Dolly by Anita Brookner Page B

fear.
    When I got home from one of my walks my mother would express gratification at my audacity and would hasten to pour out the tea, summoning Miss Lawlor to witness my prowess. I remember Miss Lawlor standing at the door of the drawing-room, her straw hat already in place (she usually went home in the early afternoon, but occasionally liked to linger) and miming admiration in her typically muted fashion. We were all affected by the weather in one way or another.
    ‘Sit down, Violet,’ said my mother. ‘You’re not going out in this heat without a cup of tea. It’s supposed to cool one down, although I can’t see how it can. It is simply the best drink of all; ours not to reason why. And help yourself to cake. Jane? Eat something, darling.’
    But there was no need to encourage me. I ate and drank substantially, as did my parents. Miss Lawlor, as I have said, shared my mother’s lunch, and mine too if I were at home, and helped to prepare our dinner. Gradually she fell into the habit of joining my mother at teatime, which pleased my mother, as they were very fond of each other. Of the two of them Miss Lawlor was the more discreet, if that is possible. Her conversation consisted largely of gentle murmurings of agreement. She was a timid woman who had long sought a shelter from the world’s harshness, and had found this in the church. My mother tried to make her feel at ease in our home and I think succeeded. Although she had come to us from my father’s side of the family she loved both my parents equally well, and was content to share their lives ratherthan seek one of her own. I never knew her age, although she must have been a good fifteen years older than my father. But age had not attacked her as it attacks more robust women; she simply became a little more tentative every year, while from her faded face her large brown eyes shone forth with undimmed faith in the world beyond this world, which my parents, free-thinkers, took care never to disparage in her presence. Even when we were alone together no aspersions were allowed: the world to come was left intact for those who believed in it. This was considered part of a general courtesy, all the more impressive in that it was completely undemonstrative. Such a training is difficult to lose, even in situations which call for something more decisive. I never lost my temper, even as a child, and have remained incapable of doing so to this day.
    After tea my friend Marigold Chance might receive a visit. She lived in Bramerton Street, a short walk over the bridge. She had been my friend since we had started school together at the age of four, and now that our schooldays were approaching their end we had become aware that life might separate us: I would go to Cambridge and Marigold would begin her nurse’s training. I loved her, as I loved everyone; I was not jealous of her beauty, which was considerable and was to remain so until after the birth of her third child. If I envied her at all it was for her relations, who were numerous. I particularly envied her for her two great-aunts, Catherine and Eleanor—Kate and Nell—two vigorous and heroically built women who travelled down from Glasgow every summer with a cargo of shortbread, whisky, Shetland pullovers for Marigold’s father and brother, and kilts for her motherand for Marigold herself. Kate and Nell, who lived together in harmonious spinsterhood, or single blessedness, as they put it, felt vaguely sorry for the perfectly capable girl their nephew had married, simply because they felt sorry for any woman held in bondage to a man. Paradoxically, they doted on Marigold’s father and brother, and were always trying to devise treats for them. From the double bed in which they had spent their chaste night they would rise and make the early morning tea, anxious to get everyone out of the house so that they could get on with some serious baking. ‘Sit down, dear,’ they would say to Marigold’s mother. ‘Let me do