But perhaps that was
fatigue.
"I couldn't have had Castle, mother. I didn't need anything. I've
been very happy, really, and very busy."
"You have been very vague lately about your work."
Lily faced her mother squarely.
"I didn't think you'd much like having me do it, and I thought it
would drive grandfather crazy."
"I thought you were in a canteen."
"Not lately. I've been looking after girls who had followed soldiers
to camps. Some of them were going to have babies, too. It was
rather awful. We married quite a lot of them, however."
The curious reserve that so often exists between mother and daughter
held Grace Cardew dumb. She nodded, but her eyes had slightly
hardened. So this was what war had done to her. She had had no son,
and had thanked God for it during the war, although old Anthony had
hated her all her married life for it. But she had given her
daughter, her clear-eyed daughter, and they had shown her the dregs
of life.
Her thoughts went back over the years. To Lily as a child, with
Mademoiselle always at her elbow, and life painted as a thing of
beauty. Love, marriage and birth were divine accidents. Death was
a quiet sleep, with heaven just beyond, a sleep which came only to
age, which had wearied and would rest.
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