This Real Night by Rebecca West

told her that you were unhappy because Papa had gone away, and asked her to do what she could to make you happier, and she was too brainless and too careless to remember, and worse, she was too drunk, drunk with stupidity and ill-will. Mamma, promise you will never go near her again.’
    ‘I hope I never shall,’ said Mamma. ‘It was dreadful, sitting in that small room and having all that hatred played at one on the cornet. But you did not hear what poor, poor Mr Morpurgo said as we left. “I hope you will come again and bring Mary.” How could he think we could go back and endure all that a second time? And bring Mary, the most sensitive of you all.’ Cordelia jerked up her head and stuck out her stubborn little chin, angry at the idea that any of us were considered more sensitive than she was. ‘Poor Mary would have taken weeks to get over this, while all of you will be no worse by the time you have got home,’ Mamma went on, unconscious that she was giving any of us cause for offence, believing indeed that she was paying us a compliment. ‘But I am sure poor Edgar meant it, and I know he will be hurt when I refuse the invitation, and perhaps he will guess at the reason, and that is the last thing one must ever do - to make a husband think badly of his wife, to make a wife think badly of her husband. But I really will not be able to go.’
    ‘Well, stick to that,’ said Richard Quin. He sat back and looked down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them. ‘Anyway, we are probably worrying about nothing. She was not pleased that we had been invited, and she will be less pleased to have us in the house now she has seen you. Cordelia and Rose are much prettier than her daughters, and much younger than she is, and you have something that trumps her ace. Oh, ten to one we’ll not be asked again.’
    ‘Richard Quin,’ exclaimed Mamma, ‘how can you be so vulgar? I am sure that the woman, idiot as she is, would not have such petty thoughts. People are not like that in real life, only in Punch jokes.’
    ‘Mamma,’ I said, ‘how can you say that? Richard Quin is perfectly right. Of course Mrs Morpurgo was as jealous as could be. Didn’t you see how she was glaring at Cordelia?’
    ‘That horrid common woman does not matter,’ said Cordelia. ‘But, Mamma—’
    ‘Anyway, Mrs Morpurgo will not be in the house if we are asked again,’ I said. ‘I think Mr Morpurgo is going to divorce her.’
    ‘Oh, Rose! Rose!’ cried Mamma. ‘What has come over all of you? Talking of divorce beside this beautiful lake? Divorce! You are too young to utter the word, and there is no reason why you should, for you know nothing about it. You have never known anybody who was divorced. I don’t think I ever have, except of course Cosima Wagner, and I don’t expect you ever will. And nothing happened today to make you say the dreadful thing you have just said. Mrs Morpurgo was rude to us, she was disagreeable to poor Edgar, and of course it is the worst condemnation of a woman that she should not appreciate a husband like that. It was so strange,’ she said, going into a dream, ‘that she would not do what he wanted. It is such a pleasure when people you are fond of want you to do something. Your father was so taken up with his writing that he rarely asked me to do anything in particular. But Edgar asked his wife today to stay at home instead of going out, you would have thought that would be a great pleasure for her. But beyond that, Rose, Mrs Morpurgo did nothing wrong. There was no hint of any of the awful things that have to happen before there could be a divorce.’
    ‘But, Mamma,’ I protested, ‘there was the riding master.’
    ‘Yes, Mamma,’ said Richard Quin. ‘Mamma, didn’t you understand about the riding master?’
    We eyed her innocence with something of the same amazement that she herself had felt at seeing a grown man shorter than a boy.
    ‘Mamma, dear, there are lots of things we don’t know