He would not talk to her about teaching, and refused to see that her experience there was in any way parallel. “Spoilt girls in a private school, what do you know about it?” he asked. The boys in Grantham gave him a great deal of disciplinary trouble. He was also trying to write a book, a treatise on philosophy. He shut himself up in his room after dinner on most nights to work on it. He refused to discuss it with her, though he expected her to type his handwritten chapters on his heavy typewriter, though she could type no better than he could. He would tell her what a word was if she couldn’t make out his handwriting, even spell it out if it were some obscure German technical term, but he would never tell her what it meant. He laughed at her ignorance, as he would not laugh at the domestic failures where she would have been able to laugh too.
Whenever Mark was especially harsh and sarcastic, or when he seemed to treat her like a bad servant, she would turn to his old letters to remind herself that he did love her really, however he behaved. She did not do it too often, but it unfailingly worked. Even a few lines from one of the letters would reassure her, would fill her with renewed confidence to keep going at her drudgery. He might not seem to appreciate her, but he had written these things to her, had opened his heart. He might do so again one day when things were better, when he was over his disappointment, if she tried hard enough. She tried hard to love him. Sometimes he would accept her love and unfold and be friendly towards her. Other times she felt that he was judging her for not loving him enough.
Mark had not paid her any more conjugal visits after their wedding night. Their house had three bedrooms, and they had arranged without any discussion that they would have one each. Mark’s was officially his “study” but he inevitably slept there. She did not enter it except to clean it, change the sheets on his bed, and put away his clean clothes. She never entered it when he was home.
In their first weeks in the house she had quickly discovered that she had become immediately pregnant, and she imagined that this would confirm everyone’s prejudices about her hasty wedding. The memory of her wedding night came back as she was giving birth, which also hurt and stretched her and took her to that place without shame where she cried out in pain and anguish and terror.
Her mother came to stay after Doug was born and was immensely helpful in showing Tricia how to care for a newborn. She had also made him many tiny clothes, to supplement those Tricia had made. She brought Tricia her sewing machine. “You’ll need it more than I will now.” Tricia was touched; she remembered her mother teaching her to sew and how to make clothes when she and Oswald had been children. Caring for small children was her mother’s one real skill, and Tricia was glad to be able to learn it from her. They became close for the first time since Tricia was herself a small child, united in their love for Doug, or “Douglas Oswald” as her mother always called him.
There was room in the cottage, as Doug slept in Tricia’s room for now. Tricia’s mother lived alone and was lonely in Twickenham. There was no reason why she should not have stayed on indefinitely, helping out in their newfound closeness. But Mark grew impatient with his mother-in-law. Tricia realized that he was jealous of both her mother and the baby. She persuaded her mother to go back to her own house.
Despite the fashion for using formula and bottles, Tricia chose to feed Doug herself. She liked doing it, liked the animal closeness, liked feeling she was providing for him from her own resources. She even liked the tug of his lips on her breast and the feeling of relief as the fullness was drained.
Rationing was finally over, and at last she could buy all the milk and eggs she wanted. She continued to cook chops and vegetables for Mark’s dinners, but she ate little herself; mostly milk and eggs and fruit.
When Doug was nine months old, Mark came home with a bottle of wine. “We want more children,” he said.
“We do,” Tricia agreed, her heart sinking. It was not the birth she dreaded but the conception. She put Doug to bed in the third room and that night, after a bath, she heard Mark tap on her door. The process of their wedding night was repeated—the wine, the jabbing, the awkwardness, the whimpering and pleading, the muttered apology. This time was better because Mark had his own room to go back to and she had hot water to wash herself with. She did not become pregnant, and the process was repeated twice more in the following months before there were results.