Free Good Behaviour by Maggie O'Farrell, Molly Keane

as pearls among the pebbles, as
     we did on that afternoon. Intoxicated, braced with pleasure and the magical change from dark, inland July, I stuffed my dress
     into my knickers and ran yelling out my freedom like asea bird. Hubert set off alone into the business of shrimping the rock pools; Mrs Brock did not attend him with help or advice.
     Nor did she run and yell with me. But she laughed at me, and dug herself a grave in the sand for shelter, after she had put
     the milk bottle in a rock pool. I knew she was on my side, and less interested in Hubert.
    Presently, under capes of striped towelling, we undressed for our swim; Hubert had his cape too, and Mrs Brock her own side
     of the rock as well.
    We screamed and spattered in the breaking waves while Mrs Brock took her real swim. I watched her fat body, a frilled torpedo
     in the black bathing costume, standing balanced and poised, ridiculous on a rock, before she dived – a joyous plunge into
     the deep water. Then she struck out into the bay with the strength and buoyancy of a seal; indeed, when the black bathing
     dress was sleeked by the water onto her body she had all the armoured rotundity of a seal – the same easy glory and enjoyment
     of an element that frightened me. Soon she returned to our depth and gave us a swimming lesson. I stayed up four strokes longer
     than Hubert and nobody said, ‘Nothing to crow about, is there, Aroon? He’s three years younger than you, after all.’ While
     I was drying and dressing I explained my superior technique to him; he chattered his teeth at me so loudly I could hardly
     hear myself speak.
    After tea Mrs Brock yawned and snuggled down into her grave while I played a game of burying her feet in the sand. She did
     not speak, but when I had them buried and patted over she would poke out a toe, cracking the damp sand. I felt this like a
     secret joke between us, and in this overwhelming moment of intimacy and love I needed absolutely to give hersomething. I did: I told her all about Papa’s delight in her work on his coat. She listened to me with close attention, sitting
     upright, her feet still in their mounds of sand. I knew she was tense with pleasure; and, while I glowed in its bestowal,
     the story was hardly out of my mouth before I knew too that her reception of it was on a different level from mine – a foreign,
     secret level, leaving me outside, a messenger, not a participant.
    Hubert wandered back to us, no shrimps in his bucket. We packed up the picnic mugs and all the bits of paper and tucked the
     matchbox full of cowries safely away in Mrs Brock’s handbag before we walked back to the village, where the pony had been
     left to shelter from the flies in a tiny stinking cowshed belonging to the fisherman whose lobsters were to cost us two shillings
     each. ‘He’s only now gone to lift the pots,’ his wife told us. ‘Tommy Nangle disappointed him. Wouldn’t you drive to Gulls’
     Cry and see Miss Enid and poor Mister Hamish while you’re waiting on them?’
    ‘Oh, no,’ we said. ‘Please, Mrs Brock, don’t let’s.’ Miss Enid and poor Mister Hamish were our cousins, Mummie’s cousins,
     and they lived in a depleted little manor house looking over the cliffs and the boat cove. They had no money at all; Mummie
     said they lived on mackerel and sea spinach. We dreaded the hedgehog kiss of Cousin Enid and the drooling silences of Cousin
     Hamish. So we preferred to wait, sitting on the low wall above the nettles which filled the ditch beneath our feet.
    ‘Any minute now,’ the woman repeated every so often. She didn’t want us to leave the lobsters behind and unpaid for.
    At last the fishermen returned, wet blue lobsters arching their backs as they hung from the men’s hands with nipperstied before they were laid on the floor of the pony cart, strong and lively for an early death. Mrs Brock paid. We thanked,
     and climbed into the round governess cart behind the fat pony, pulling double for