Time After Time by Molly Keane

Author:Molly Keane [KEANE, MOLLY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405526869
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2013-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

If April was part of Leda’s restoration and re-establishment at Durraghglass, May, too, was an important object for subjugation to the limitless charm that was Leda’s whole trade in life. She could find a use for any person or circumstance even before she knew how such a one or such an event could forward her aims. People had to be kept apart, distanced from one another by small steely jokes and denigrations verging on kindness. So, to May she might say: “Oh, you are so wise and patient. How do you do it? I love April, but one gets to the end … and she can’t read my writing.” Then there was laughter, first at her own infirmity, then perhaps a reprise of some absurd non sequitur of April’s they had heard together. Like fitting pieces in a puzzle, familiarity joined them until Leda could whisper, “Save me, save me!” when April came to insist on some stringent exercise or a direful fast for beauty’s sake, perhaps when the incense from Jasper’s cooking was falling from the air.

May could seldom rescue, but she could sympathise and join in the fun of saying things that April could not hear. Leda warmed their intimacy with her special skills to capture love in any form that she could use at her own discretion and requirement. And May, the sad pretender to all importances, the stringent avoider of pity, the deviser and maker and restorer of so many lifeless pretty things, found herself borne on a mild tide of sympathy and appreciation. The tide was making, was invading the dry shores of her life, where before its flow only her own courage and fortitude had sown and grown her importances. Her cultivated corners of the deserted garden, her flower decorations, her china restoration, her industry on behalf of The Countrywomen’s Association and the Flower Guild – even her friendship with Alys – were all maintained by usefulness alone. Beyond these things it was her secret vagrancies that lent her a power outside herself, a power that she accepted questionless. It was her ultimate protest and defence against her infirmity – it was a power that took her like a spasm, a secret untold even to herself. But to have the other lonely territories invaded, to find warmth and understanding sneaking round her, to have questions asked and answers remembered, woke in her a gratitude and gentleness absent from all her self-given responsibilities and occupations. This was, since her mother died, the first time that May knew a whisper of love to be in the air about her. Appreciation she earned often. Love, never.

The underhand contest with April was another matter. It was a sport without a name, a point scored when she knew herself preferred, points lost in those pre-dinner meetings in April’s bedroom. Neither saw that Leda was a doll to them. And she played the doll. They were children scrapping for the favourite doll. In every nursery there is a Princess Baby Doll, the forerunner of the favourite dog.

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