The Happy Prisoner by Monica Dickens

distracted air, as if she were not giving heiwhole mind to resisting his curiosity. He might catch her out yet. “Man or woman, I said.”
    â€œOh, a man.”
    â€œAh. Your boy friend.”
    â€œJust a man I know.”
    â€œWhat’s his name? Don’t think I’m being nosey, but you never tell me anything off your own bat, and, oddly enough, I am interested.”
    â€œArnold Clitheroe.”
    â€œOh. What did you do? You had dinner—
    â€œYes, and we danced.”
    â€œDoes he dance well?”
    â€œWe dance quite well together.”
    â€œYou enjoyed yourself, in fact.”
    â€œYes, I always do with Arnold. He—” She was about to add something and then stopped.
    â€œGo out with him on Sunday?” asked Oliver casually. “Yes.”
    â€œHe is your boy friend. I know it. Tell me something about him, Elizabeth. Why are you being so coy?”
    â€œI’m
not
being coy.” It was the first time he had ever seen her angry. “And I don’t see that it’s any of your business. What’s the idea of this stupid cross-examination? If you’re trying to make fun of me, I’m afraid I can’t see the joke.” She banged out of the room. She had never banged his door before. This was interesting, most interesting. Oliver leaned back, tapped his finger-tips together and smiled. He was feeling better already. This was how it always was. Suddenly, between one sentence and the next, for no particular reason, the heaviness of his mind and body would lift and take itself right away. He imagined it sometimes as a shutter, rolling back inside his head; it was like someone coming into a darkened room full of stale sleep and pulling up the blind and opening the window to let in a sunburst of morning air.
    Already his room, instead of being the prison it had seemed for the last two days, empty of consolation, was filling with its own warm, comfortable atmosphere. He could almost imagine he heard the furniture creaking as it relaxed. Outside, the pale November landscape was beautiful. The orange sun was like a woolly toy. Far away on the side of the hill, he could see Evelyn leading down her half-broken young Exmoor pony. Soon she and Violet would start struggling with it in the meadow at the bottom. He would watch that; it was always good fun.
    He could smell onions cooking and found that he was looking forward to lunch. He picked up his shaving mirror. It had always been a bony, angled face, but since he had got thin his cheekbones seemed higher and his forehead more knobbly and prominent. His hair, ungreased for months now, seemed to be getting fairer and softer and kept trying to grow in the childish, untrained way of twenty years ago. It wanted cutting too. He smiled at himself. Ugly, grinning devil. Presently, he would ring the cow-bell for something and let the glad tidings spread through the house.

Chapter 5
    Mrs. North often said to Elizabeth: “I don’t know what we should do without you.” She certainly was a most useful person to have about the house. Besides looking after Oliver and fulfilling to the letter the duties which Mrs. North had worked out for her, she was always doing little extra things which might have been taken for kindnesses if she had not done them in a manner that implied that this was what she was paid for. Mrs. North was often tired in winter; because the cold weather did not agree with her. Elizabeth would urge her into bed, professionally rather than solicitously, and appear later with a tempting tea-tray, just when Mrs. North was wondering whether to pander to her legs by staying in bed, or to her stomach by going downstairs for tea.
    Sometimes she would take her rest in Oliver’s room, with her feet on the red-leather stool in front of the fire. Lying back, the sides of the high armchair hid her face, but Oliver could tell when she was asleep by the steeper rise and fall of her chest, although she