The Chalice

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There she was, lying across the bed, stretched out corner to corner, as though this could relieve the cramp inside caused by the way she'd been used… trifled with and slighted, yes, and humiliated

… as if, as a young woman, she was natural prey, just another little hopping bird in the hawk's garden.

Oh! She might have felt better beating her fists into the pillow, but she'd never have excused herself for that. Not the behaviour of a trained psychoanalyst.

All the same, she would remember telling herself that if she didn't do something about it she'd quite simply implode. So perhaps that was what started the process.

It must have been going on, somewhere, while she was persuading her body into the relaxation procedure – not easy when her stupid mind insisted on re-enacting the appalling business, over and over.

Beginning with his proposal of a small adventure for her. That boyish grin through the bristly little moustache, the kind which all the men she knew seemed to have brought back from the Great War. The bantering baritone, smooth and slick as freshly buffed mahogany. 'Didn't you know, Violet? My goodness, didn't you know – that we still had it here?'

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