‘ …and so I told him that I thought it was quite disgraceful. A whole three pence overnight! Of course, he cheeked me. “Everything goes up,” he said. “I have to cover my costs.” Well, you can imagine. “Cover your costs!” I said …’ Bea fiddled restlessly with the letter in her lap and wondered at what point Norah had become so penny-pinching. She had arrived to teach English at the preparatory school in Dorset when Bea had been Matron for five years or so. In the heavily male-dominated society they had automatically drawn together and, when Norah married and moved into Hampshire, they had remained good friends. Each summer Bea had spent some part of the holidays with her and Bernard, and they had always joked about how they would be tiresome old ladies together. She had sympathised with Norah’s irritations at Bernard’s feckless ways; his extravagance, his generosity to the undeserving, his tendency to pop round to the pub. He had always effaced himself, leaving the two of them to their own devices, but in the last two months Bea had begun to realise that it must have been no self-sacrifice on Bernard’s part.
What do You think about Second Time Around (2011)?
