The Sandcastle Read Free

ass. Men of his generation have such romantic
ideas about female emancipation. But if his idea of the free society is women
making after-dinner speeches, he’d better find someone else to cooperate with.
He told me to “think it over”. I just laughed at him. He’s pathetic.‘

‘You ought to try,’ said Mor. ‘You complain about the narrowness of your life,
and yet you never take the chance to do anything new or different.’

‘If you think my life would be made any less, as you charmingly put it,
“narrow” by my making a fool of myself at that stupid dinner,’ said Nan, ‘I
really cannot imagine what conception you have of me at all.’ The two-fifteen
bell for the first afternoon lesson could be heard ringing beyond the trees.

‘I wish you hadn’t stopped your German,’ said Mor. ‘You haven’t done any for
months, have you?’

Mor had hoped to be able to educate his wife. He had always known that she was
intelligent. He had imagined that she would turn out to be talented. The house
was littered with the discarded paraphernalia of subjects in which he had hoped
to interest her: French grammars, German grammars, books of history and
biography, paints, even a guitar on which she had strummed a while but never
learnt to play. It irritated Mor that his wife should combine a grievance about
her frustrated gifts with a lack of any attempt to concentrate. She
deliberately related herself to the world through him only and then disliked
him for it. She had few friends, and no occupations other than housework.

‘Don’t go out of your way to annoy me,’ said Nan. ‘Haven’t you got a lesson at
two-fifteen?’

‘It’s a free period,’ said Mor, ‘but I ought to go and do some correcting. Is
that Felicity?’

‘No, it’s the milkman,’ said Nan. ‘I suppose you’d like some coffee?’

‘Well, maybe,’ said Mor.

‘Don’t have it if you’re indifferent,’ said Nan; ‘it’s expensive enough. In
fact, you weren’t really thinking about my German. You’re still stuffed up with
those dreams that Tim Burke put into you. You imagine that it’s only my
narrowmindedness that stops you from being Prime Minister!’

Tim Burke was a goldsmith, and an old friend of the Mor family. He was also the
chairman of the Labour Party in a neighbouring borough, where he had been
trying to persuade Mor to become the local candidate. It was a safe Labour
seat. Mor was deeply interested in the idea.

‘I wasn’t thinking about that,’ said Mor, ‘but you are timid there too.’ He was
shaken more deeply than he yet liked to admit by his wife’s opposition to this
plan. He had not yet decided how to deal with it.

‘Timid!’ said Nan. ‘What funny words you use! I’m just realistic. I don’t want
us both to be exposed to ridicule. My dear, I know, it’s attractive, London and
so on, but in real life terms it means a small salary and colossal expenses and
absolutely no security. You don’t realize that one still needs a private income
to be an M.P. You can’t have everything, you know. It was your idea to send
Felicity to that expensive school. It was your idea to push Don into going to
Cambridge.’

‘He’ll get a county grant,’ Mor mumbled. He did not want this argument now. He
would reserve his fire.

‘You know as well as I do,’ said Nan, ‘that a county grant is a drop in the
ocean. He might have worked with Tim. He might have knocked around the world a
bit. And if he learns anything at Cambridge except how to imitate his expensive
friends — ’

‘He’ll do his military service,’ said Mor. In persuading Donald to work for the
University Mor had won one of his rare victories. He had been paying for it
ever since.

‘The trouble with you, Bill,’ said Nan, ‘is that for all your noisy Labour
Party views you’re a snob at heart. You want your children to be ladies and
gents. But anyhow, quite apart from the money, you haven’t the personality to
be a public man. You’d much