DeanJean

“It was only then, when the man lay sleeping beside her, that Evelyn took in the whole new astonishment of her situation. She shifted very slightly away from him in her bed so that no part of her body was touching his, aware of the smell of his skin of his naked back so close beside her, so masculine and alien, an affront in a new language she couldn't read.”
― Tessa Hadley, The Party

“James was teaching me how to knit baby clothes, but I didn’t get on very well when he wasn’t there, but I did manage two vests that resembled badly made porridge.”
― Barbara Comyns

“All the golden guineas had gone now and we only had the little I earned as a model. With this we had to pay for food, light and heat, and laundry and of course rent. Sometimes we were several weeks behind and the landlady would ask us for money each time we went in or out of the house. I would hear her talking about us to the other people who lived on the floor below and felt dreadfully ashamed.

Charles did not mind. He just said she was a silly old bitch. As soon as Charles started to paint he forgot about the cold and money worries. That is how artists should be, but I was only a commercial artist, so I went on worrying.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“Eva was rather impressed that we had made all the necessary arrangements. I did not tell her that I would shortly be leaving my job, because already she had said that penniless people had no right to have children. She didn’t seem to think it was Charles’s baby — only mine, because later on, when I was upstairs putting on my coat, she kissed me quite kindly, but spoilt it by saying, ‘I shall never forgive you, Sophia, for making my son a father at twenty-one.’ I almost added, ‘And you a grandmother at forty-six.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths