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Chapter 5

Chapter 5

 Then they moved off. Quick as could be, before anyone else might turn up and hang them for a sheep when they had barely glanced at the lamb, they hopped back into the fully public part of the deck. "I wonder who that woman might have been talking about?" Hilda mused.

Walter cleared his throat tendentiously and they both laughed - not because it was so funny but because they needed a laugh at that moment." "Thank heavens I didn't tell her," Walter added, almost under his breath.

"Tell her what?" Hilda was forced to ask. "Oh," he replied airily, as if it were a very trivial matter, "I know a very tactful hotel in Maidstone. I sometimes spend an idyllic Fri-to-Mon there. Thank heavens I didn't tell her!"

H ILDA LAY IN HER bed, as far from sleep as she had earlier felt she was from Francis. Curiously enough, now that she had betrayed him - in her mind, anyway - she felt a little closer - which sounded mad. Perhaps it was. If one were going mad, she mused, would one even be aware of it? Her image of a madwoman was of a naked, hairless creature with her limbs all contorted, crawling in the straw and laughing at nothing. She remembered her grandmother telling her of being taken as a little girl to see the mad people in the Bedlam; it had been a sort of Sunday treat in those days. That was where the image came from, to be sure, for she herself had never seen a madwoman. Or never knowingly seen one - and there was the rub. How would you know?

They would do mad things without believing them to be mad.

Well! And what had she and Walter Grandison done, or nearly done, that evening? If that was not madness itself, then nothing was. But did it feel mad? She had to admit it did not, neither at the time nor now, thinking about it in calmer mood. Then what had it been, she wondered? Exciting? Certainly. Novel? Beyond a doubt! Thrilling? Yes, it was the most thrilling few minutes she had ever known.

She tried to imagine that discreet hôtel in Maidstone - the discreet room with the discreet furnishings and the discreetly turned-down bed.

"I will!" she said out loud.

"Mama?" Kathleen turned over beside her and rose on one elbow. "Sorry. I was thinking aloud, that's all. I didn't mean to awaken you." "First sign of madness," Kathleen joked. "You didn't wake me, actually. I've been lying here listening to you grunting and sighing for about half an hour. You shouldn't have stayed out on deck so long. I'm sure you must have caught a chill."

"Chill!" Hilda threw the coverings off her side of the bed. "It's more like a fever. I wish they'd go away. You wait! Your turn will come!" "Poor Mama!" She reached hesitantly across and patted her mother's shoulder, ending with a reassuring squeeze.

Hilda clutched at her hand. "I love you very much, Kathleen," she said out of the blue.

"Oh!" The girl was nonplussed. Her mother had never said such a thing to her before. Hilda gave a little laugh, awkward and hesitant.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you." "Oh, you don't embarrass me," Kathleen lied. "It's just so ... I mean, I love you, too, only we're usually too stiff-upper-lip to say things like that in our family, do we.

"We don't say anything, really," Hilda sighed.

"What is it?" Greatly daring, Kathleen leaned across the space between them and kissed her mother's cheek. Half of her hoped it was what she thought it might be; half of her it.

"I was thinking how demonstrative Mrs Burgoyne is with Chuck, demonstrative of her affections, I mean. No English mother would behave like that, would she. Not in Highbury, anyway. We'd all be too afraid of turning our sons into milksops. Yet look at Chuck! You'd think of a hundred other words to describe him and never come near 'milksop'!"

"A thousand!" Kathleen agreed. She grazed her mother's shoulder with the cold tip of her nose. "So that was your New Year's resolution, eh?"

"Not consciously. I'm beginning to wonder if our consciences are any guide no! I don't mean consciences, I mean consciousnesses, or whatever you could call them. Our conscious minds... oh dear, I've lost the thread now. We've seen so much and ... done so much. My head's all in a whirl."

"Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"About Michael Harding."

"Oh dear."

Kathleen groped for her mother's hand and lay down again, clasping it to her breast. "You needn't answer if you don't want to. I mean, it's none of my business."

"Isn't it?" For the first time Hilda laughed dry chuckle.

- a little "Papa told me you were bent on dismissing her again. I was going to throw myself overboard if you did."

Hilda shivered suddenly and pulled the clothes back over herself - rather awkwardly since Kathleen would not release her left hand. "Why does she mean so much to you?" she asked