Monica Dickens

Life was like a jigsaw, but if you tried to fit the pieces together yourself, you generally got them wrong. Pierre had money; she needed money. Pierre was lovable and loved her; she would marry him. She had thought that was the pattern the pieces made. But it had been like trying to force two pieces together that didn't fit, and then, suddenly, the jigsaw had been done, in quite a different way, by other hands.

She had not told her mother about Denys, but she had a suspicion that Mrs. Shannon knew all about it nevertheless. It was unlike her not to want to satisfy her curiosity when she came upon her daughter sobbing in various parts of the house. She had asked no questions; she had simply donned the role of the heavily understanding mother, and had done a lot of shoulder-patting and given Mary an expensive evening dress from the shop. Mary had no idea how she knew, but was certain that if she had not known she would never have rested until she did.

While they were dancing, the buoyancy that the champagne had given her left her all at once, and she slumped and felt suddenly tired and miserable about all the things that Denys should have said and done and hadn't. At the end of the dance there was one awful moment when she was bored. She didn't want to go and be kissed in the garden, she didn't want to drink any more, and Denys was in no mood for conversation; what was there to do? She was bored. It was a terrible, treacherous thought to feel like that when you were with someone you loved.

People were kind and friendly and amusing, but they thought that companionship and conversation were synonymous, and some of them had voices that jarred in your head. There was a lot to be said for dogs. They understood without telling you so, and they were always pleasing to look at, awake or asleep, like Bingo. He slept now, with little whistling snores, in his basket at the side of the fire, his stubby legs and one whiskery eyebrow twitching to the fitful tempo of his dreams.

When I can't ride anymore, I shall keep horses as long as I can hobble around with a bucket and a wheelbarrow. When I can't hobble, I shall roll my wheelchair out to the fence of the field where my horses graze and watch them. Whether by wheelbarrow or wheelchair, I will do likewise to keep alive-as long as I can do as best I can-my connection with horses.

However, now she was a schoolgirl no longer. She had discovered how to manage her hair, had been to one or two parties and a night club, and laid on lipstick with the idea that each layer was a layer of sophistication.