Free Devil By The Sea by Nina Bawden Page B

no good your taking a lover. It’s marriage that is the badge of success. Once you’ve been married,
     everyone will know you’ve been loved.”
    The room was silent. Auntie brooded in her chair. On the point of departure, Janet drooped with inanition, stifling a yawn.
    There was a scuffle on the landing. Immediately following her peremptory knock, Mrs. Peacock appeared on the threshold of
     the room. In spite of her frail, shrinking appearance, she had a large, dramatic soul: she made her entrance as to a roll
     of drums. For a long, impressive moment she waited, gathering their startled eyes.
    Then she spoke. “Look at him. Just look at ’im.”
    Pulling the child forward into the room, she pointed to his face with her free hand. Peregrine, who could not bear her proximity,
     shrank away, his arms stretched to the limit. He was tear-stained and paler than usual. His upper lip was disfigured by a
     dark, spreading burn.
    To their shocked cries, Mrs. Peacock returned a nod of grim satisfaction. “What a thing for a sister to do! She can’t deny
     it. I caught her in the act. Holding his little mouth on to the bulb of her electric lamp. He’ll be markedfor life.” She drew in her breath with a sharp, indignant hiss: the air quivered.
    “The little beast,” cried Janet. Falling to her knees, she gathered Peregrine into her arms.
    “I told her straight. You’re a wicked girl, I said, a wicked girl and God will punish you for this. She knew what she’d done
then,
I can tell you….”
    Groping for her stick, Auntie rose ponderously to her feet. “You had no right to say that. No right at all. You exceeded your
     authority. Where is she now?”
    Mrs. Peacock did not answer. Before this frontal attack, her righteous indignation faded: an alarmed and sheepish expression
     crossed her face.
    “Where is she?” Auntie insisted, thumping her stick on the floor, “What has become of the child?”

Chapter Four
    In the playground of the Primary School, the children chattered like starlings. Their feet dragged and scraped on the grey
     asphalt. It was the first day of term and they were still drunk with the summer’s freedom: their shouting and laughter rose
     to the blue roof of the sky. Presently, the cold clanging of the bell sobered them a little and they straggled out of the
     sunlight into the dark, stone doorway. Through the open window thumped the first, stolid bars of the morning hymn.
    Beyond the high, fearsomely spiked railings, the bodyguard of mothers lingered, their perambulators spilling out into the
     road. Toddlers, wailing at the inactivity, were slapped and given sweets to suck. On the opposite pavement, a young bobby
     in blue paced his beat self-consciously, his heart brimming over. A deeply sentimental man, he had been painfully affected
     by the death of poor Camelia Perkins and, seeing the waiting women, he loved them for the suffering which he was sure they
     must endure while her murderer was still at large in the town. He trod the ground with a heavy, solemn tread as if to tell
     them by his bearing that their children were safe with him.
    At last the women began to disperse. Hilary, coming upon a group of them as she rounded a corner, dodged between the perambulators
     and ran on. They looked after her with a faint censorious interest. Why wasn’t she at school? Perhaps she went to one of the
     private schoolswhere term had not yet begun. You wouldn’t believe, would you, that any mother would allow her little girl out alone at a
     time like this? In all their minds dawned the mild, unadmitted hope that if anything
were
to happen, they would have a chance to say that they had seen her. You couldn’t mistake that hair. It was a lovely colour
     and, really, quite uncommon.
    Hilary felt as exposed and helpless as a shelled crab. She was quite sure that her wickedness was already generally known.
     She was young enough, still, to believe that grown-up power was limitless: the long arm of