Michael’s Reviews > It's a Battlefield > Status Update

‘Loneliness was only too easily attained; it was in the air one breathed; open any door, it opened on to loneliness in the passage; close the door at night, one shut loneliness in. The toothbrush, the chair, the ewer and the bed were dents in loneliness.’

Mrs. Drover says ‘hanged’, Mrs. Coney says ‘hung’. There's nice attention to a difference in register and diction here.

‘[…] It was themselves, carning the fees they had fixed themselves, hundreds of pounds going into their pockets while the trial went on. A death for a death—the law demanded this, but the law had not been made by Jim or Mrs Coney or herself, it had been made by kings and priests and lawyers and rich men.’

‘It occurred to Milly how easily the whole affair could have been settled between them. Ms Coney did not want vengeance, she did not want another woman's husband slaughtered because she had lost her own: they were two women of the same class who could talk things over and come to an understanding. […]’