CHAPTER FOUR

Mrs Munt and Helen returned home in terrible condition. Eventually, Mrs Munt recovered and thought of herself as a hero. In her mind, she had saved Helen from certain disaster. Helen, however, had truly been in love, not with one boy, but with all of the Wilcox family. Therefore, she still suffered.

She loved them all so much that she was willing to accept their ideas about the world. She even began to agree with Mr Wilcox's view that women should not be allowed to vote; and with Charles' feeling that it was useless to be polite to servants. She was ready to throw all of her own ideas away, because she loved everything about being with them all. As for Paul, she had fallen in love with him before he had even arrived. They were the same age and the situation was like a dream for both of them: a fresh, new face, a temporary visitor. That was how they both looked at things. And, of course, it helped that he was a member of the Wilcox family. They kissed only once, in secret. Then they decided to marry. But soon reality began to fall upon them and the magic of those brief moments disappeared entirely.

"What happened?" asked Margaret.

"I don't know, really. I just came downstairs the next morning and saw everyone looking as normal as always, except for Paul, who looked terribly frightened that I would say or do something to embarrass him. I knew right then and there that we had made a mistake. A little later, I was able to tell him how silly I thought we both had behaved the night before. He agreed and everything seemed all right again. But then I remembered the letter I'd sent you. I told him about it and he did his best to send you a telegram so that you wouldn't come. But, of course, it was too late. Paul became very angry with me after that."

"You know, the two of us have managed to avoid the world out there most of our lives," Margaret said. "For us, relationships with others are strong, healthy things. But out there, relationships tend to put things out of order. The problem is, however, that, for some reason, the world out there seems much more real than ours. I think that those difficult relationships make people stronger."

"You're right. Yes, very right."

And from that moment, the memory of that horrible day at the Wilcoxes moved further and further back in their minds.

They began to have guests at their home in order to get more experience of that 'real world' of which Margaret had spoken. They were quite open-minded people, who believed that everyone should be equal. They were interested in politics, but could not get excited about issues surrounding England's 'empire', the land that their country had taken from others all around the world.

Margaret and Helen were not ordinary British people. Maybe it was because they were not entirely British. Their father had been German. He moved to England after the war ended with France. He felt that something had changed about his homeland after the war, and decided that he no longer wanted to live there. He was not like the newer types of Germans that people are familiar with today: so proud of their country that they look down on all others. No, he was the older kind of German: the thinking kind.

"So you think that Germans are stupid now?" A young relative of Mr Schlegel's once argued.

"Well, it seems that Germans, today, think that ruling the world is the most important thing," Mr Schlegel answered, "All of the wonderful ideas of the old Germany have been replaced by this stupid desire for power."

Sometimes the whole family would get involved in this discussion, with this young nephew and his wife saying Germany was chosen by God to rule the world, and Aunt Munt saying the same thing about England, and Mr Schlegel sitting in the middle.

Margaret learned a lot from hearing these discussions as a child. From an early age, she decided that individual people could trust their own ideas more than they could trust the ideas of a larger group. Helen was similar in many ways to her sister, but one thing made their individual experience of life quite different: Helen was attractive and Margaret was not. This made people pay more attention to Helen than to Margaret, and, at the same time, it also made Helen pay more attention to people than Margaret did. Personal appearance definitely can have an effect on a person's character.

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