Scold's Bridle

Joanna came to visit me today. She fixed me with that peculiarly unpleasant stare of hers through most of lunch-I was reminded of a terrier Father once had which turned vicious after a beating and had to be put down; there was the same malicious gleam in his eyes just before he sank his teeth into Father's palm and ripped the flesh from the bone-then spent most of the afternoon searching about in the library. She said she was looking for my mother's book on flower arranging, but she was lying, of course. I remember giving that to her when she moved back to London. I did not interfere.

She looked very tarty, I thought-far too much make-up for a trip to the country and in a ridiculously short skirt for a woman of her age. I suspect some man brought her down and was abandoned to forage for himself at the pub. Sex, to Joanna, is a currency to be used quite shamelessly in return for services rendered.

Oh, Mathilda, Mathilda! Such hypocrisy!

Do these men realize, I wonder, how little she cares for and about them? Not through contempt, I think, but through sheer indifference to anyone's feelings but her own. I should have taken Hugh Hendry's advice and insisted on a psychiatrist. She's quite mad, but then, so, of course, was Gerald. "The wheel is come full circle."

She came out of the library with his idiotic will held in front of her like some holy relic and cursed me in the most childish and absurd way for stealing her inheritance. I wonder who told her about it.