Amongst Women

For the girls the regular comings and goings restored their superior sense of self, a superiority they had received intact from Moran and which was little acknowledged by the wide world in which they had to work and live. That unexplained notion of superiority was often badly shaken and in need of restoration by the time they came home.

As looking down from great heights brings the urge to fall and end the terror of falling, so his very watching put pressure on them to make a slip as they dried and stacked the plates and cups.

To leave the everpresent tension of Great Meadow was like shedding stiff, formal clothes or kicking off pinching shoes.

Time should have stopped with the clocks but instead it moved in a glazed dream of tiredness without their ticking insistence.