Scold's Bridle

Arthritis is a brute. It makes one so vulnerable. If I were a less cynical woman, I would say Sarah has the gift of healing, though, frankfy, I'm inclined to think anyone would have been an improvement on that old fool, Hendry. He was lazy, of course, and didn't bother to keep up his reading. Sarah tells me there have been huge advances in the field which he obviously knew nothing about. I am rather inclined to sue, if not on my own behalf, then on Joanna's. Clearly, it was he who set her on the path to addiction.

Sarah asked me today how I was, and I answered with a line from

King Lear

: "I grow; I prosper. Now, gods, stand up for bastards." She quite naturally assumed I was referring to myself, laughed good-naturedfy and said: "A bitch, possibly, Mathilda, but never a bastard. There's only one bastard I know, and that's Jack." I asked her what he had done to deserve such an appellation. "He takes my love for granted," she said, "and offers his to anyone who's foolish enough to flatter him."

How very flawed are human relationships. This is not a Jack I recognize. He guards his love as jealously as he guards his art. The truth, I think, is that Sarah perceives both herself and him "through a glass darkly." She believes he strays, but only, I suspect, because she insists on using his effect on women as a criterion by which to judge him. His passions frighten her because they exist outside her control, and she is less adept than she thinks she is at seeing where he directs them.

I adore the man. He encourages me to "dare damnation," for what is life if it is not a rebellion against death .