Scold's Bridle

I watched Duncan clipping his hedge this afternoon and could barely remember the handsome man he was. If I had been a charitable woman, I would have married him forty years ago and saved him from himself and Violet. She has turned my Romeo into a sad-eyed Billy Bunter who blinks his passion quietly when no one's looking. Oh, that his too, too solid flesh should melt. At twenty, he had the body of Michelangelo's David, now he resembles an entire family group by Henry Moore.

Jack continues to delight me. What a tragedy I didn't meet him or someone like him when I was "green in judgement." I learnt only how to survive, when Jack would, I think, have taught me how to love. I asked him why he and Sarah have no children, and he answered: "Because I've never had the urge to play God." I told him there was nothing godlike about procreation-doglike perhaps-and it's a monumental conceit that allows him to dictate Sarah's suitability as a mother. "The vicar would say you're playing the devil, Jack. The species won't survive unless people like you reproduce themselves."

But he is not an amenable man. If he were, I would enjoy him less. "You've played God for years, Mathilda. Has it given you any pleasure or made you more content?" No, and I can say that honestly. I shall die as naked as I was born.