And we clung to each other in a shelter smelling of orange peel and piss on the promenade, and shrieked with glee, like the Bacchae who dismembered Orpheus.

The children of violently unhappy marriages, like my mother, are often hamstrung for life, but the children of happier marriages have problems too - all the worse, perhaps, because they don't have virtue on their side.

He seemed to be having trouble remembering the steps, for he was pumping my arm and counting under his breath (one, two, three), and his breath smelled like the open maws of the pub cellars that grapes on Whitchurch pavements on delivery day. Beer.

Like many who'd married in the war, my parents were finding it hard to survive the peace. This wasn't because they had discovered that they didn't love each other once their life together wasn't spiced with constant separations and the threat of death. Far from it. But they hadn't chosen each other so much against the social grain that they were tense, self-conscious, embattled, as though something was supposed to go wrong. Their families didn't like their marriage, nor did the village.

Thou seest, thou wicked varlet, now, what’s come upon thee: thou art to continue, now, thou varlet; thou art to continue.

She thought men and women belonged to different races and any getting together was worse than