Mary Olivier: a Life

If she could only dream about Mark. But if she dreamed about any of them it was always Mamma. She had left her in the house by herself and she had got out of her room to the stairhead. Or they were in London at the crossing by the Bank and Mamma was frightened. She had to get her through the thick of the traffic. The horses pushed at Mamma and you tried to hold back their noses, but she sank down and slid away from you sideways under the wheel.

Or she would come into this room and find her in it. At first she would be glad to see that Mamma was still there; then she would be unhappy and afraid. She would go on to a clear thought: if Mamma was still there, then she had got back somehow to Morfe. The old life was still going on; it had never really stopped. But if that was real, then this was not real. Her secure, shining life of last year and now wasn't real; nothing could make it real; her exquisite sense of it was not real. She had only thought it had happened.