to ask whether David had had this effect on her, but suppressed the thought as ridiculous. For all her status as a tragic mother, Kitty was not permeable to the simpler affections. Besides, there was no reason whyDavid should touch a maternal chord. The poor fellow, for some reason, inspired a certain contempt, whether for his easy convictions, or for his hapless good cheer, or for his all-embracing physical and emotional forbearance. Kitty might not be permeable to the simpler affections but she was extremely susceptible to masculine charm, and David possessed none. Even in their short acquaintance Mrs May had felt irritated by his gladness. Kitty probably dismissed him as a sort of eunuch. He had made no effort to tease her, to cajole her, which was what she may have expected; his innocence in this regard compounded his original offence, which lay in his problematic physicality. He had made his fiancée pregnant but seemed strangely removed from the evidence. Kitty would no doubt have appreciated a hint of licence: like many old women she looked to the young to gratify her in this particular way, to remind her of her own youth and its conquests, and of all that she had done to evince a certain reaction from a man, a reaction that David bafflingly refused her, so that she felt slighted, foolish. Dislike came more easily then, and dislike based on disappointment is difficult to dislodge.
From that single encounter over the tea table Mrs May had divined that Kitty felt for her inappropriate granddaughter the same emotion that had overwhelmed her when faced with the refractory child. She herself had felt for the girl a certain distaste which Ann had done nothing to justify. Perhaps it was the lazy turn of the head, a certain sly watchfulness, which may have signalled nothing more than an ability to gauge Kitty’s mood, that had awoken in Mrs May an unwelcome reminder of her own girlhood, which had been as innocent of sexual involvement as that of any Victorian maiden. Young men, the brothers of friends, had existed, but on the periphery, while she had sat at home reading
Persuasion
. LikeAnne Elliot she believed that all she had to do was wait, and any slight disappointment she felt, when a belated consciousness of her unsought condition was brought home to her, was compensated by the thought of the lifelong fidelity with which she would reward the man who would eventually awaken her love.
In the meantime she had been the object of a certain lazy scrutiny, not from the brothers of those friends with whom she had once walked home from school, but from the friends themselves. It was the same sly speculative look that she had seen on Ann’s face, as if Ann had crossed the line that marked out the experienced from the inexperienced. This was understandable, but nevertheless unwelcome. It was as if the girl took a pride in reminding old women like Kitty, like Mrs May, to whom nothing more could happen in the way of romance, that she at least was sexually active. Mrs May could have told her that her pride was misplaced, that she was in fact deluding herself if she thought she had acquired a singular advantage. Kitty too had felt the weight of that misplaced superiority. Even more than the exasperating David who, by comparison, seemed positively virginal, Ann, once more, had frustrated her. Kitty might have longed to offer advice, not knowing that mothers in these enlightened times frequently took advice from their daughters. Kitty, in short, would have liked to act as a matriarch, as a patroness, graciously revealing a little—but not too much—of that arcane knowledge that only married women possess. Instead of which Ann’s almost insolent smile—and it did indeed almost verge on insolence—had relegated her to the sidelines, and worse, had reminded her of her obsolete status, and with it her no doubt imperfect knowledge (for so it was judged) and her redundant maternity. Seeing Austin half lying in his chair, his pills
From that single encounter over the tea table Mrs May had divined that Kitty felt for her inappropriate granddaughter the same emotion that had overwhelmed her when faced with the refractory child. She herself had felt for the girl a certain distaste which Ann had done nothing to justify. Perhaps it was the lazy turn of the head, a certain sly watchfulness, which may have signalled nothing more than an ability to gauge Kitty’s mood, that had awoken in Mrs May an unwelcome reminder of her own girlhood, which had been as innocent of sexual involvement as that of any Victorian maiden. Young men, the brothers of friends, had existed, but on the periphery, while she had sat at home reading
Persuasion
. LikeAnne Elliot she believed that all she had to do was wait, and any slight disappointment she felt, when a belated consciousness of her unsought condition was brought home to her, was compensated by the thought of the lifelong fidelity with which she would reward the man who would eventually awaken her love.
In the meantime she had been the object of a certain lazy scrutiny, not from the brothers of those friends with whom she had once walked home from school, but from the friends themselves. It was the same sly speculative look that she had seen on Ann’s face, as if Ann had crossed the line that marked out the experienced from the inexperienced. This was understandable, but nevertheless unwelcome. It was as if the girl took a pride in reminding old women like Kitty, like Mrs May, to whom nothing more could happen in the way of romance, that she at least was sexually active. Mrs May could have told her that her pride was misplaced, that she was in fact deluding herself if she thought she had acquired a singular advantage. Kitty too had felt the weight of that misplaced superiority. Even more than the exasperating David who, by comparison, seemed positively virginal, Ann, once more, had frustrated her. Kitty might have longed to offer advice, not knowing that mothers in these enlightened times frequently took advice from their daughters. Kitty, in short, would have liked to act as a matriarch, as a patroness, graciously revealing a little—but not too much—of that arcane knowledge that only married women possess. Instead of which Ann’s almost insolent smile—and it did indeed almost verge on insolence—had relegated her to the sidelines, and worse, had reminded her of her obsolete status, and with it her no doubt imperfect knowledge (for so it was judged) and her redundant maternity. Seeing Austin half lying in his chair, his pills
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