When involved in these curious situations with people, I'm not really all that involved emotionally. I'm more curious by what's going on. I'm watching it. It's as though I was reading a very interesting book. So that I'm not really as much as kindly involved, as I appear to be. I'm more distanced.

[Q] And that's what meant by a beady eye?

That's what I mean by a beady eye.

[Q] It's very honest of you to say that, isn't it?

Well, when I write, I try, always, if possible, to get it right, how it really is. It's just everyone always goes on about this honesty thing, because I don't think there's any point in writing about yourself unless you try to get it right.

[Q] Even if it's sometimes uncomfortable?

Even if it's sometimes uncomfortable.

[Q] So is there anything about yourself that you've noticed or come to realise, that makes you uncomfortable?

Well, I think probably that there's a sort of a… a sort of… somehow, I… In Instead of a Letter, when I was trying to… at the end, thinking well now, out of this long, long… not Instead of a Letter, the last book, this long life, there must be things I regret about myself. And I say that it's a sort of… it's a sort of selfishness, basically, right at the bottom, although I can do unselfish things from time to time. A self-protectiveness, of not getting too involved. Being an observer rather than a participant, which I think is not very nice.

[Q] Aren't you a bit hard on yourself?

Hm?

[Q] Aren't you a bit hard on yourself?

Well, I don't know. I mean, one is a participant in some ways, obviously, in certain circumstances, but I think that that's probably something that I must blame myself for.

[Q] But has it had any consequences that matter?

It probably has. I mean, I think it's odd, you see. It was very, very odd that I don't regret more not having children. And I think that that is part of it. I never was, when I was young, in the least maternal. Didn't have the slightest wish to have babies, and it overtook me in my forties, when I very nearly did have a child, but had a miscarriage.

And I suppose, if I'd had that child, I should have been a perfectly good mother to it. I think I would have been, but when… having wanted it very much, as I thought, after the miscarriage, I never really have minded it. That I had a ... partly, because, you see, it nearly killed me. And the fact that I was still alive was so wonderful that it quite swept away everything else. But that always seemed to me to suggest a sort of coldness somewhere. I mean, I ought… other people, many another woman would be eating their hearts out after that. And I can't say that I did.

I know that a lot of writers say this about themselves, you know, that they can sit there watching their parents die, and they mind, but they're still observing all the time. I certainly did that. I mean, I minded my mother dying very much, but I certainly was watching it, and watching my own reactions all the time. I think writers do it and probably… probably makers of documentary films do it, too.