Ann Prentice stood on the platform at Victoria, waving.
The boat train drew out in a series of purposeful jerks, Sarah’s dark head disappeared, and Ann Prentice turned to walk slowly down the platform towards the exit.
She experienced the strangely mixed sensations that seeing a loved one off may occasionally engender.
Darling Sarah—how she would miss her … Of course it was only for three weeks … But the flat would seem so empty … Just herself and Edith—two dull middle-aged women …
Sarah was so alive, so vital, so positive about everything … And yet still such a darling black-haired baby—
How awful! What a way to think! How frightfully annoyed Sarah would be! The one thing that Sarah—and all the other girls of her age—seemed to insist upon was an attitude of casual indifference on the part of their parents. ‘No fuss, Mother,’ they said urgently.
They accepted, of course, tribute in kind. Taking their clothes to the cleaners and fetching them and usually paying for them. Difficult telephone calls (‘If you just ring Carol up, it will be so much easier, Mother.’) Clearing up the incessant untidiness. (‘Darling, I did mean to take away my messes. But I have simply got to rush.’)
‘Now when I was young,’ reflected Ann …
Her thoughts went back. Hers had been an old-fashioned home. Her mother had been a woman of over forty when she was born, her father older still, fifteen or sixteen years older than her mother. The house had been run in the way her father liked.
Affection had not been taken for granted, it had been expressed on both sides.
‘There’s my dear little girl.’ ‘Father’s pet!’ ‘Is there anything I can get you, Mother darling?’
Tidying up the house, odd errands, tradesmen’s books, invitations and social notes, all these Ann had attended to as a matter of course. Daughters existed to serve their parents—not the other way about.
As she passed near the bookstall, Ann asked herself suddenly, ‘Which was the best?’
Surprisingly enough, it didn’t seem an easy question to answer.
Running her eyes along the publications on the bookstall (something to read this evening in front of the fire) she came to the unexpected decision that it didn’t really matter. The whole thing was a convention, nothing more. Like using slang. At one period one said things were ‘topping’, and then that they were ‘too divine’, and then that they were ‘marvellous’, and that one ‘couldn’t agree with you more’, and that you were ‘madly’ fond of this, that and the other.
Children waited on parents, or parents waited on children—it made no difference to the underlying vital relationship of person to person. Between Sarah and herself there was, Ann believed, a deep and genuine love. Between her and her own mother? Looking back she thought that under the surface fondness and affection there had been, actually, that casual and kindly indifference which it was the fashion to assume nowadays.
Smiling to herself, Ann bought a Penguin, a book that she remembered reading some years ago and enjoying. Perhaps it might seem a little sentimental now, but that wouldn’t matter, as Sarah was not going to be there …
Ann thought: ‘I shall miss her—of course I shall miss her—but it will be rather peaceful …’
And she thought: ‘It will be a rest for Edith, too. She gets upset when plans are always being changed and meals altered.’
For Sarah and her friends were always in a flux of coming and going and ringing up and changing plans. ‘Mother darling, can we have a meal early? We want to go to a movie.’ ‘Is that you, Mother? I rang up to say I shan’t be in to lunch after all.’