It was -- to use the vernacular espoused by the young men in navy and khaki who frequent my drawing-room these days -- a bloody shame.

They never use those words to me .But I hear them, nonetheless.

Was I ever a widow, truly? When I looked down at that -- that thing -- raving on the hospital bed did I think husband? No, I rather think I didn't. I 'd lost him, long ago. Never back, never again.

I'd married -- that was my bargain (straight from the schoolroom -- no-one mentioned them at the time --: it comes in the Bible, and in Shakespeare some half wit told me later) and then --

A succession of little sloughed-off half-formed babes, eyeless, untimely ripp'd -- oh, yes, ripp'd. Miscarrying, be it early or late, rips things away. Rips womb, life, heart. Hip rip away. I was a great sport, at school, I always called first -- you shouldn't, as a victor, but I'd grown so used to losing I called, always, even after we started to win.

All times, all seasons.

They won't get a penny of it. Not his family, not mine.

If I'd been poor, to start with --

No. Let the millstone become a lifeline.

I never could climb ropes, no matter what the games captain yelled.

But I can weave them, weave them out of gold.

And when I lie in this pit I'll watch those others climbing towards the sun.