As the woman shrieks and rails («You there with your fancy man in the garden in the
bright light of day... canoodling with him you in nothing but your floral
swimming costume and showing your very thighs»), Mantel's mother, in a turn that anticipates Mantel's later descriptions of Anne Boleyn, rises from where she is basking, blinks, and dawdles indifferently indoors, leaving her daughter — small, foursquare, hands planted on her hips — to defend the family honor.