It had always stayed with her, the way their male eyes had all harboured the same low thought, their curiosity like another body following her around all through those first weeks. “They could be as ignorant as they liked to us but I had to have a smile for all and never let on what I really thought about any of them. You know how it is, you’ve grown up with it, but I had never set foot in a pub in my life.”
“It must have been hard, all right.”
“I had to learn everything. But I did learn. I kept my side of the bargain.”
“Bargain?”
“A marriage is a bargain, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.” Peg looked pained, wearing the face she used to make as a child when you’d give her her cod-liver oil. Oh, young ones and their notions. She hardly expected her mother and father to be a pair of turtle doves,
