old, nothing mattered except your physical comfort and security: without it, all her pretensions and
     eccentricities would wither, she would be a shell of an old woman. Her eyes watered with self-pity. “I’m old,” she mourned,
     “old.”
    The door of the hot little room opened, letting in a cold blast of air. Janet stood there, one hand on the door jamb, her
     skirts swaying about her. She looked sullen, her hair was blown spikily about her face as if she had been running in the wind.
    Seeing Hilary, she frowned. “You shouldn’t be here, bothering Auntie.” She ignored Hilary’s tears, assuming that the child
     had broken something. The room was full of small china treasures and Hilary was clumsy. “Run along to the nursery,” she said.
    Moving her lips carefully, Janet asked, “Was she being a nuisance?”
    “A nuisance? No, she is never a nuisance.” Auntie sat upright in her chair. Without much effort, she drew her character round
     her like a sumptuous cloak, concealing the tell-tale rags of her reality. “There was nothing wrong with the child.”
    She spoke quite sincerely. She had already forgotten the cause of Hilary’s tears. She was not deliberately self-deceptive,
     only very old and unwilling to remember hermoments of weakness. Now she was herself again, as proud and unflinching as a stage dowager.
    She said maliciously,
“You
don’t like the child, of course. You’ve always been jealous of her. When she was a baby they were afraid to leave you alone
     with her in case you did her a mischief.”
    Janet peered at herself in the looking-glass and pulled her hair tightly away from her face. She observed the effect despondently.
     Turning towards Auntie, she mouthed, “I was rude at breakfast.
She
hasn’t said anything yet, but she will. She’s never liked me.”
    “Why should she?” said Auntie in a bracing voice. “When she married Charles, you were a very cross-grained little creature.
     You adored her and that irritated—no one could have stood it. You followed her round like a spaniel, brimming over with sad,
     suffering love.”
    “I only wanted her to love me,” said Janet miserably.
    “Don’t brood over your misfortunes.” Auntie was never happier than when giving advice. “You don’t have to stay here. You’re
     young, you could get away.”
    “What could I do?” she asked inertly. “What have I got to offer?” She looked at her disconsolate face in the glass and smiled
     experimentally.
    “You’re pretty enough.”
    “But when it’s all I’ve got, it’s not much, is it?”
    “Looks aren’t the only thing.”
    “I haven’t anything else. All I’m fit for is to go clickety-clack, clickety-clack, typing in an office, giggling with the
     other girls. I’m not clever. I take after my mother.”
    Auntie shook her head. “I mean, if you want to get married, your looks will do. You have other assets—a compliant nature,
     for example—and you are very ready to admire. These things count for a lot. In the end, more than beauty.
I
was beautiful.”
    Taken aback by this cold calculation of her prospects, Janet gave her an incredulous glance. “Is it so important, then, to
     catch a man?”
    Auntie looked at her. “I think so, yes. Once you’ve done it, you may wonder what all the fuss was about, but if you never
     do, you’ll feel, all your life, that you’ve missed the most important thing. Of course, you can fill up your life with other
     things but they don’t last and when you’re old no one will know that you were pretty or clever.…” Her voice fading, she gazed
     out of the window at the elm tree. Janet fidgeted. After a moment or two the old woman dismissed her solitary thoughts and
     continued, “And it would be