In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill Page B

this place and do you think this is all I was born for? Don’t you think I had chances enough, when I was your age, for something better?’
    The same things, over and over again. Alice sat stiffly, her face expressionless.
    ‘How much do any of you care or understand? What do you know about how I suffer? The sacrifices I’ve made. You don’t, you know nothing. He was the only one, he was sensitive, and he was taken from me, and what have I left?’
    Jo turned one of the small stones about between his finger and thumb.
    ‘And why does she have to have you? Going all the way up there, doing everything for her. What do you ever do for me? Why can’t she lift a finger? Others have had to. Hasn’t anyone told her, life goes on and she’s no exception? As if I couldn’t have taken to my bed and never got up. She’s not in her right mind and whose fault is it but her own? She’s making use of you. It’s to stop. You’re not to go over there, spending half the day and night, locked up with a mad woman.’
    ‘She is not mad, you shouldn’t say those things.’
    ‘Is that how you’d talk to me? My own son? Don’t you take on her airs. She’s the proud one, she’s cut herself off. Well then, let her be, she’s nothing to us now.’
    ‘She is to me.’
    ‘Yes, you’re on her side, she’s turned you against me. How do you know anything, boy? You can’t see the truth about her, a child like you. Nor he. She took him and now she’s trying to take you.’
    ‘She needs someone. Me. I have to help her.’
    ‘Have to? And if I say you don’t?’ Dora Bryce turned away, making for the kitchen. ‘The sea. What right has she to go spending money, going on pleasure trips , enjoying herself. The sea! So much for what she feels. How long is it? Four weeks? Less. And she can go off to the sea. She’s hard as hard,’
    ‘No,’ said Jo quietly. He felt sick inside himself, but he would not let Ruth down, he would defend her against all of them.
    ‘And what will happen to her? I’ll tell you. It’s only what anyone could tell you. She’ll either go out of her mind and have to be taken away, or else find another man, quick enough, and be off. That’s what.’
    It was Alice who interrupted, Alice, not Jo, who could no longer sit in that stifling room, hearing the endless complaints, the self-pity and bitterness. She got up.
    ‘Leave it,’ she said, ‘leave him alone. Does it matter where he went? It does no harm. Can’t we talk like normal people, can’t anybody forget about it for a moment?’
    ‘You? You as well? Taking her side, going against me?’
    ‘No one’s against you.’
    ‘I could have been Someone, Miss, had a real life, I could.’
    ‘We all know what you fancy you could have been. A lady! We’ve heard it all our lives and do you suppose we believe it? Why should we? And does it matter? Because whatever you might have been is a day-dream, isn’t it, an escape from the truth? You live in a day dream. But this is real, this is what you are, here, a woman of fifty, married to a farm hand. Well why can’t you be satisfied, why not make do?’
    Dora Bryce leaned against the wall, swaying slightly, a hand up to her face.
    ‘And I’m not staying. I’m not sitting here in this room, waiting for something you dream about, hopes, half-plans, waiting this year, next year, sometime, never, and most likely it’ll be never, I’m not going to be what you think you’ll make of me, do what you fancy you could have done, I’ll find something of my own, live my own life and be glad of it, whatever it is. I’ll make do when you can’t.’
    Jo wanted to make them stop somehow, he could not bear the sound of their voices, raised, harsh, and the cruel words that darted to and fro and were meant to wound and to be remembered. But he could do nothing. They did not notice when he slipped out of the room and the front door, his visit to the sea was forgotten now. He went down the lane and out of the village,