Their presence, their absence, together with the alternation of week and week-end made of Mary's existence a chequer-board of contrasting atmosphere. When the children were away Kate often spent part of the week at the Grays' house in London, if she was not absent on a trip with Octavian, who treated airline timetables as most people treat train timetables. The arrival of the week-end changed the house with the introduction into it of the mystery of a married pair. Kate and Octavian, charmingly, ebulliently wedded, took, as it were, the thrones which awaited them. Paula and Mary then wore their status of women without men. They laughed at Octavian's harem jokes and heard late at night behind walls the ceaseless rivery murmur of the conversing couple. When the children were at home the week-end was a less intensive matter just because the house was fuller and more anarchic and less private. But the children too were altered by it, Barbara becoming suddenly 'the child of the house', a somewhat purdah-like condition, half privilege, half penalty, the nature of which was never questioned by the other three. The presence of men, Octavian and of late John Ducane (it occurred to no one to count Uncle Theo as a man), also made the conduct of the children not exactly more disciplined, but more coherent and self-conscious.On the whole Mary Clothier was satisfied, at least she enjoyed a harassed nervous rather dark content which she told herself was the best she was capable of. Alistair Clothier had died when Pierce was a very small child, leaving his wife with no money. Mary, who had abandoned the university to marry, found it hard to earn. She became a typist. Pierce gained a scholarship at his father's old school. They managed; but Mary had never forgiven the fates for so cheating her over Alistair. A spirit took possession of her which was sardonic, sarcastic, narrow. She had come to expect little and to rail on what she had.
