Free Good Behaviour by Maggie O'Farrell, Molly Keane Page A

home.
    Leaving the sea at evening is a death – a parting of worlds. We turned inland, past the Round Tower and the roofless church,
     where small primitive carvings of apostles were worn by time and sea-winds to blunt thumbs among its stones. In the cove small
     boats, drawn up on the beach, leaned about awkwardly as swans out of water. Lobster-pots were piled each on each, building
     into netted castles in the evening; and, plain as cooking on the air, the salty rot of seaweed came with us along the road.
     Mrs Brock whacked the pony with an ash-plant; the dust flew round us and lay back heavy on the dog roses in the banks as we
     turned inland.
    ‘My tired,’ Hubert said, long before we reached home; this baby talk was always a tiresome sign with him. ‘My very tired.’
    ‘Soon home now, chick.’ Mrs Brock banged away at the pony while the lobsters clanked and bubbled at our feet. ‘What about
     a biscuit?’
    Hubert turned green. ‘I wish we were HOME. I wish we hadn’t waited for the poor lobsters.’
    ‘Oh, Hubert! And you know Daddy loves lobsters.’
    ‘Papa,’ Hubert corrected her faintly.
    Three long miles from home we were met by Ollie Reilly, a stable lad who had had his evening with Wild Rose interrupted to
     go to our rescue. He was driving a leggy, uppish chestnut mare in the shafts of the dog cart; she sidled and fidgeted about
     as Hubert and I climbed up to sit side by side on the blue buttoned face-cloth seat.
    ‘What kept her?’ He nodded back to Mrs Brock in the ponycart, fumbling along in the dust far behind us. ‘The Captain made sure ye’d met an accident.’
    ‘She made us wait for the lobsters.’ Hubert, revived now, was full of perky information.
    ‘What about the dirty lobsters at this time of the night?’ Ollie Reilly was derisive.
    Angrily I answered, ‘The boats were late and Mrs Brock’ (not ‘she’) ‘knows the Captain loves lobsters.’
    He made no reply. He considered what I had said as he sent the mare flying along. Deprived of Rose that night, a popular girl
     who wouldn’t wait for him a second time, his disappointment and irritation were centred on Mrs Brock.
    From that time there was a faint note, hardly sounded but evident in Rose’s manner, a kind of familiarity towards Mrs Brock.
     She would flaunt in and out of the schoolroom in her starched pink cotton, crunching starch, leaving behind shirt collars
     for turning, clocked socks for darning, and pyjama coats with their sleeves out. I felt as if she were feeding Mrs Brock.
     Shooting stockings were a big meal: Mrs Brock would knit and weave heels for these pale stockings, soon to be trampled again
     into gaping holes, wet shoes in the snipe bogs dragging them apart – and never too soon for Mrs Brock’s eager fingers.
    Papa never said an actual thank-you for all this labour. Perhaps during luncheon, if he was wearing a resuscitated old ghost
     of other days, he might pat himself and give her a look – a look like a ray of light from a distant star, a look that suggested
     warmth and pleasure.
    A day came when, I suppose, he felt these silent looks of understanding gratitude were not enough, and there arrived in the
     schoolroom a neatly packed parcel with a London postmark.Chocolates. Exquisite, expensive chocolates. ‘
The
best,’ Mrs Brock intoned happily. ‘Charbonnel AND Walker.’ Liqueur and coffee creams, powdered truffles, crystallized rose-leaves,
     crystallized violets, and a fresh mirror-smooth gleam on the row upon row and layer after layer that filled the big box, each
     chocolate as beautiful as a chocolate could be.

CHAPTER SIX
    About this time Papa decided to take our riding seriously – and what an escalation in misery that proved for us. I know he
     was a perfect horseman with a beautiful seat and hands and a total command of any horse he rode, but as an instructor he was
     incomprehensible, impatient, and unnerving.
    He would look at our whey-pale faces in dismayed irritation as