‘I’ve always thought that you and Sarah had a very satisfactory relationship. I should say there was a deep natural love between you.’ She added thoughtfully: ‘Of course Sarah’s young for her age.’
‘I’ve always thought she was old for her age.’
‘I shouldn’t say so. She strikes me as younger than nineteen in mentality.’
‘But she’s very positive, very assured. And quite sophisticated. Full of her own ideas.’
‘Full of the current ideas, you mean. It will be a very long time before she has any ideas that are really her own. And all these young creatures nowadays seem positive. They need reassurance, that’s why. We live in an uncertain age and everything is unstable and the young feel it. That’s where half the trouble starts nowadays. Lack of stability. Broken homes. Lack of moral standards. A young plant, you know, needs tying up to a good firm stake.’
She grinned suddenly.
‘Like all old women, even if I am a distinguished one, I preach.’ She drained her glass of buttermilk. ‘Do you know why I drink this?’
‘Because it’s healthy?’
‘Bah! I like it. Always have since I went for holidays to a farm in the country. The other reason is so as to be different. One poses. We all pose. Have to. I do it more than most. But, thank God, I know I’m doing it. But now about you, Ann. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just getting your second wind, that’s all.’
‘What do you mean by my second wind, Laura? You don’t mean—’ She hesitated.
‘I don’t mean anything physical. I’m talking in mental terms. Women are lucky, although ninety-nine out of a hundred don’t know it. At what age did St Teresa set out to reform the monasteries? At fifty. And I could quote you a score of other cases. From twenty to forty women are biologically absorbed—and rightly so. Their concern is with children, with husbands, with lovers—with personal relations. Or they sublimate these things and fling themselves into a career in a female emotional way. But the natural second blooming is of the mind and spirit and it takes place at middle age. Women take more interest in impersonal things as they grow older. Men’s interests grow narrower, women’s grow wider. A man of sixty is usually repeating himself like a gramophone record. A woman of sixty, if she’s got any individuality at all—is an interesting person.’
Ann thought of James Grant and smiled.
‘Women stretch out to something new. Oh, they make fools of themselves too at that age. Sometimes they’re sex bound. But middle age is an age of great possibilities.’
‘How comforting you are, Laura! Do you think I ought to take up something? Social work of some kind?’
‘How much do you love your fellow beings?’ said Laura Whitstable gravely. ‘The deed is no good without the inner fire. Don’t do things you don’t want to do, and then pat yourself on the back for doing them! Nothing, if I may say so, produces a more odious result. If you enjoy visiting the sick old women, or taking unattractive mannerless brats to the seaside, by all means do it. Quite a lot of people do enjoy it. No, Ann, don’t force yourself into activities. Remember all ground has sometimes to lie fallow. Motherhood has been your crop up to now. I don’t see you becoming a reformer, or an artist, or an exponent of the Social Services. You’re quite an ordinary woman, Ann, but a very nice one. Wait. Just wait quietly, with faith and hope, and you’ll see. Something worth while will come to fill your life.’
She hesitated and then said:
‘You’ve never had an affair, have you?’
Ann flushed.
‘No.’ She braced herself. ‘Do you—do you think I ought to?’
Dame Laura gave a terrific snort, a vast explosive sound that shook the glasses on the table.
‘All this modern cant! In Victorian days we were afraid of sex, draped the legs of the furniture, even! Hid sex away, shoved it out of sight. All very bad. But nowadays we’ve gone to the opposite extreme. We treat sex like something you order from the chemist. It’s on a par with sulphur drugs and penicillin. Young women come and ask me, “Had I better take a lover?” “Do you think I ought to have a child?” You’d think it was a sacred duty to go to bed with a man instead of a pleasure. You’re not a passionate woman, Ann. You’re a woman with a very deep store of affection and tenderness. That can include sex, but sex doesn’t come first with you. If you ask me to prophesy, I’ll say that in due course you’ll marry again.’
‘Oh no. I don’t believe I could ever do that.’
‘Why did you buy a bunch of violets today and pin them in your coat? You buy flowers for your rooms but you don’t usually wear them. Those violets are a symbol, Ann. You bought them because, deep down, you feel spring—your second spring is near.’
‘St Martin’s summer, you mean,’ said Ann ruefully.
‘Yes, if you like to call it that.’
‘But really, Laura, I daresay it’s a very pretty idea, but I only bought these violets because the woman who was selling them looked so cold and miserable.’
‘That’s what you think. But that’s only the superficial reason. Look down to the real motive, Ann. Learn to know yourself. That’s the most important thing in life—to try and know yourself. Heavens—it’s past two. I must fly. What are you doing this evening?’
‘I’m going out to dinner with James Grant.’
‘Colonel Grant? Yes, of course. A nice fellow.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘He’s been after you for a long time, Ann.’
Ann Prentice laughed and blushed.
‘Oh, it’s just a habit.’
‘He’s asked you to marry him several times, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes, but it’s all nonsense really. Oh, Laura, do you think perhaps—I ought to? If we’re both lonely—’
‘There’s no ought about marriage, Ann! And the wrong companion is worse than none. Poor Colonel Grant—not that I pity him really. A man who continually asks a woman to marry him and can’t make her change her mind, is a man who secretly enjoys devotion to lost causes. If he was at Dunkirk, he would have enjoyed it—but I daresay the Charge of the Light Brigade would have suited him far better! How fond we are in this country of our defeats and our blunders—and how ashamed we always seem to be of our victories!’
I
Ann arrived back at her flat to be greeted by the faithful Edith in a somewhat cold fashion.
‘A nice bit of plaice I had for your lunch,’ she said, appearing at the kitchen door. ‘And a caramel custard.’
‘I’m so sorry. I had lunch with Dame Laura. I did telephone you in time that I shouldn’t be in, didn’t I?’
‘I hadn’t cooked the plaice,’ admitted Edith grudgingly. She was a tall lean woman with the upright carriage of a grenadier and a pursed-up disapproving mouth.
‘It’s not like you, though, to go chopping and changing. With Miss Sarah, now, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I found those fancy gloves she was looking for after she’d gone and it was too late. Stuffed down behind the sofa they were.’
‘What a pity.’ Ann took the gaily knitted woollen gloves. ‘She got off all right.’
‘And happy to go, I suppose.’