PASSING ON

PENELOPE LIVELY



'Eternal life is an appalling idea, especially in mother's case'
Helen is fifty-two and Edward forty-nine when Dorothy, their
mother, dies, ending her reign of terror and leaving them ill
equipped to deal with their lives. Timid, cautious and naive,
Helen makes the charming Giles Carnaby. family solicitor, the
object of a belated schoolgirl crush, while Edward, free to
express his sexuality at last, finds it gets the better of him.
Dorothy may be dead and buried, but her iron grip continues to
hold them in its power.
'Passing On is about the essential difficulty of being English,
of coping with peculiarly English varieties of guilt, nostalgia,
frustration and desire' Jonathan Keates, Observer
'Lively is at her sharpest, alert to every conceivable irony'
Jonathan Coe. Guardian
'Lively brilliantly captures the ecstasy and agony of falling in
love ... A highly plausible, utterly authentic, beautifully written
slice of contemporary life' Val Hennessy, Daily Mail

"A story as poignant as it is humorous'
David Hughes, Mud on SundayPENGUIN BOOKS

PASSING ON


'The quiet achievement of Passing On is that it finds drama in
the lives of characters so emotionally suffocated that a less
penetrating novelist might not have considered them worth
writing about' - Jonathan Coe in the Guardian

'Edward and Helen in Passing On are pleasant, plain,
inarticulate and so insecure that sometimes they become almost
invisible . . . We weep for him, tortured by his homosexuality
and loneliness, and for Helen with her once-worn ball-dress,
thirty years old, lying shrivelled on her knee. We also want to
kick them both. But it would be a small kick . . . Passing On is
Penelope Lively at her best, desolating us one moment by the
pain of unloved people, maddening us the next by their feebleness' - Jane Gardam in the Evening Standard

'Well written, and often drily, darkly funny' - Carole Angier
in New Statesman & Society

'This quiet novel will delight Penelope Lively's devoted
readers, of whom the present writer is one ... If, as I
suppose, novel writing is a strange, delusive and obsessive
calling, Penelope Lively makes it seem almost normal, as
natural as breathing or going for a walk . . . Passing On is, for
my money, her most attractive novel to date'
- Anita Brookner in the Spectator

'Treat it like a bar of chocolate or an unjustifiable cream bun
and hide it until you have finished it ... It is a sensitive and
profound tale . . . Finely caught here is the conflict of the
English village of the 1980s . . . No curate's egg about
Penelope Lively; she is good in every part. Dialogue,
description, detail, emotions, pace - she seems to get it all
right' - Rosemary Stoyle in the Literary Review

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Penelope Lively grew up in Egypt but settled in England after the war
and took a degree in history at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of PEN and
the Society of Authors. She was married to the late Professor Jack
Lively, has a daughter, a son and four grandchildren, and lives in
Oxfordshire and London.

Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and
short story collections for both adults and children. She has twice
been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; once in 1977 for her first
novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her novels include Passing On, shortlisted for the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, City of the Mind, Cleopatra's
Sister and Heat Wave. Many of her books, including Going Back, which first appeared as a children's book, Oleander, Jacaranda, an
autobiographical memoir of her childhood days in Egypt, and her
recent collection of short stories, Beyond the Blue Mountains, are published
in Penguin. Her most recent novel, Spiderweb, is published by
Viking and forthcoming in Penguin,

Penelope Lively has also written radio and television scripts and has
acted as presenter for a BBC Radio 4 programme on children's literature.
She is a popular writer for children and has won both the
Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award.

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Private Bag 102902, NSMC, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published by Andre Deutsch 1989

Published in Penguin Books 1990

13 15 17 19 20 18 16 14
Copyright © Penelope Lively, 1989

All rights reserved

Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's

prior consent in any form of binding Of cover other than that in

which it is published and without a similar condition including this

condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ONE

The coffin stuck fast at the angle of the garden path and the
gateway out into the road. The undertaker's men shunted to and
fro, their hats knocked askew by low branches, their topcoats
showered with raindrops from the hedge. The mourners halted
around the front door and waited in silence. Birds sang effusively.
At last the men managed to pivot the coffin on the
gatepost and proceeded to the waiting hearse. The coffin was
loaded. The mourners straggled out into the road and hesitated,
unwilling to commit themselves to the attendant limousines.

Louise said, 'It's daft using cars to go such a short distance. At
least we could have squashed into one, surely?'
There were two Daimlers. Helen and Edward got into the
first, the four Dysons into the second. First time I've ever ridden
in one of these, thought Helen. The last too, let's hope. They
moved off at walking pace, past the Britches, radiant still with
birdsong, past the builders' yard where Ron Paget, heaving
planks of timber from the pick-up, suspended the operation and
stood in respect, his eyes lowered. Helen nudged Edward: 'The
old rogue -- look at him.' Edward nodded. He said, 'At least he's
not coming to the church -- I wouldn't have put it past him.'
Now they were passing the shop, where the Birds Eye van driver
continued to lift out cartons without looking up. From within,
faces watched furtively. Two women with prams paused, tucking
themselves into the wall as the cortege went by. A small child
pointed, questioning. They are having to explain, Helen thought.
About deaths, funerals. Probably they will dodge the issue with
distractions -- an iced lollie, a sweetie. All the same, mother has
disrupted the lives of others, just a little, for the last time.

Now they were at the church, unloading. The coffin, the

flowers, the mourners. Through the lych gate, along the path, a
halt at the door to make adjustments before entering. Two of the
undertaker's men were young, Helen noticed; what a very
curious choice of occupation. Earlier, she had looked out of the
window at Greystones and seen one of them filling in a football
coupon while they waited in the hearse. Now, their faces were
composed into expressions of noncommittal sobriety.

'You three should go in first,' said Tim Dyson. 'I'll follow with
the children.'

Only two of the family wore black. Tim's suit was a dark
pinstripe but Edward's was green, shiny around the seat and
elbows, brought out for school speech days and probably twenty
years old. Helen had put on her camel coat; the late May morning
was quite cold and she felt the coat to be more subdued than her
maroon suit, the only other garment suitable for a formal
occasion. Louise was in a hotchpotch of unashamed colour and
pattern. The two adolescents, alone, were appropriately funereal,
clad from head to toe in black leather.

There were twenty or thirty people in the church. The front
pew had been left empty. The family shuffled into it. Helen,
between her brother and sister, observed the coffin, which had
been placed in the aisle just below the steps to the chancel.

It seemed, now, much too small. Helen thought of her
mother's stocky form, eyed the coffin, and could not imagine her
squeezed into it. She gazed at the varnished wood and the brass
handles and waited to hear cries of protest and complaint. She
half expected to have to rise to her feet and set things right.
Glancing at Edward, she knew that he was thinking exactly the
same.

'Let us pray . .
Helen sank obediently to her knees. She said, 'O God, now
that she is Thine rather than mine, do something about her. If
she was created in Thy Image, then the system is an imperfect
one.

'We consume away in Thy displeasure: and are afraid at Thy
wrathful indignation. .
No, not mother. She wasn't much more of a Christian than I
am. A token one, being a natural conservative. But I doubt if she

ever gave a thought to Thy displeasure, any more than to anyone
else's.
The service proceeded. The congregation sang a hymn, creakily'.
Louise and the children were silent; Edward and Helen
moved their lips; Tim Dyson gave tongue firmly in a light tenor.
Helen allowed herself a glance sideways and backwards to see
who was there. Expected faces. Village faces, more distant
relatives, Doctor Taylor, someone middle-aged who must be Mr
Carnaby from Carnaby and Proctor, solicitors, to whom Helen
had spoken on the phone but had not met. Dorothy Glover, at
eighty, had not had friends. Indeed she had not had many at
sixty or at forty or even, perhaps, at twenty. Helen could think
only of someone she did voluntary nursing with during the war,
who sent Christmas cards, and a woman who shared her interest
in a mystical form of healing involving a black box with a lot of
wires and buttons, with whom she corresponded.

Mother was not a nice woman. I have always known that, and
I can say it, because I am her daughter and so in the nature of
things came nearer to loving her than anyone else ever did. As
did Edward. Louise's attitude is rather different, for various
reasons.

Louise, right now, appeared to be suffering. Her face had
become contorted; she was reaching for a Kleenex with which
she scrubbed both eyes, angrily. As the hymn ground to its end
she hissed to Helen, 'Bloody hay fever! It's those blasted flowers.
Why did we have to have them?'

'Because they were sent.'

The flowers were rather awful: gladioli and enormous white
daisies that looked artificial, and tightly budded roses fanned out
behind windows of cellophane. And a couple of wreaths of shiny,
hard-looking leaves. These offerings had ridden in the hearse and
were stacked now outside the church door. Helen hoped they
would not be brought back to the house: she was vague about
what the etiquette was here. She longed to be rid of the flowers,
of the appalling hours that loomed in which she must dispense
hospitality and talk to people, of the whole disagreeable day. She
simply wanted to get on with life, which would now be different.
She wanted, quite dispassionately, to see what this difference


would be. She was also extremely tired. Her mother had died
indignantly and demandingly. Neither she nor Edward had had
much sleep for quite a while.
And out now into the churchyard, trailing behind the coffin.
The hole; the pile of fresh-dug earth. Oh God, thought Helen,
this is too awful. Why isn't she being cremated? She is not being
cremated because she specified that it should be like this. All in
black and white, it appears. Burial in the churchyard of St
Peter's, Long Sydenham, in a plot in the far corner near the big
sycamore that she laid claim to several years ago, apparently --
after, it emerges, a row with the rector that none of us knew a
thing about. Now I know why he's been giving us funny looks
for so long. So mother envisaged us all here, gathered round
staring down in this ghastly way, looking at anything rather than
each other, wishing they'd get on and get it over. You could have
spared us that, mother.

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The words, in
fact, are beautiful -- the rhythms, the resonance. The meaning is
another matter, for us unbelievers. Mercifully. Eternal life is an
appalling idea, especially in mother's case.

And that, at last, was that. They could start to turn away,
look at each other, they could leave her there under the sycamore
and go. And now, damn and blast it, Helen feels tears prick her
eyes, surge up, begin to trickle -- and she looks at Edward and
sees that he is the same. They both scowl and furtively dab. We
can't leave her here, thinks Helen, we can't just put her in there
and leave her. Mother.

But they can. And do. She is dead. Helen thinks, almost for
the first time, mother has died. She is not here any more.
Incredulous, she searches the group around the grave: Edward,
Louise, Tim, Suzanne and Phil. No mother, any more.
'I thought they'd never go,' said Louise. 'Cousin Phoebe -- may I
be preserved from cousin Phoebe, now and for ever. Who was
the good-looking bloke with the silver hair?' She stood at the
drawing-room windows, open into the garden, sniffing and
mopping her eyes. 'Oh those bloody flowers. .
'Surely,' said Helen, 'there must be some flowers in Camden?'
'Not a lot. Anyway florist ones are worse, for some reason.
Was he the solicitor?'
'Yes. He's writing to us all. About the Will.'
'Oh, all that bumph . . .' said Louise vaguely. suppose you
wouldn't think of selling the Britches now? Make this place a bit
more comfortable? It's perishing cold, as usual -- frankly I don't
know how you endure it.'

'Of course we're not going to sell the Britches,' said Edward.
They stood at the window, the three of them, and looked into
the garden, on which rain now fell once more, after a tactful
intermission for the funeral. It was defiantly unkempt; the lawn
was a hayfield, the yew hedge drooped almost to the ground, the
only surviving plants were vigorous shrubs and a few creepers
swarming up above the general level of growth. None of them
saw this, since it had been ever thus.

Louise saw fuming pollen, and longed for the tarmac of North
London. Helen saw their mother, thick-set, irritable, wearing
brown corduroy, stumping across the grass with a query or an
order on her lips. Edward saw a flycatcher, a pair of great tits
and a collared dove. He looked for the flycatcher's mate, and
wondered where the nest was.

They did not look like siblings. Helen and Edward, at fifty
two and forty-nine respectively, were not physically alike though
they shared a certain style: Edward's shiny suit, Helen's rather
unbecoming dress, obviously chosen without interest or prolonged
thought. Edward was fair, thin, blue-eyed, and slightly
stooping; Helen was shorter, brown-haired and fresh-faced, a
woman who would be unremarkable in a group -- only a second
glance would reveal distinctive features: the bright eyes, the neat
set of the nose. Louise, ten years younger, seemed of another
generation and culture -- her clothes raffish but also metropolitan,
her hair unruly but tinted with salon highlights.

Of course not,' said Louise, turning from the window. 'I never
really imagined you would.' She patted Edward's arm. 'You'd
feel uncomfortable being comfortable, wouldn't you? I'll help
you wash up and then we'd better push off. Where are the
others?'


'Taking glasses into the kitchen,' said Edward. 'Don't bother
about the washing-up.'
Louise flung herself into a chair. 'All right. Maybe the kids'll
do it. Wonders never cease.'
Helen picked up a plate of uneaten bits and pieces and took
them through to the kitchen, where Tim Dyson stood looking
with distaste at the crammed sink. It was a large, low ceramic
sink, of the kind more often seen nowadays in a garden, planted
with alpines. Quite possibly Tim did not recognise it as a sink,
being accustomed to stainless steel. He always avoided the
kitchen at Greystones; in fact Helen could not remember having
seen him in there before. Normally, he kept to the drawing room
and the dining room while domestic chores were being undertaken;
he had not spent a night in the house for many years.
Louise, during her mother's illness, had visited on her own.

The children -- it was hard to think of them now as children,
given their appearance, but fifteen and sixteen is more child than
adult -- were eating sausage rolls. Suzanne swallowed quickly
and said, 'I'll wash, Helen -- I don't mind.'

'Don't bother. We'll do it when you've gone. I think Louise
wants to be off.'

Suzanne's metamorphosis was less startling than Phil's. Her
hair stuck up spikily from her scalp in a way that seemed to defy
gravity, her eyes were black-rimmed and there was a general
impression of leather and metalwork. Phil, though, was almost
unrecognisable. Helen's first reaction had been that someone had
followed Louise and Tim into the house, then that Louise had let
Phil bring some undesirable friend, that it was too bad of Louise,
that he certainly couldn't be allowed to come to church, and at
last, with pure astonishment, that this was Phil. He too was
black-leathered and slung about with chains; his boots had spurs;
there were chrome studs all over his back. It was his head,
though, that startled most: the shaven scalp, the jet-black crest
with streaks of emerald. Helen, punch-drunk with strain and
exhaustion, had been on the edge of hysterical laughter. Neither
Louise nor Tim had apparently thought the matter worth
comment. Presumably they were so used to it. Helen had not
seen either of the children for almost a year, she realised. A year
is a long time, in more eventful lives. Louise and Tim led
eventful lives. All Louise's phone calls were catalogues of activity
and disaster; they were both always over-worked, over-stressed,
on the brink of startling achievement or notoriety, and plagued
by minor illness. Louise had hay-fever, cystitis and migraine;
Tim had high blood pressure and sinus trouble. They were
always in need of holidays for which they could not be spared.
Louise worked for a firm of design consultants; Tim was in
advertising. Long ago, Louise had been Helen's baby sister --
adorable, charming, vulnerable, to be looked after and protected.
This Louise seemed very far away and inaccessible now: from
time to time, though, she surfaced, weeping over the telephone
of betrayals, impositions and the cruelty of fate. More often, the
Louise of today scolded Helen for conservatism, retrenchment
and, above all, for not standing up to their mother. 'I live with
her,' Helen used to say. 'You don't. That is the difference.'

Louise got out, as she put it, when she was seventeen. She had
a series of rows with Dorothy and flounced off to art school,
where she conned the authorities over the question of parental
consent and support. There was more trouble. Eventually Dorothy
gave in, reluctantly and vociferously, and Louise, from then
on, was at one remove from Greystones, returning for Christmas
and the occasional weekend, an unruly emotive draught of alien
worlds. 'You and Edward can't just stay here for ever,' she said,
each time. 'I mean, for God's sake, Helen, you're thirty . .

have to see what turns up,' Helen would say.
And in the event nothing did. Or not enough.

When the Dysons had gone Helen and Edward got down to the
washing-up. Edward stooped over the sink -- always inconveniently
low -- while Helen dried. Helen would have preferred to
be left to deal with the mess on her own, in which case she could
have brought out her illicit bottle of Fairy Liquid, but Edward
would have been hurt to be shooed away at this moment. He
wanted to talk. A scum of grease floated on top of the washing
up water; the dishes were slimy. Edward, an ardent conservationist,
ignored the fact that detergents had been biodegradable for

fifteen years. Lurid still in his mind's eye were the foam-packed
rivers of the sixties, the rafts of dead fish, the blighted vegetation.
Detergent never disgraced Greystones, or at least none that
Edward knew about.
He said, 'How did Phil's hair get like that?'
'It's dyed, I suppose.'
Edward pondered. 'He seems a perfectly nice boy still. What
an awful day. The bit in the churchyard was worst of all.'
'Yes. Do scrape that plate before you wash it. Shut up, Tam!'
Tam, Edward's rough-haired white terrier, squatted in the
middle of the floor moaning with lust. He was a dog of
unassuageable greed. Edward looked down at him, and then at
the table, on which was a dish piled with sausage rolls and volau-vents.
He said, 'Would we eat these, do you think?' Without
waiting for an answer he slid two sausage rolls and a chicken volau-vent
into Tam's bowl. Helen said nothing. They looked at
each other, both realising that this had never before been done
openly and unashamedly. Tam, as though in recognition that
from now on things were going to be different, belched with
roomy satisfaction. Dorothy had fought, for forty years, a vigorous and vindictive campaign against Edward's animals, from
the kitten smuggled in when he was a schoolboy to the official
but resented dogs of later years.

Now I feel guilty,' said Edward. 'Is it always going to be like
that?'
'That's what we're going to find out, I suppose.'
Edward, dabbling inefficiently in the murky sink, said 'I've
never seen these plates before, where did they come from?'
'They were a wedding present of mother's, I think. We never
used to use them, but I had to get out everything for today, or
there wouldn't have been enough.'

As it was, nothing went with anything else, a medley of
glasses, cups, plates surviving from once complete sets. Chipped
cups, rogue saucers without a partner, pieces of cloudy pre-war
pyrex. 'There is absolutely nothing at Greystones that is nice to
look at,' said Louise once, in a fit of rage, and Helen, dispassionate
and not caring one way or the other, could see that she was
absolutely right.

'Actually,' said Edward, 'they're rather pretty.' He held the
plate clear of the sink to inspect it and it at once slid from his
fingers to crash into several pieces upon the tiled floor.
They scrabbled for dustpan and brush, bumping into each
other. Edward, assembling the bits on the draining-board, said
anxiously, 'Isn't there some process for mending things like this?
Riveting or something?'

'Why bother?' said Helen.
'But . . .' He looked at her. 'No. I see what you mean. All the
same . . .' He stacked the pieces on the shelf beside the Coronation
biscuit tin where, Helen suddenly saw with awful clarity,
they would stay for the next five years.
They finished clearing up and went back into the drawing
room. It was early evening now and the wet garden glinted in
the low sunshine. Beyond it was the shaggy mass of the Britches
and above the blackbirds and robins came the shrill whine of a
chain-saw in Ron Paget's yard. The mantelpiece clock struck six
and the chain-saw ceased abruptly.

Helen watched him walk towards the Britches. She knew
exactly where he would go. He would sit on the fallen tree-trunk
somewhere in the midst of that muddle of vegetation, doing
nothing. He would come back in half an hour or so, apparently
in some way renovated.
The village, at the outer rim of the Cotswolds, was also on the
edge of notability. It was not one of those places that people tell
each other they mustn't miss. The church was good but not
exceptional. There was a respectable acreage of limestone, mullioned
windows and drip-moulding but few single buildings of
any distinction. There was nothing much to take a photograph
of. Nor was there any antique shop or anywhere selling country
jams, dried flowers and basketry from Hong Kong. The village
store was a small supermarket and sold food only, rather expensively
and of second-rate quality. Most people shopped ten miles
away on Saturdays, by car.

Most of them also worked ten or fifteen miles away. They worked in offices and hospitals and shops. There were a few

schoolteachers and a scattering of retired people, the rector and
his wife in a new Barratt's Executive Home and an industrialist
and his family in the Old Rectory. Sociologically classified, they
would have come out as preponderantly A's and AB's with a
sprinkling of C's; council housing had been kept to a minimum
in Long Sydenham and what there was was mainly built before
the war. The Glovers, Edward and Helen, and -- hitherto --
Dorothy, were presumably AB or thereabouts, by occupation
(Edward taught, Helen worked as a part-time librarian). In terms
of income and life-style, though, they were a bit of a puzzle, to
the rest of the village, at any rate.

Within the village wealth was unequally distributed. Of
course; it always is. There were the Hadleys at the Old Rectory
who were so very much richer than everyone else that they were
beyond competition, outside the fray. Their sleek cars, Mrs
Hadley's even sleeker hunters, the rumoured house in the West
Indies and yacht at Fowey were like the attributes of gods, only
to be expected. Beneath them, nearly everyone else jostled within
an income band narrow enough to allow for plenty of resentment,
aspiration and emulation. The matters at issue were housing,
cars, electrical and electronic appliances, holidays and children's
schooling -- probably in that order. Right at the bottom were
those poor enough to be immune from competition, concerned
only with survival. There were not many of these, Long Sydenham
being geographically fortunate: a handful of old age pensioners,
a couple of large families (considered feckless), a single parent
(ditto) and a few unemployed, most of whom were very young.
While none of these were in danger of starvation, they were
nevertheless obliged to contemplate daily the lavishness around
them, from the Hadleys' Mercedes gliding past their door to the
five pound box of chocolates in the village shop, almost equally
inaccessible. The advertisements on their television screens made
certain that they should be in no danger of forgetting the range
of consumer goods available and the urgency and intensity of
normal need for these things.

The Glovers were a problem, where wealth status was concerned.
The house, one of the largest and -- at least potentially --
most valuable in the village, put them in one category. So did

their accents and their education; old Dorothy's self-confidence
was generations deep. But patently there was no loose cash
swilling around at Greystones. You only had to look at their
cars, at the furnishings within (nothing new within sight, no
central heating, no dishwasher, only the most decrepit old twin
tub washing-machine); none of them was known to go abroad at
all. As for their clothes . . .

The failure of the Glovers to fit properly into a category
troubled the village, which liked to know where it was with
people. The inhabitants of the Barratt Executive Homes did not
know whether to defer or to be kindly patronising and ended up
doing both, disconcerting themselves. The Hadleys were so set
apart by wealth that, like old-fashioned aristocrats, they saw
everyone else as a featureless proletariat and were uniformly
bland to everyone; they would never have noticed the Glovers.
The older inhabitants of the council houses had had a barbed
relationship with Dorothy Glover for many a long year. Their
children and grandchildren, less conditioned and more broadminded,
thought her a bad-tempered old bag but rather liked
Edward and Helen, who were in no way stuck-up and not given
to complaining about noisy motor bikes.

There were only two industrial enterprises in Long Sydenham.
At one end of the village the Old Forge made wrought iron
garden gates, firescreens, lampstands and candlesticks. It
wouldn't have known what to do with a horse if it saw one. At
the other, divided from Greystones by the cordon sanitaire of the
Britches, was Ron Paget's builders' yard, a place of noise, mud,
lorries, churning cement-mixers and stacks of bricks.

The Britches was a piece of mixed scrub and woodland about
two acres in extent. It was known as the Britches to everyone in
the village for reasons now lost; that was its name, simply. It
belonged to the Glovers; their garden, indeed, melted into it at
an indeterminate point where the back of a shrubbery gave way
to docks, elder bushes, and a few diseased apple trees long past
Producing anything but a sparse rash of blossom in spring.
Beyond that was an expanse of grass that was waist high by
August, and huge billowing clumps of nettles, and beyond that
again a thickly tangled place of beech, birch, elder and an

undergrowth of brambles and low bushes above a blanket of
leafmould. There was a vague belief at Greystones that the
Britches had once been a quarry; certainly the ground was very
uneven. Long ago Edward had constructed a rockery in the
garden with large stones hauled from there. It was divided from
Ron Paget's yard by a high but battered fence through which
came marauders by way of dogs, cats and children. From time to
time unpleasant things turned up: animal corpses, hanks of
lavatory paper and used condoms.

The village had long marvelled over the Britches. Throughout
the rapacious seventies, when every other morsel of waste ground
within miles, every barn, shed, pigsty, dilapidated cottage, every
orchard and a good many back lawns had been turned to financial
advantage by their owners, Dorothy Glover had disregarded the
blandishments of speculative builders. Foremost among them,
naturally, was Ron Paget. He had tried everything, varying his
approach from brisk outright proposals to more subtle manoeuvres,
moving from periods of relentless pressure to times of
tactful neighbourly solicitude. Dorothy ignored him.

From time to time people raised the matter, driven by curiosity
and perplexity. If you sold the Britches, they said (circuitously,
delicately, wrapping it up in euphemisms . . .) you could buy a new car, put in central heating, have a holiday in the Bahamas,
go and live in Have. Helen and Edward could have cars,
holidays, new clothes, consumer goods. You would all inspire
respect and envy. You would look nicer. You would be asked out
more. Helen and Edward would have sexual clout. Money is
power.

The years went by and the Britches remained unsold and
untouched. It became apparent to the village that you were
dealing with people who were beyond reason and impervious to
common sense. Those who had attributed to Dorothy Glover
financial acumen and patience greater than their own -- the old
bat was waiting till land prices rocketed even higher -- came to
realise that they were mistaken. Land prices peaked, and peaked
again; planning permissions poured forth from the offices of the
county council, and still she did not sell. She wasn't ever going

to sell: she meant what she said.

Dorothy herself never went into the Britches, Helen only
rarely. The only person who visited it regularly was Edward, to
monitor the ecology. There was a surprising amount of it if you
knew what you were looking for. A pair of tawny owls nested,
as did green and spotted woodpeckers. Warblers abounded.
There were treecreepers and occasionally a nuthatch, goldfinches
and every kind of tit. There was a good assortment of butterflies
and moths. Flora did rather less well; the surviving patch of
bluebells was imperilled by ranker growths, the few wood
anemones had vanished along with the purple spotted orchids
that were now almost legendary. But there were some ramsoms
and plenty of celandine and self-heal and ground ivy and more
ordinary stuff. Edward fought a half-hearted battle with grey
squirrels and magpies, considered to be a threat to the choicer
forms of bird life. Helen, from time to time, pointed out the
irrationality of this: 'You're interfering, in fact. Tampering with
the system. And why is one bird more desirable than another?'
Edward, while admitting the ambiguity, said that one couldn't
help feeling that way. As it was, all he was able to bring himself
to do was to make shooing noises and, on occasion, destroy a
magpie nest. When, years ago, Ron Paget had spotted what he
was at and offered to come over with a shotgun, Edward had
been appalled. Helen pointed out the irrationality of this, also.

It was starting to rain again. Helen continued to stand at the
window and after a few minutes Edward appeared, breaking out
of the gap in the shrubbery that was the normal route to the
Britches. He had not changed out of the suit, his only one, which
would now have bits of twig and leafmould on it when next it
was required. He looked exactly what he was: an absent-minded
well-intentioned school teacher approaching fifty.

TWO

During the ensuing days Helen felt as though her mother were
continuously present in the house as a large black hole. There
was a hole in Dorothy's bedroom, in the bed where she was not,
on which, now, the blankets were neatly folded and the cover
spread. There were various other holes, where she stood at the
kitchen table preparing one of those unappetising stews, or
shouting instructions from the landing or inspecting a caller at
the front door. There were perambulant holes in which she
creaked down the stairs or came in through the front door.
Almost, Helen stood aside to let her pass or manoeuvred around
her large black airy bulk as she occupied the scullery or the
narrow passage by the back stairs. It was weeks before Helen
could walk straight through her, or open her bedroom door
without bracing herself for the confrontation.

Louise telephoned, almost daily. 'Are you all right?'
'Of course I'm all right.'
'And Edward?'
'Edward's all right too,' said Helen, rather crossly. 'Why
shouldn't we be?'
'After all this time. You're so used to her. I mean, I can't quite
take it in myself yet. It's a shock.'
No it isn't,' said Helen. 'We all knew she was going to die.'
'Yes, but we didn't properly believe it. One doesn't. She
didn't, certainly, which I suppose was just as well. 'Oh gosh . .
-- Louise's voice trailed away -- 'I still can't . .
Dorothy, who had seldom had a day's illness in her eighty
years, had disputed the diagnosis. She had contradicted it flatly.
'The stupid man says I've got something foul,' she announced. 'I
told him not to be so silly.' As the disease progressed she blamed
the consultant for ineffective or faulty treatment, baying at him
across his desk in the hospital or railing over the telephone. When
eventually it reduced her to bed, and at last to a glaring silence,
the specialist came into his own, able to commend her fighting
spirit. 'Your mother never gave in,' he told Helen and Edward,
portentously. 'One can tell the truth to someone like that and
know that it will inspire strength rather than despair.' Helen
hadn't had the heart to say that her mother had never for one
moment believed him. Her dead face had worn, it seemed, an
expression of outrage and incredulity.

'You should have a holiday,' said Louise. 'Go off somewhere.
Look, we've this friend who's got a cottage in the Lake
District . .
'No thanks. I'm too busy. I'm getting back to the library as
soon as I've got the house sorted out.'
During the long weeks of her mother's illness Helen had had
to take leave from the library. She looked forward, now, to a
return to those brisk impersonal days. First, though, there were
chores. The paraphernalia of nursing had to be disposed of, bills
attended to, those things done which had not been done. She
saw that the drooping gutter at the front of the house was now
quite unsupported, and that there was yet another slate off the
roof. Ron Paget had been asked to come and had not. Foolish to
have imagined that one request would suffice. With the back of
the Morris Minor piled up with the things for the Red Cross --
the commode, the back supports -- she stopped off at the yard,
Spotting Paget loading one of his lorries.

'Mr Paget!'
He came across. They were old sparring partners. He was
almost pleased to see her, she saw -- gingered up at the thought
of a little contest. Over the years there had been plenty: questions
of noise and dirt from the yard, the dominant continuous issue
of the Britches, Ron's need to keep in with Greystones offset
against Greystones' frequent need for minor repairs and services.
We have grown middle-aged together, thought Helen. Except
that Ron has also grown richer and richer, and shed his dull old
Wife and got a glossier younger one, and progressed from a beat
up van to a flashy new car every year. The times have been good
to Ron. More so than to me. She thought of him as Ron, but
always addressed him with formality, for good strategic reasons.
'Mr Paget, you said you'd see to that gutter for us. And the
slates.'
'So I did, Miss Glover, so I did. Will do. Tell you what -- I'll send a couple of the men over tomorrow morning. How's that?'
'Thanks. I'll expect them, then.'
'A sad time for you,' said Ron piously. 'We've been thinking
about you, Pauline and me. You're keeping well, and your
brother, I hope.'
'We're fine, thank you,' said Helen briskly. She started up the
Morris again.
Ron Paget laid a hand on the bonnet. 'It's done you well,
hasn't it, your old jalopy. How old would it be now?'
'I wouldn't know,' said Helen. 'I'm not very interested in cars.'
The Morris Minor, in fact, was fifteen years old but had seldom been more than fifty miles from Long Sydenham. The
mileage was barely forty thousand and it was in pristine condition,
exquisitely maintained by a fond mechanic at Willoughby's
Garage in Spaxton.
Ron, eyeing the Morris, said, 'I'll tell you what, Miss Glover,
I've had an idea. I'll do you a favour. My sister's wanting
something to potter around in. She doesn't need anything fancy. I'll buy your old rattle-trap off you and do it up for her.' Amazing
what a good Morris would fetch now, collector's items, they
were. This particular one was hot stuff, in the right market. Old
Miss G. wouldn't know that, of course, not in a month of
Sundays she wouldn't. 'Get yourself something more up to date,'
he went on. 'Nice little Escort, that sort of thing. You deserve
it.'
'Do I?' said Helen. 'Well, you may be right.' She got out and
contemplated the Morris. 'What do you think it's worth, Mr
Paget?'
'Well . . .' Ron considered. "Course, they don't make them
any more. Gone right out of fashion. You can't get the spares.
And that's long in the tooth, that one.'
'Mmm,' said Helen.
'Hartwell's wouldn't look at it. Not as a trade-in for a newish
Escort.'
'I daresay not,' said Helen.
'I'd like to do you a good turn, though, Miss Glover. I can
tinker about with it myself and see if I can put it to rights. Tell
you what, I'll give you five hundred for it.' He slapped the
Morris's rump, scraped at a small scratch mark and frowned.
'I'm a fool, but I'm feeling generous. Five hundred.'
'It goes very well still, as it happens,' said Helen. 'I doubt if
you'd need to do much tinkering. I'll think it over. Or I could
put an advertisement in the Morris Minor Owners' Club magazine.
Did you see that article in the Observer?' She got into the
car and started up the nicely tuned engine. 'Thanks for the offer,
anyway. And that's a promise, is it, about the gutter?'

Ron watched her go. Crafty bugger. Not so daft as she looks.
Like the old woman. But where does it get them?
Helen, experiencing the first little glow of pleasure for quite a
while, turned out of Ron's yard into the road. In fact, Edward
was more in need of a new car than she was. The Morris had
many miles in it yet, but Edward's old Beetle (also, one understood,
of rarity value nowadays but in this case, alas, too far
gone) had packed up again that morning and he had had to go to
school on the bus, a tedious process involving a change with a
long wait.

Edward taught at Croxford House, a private girls' school
catering for the daughters of the more prosperous local farmers,
the less prosperous gentry and upwardly mobile business people
from Spaxton. It had few educational pretensions. Hardly
anyone went on to university. A few of the more aspiring girls
took vocational courses and became physiotherapists or nurses.
Most settled for clerical work, jobs as receptionists or, if the
worst came to the worst, shop assistants. Marriage was very
much on the cards, too. There might no longer be any stigma on
spinsterhood in Hampstead or Fulham, but down here things
were a little different. The girls still married at twenty; marriage
remained their objective and the means whereby they acquired
status. Mrs Hadley of the Old Rectory gave a great many parties,
the purpose of which was to infiltrate her two daughters into the

local aristocracy. No nonsense about universities or interesting
jobs for them. Here was a tacit agreement on what life for a girl
was all about. And Croxford House, while paying lip-service to
more up-to-date ways of thinking, would not have entirely
disagreed.

Edward taught English, History and Biology to the juniors,
and Current Events to the seniors. He was the only male teacher
except someone who came on Wednesdays to coach tennis in the
summer, and he was regarded with kindly patronage by everyone
save the headmistress, who thought him distinguished (in a social
rather than an intellectual sense) and had hired him for that
reason, fifteen years ago.

The girls liked him. They recognised that his disciplinary
powers were so weak that there would simply be no point in
challenging them. Also he was amiable, he listened to what they
told him with apparent interest, and he never gave them bad
conduct marks or reported them to the Head. He demanded little
of them, so they demanded little of him. His lessons were gentle,
dreamy affairs that seemed to go on and on for ever, with
sunlight lying in bars across the desks and flies buzzing at the
window. He had long since been removed from teaching duties
involving anyone old enough to be within hailing distance of
such public examinations as Croxford House bothered with, and
simply pottered around with the eleven and twelve year olds in
the more decorative areas of English history. He also read to
them from books that he himself remembered having enjoyed
when he was their age. Modern children's fiction had passed him
by. He read Alice, The Wind in the Willows and The Water Babies to the juniors while they handed notes to each other, knitted
under their desks or lay with their heads on their arms, apparently
asleep. Edward still loved Alice and had never noticed that
the children did not. He read, effectively, to himself and was
happy. It reminded him of being read to by his mother -- except
that this was an elusive memory since Dorothy had seldom done
so. She was profoundly bored by books. It was Helen who had
read to Edward, and subsequently to Louise. What Edward was
reviving was a cloudy, luxurious sensation of acquiescence to
someone authoritative, more skilled and with access to a wondrous
other world. Helen would have been about nine at the
time.
Helen, disposing of the invalid equipment in Spaxton, was
reminded not of reading to Edward but of her mother's antipathy
to the printed word. One of the accelerating problems of her final
years had been the entertainment of a vigorous old woman,
sound of mind and body, who had no interests.
Dorothy Glover's attention was concentrated on a personal
reference system. She read the Births, Marriages and Deaths
columns only of The Times, with a practised eye that could pick
out any known name in three seconds flat. Novels met with
approval only if the setting was familiar. 'I'm extremely fond of Persuasion,' she would say, 'I went to school near Bath. It's by far
her best book.' Her knowledge of personal connections was
compendious -- she knew of cousins unto the tenth degree, she
remembered everyone she had ever met, their names, their
occupations and their attributes. She knew all this with the dry
detachment of an official at Somerset House; she had no interest
whatsoever in people as such. She was expert and scholarly in
disposing of extraneous material; there was the world which
related to her, to which she had been or to whom she had spoken,
and there was the rest, which was irrelevant. Needless to say,
she could not see the point of history and ignored politics. She
never voted. She was a Tory by inclination, but would have
denied political affiliations with indignation, claiming that she
had no time for politicians and owed her opinions to common
sense and using her head. 'Stupid' was her favourite term of
abuse; interestingly, though, 'clever' was not a word used in
praise. She was more likely to call someone 'too clever by half'.

She read books only for good reason, and noisily when she did
so, pointing out the personal resonances whereby the work
satisfied her -- the familiar place or the name with associations of
some kind. She had once written to a well-known novelist to ask
if a character in her novel was related to a family of the same
name Dorothy had known. The author's polite but acid response
had been read to Helen and Edward over breakfast, as they
squirmed: 'What on earth does the woman mean -- ". . . your
unusually literal view of fiction"? Is she trying to be funny or
something?'
As Helen, Edward and Louise grew up they had come to
recognise their mother's outlook for what it was. They realised
with discomfort that she was not so much egotistical as fettered
-- trapped within a perpetual adolescence. She moved for ever
within a landscape whose only point of reference was herself.

The Red Cross lady received the commode and the backrest
with nicely gauged murmurs of sympathy. Helen parked the
Morris and set out to do some shopping. Spaxton, a medium
sized market town, supplied all those needs that the village could
not meet. Helen and Edward, unfastidious eaters and exceptionally
unacquisitive, had fewer needs than most people. Even so,
there were occasional requirements. Today, a screwdriver with
which to do something about the broken lamp, Earl Grey tea
(one of Edward's few indulgences) and a sweater for herself. She
walked down the High Street and plunged into the new shopping
precinct, a futuristic place in which the shops had no fronts but
opened straight into the shining heated covered walk, like some
awkward parody of eastern booths. Her mother walked beside
her, in her more strident persona of ten years ago, criticising
loudly and attracting glances. 'I know,' said Helen. 'I don't care
for it either, aesthetically, but I see no reason why people
shouldn't have a better choice of things to buy, if that's what
they want.'

She stopped to contemplate a display of sweaters. Blue.
Interestingly patterned.

'You can't wear that sort of thing,' said her mother. 'It's too
young for you. You're fifty-two. And too short and too fat.
Louise could get away with something like that, I daresay. Not
you.'

'I may be a little more adventurous,' said Helen. Tor a change.'
'Brown,' snorted her mother. 'Brown's right for you. That's
what you always wear.'

Helen left her outside and went into the shop. She held
garments up against herself and tried to see both face and garment with detachment. The face was -- well, unassuming was the word
that sprang to mind -- neither particularly attractive, nor unattractive
either, the complexion better than average, something
interesting about the eyes, the chin a touch stubby. She saw age
and decay, but did not too much care. She would not have
especially wanted to be younger, but would welcome change.
Brown, she now observed, sent her face into compliant anonymity;
she held up a sweater rich with stained glass window colours
-- blues and reds and a spice of green -- and thought she saw an
answering glow above. She bought the sweater. Her mother,
waiting outside, made noises of disapproval. 'Well,' said Helen,
'maybe. And again maybe not. We shall see. I shall see. Anyway,
I need uplift.' She turned away and her mother, with a curious,
unprecedented look of vulnerability on her face, began to fade,
like the Cheshire cat in Alice. Help me, she seemed to be saying,
save me, keep me. And Helen, with tears pricking her eyes,
treacherous and deaf, marched out of the shopping precinct,
clutching the sweater, the screwdriver and the packet of Earl
Grey tea.

'We've each got a letter from the lawyers,' said Helen.
Edward stood at the kitchen door, eating Puffed Wheat out of
a bowl and throwing bread to the birds, who lurked in droves.
Greystones, it sometimes seemed to Helen, sustained entirely
the local wildlife, if it could be called that; they bought a loaf a
day just for the birds, in winter. The garden was festooned with
coconuts and mesh feeders as though with exotic Chinese
decorations.

Edward turned back into the room. 'I shan't have time to read
mine -- I'll have to get the bus again. Have you seen a pile of
exercise books anywhere?'

Helen opened her letter. Edward prowled the room, went out
into the hall and returned, still murmuring plaintively about
exercise books.
'It's about mother's Will.'
'Yes,' said Edward. Did you see me with them last night, can
you remember? Maybe I never brought them back at all.'
'Mother hasn't left Greystones to us. Just the Britches.'

Edward halted. He stared at her.

The house is left to Phil.'
'Phil?' Edward gaped. 'But why?'
'It's to do with tax. Inheritance Tax. At least up to a point it
is. This lawyer seems a bit puzzled. He's a new one. The old one
did the Will, apparently, five or six years ago. It's left to Phil
because that way some tax is saved, but there is a proviso that
we go on living here till our own deaths.'
'Oh,' said Edward. 'Then I suppose it doesn't really make
much difference.'

'I suppose not.'
They looked at each other. 'I wonder why mother never told
us,' said Edward, at last.
'So do I.'

Edward, now, opened his letter and read it. The letters were
identical.

'I don't think Louise is going to be awfully pleased about this,'
said Edward.
At that moment the phone rang. Helen went into the hall to
answer it.

'I don't believe it!' shrieked Louise. 'What on earth is all this
about? What the hell was mother thinking of? It's crazy. Why
didn't she ask us about it? Oh God -- I can't talk now, I'm half an
hour late already and I've got an important meeting. Look, we'll
come down on Saturday, we've got to talk about this.'
Helen returned to the kitchen. 'She isn't.'
Edward was hunting for his exercise books again. He opened
the bread bin and peered inside. 'Oh dear . . Could I have left
them on the bus? Louise is furious, is she? Do we have to answer
these letters?'

'They're fairly conclusive,' said Helen. After a moment she
added 'I'll ring him up -- Mr Carnaby. It does seem to need a bit
of explanation.'
'Oh, good,' said Edward, relieved. He lifted the bread board
and found his exercise books underneath. 'There they are . .
knew I'd brought them back.' He sounded quite happy now.
'Can I borrow your car this evening -- there's a Naturalists' Trust
meeting in Spaxton.'
Helen, as she moved around the house that morning, thought
about responses to possession. She owned very little: a car
(coveted, admittedly, by Ron Paget, which gave it an enhanced
status), a wardrobe full of clothes (which no one would covet),
some books and knick-knacks. She owned also some stocks and
shares left to her by her father, which brought in, nowadays,
about a thousand pounds a year. Edward and Louise had received
the same legacies when John Glover died in 1958. Everything
else had gone to Dorothy, naturally enough. Helen recognised
that she, and Edward, and Dorothy herself, for that matter, were
not as others are when it came to possession. She seldom wanted
anything. Edward was the same. Her mother had hated spending
money, not out of parsimony but laziness. Whatever it was in
the make-up of most people that responds to the sight of goods
for sale had been left out, in their case. Equally, they derived no
pleasure from ownership. Helen could just remember a certain
frisson induced by an evening dress when she was eighteen, but
this had seldom been repeated.

Louise was rather different. Louise had a lot of clothes and a
big untidy house in Camden Town crammed with furniture
acquired at sales and from junk-shops. She bought pictures and
then got tired of them and shoved them in cupboards and bought
others. She owned, probably, a considerable bulk of material
goods, obtained impulsively and without calculation, and frequently
disposed of in the same way. Louise was generous, vague
and impatient.

And now Phil owned Greystones.
Pondering this, Helen went out into the garden. Something
ought to be done about the garden, she supposed. There were
obstacles to anything being done, though, quite apart from
apathy. Insecticides could not be employed, nor fungicides or
weedkillers or any of those labour-saving devices used by everyone
else. Just as mice and moles could not be trapped, or flies
and wasps sprayed. Neglect and conservational sensitivity
together had turned the garden into a fine acreage of cow parsley,
buttercup, dandelion, bindweed and nettle. In fact, Helen rather
liked it as it was, though it was annoying not to be able to walk

across the lawn without getting wet to the calves. It really should
be mown.

Tam was hunched over something, gnawing. As she
approached he laid his ears back and began to growl, still
frantically gnawing. He had got the withered carcass of a
blackbird, Helen saw. 'Drop!' she ordered. Tam snarled and
shuffled sideways. Helen seized a corner of the blackbird and
tugged. Tam tried to bite her hand, letting go of the blackbird in
the process. Helen marched to the rubbish heap with it, Tam
mobbing her heels and yapping hysterically. She flung it as high
and as far back as she could. Tam watched balefully and then
walked off with his whole rear end twitching, as though something
were stinging him.

Helen supposed that she would live at Greystones for the rest
of her life. She supposed that Edward would also. Edward's
attempts to live elsewhere had never come to much. There had
been the time when he worked in London with maladjusted
children and shared a flat with a man he had been at college with.
The children were uncontrollable and scared the wits out of
Edward; also, he couldn't stand the traffic noise. After eighteen
months he packed it in and returned to Greystones, where he
was perfectly happy doing a bit of private coaching and spending
the rest of his time on volunteer stuff for the Nature Conservancy
people until a casual criticism by some relative sent him into a
crisis of conscience. Edward announced that he was thirty-four,
had no purpose in life, and ought to be serious about his career.
He applied for a job at a minor public school and got it. When,
after eight months, he resigned and returned to Greystones,
Dorothy was put out. 'What on earth does he want to give up so
easily for?' she demanded. 'It's not as though they'd be impossible
boys, like that lot in London.' Helen, who knew why, said
nothing. Edward got the job at Croxford House and lost that
hunted look.

And Helen? Helen, too, had left Greystones. More than once.
She had left to go to college, and had returned of course in the
vacations. She had taken that first job in the county town fifty
miles away, lived in a bedsitter and drifted back to Greystones at
weekends. There seemed no reason not to do so, and anyway
It
Edward was usually there. 'Helen's looking for something to do
locally,' stated her mother, to those who displayed any interest.
'It's ridiculous her trailing off like this every Monday morning.'
And so inevitably the local opportunities had arisen -- the part
time work at a school, then at a technical college, and eventually
at Spaxton library. Helen herself saw, now, with crystal clarity,
the slide from indecision to an inevitable self-perpetuating
arrangement; she saw how what might have been an undistinguished
but useful career, dignified by such a title, had turned
into a series of jobs. At the time, fatal steps are set:loin recognised
as such. There had been, for so long, the presumption that at any
moment something would crop up to provoke change. There had
been Dorothy, making assumptions. There had been Edward.
And in any case she quite liked Greystones, and was, it would
seem, pathologically short of territorial instincts of her own.

So, technically, Greystones now belonged to Phil. Technically,
it had belonged before to her mother. Did that matter?
Well, of course it matters, thought Helen, but does it matter in
any significant way? And, walking back across the lawn with
sodden feet, her arms full of lilac with which to cheer up the
house, she decided that it did not.

What was significant, of course, what did matter, was their
mother's continuing effect; absent, she still prescribed.

'Ludicrous!' stormed Louise.
Not necessarily. There seems to have been a tax incentive.'
Tim, in the big armchair, was the still calm centre. Louise eddied
around him. Phil and Suzanne perched on chair arms. Helen and
Edward stood at either side of the mantelpiece.

'Mother didn't care tuppence about that sort of thing. Anyway,
why didn't she tell us?'
'Ah,' said Tim. Now there you have a point.'
I don' wan' it anyway,' said Phil comfortably.
'You haven't got it,' stormed Louise. 'It's Helen and Edward's
home, just like it always has been. It makes no difference.'
'Exactly,' said Helen. 'So there's no need for any of us to get in a fuss about it. It's a technicality.'

'S'right,' Phil agreed.
Louise, glaring out of the window, swung round. 'It's the
principle of the thing. In the first place she should have discussed it with us and in the second it's insulting to Helen and Edward
technicality or not and frankly how far tax was a consideration I
doubt. Mother never had a clue about finance and she wasn't
interested so . .

'One assumes that this lawyer . . .' Tim began.
'Oh, sod the lawyer. Mother would have done what she'd
decided to do. She always did. I daresay he put the idea into her
head -- that's quite possible -- but from there on it would have
been her. She should have told us, it's insulting to Helen and
Edward and it's discriminating between Phil and Suzanne.
Suzanne is left her jewellery. Her jewellery! Her jewellery! Her
jewellery is that brown bead necklace and her wedding and
engagement rings and the regimental brooch with half the stones
missing and the copper bracelet for preventing rheumatism.
That's what her jewellery is.'

'Oh, shut up, Mum,' said Suzanne. 'I mean, I don't mind. It's
silly, all of this.'
'That's not the point. The point is that it's everything for Phil
and nothing for Suzanne. The point is also that Phil is a boy and
Suzanne is a girl. That's what the point is. Mother is making
what might be called a political point.'

'Was,' murmured Tim, his hands folded behind his head, his
gaze trained upon the ceiling. 'Was making, darling. Sad to say.'
Louise ignored him. 'It's a blatant piece of anti-feminism.
Quite deliberate. Calculated to annoy. She wasn't particularly
fond of Phil. She criticised him every time she saw him.'
'She got at me just as much,' said Suzanne.
'Oh, do let's stop talking like this!' cried Edward.
'S'right,' agreed Phil. 'S'all stupid, anyway. Anyone min' if I
go for a walk?'
Louise looked for a moment as though she might strike him,
then subsided on to the sofa with a groan.
'Think I'll go too,' said Suzanne, following Phil out of the
room.
There was a silence. Edward took off his glasses and began to
clean them meticulously, a thing he only did when emotionally
disturbed; most of the time they were opaque with dust. Helen
heard a creak from somewhere upstairs and reminded herself that
no, that was not mother. Mother was not heaving herself out of
the bed in search of something; there was no need to go up, no
need to feel restive. Tim cleared his throat and glanced at his
watch.

Louise sneezed violently. 'Oh, Christ . . . I don't care what
they say, it's psychosomatic too. I always get it worse here.' She
blew her nose and wiped her eyes. 'Apart from anything else,
you realise it makes it difficult if not impossible for you ever to
leave Greystones?'

'We don't want to,' said Edward. 'At least I don't.' He looked
at Helen.
'How can you know?' Louise bounced to the other end of the
sofa. She stuffed a cushion behind her head and lay back.

Tim was restive. 'Darling, I've got a thousand things to see to
before . .
'All right, all right. Anyway the kids have pushed off somewhere.
How can you know what you might want? Or Helen. I
mean, it's perfectly possible that . .
'I doubt it,' said Helen. 'My market value has declined with
the years. Come to think of it, I suppose it's even lower now.'
She laughed. Tim looked embarrassed.
'That's not what I mean. You know perfectly well that's not
what I mean. What I mean is that you don't know what might
turn up. Specially now that you're not going to be dancing
attendance on mother. Both of you.'

'We never did so very much dancing,' said Edward. 'Not till
lately. Mother was always self-sufficient, that you must admit.'
Tim rose. 'Think I'll go and round up the children.' He left.
'Anyone can get married,' said Louise. 'I'm not interested in
you getting married. I'm interested in you being able to . . .
to . .

'Go where the wind blows?' suggested Edward. He put his
glasses on again, looking unusually clear-eyed. He seemed rather
cheerful now.
Louise scowled at him. 'You simply are not taking this
seriously.'
'It isn't worth taking seriously.'
Louise swung towards Helen. 'Surely you can see?'
'I stand somewhere in the middle. I think Edward may well
be ignoring possible future problems. But I don't think it's
something we should get steamed up about. It is, in the last
resort, a technical point. It's not going to make any practical
difference to any of us.'

'I know, I know. It's the effect.'
'There's nothing that can be done about an effect,' said Helen.
Her own words came back to her that night, standing in front
of her bedroom mirror. The new sweater was a mistake, it made
her face look not more appealing but disturbingly furtive. It
stared out over the unaccustomed colour and pattern with, it
seemed to Helen, sly defiance. It was not at home. She took off
the sweater, folded it and put it on a shelf of the wardrobe. It
would do nicely as a piece de resistance at the village fete jumble
stall.

She got into bed. It was late. Edward had come up some time
ago, while she was still pottering in the kitchen. Now, she heard
his door open, quietly. The stairs let out a furtive creak. She
knew exactly what he was doing. Assuming that she was asleep,
he was going down to see if she had set a mousetrap in the larder.
If she had, he would spring it with a pencil, guiltily, and not
mention the matter. Helen, one step ahead in the mouse battle,
now put traps under the sink; Edward -- unlike the mice -- had so
far failed to discover them.

Helen had a clear memory of Edward as a toddler sitting in long
grass contemplating with rapturous absorption a butterfly on
some clover. She could see it now: the waving grasses, the
crunchy head of the clover, the butterfly opening and closing its
wings, Edward's baby face. Was that when it had all begun? Or
later? For alongside that -- the next slide in the box, as it were --
was another scene featuring an upright, articulate Edward, aged
three or four: a man shooting pigeons over a stubble field, the
mound of pearly corpses at his side, Edward flinging himself at
his mother screaming 'Tell him he mustn't shoot they! Tell him
he mustn't kill they because they nice!' Dorothy pushing him
impatiently aside: 'Don't be silly, Edward. Birds have to be shot.'

Nowadays the possibilities for distress were limitless, and had
been for many a year. Edward's outrage had run from the abuse
of donkeys and circus animals and battery hens to vivisection and
otter-hunting. There were whales to worry about and ospreys
and gorillas and the greater horseshoe bat, orchids and lichens,
butterflies and toads. There was no end to it. And it got
progressively worse, as far as Helen could see. Fuelled by the
glowing testimony of television, in full colour, the scale of man's
insensitivity was seen to be as never before. The destruction of
South American rain forests, the draining of the Somerset levels,
the pollution of Finnish lakes -- it was all brought to your hearth
now, to furnish sleepless nights for such as Edward. In the
village, small boys no longer collected birds' eggs; propaganda in
the primary school had seen to that, but five thousand miles
away people were exterminating entire ecological systems.
Edward's interest in protective organisations had extended from
the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and local naturalists'


groups to Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund. Greystones
had a television for one reason only -- that Edward might indulge
his passion for wildlife films, though these as often as not brought
to his attention some new aspect of the endangered environment
and gave him yet another thing to worry about. His rare holidays
were spent with like-minded souls, camping on bird-infested
islands and living off wild spinach and tins of baked beans. He
always came back wonderfully exhilarated, which puzzled
Helen. Surely the contemplation of vanishing riches should be
dampening rather than uplifting? 'It's knowing that it's still there
somewhere,' said Edward.

Helen, getting down before him in the morning, hurried out
into the garden with the mousetrap, from which projected a
stiffened corpse. Tam followed her, gazing hopefully upwards.
When they returned Edward was in the kitchen, making tea.
Helen said, 'I forgot to tell you -- Mr Carnaby rang. The lawyer.
He's going to look in this afternoon.'

'I shan't be here,' said Edward at once. 'Why?' he added.
'That's not clear. He just said he'd like a word.'
'Well, he'll have a much more satisfactory one with you than
with me. You can tell me all about it afterwards.' He gave her a
propitiating smile and left for work. Habitually, Edward sidestepped
all confrontations with the world of affairs; he would
have avoided having a bank account if he could, and had great
difficulties with the income tax people. He never answered letters
that came in typed envelopes, and often did not open them.

'I hope you don't mind me inviting myself here,' said Giles
Carnaby. 'I felt that my office would be inappropriate. People
can feel at a disadvantage.'
'Supplicants. And all those filing cabinets. Of course,' Helen
added hastily, 'you have to have the filing cabinets, I realise that.'
'Quite. And in any case I think it is I who am the supplicant.
I'll come straight to the point. I'm feeling somewhat concerned --
and embarrassed -- about your mother's Will. We wee not
aware, in our office, that you and your brother had never been
informed of the terms of the Will -- that this house was to be left
to your nephew, with the proviso about your continued occupancy.
The fact of the matter is that when my predecessor
advised your mother, and the Will was drawn up, he appears
from the correspondence to have suggested to her that she should
consult all of you -- all three of you. It now seems that . . . urn,
well, that she didn't.'

'That's right,' said Helen.
'Which is a bit unfortunate. So my predecessor seems to have
been under the impression that she had, and proceeded accordingly,
and of course it wasn't up to him to inform you, and
indeed he would have been acting unprofessionally had he done
so on his own initiative.'

'Oh goodness,' said Helen. 'No one's blaming him.' She shifted
slightly; the sun was in her eyes, obscuring her view of the
visitor. Thick silvery hair and a face beneath that looked younger
than the hair. Actually, she thought, my age -- give or take a year
or two. Nice voice.

'All the same. We feel . . . concerned. I feel concerned. Not
of course that it makes the slightest difference to . . . to your
living arrangements. But obviously there is . . . there is . .

'An effect,' suggested Helen.
'Precisely. Which could have been avoided.'
'I don't think my mother wanted to avoid it,' said Helen. He
looks like a film star, she thought, the one in that film about a
man being chased across enormous fields by a plane. What's he
called, for heaven's sake? Man with a nice face and thick hair. Bit
younger.

'Oh,' said Giles Carnaby. 'I see.'
There was a silence. Got it, thought Helen. Cary Grant. Why
on earth should I think of that? I haven't seen a film in years.
Giles Carnaby coughed. He ran a hand through the thick hair.
The hand wore a heavy gold ring. Married? wondered Helen.
Wedding ring? Some men wear them. Oh, married, presumably.
Everyone's married.

'The other rather unfortunate thing is that -- and I feel I really
have to mention this -- the tax advantage is not, to be frank, all
that great. My predecessor was -- well, his initial enthusiasm for the scheme turned out to be somewhat misplaced though, to be
fair to him, he did put this to your mother. But by that time she
appears to have got up a certain enthusiasm of her own. At least
this is my impression, from the correspondence.' Giles Carnaby
looked at the floor, uncomfortable; he stirred the carpet with his
foot, ran a hand through the hair again. Don't take on so, thought
Helen, please, it's not your fault. It's perfectly all right, honestly.
Would you like a glass of sherry? No -- heavens, it's only half
past four. Tea. Would you like a cup of tea?

'Yes, mother would have,' she said. 'I can imagine.'
'I hope it's not causing family problems, anyway.'
'My sister's rather put out. She'll calm down.'
'The boy himself. .
'He's got green stripes in his hair,' said Helen. 'I don't imagine
they mean anything serious. He was always a perfectly nice
child.'
Giles Carnaby laughed.
Helen sprang to her feet. 'Would you like a cup of tea?'
'I'd love a cup of tea.'
He followed her into the kitchen, a move she immediately
regretted. From time to time she saw Greystones as others must
see it; this was one of those occasions. The cracks in the flagged
floor. The green mould creeping up the wall by the back door
that one just ignored because if you redecorated it simply crept
up again within a month or two. The rusting cake tins. The
crockery. That sink.
'What a marvellous kitchen,' said Giles Carnaby.
Helen threw him a quick look of suspicion. No, perfectly
sincere.
He wandered around. 'I say! Country Life calendar for 1962!'
'It's got some photos of bats that my brother is rather fond of.'
'Doesn't he get confused over dates?'
'He's never very bothered about that sort of thing,' said Helen.
She put the kettle on. Biscuits? She opened the Coronation tin
and closed it again quickly. You cannot offer slightly mouldy
Tea-Time Fancies (Dorothy's favourites) to a visitor. Cake? No
cake available.
'Earl Grey!' said Giles Carnaby. 'I haven't had Earl Grey since
my wife died. I never know where to get it.'


'Oh,' said Helen. 'Have this one.' She thrust the packet at
him, an extraordinary, unaccustomed sunny smile on her face. 'I
can get another.'
'I wouldn't dream of it.'
'Please . .
'All right,' said Giles Carnaby. 'But only on condition you
come and drink a cup of it with me sometime.'
The kettle boiled. Violently, as always, spewing water all over
the stove. Helen leapt for it, this absurd smile still pasted to her
face. How tragic. When did she die? Come and drink a cup of it
with me sometime.

'You would probably have to make it also,' said Giles Carnaby.
'I'm hopelessly inefficient. Not professionally, of course -- I
mustn't let you think you've got a dud lawyer. Professionally I
am a whizz.'

Don't just stand there, you stupid woman. Put hot water in
teapot, cups on tray, and milk in jug. The man will think you're
half-witted. Don't look at him like that, either. God knows what
he will think.

'Let me carry the tray for you.'
'Thank you,' said Helen.
They returned to the sitting room.
'Oh -- I've forgotten the sugar.'
'I don't take it,' said Giles Carnaby. 'My wife always went on
at me about getting fat. I am a bit too fat.' He peered down at
the front of his trousers. 'Don't you think? No -- I'm not asking
you, you'll be too polite to do other than prevaricate. Anyway,
no sugar. Your delightful time-slip kitchen has completely distracted
me from the matter in hand. Is there anything you -- or
your brother -- would like any further advice about?'

Helen racked her brains. Advice? Surely they needed advice?
Of course they needed advice; she reviewed, in a flash, the whole
unsatisfactory condition of Greystones, of her state of mind, of
life itself. How can we stop the drain flooding whenever it rains?
Why do I have to feel guilty because my mother has died? How
can I achieve a comforting complacency?

'I can't think of anything.'
'Oh dear. What a pity. I don't in the least want to go back to


the office. Let's have another cup of tea and perhaps something

will spring to mind.' He held his cup out. 'I like this house. It

feels so . . . established. I imagine you've lived here a long time.'
I must remember 'established', thought Helen. Next time
Louise is on at us about brightening the place up a bit. Established.
'Nearly thirty years. We came here just after my father
died. We'd been living in London and mother always hankered
after a village.'

'And it came up to expectations?'
'Of course,' said Helen. 'Villages are red in tooth and claw and
my mother was naturally contentious.'
'Really? How interesting. What is it that is being contended
about?'
Helen reflected. 'Who owns what, on the whole, and what
they are doing with it. Conservation versus making money. All
that. Oh -- and with side-issues about noise and personal vendettas
and things people's children have been up to. There's no end
to it.'

'And do you take part? And your brother?'
'Only in a desultory way. Edward not at all, I suppose. We
are considered a bit eccentric. And then there's the Britches.' 'Ah. The bit of woodland. What about it?'

Helen explained. Giles Carnaby listened with attention. When
she had finished he said, 'Yes. I can see how this would be seen
as perverse. Your mother was not acting according to the spirit
of the times. She could have made a hundred thousand or so.
Was it that she was ecologically minded, like your brother?'

'Not in the least. She just liked saying no to people. She
especially liked saying no to Ron Paget.'
'Who?'
'The builder along the road.'
'Ah yes. Does he drive a very affluent-looking red car? I think
I saw him coming out as I arrived. You realise it would be
perfectly possible to sell the -- what's it called? -- this land now if
you wished?'

'That's out of the question,' said Helen. 'Edward would be
terribly upset.'
'Then so long as your finances are healthy there is absolutely
no reason why you should. Perhaps that's why your mother
didn't include the. . . the. .
'Britches.'
'Curious name -- what does it mean? Why she didn't include
the Britches with the house. Maybe she didn't feel confident that
your nephew would share the family resistance to material
prosperity. Maybe she thought he'd sell it to your builder friend
-- in the fullness of time.'
'Yes,' said Helen. 'I should imagine that was precisely why.
She knew we never would.' She thought of her mother with a
flash of respect, successfully pursuing her struggle against Ron
Paget from beyond the grave.

The whole situation is a touch bizarre, but nothing for you to
worry about. The lad can't ever evict you, even should he turn
out a villain and who's to suppose he will? The green hair tells
us nothing, I assume -- it's purely totemic and tribal. Anyway, at
sixteen, he remains an unknown quantity. I speak from authority
-- my own son didn't solidify, as it were, until he was well over
twenty. And you have no need to sell the land so your brother
can go on enjoying his ecology.'

'Good.'
'You're protective about your brother, aren't you? Oh dear --
I'm sorry, none of my business. Now I'm exceeding my brief.'
He smiled. 'I'm seduced by the ambience -- I keep forgetting I'm
here in a professional capacity.'

Ambience, thought Helen. Ambience and established. Just
you wait, Louise. She smiled back -- no, beamed: felt her face
fixed in this idiot grin of well-being and response.
'More tea?'
'What did the lawyer say?'
'He said they never realised mother hadn't told us about
leaving the house to Phil and it didn't save much tax anyway.
And he liked the kitchen.'
'What was he like?'
'Do you remember that old film with a man being chased
across an enormous field by an aeroplane?'
'No.'
'Oh, never mind,' said Helen. 'Nice, anyway. Very nice,
actually.'

Protective.
That, yes. One had no choice, really. Given mother. Given
Edward.

She had taken them, aged maybe four and seven, to someone
else's birthday party. Children skittering all over polished parquet
floors: children more practised and assured than they were.
Musical chairs. Hunt the slipper. Balloons. Attendant nannies.
They did not have a nanny. Mothers gathered in a drawing
room.

She had tugged at her mother's sleeve, whispering, 'Edward's
wet himself-- what shall we do?'
'I'm talking to Mrs Carew,' said her mother. 'Be quiet, Helen.
If you've got something to say wait till I've finished.'
'But mother. .
Her mother turned on her a scalding gaze. 'Don't interrupt,
Helen. And go away, please. Play with the others.'
Helen led Edward to the bathroom. His pants dropped,
damply. Once there she took his things off. His socks, too, were
sodden. She tried to dry them on the bathmat. Edward simply
stood, compliantly lifting a foot when required. Once, he said 'Will there be crackers for tea?' She wiped him down with
lavatory paper and put his pants back on; they were still wet but
there was nothing else for it. She stuffed his underpants and
socks behind the Carews' radiator. Then she washed her hands
and his and led him downstairs again. He was talking once more
about crackers. All she could think of was whether anyone would
notice that he had no socks on.

He was sent to boarding school at nine. It was inevitable. 'Don't

be silly, Helen,' said her mother. 'Of course he won't hate it.


He can play football and all that sort of thing. What do you mean
-- he doesn't like football? All boys like football. And there's no
point in going on at Daddy about it. Daddy agrees with me.'
Or so she said. And so he appeared to do -- backing into the
study, newspaper in hand, with deprecating gesture. Distant,
hazy, dead Daddy. Long since drowned out by other voices,
other opinions; bleached now to a faded outline, a few mannerisms,
a vague remembered preference for anchovy paste as opposed to jam. Could a lifetime be reduced to that?

But in the event Edward, who might have been expected to
suffer deeply and conventionally at school, in fact went through
it in some kind of trance. He retreated so far into himself, became
so withdrawn and unresponsive, that in another age he would
probably have been classified as subnormal. As it was, he was
simply left alone to operate some private sensual filter system,
which admitted air and nourishment but excluded the grinding
scatological barbarity of his peers and the ugly monotony of the
nine years' imprisonment to which he was condemned. He must
also have admitted instruction, since he passed examinations --
though only just. He was no good at games, but survived again
by a system of practised self-effacement -- dreaming long afternoons
away in the long grass of the cricket pitch at deep square
leg, trotting helpfully around on the wing at football. From time
to time he was bullied, but his anonymity was so expert that
after a while even the bullies lost interest. There is no fun in
negative response; screams of pain are essential.
'How did he get into the kitchen anyway?' said Edward. 'Lawyers
don't go into kitchens. Didn't you receive him in the sitting
room?'
'One thing led to another, somehow.'
'I see.' He was busy fiddling with the knobs on the television
set. It was an ancient model and required much coaxing;
Edward's favourite programme was due in five minutes. 'Do you
think mother did it all on purpose? The Will, and Phil and
everything.'

'I suppose so,' said Helen.
The television screen shuddered into life and produced a
delicate Seurat landscape composed of coloured dots, with just
discernible trees and moving figures. 'Blast!' said Edward. He
hammered the side of the set and the dots turned from green to
red. He turned to look at her for a moment: 'There's really no
point in us getting worked up about it now. About her, I mean.'

'Absolutely none.'
'I suppose she couldn't bear the thought of not dictating things
any more. It's bad enough for anyone to know they're going to
die eventually but I suppose it's even worse for people like
mother. Like medieval kings. Poor mother. We never realised
what she was going through, really.'

limn. Maybe not.'
Upstairs, a window slammed. Involuntarily, they both leapt
to their feet. And sat down again sheepishly. 'God!' said Edward.
'Are we ever going to get used to it?'
'Eventually, I imagine.'
Edward hit the other side of the television set and a head and
shoulders shot into clarity, talking about pesticides. He sighed
and slumped into the armchair.

The programme, that evening, dealt among other things with
the Barnacle geese of the Arctic. The Barnacle geese migrate
north in the breeding seasons to a wide river valley bordered by
low mountains. In order to preserve their young from the
marauding foxes of the plain the geese nest two or three hundred
feet up a mountain cliff. As soon as the young are fledged it
becomes necessary to get them down off these crags to the
feeding grounds below. To this end, the parents lead the chirping
fluffy bundles across the rocks until they reach the precipitous
edge. Then the adult birds, squawking anxiously, launch themselves
into the air and circle around, calling the babies.
The camera dwelt unflinchingly on the ensuing horror as, one
by one, the pathetically cheeping goslings hurled themselves over
the edge. It lingered on the plunging balls of fluff as, embryonic
wings outstretched, small feet flailing, they plunged to the rocks
below. There, a fox trotted up and down sniffing. The parents
rushed around calling frantically. It came as a surprise to learn

that about fifty percent of the chicks survive this charming
natural arrangement.
Edward and Helen watched in appalled silence. The programme
ended with some stunning tour de force photography -- a blood red Arctic sun hanging low in an orange sky above an exquisite wilderness in which wolves and caribou, foxes and
geese were left undisturbed to do what they liked to one another.
Edward, after that, found it difficult to sleep. In his head, the
goslings churned around with other, more personal, matters.
The peculiarly savage twist to the distress he felt about the
goslings was that there was nowhere to direct one's outrage. It
was easier, in a way, to lie awake boiling about the barbarities of
Canadian seal-slaughterers or the ecological insensitivity of English
farmers. There was no one and nothing to blame for the
goslings. There was nothing to join, no one to whom to send a
contribution, no letter to be written to a newspaper.

In the darkness at the end of the bed Tam snored in loud
staccato bursts; from time to time he changed position in his
sleep and tried to shove Edward's foot out of the way. He was a
dog entirely devoted to the pursuit of self-interest; Edward and
Helen, discussing this, always came up against the intractable
point that presumably there could be no other kind of dog, or
indeed of animal. Animals always act out of self-interest, unless
in the interests of their young, and that too can presumably be
defined as self-interest in a genetic sense.

Tam, Edward suspected, would not even act in the interests
of his young, should he have any. Since he was rising ten and
had never given more than token attention to the village bitches
this was unlikely. Edward loved Tam, in the complex and
distorted way in which people can be said to love animals, though
he had loved other dogs more. Tam was one of a series; he had
predecessors and would no doubt have successors, and Edward
sometimes thought of the others in the way in which people
review other children or other spouses. He also knew quite well that these were the terms in which he thought of them, and why.

He had never shared his bed with a person. He had come near
to it, once or twice, but a long time ago. Even those occasions,
now, were dimmed; they were rosier, too, in recollection than in
cold reality. He flinched from the thought of the people involved.
What was left was the memory of something else: his own
feelings.
He had a vivid, and much earlier, memory of the first occasion
on which he had realised that feelings were something to which
a word was attached, and that they were recognised by others.
He was quite small -- his head did not reach above the windowsill
below which he stood -- and through the open window came
Helen's voice, high-pitched in indignation, crying out to their
mother 'You've hurt his feelings! Why did you say that!' And
three things fused within his head: Dorothy's derision of his
ineptitude at something, what he felt in consequence, and the
fact that Helen understood how he felt even though it hadn't
happened to her. Now that he knew what they were called, he
realised also that he had them all the time, with kaleidoscopic
intensity, and hence that others must do so too.

Their mother also, presumably, though in her case expressions
of feeling more usually took the form of anger. Dorothy found
outbursts of rage exhilarating; she would descend the next ,
morning blithe and invigorated, while everyone else crawled around punch-drunk from emotion. Louise was the only one who
was a match for her. She learned in infancy to throw spirited
tantrums in response to her mother's anger, holding her breath
and going blue in the face in a way that alarmed even Dorothy,
who held that most childish ailments were put on. The tantrums
were, of course, up to a point, but they were impressive all the
same. When too old for tantrums, Louise resorted to argument
and shouting matches. And, eventually, she left.

Helen and Edward, on the other hand, withdrew. Once they
grew beyond being afraid of Dorothy's temper, they dealt with
it by evasion; they simply got out of the way whenever she
brewed up. Living with her, they learned to treat her as the
weather -- elemental and inescapable.
Feelings also may be inescapable, Edward learned, but there
are ways of cheating them. Of diverting them. Of hiding from
them. Your own howls can be drowned out by the howls of the


rest of the world, if you set about it properly. If you are naturally
self-deprecating, and exceptionally under-endowed with egotism,
the process comes almost naturally. Eventually you are exercised
only about the atrocities around. Or so it can seem.
Helen also thought about the Barnacle geese that night, though
with less intensity. The image of the plunging chicks lurked in
her head, nagging, but it was other matters that kept her awake.
Feelings, of course -- those maddening unquenchable onsets of
disease. She reviewed Giles Carnaby's visit and was aware of
having existed, during that hour or so, on two different planes;
at one level she had listened to Giles Carnaby and talked to Giles
Carnaby, at some other level she had undergone strange physical
and emotional experiences. She had gone hot and cold; she had
felt slightly dizzy; she had been unable to take her eyes off him.
All this while discussing her mother's testamentary
arrangements.

She had not felt thus for roughly fifteen years and had not
expected to do so ever again.
Edward -- in so far as he thought about the matter -- had always
assumed that his sister was a virgin. He was wrong. Other
people's sexual lives are of course deeply mysterious; even so,
Edward's assumption was understandable. To his knowledge,
she had had few abiding relationships with men and not many
transient ones either. It was lack of opportunity as well as his
knowledge of her character that made virginity seem likely.

In fact, Helen had first gone to bed with a man when she was
twenty-three. She found the whole performance embarrassing
but distinctly pleasurable. She quite liked him but was not in
love with him, and recognised the experience as a purely sexual
one. The man made vague suggestions about keeping in touch,
and then vanished. Helen settled down wretchedly to await the
outcome; she doubted if the correct precautions had been taken
and knew that copulation leads, more often than not, to pregnancy.
She told no one and sat it out stoically. When, on the
seventeenth day, her period arrived the relief and elation she felt
were like a religious experience. Indeed, she went down on her

knees beside her mother in church that Sunday and thanked the
Lord, furtively and guiltily. She did not say to Him that she
wouldn't do it again because she did not expect the opportunity
to arise. Nor did it, for quite a while.

Dorothy's attitude to sex was one of withering contempt. She
did not disapprove, she despised. The subject brought out in her
a particular look -- an expression of obstinate rejection, a clamping
of the mouth, a hardening of the eye. Each time Helen saw it she
thought of her father, and shivered for him.

Louise, at sixteen, discovered boys. The row with Dorothy
and Louise's flight to London and to art school was about sex
rather more than about educational opportunity. Dorothy had
opened the front door at the wrong moment late one evening and
discovered Louise on the top step, in a fervent embrace with the
publican's son. The ensuing commotion kept everyone up till the
small hours of the morning. 'You're disgusting!' bawled Dorothy.
'You're a revolting little trollop, do you hear me?' And Louise,
incoherent and weeping but primed with righteous outrage,
shouted back that Dorothy didn't own her, that other people's
mothers didn't . . . that every other teenager in the country . . .
that this wasn't the nineteenth century, for heaven's sake!

Louise and Dorothy kept up a spasmodic battle about Louise's
sex-life until Louise married Tim, at which point Dorothy lost
interest. Helen and Edward were an altogether simpler matter.
So far as Dorothy was concerned they had nothing to do with
that sort of thing; they weren't 'silly' like Louise. When Helen
struck up friendships with men Dorothy moved into the offensive
with a strategy of disparagement: 'That poor young man -- one
wonders what he can possibly fetch up doing, with that voice
and those looks.' She was given to assessing people in terms of
appearance. Girls were classified as pretty girls, nice girls and
clever girls. Pretty was best; clever was worst. One could not
help noting that Dorothy herself, in youth, could not have fallen
into any of these categories, but then Dorothy always saw herself
as apart. Not in any sense of superiority: simply as apart. There
was her, and there was the rest of the world.

At first Helen was upset by Dorothy's disparagement: 'Just as
well you're prepared to put up with that chap's acne -- no one



else would, I imagine.' Why hasn't anyone ever told him about
his teeth?' Then she ceased to bring her friends home, unless it
was unavoidable. Eventually what Dorothy said no longer mattered.
During the long-ago weeks and months when it had
seemed possible that she might be on the brink of a permanent
alliance she explained to the man in question about her mother,
and he appeared to understand. As it turned out, she need not
have bothered.

The hall clock struck four. Edward and Helen, apart and
awake, heard it. Edward remembered that he had to coach the
remedial French class in a few hours' time, always a taxing
business; he turned over and made a resolute attempt to sleep.
Helen felt an odd little tingle of interest at the approach of the
new day: another unusual sensation. In the Britches a cat yowled.
FOUR
'Why are there ladders everywhere?' said Edward.
'Ron Paget's men are mending the broken guttering.'
'The house looks like some medieval siege. Do tell them to be
careful of the martins' nests.'
'They've been told. Though I don't see why the martins
shouldn't do some rebuilding. Here is Ron.'
Edward made a dive for the door, but too late. Ron Paget was
already there.
'Better to come round to the back, I thought, this time of day.
Don't let me interrupt your tea. I heard Mr Glover's car go past
so I thought I'd just pop over and see the men are getting on all
right. What about that window-frame -- shall I have them see to
that while they're about it?'

'I suppose they may as well,' said Helen.
'No problem.' Ron's glance slid around the kitchen. 'The
damp's really got a hold in here, hasn't it? You ever thought of
having a proper damp course put in?'
'Well . . .' Helen began.
'Tell you what -- why don't I have a look round later this
week? Work out what we could do and how much it would set
you back. Just to give you an idea. It'd be a biggish job, mind,
but I'd make a special price -- we've been neighbours a heck of a
long time now and I had a soft spot for your mother.'

Helen and Edward looked at each other.
'You leave it to me,' said Ron. 'I'll suss out the damage and we
can talk about it later.' He turned sideways to look out into the
garden. 'Lovely place, this. Of course it's bound to get out of
hand, you've neither of you got the time to give to it. You know,
if it was me I'd have a patio. Cut down on some of the grass --

give you an area for sitting out -- York stone paving, swing seat
with an awning, very nice.'
The Glovers made no comment.
'Yes. Well, of course you've gone rather more for the natural
look, the way it is. Is that a yew hedge?'
believe it is,' said Edward. 'In theory, anyway.'
'It needs the clippers taken to it, certainly. And beyond it
there's what you'd call the kitchen garden, right? Your mother did a bit in the veg line, I seem to remember.'
'Not for quite a while,' said Helen, wondering how to curtail
all this. 'Anyway, thanks very much, Mr Paget, we mustn't keep
you, the men seem to be. .

Ron took a few steps backwards and stared up at the house.
'There's a bit of re-pointing needs doing up there, too. We'll see
to that. And I tell you what, Miss Glover, I've had a thought.
About your garden. Our Gary'll come in for a couple of hours,
Saturday mornings.'
'Gary?' There were several Paget offspring. Gary must be the
adolescent, from marriage number one.
'He's a big lad now. Fourteen. Muscles on him like nobody's
business. You can put him on to the rough work -- dig over the
vegetable garden, that sort of thing. Give him one fifty an hour,
that'll be quite enough. Maybe two quid by Christmas, if you
think he's worth it.'

'But we don't grow vegetables,' said Edward.
'I'm surprised, Mr Glover.' Ron sounded quite censorious. 'I
thought everyone was doing their own veg these days. Nouvelle
cuisine and all that. Mangetouts and yellow zucchini -- that's
what I'm into this year. Fantastic. I'll tell you the varieties to go
for.'
The Glovers, intrigued by this unsuspected bent, gazed at
him. Helen suddenly thought -- well why not? It's absurd the way we waste the garden. Never mind yellow whatsits but new
potatoes would be nice. And he could clean up that old mower
and do something about the grass. 'All right. Maybe it's not a
bad idea.'
'Oh,' Edward began. 'We'd never. .
'Tell him to come on Saturday,' said Helen.
Ron grinned. 'Spot on, Miss Glover. You won't regret it. And
I'll drop by myself and have a think about your damp. Cheerio
for now.'
'What was all that about?' said Edward, when he had gone.
'Falling over himself to be so helpful.'
The Britches, of course.'
'He never gives up, does he? But do we really want this boy
messing about?'
'Might as well.'
Edward shrugged. 'If you say so.'

Life was reasserting itself. Days had trundled by and it was now
two weeks since the funeral. Helen, going into Dorothy's room,
saw that it had become dusty. Her presence was still loud and
strong, but patchily so; there were occasional moments when she
was not there at all, when it was possible to walk up the stairs or
into the kitchen without expecting to see her. The black holes
were becoming grey; Helen could see the substance of the house
behind them, as though brick, stone and wood were extinguishing
her mother.

She began to manifest herself in other ways.
'At least get new curtains,' said Louise. She had come down
for the night, for purposes as yet unclear. 'These are all of thirty
years old. They've got moth and mildew. I've always hated them.
They're the precise colour of pee.'

'Mother made them.'
'I know mother made them. That's why the hems are uneven.
That's why they're such a nasty colour.'
Remnants, thought Helen, from a sale at Elliston & Cavell's in
Oxford, which is no more, subsumed into Debenham's. I helped,
if that is the right word, mother to buy the material. Stood
about, in actual fact, while she yanked bales of stuff around and
hectored shop assistants. I murmured things about the colour at
the time. She pointed out that the fabric was cheap and serviceable.
And indeed here it is, still serving.

'And another thing,' said Louise. 'The downstairs loo. Cloakroom,
as mother called it. Something must be done about it --


there are strata, quite literally strata, of defunct raincoats in
there. There's stuff of father's. Do me a favour and clear it out.'
'It's part of the ambience,' said Helen.
'The what?'
'This house feels so established.'
'What's all this about? Who's been giving you that sort of crap?
Here . . .' Louise rummaged in a carrier bag. 'I brought a bottle
of plonk. What are we eating? And where's Edward? Don't tell
me he's sloped off somewhere -- I want to talk to both of you.
Tim's at a weekend conference, so I damn well didn't see why I
shouldn't have a break myself. God knows what I'll find when I
get back, but still.'

'Edward's in the Britches putting up some nest-boxes that
came this morning, and we're eating a sort of stew.'
'Mail order nest-boxes!' said Louise. 'I don't believe it!' She
wandered around the kitchen opening cupboards. 'I hate these
glasses -- where are those green ones? Ah, there . . . You need a
proper corkscrew -- this kind is hopeless. Here -- let's take a drink
through to the sitting room. It's perishing in here.'

Settling into the corner of the sofa she continued, 'It feels so peculiar here now. I keep expecting -- oh God, I don't know quite
what I keep expecting. And I keep wishing I hadn't fought with
her so much. You know I kept trying, all this last year, to . . .
well, to have a sort of great rapprochement. . . and each time she'd
spoil it by coming out with . . . well, the things she always did
come out with. You know.'

'I know.'
'So now I feel . . . Ugh! Guilty. Nasty.'
Edward came in. 'Hello. What are you feeling guilty about?'
'Mother, of course,' said Louise morosely. 'Here's a glass and
the bottle's on the book-case. Listen, was she the way I think she
was or did I imagine her?'

Edward poured himself a glass of wine and looked doubtfully
at it -- not because he questioned its quality but because drink
was unusual at Greystones and had connotations of ritual celebration
-- Christmas and birthdays. The note struck right now did
not seem to be one of celebration. He took a gulp and sat down
at the other end of the sofa.

'She once threw a plate at me,' Louise went on. Did you know
that? One of those blue and orange ones. It missed.'
'I thought they were supposed to be Crown Derby, those,'
said Edward. 'It shows what a temper she must have been in.'
Louise glared at him. 'I was seventeen and a half at the time.
All I could think was -- other people's mothers don't do things
like this.'
'There's probably more of it around than one imagines.'
Helen had finished what was in her glass. 'Mother was the
way you think she was. And the way I think she was and the
way Edward thinks she was. She was demanding and assertive
and dogmatic and possessive and she always thought she knew
best about everything. She bullied us. She bullied everyone who
gave her the chance. She was prejudiced and inflexible and
opinionated. She never listened to what anyone else said. She
had a vile temper. There are also other things that she wasn't.
She wasn't avaricious or malicious or cruel in any deliberate
sense, though the result of some of the things she did was cruelty
of a kind.'

The others stared at her. 'I'm not sure you should say all this,'
said Edward rather wildly.
'What's the difference between saying it and thinking it? And
it's true. And it can't hurt her now because she's dead. Also, it
doesn't mean I feel any differently about her.'
There was a silence. Louise, eventually, spoke. 'What did you
feel about her?'
'I loved her, I suppose,' said Helen. 'One does, willy-nilly.'
'Sometimes I hated her,' said Louise.
'Oh, that too.'
Further silence. Louise reached for the wine bottle and shared
out what was left. 'Edward, that dog of yours is disgusting.'
Tam was sitting under the standard lamp, salivating lavishly
as he gazed at a fly that wandered across the shade. Edward
poked him with a foot. Tam gave a propitiating wag of the tail,
licked his lips and concentrated once more on the fly.

Edward said, 'Well, it's over, anyway. Poor old mother. She's
not here, quite simply. We're on our own now.'
Helen laughed. 'Clearly that is just what we are not.'


Edward gave her a stern look. 'Wine always sets you off. Don't
give her any more, Louise.'
Tor Christ's sake!' cried Louise. 'She doesn't get enough booze,
that's the trouble. This house has always been like some Temperance
cell. Mother again -- just because she didn't care for it
herself. Oh -- enough, enough! Look, I came here to talk about
myself, not mother.'
'Good,' said Edward comfortably. The sturm und drang of
Louise's private and professional life gave him all the vicarious
satisfaction of television soap opera. 'What happened over the
row in your office about the new restaurant contract?'

Louise looked at him sharply. 'My life isn't some sort of
spectator sport, you know. Anyway, it's nothing to do with the
office. It's Phil. Classic teenage stuff, I suppose, but it's got a bit
beyond a joke. He wants to leave school, go and hang out with a
bunch of down and out friends, all that nonsense.'

Edward was losing interest. 'Talk to him,' he advised kindly.
'That's pathetic!' snapped Louise. 'Frankly we feel more like
hitting him at the moment. I have a permanent stress headache.
If! was anyone else I'd be on tranquillizers.'
The telephone rang. 'I'll go,' said Helen. Out in the hall, she
picked up the receiver. 'Hello?'
'Miss Glover? Helen . . . May I? Giles Carnaby here. I have
one or two further little things I ought to discuss with you. I
wondered if you might like to meet me in Spaxton for a spot of
lunch?'
She returned to the sitting room. Louise was still talking about
Phil. Edward was picking burrs out of Tam's coat. They both
looked at her. Louise said, 'That wine has turned you bright pink
-- it must be even more vicious than I thought. Let's open another
bottle. And your stew's burning -- I can smell it.'


When Louise was a little girl Helen had been immensely proud
of her. 'Louise is going to be the pretty one,' Dorothy said, when
Louise was about two; and said it rather too often, thereafter. In
fact Louise was not pretty, but she had a quality of vibrancy that

did very well instead. Nowadays, in the company of good
looking women she appeared louche -- her skin was bad and her
hair messy. But beside most women -- Helen included -- she was
a curious illustration of why one woman is attractive and another
not. You were simply more inclined to look at Louise than at
others. And as a small child she had been compelling, with her
bounce, her bright eyes, her mop of hair. Helen, escorting her
along a street or into shops, had delighted in it: 'Yes, she's my
sister. Yes, she is quite a handful -- come along, Louise.'

She sometimes saw a shadow of Louise in her own face, with
interest and quite without rancour. Patently, the life of an
attractive woman is different from that of a plain one -- and not
exclusively in a sexual sense: a personable appearance conditions
the world's response to most people. Louise's looks invited
attention; Helen's did not. But, that being said, Helen knew that
the gulf between her experience and her sister's could be attributed
to personality and inclination quite as much as to the cast of
nose or mouth. Louise was extrovert and unwary; Helen was
reserved and cautious. Louise, from the age of two, had fought
their mother; Helen had propitiated and avoided confrontation.
Louise had grabbed at opportunities (and, on occasion, paid for
it); Helen had hesitated, considered the pros and cons, and then
found that it was too late.

She had never envied Louise; rather, she had feared for her.
She had stood in the wings, over the years, and watched with
apprehension as Louise was crossed in love, had rows and
reconciliations, got the sack, went broke, suffered a fallopian
pregnancy and an attack of shingles and smashed up a car. She came to realise, too, that while temperament may condition
experience it also determines how we overcome it. She herself
would have been felled by any of these things, she suspected;
Louise shrieked her protests, and prospered. The mystery, as
Helen saw it, was that two people could emerge from the same
circumstances and set about dealing with the world so differently:
follow the thread back and you reached, in each case, the same
hearth, the same cot, the same indoctrinations, Dorothy's uncompromising
lap.


Will this do?' said Giles Carnaby. 'I thought of the Crown, but
I can't stand all the bucolic laughter from Rotarian lunches. And
that wine bar place is too young and the White Hart is too
elderly. I hoped this might fill the gap -- it's new, apparently.'
The restaurant struck Helen as unlikely to survive long in
Spaxton: the menu was ornate in every sense and the prices high.
There was hardly anyone else there. It was also elegantly under
lit; she had difficulty in picking out Giles until she spotted the
gleam of his silver hair in a far corner. He jumped to his feet as
she approached and fussed around with her coat; his hand lay for
an instant on her shoulder.

'It's fine,' she said.
'Are you sure? I've been having misgivings about the decor.
We could always do a bolt somewhere else.'
'Not now they've got my coat. And you've unfolded your
napkin.'
'So I have. Sheer nervousness.' That winning smile. 'Well,
we're stuck with it. Shall we get the rather boring business bit
over first or do you want me to stow it away until the coffee?'
There was some matter of the whereabouts of share certificates,
it turned out, and an explanation about probate and how
long it took. It occurred to Helen that all of it would have gone
nicely into a letter; quite a short letter. She sipped her sherry
and thought about this.
'There!' he concluded. 'Honour is satisfied. Now tell me what
you've been doing? How is the young man with green hair? By
the way -- the Earl Grey has been an absolute treat. I think about you every time I brew myself a cup -- not that I wouldn't do that
anyway but the combination vastly cheers up breakfast, always a
slightly dismal time these days. What do you have for breakfast?
I've been imagining you in that amazing kitchen, and your
brother except of course that he is a blank since we haven't met.'
The trouble about this multi-faceted style of conversation was
that it left you not knowing quite which bit to deal with first.
Helen, a little breathless, tried to talk and attend to various
unspoken responses and queries. She felt both heady and in some
way disadvantaged. The food was rather good; wine at lunchtime
was of course always a mistake but one could repent that at
leisure, later on.

Various things emerged, also to extend their impact later.
Carnaby & Proctor had only become thus four years ago, when
the Carnabys had moved down here from London since Gillian
Carnaby, already ill, had wished to spend her last years elsewhere.
Then old Mr Proctor had retired, as anticipated, leaving Giles in partnership with young Simon. Giles rather missed
London at times, but was adjusting. There were compensations.
(What were they? Who were they?) The house was pleasant
enough but Giles was not good at housekeeping. The son, a
marine engineer, was abroad. Giles enjoyed long muddy walks,
preferably in company (whose?), opera, sweet and sticky puddings
(the choice of dessert occasioned much heart-searching) and
travel books of the 1930s. He sang in an amateur choir on
Monday evenings, voted Liberal, was allergic to strawberries and
had bicycled across France when he was twenty. He didn't know
one end of a car from the other, could never see the point of
Picasso but accepted that he was probably an ignoramus, seldom
drank spirits and liked to do a little mild gardening. He had a
gold filling rather far back in his mouth that glinted when he
laughed heartily. He paid bills with Access.

'Good grief -- it can't be three-thirty! Is service included, do
you imagine? I can never tell with these things. I feel as though
I've been going on about myself in the most shameless way.
What a nice patient woman you are.'
He laid his hand on hers. There it rested for several seconds,
until the waiter arrived and there were things to be done with
wallet and credit card.

'And you never did report on the green-headed nephew.'
'He seems to be giving trouble,' said Helen. 'My sister was complaining.'
'Adolescence is quite fearful. Be thankful you're not a parent.
Though you would be a marvellous one, I'm sure. I do wonder.. .'
' He checked himself. 'Anyway, your sister has my sympathy.
The boy too. Tell them it all works out in the end.'
They rose. Coats were fetched. At the door he said 'Where are
you going?'
'I left the car in the Market Street car park.'
'I can go back to the office that way.'


Out into the street, the humdrum Spaxton street, butchers
and building societies and banks, known for thirty years but
somehow today transformed -- gay and quirky and inviting. Pails
of summer flowers outside a greengrocer. Small children skittering
home from school with enormous satchels banging against
their backs. Sunlight on old brick. A boy whistling.
He took her arm to guide her across a street in which there
was no traffic. 'What a treat! I usually spend my lunch-time in
the pub on the corner. Or having a brisk walk. Or sandwiches in
the office.'
'I enjoyed it too,' said Helen. 'Thank you so much. Perhaps
. .' she hesitated.
'It's for me to thank you. Sparing the time . . . Letting me
natter on. Oh dear -- here's the wretched car park.' He pulled a
face, then beamed the smile upon her, laid a hand on her arm.
'Perhaps. . .' she began.
'Anyway -- goodbye and thank you, my dear.'
And that was that. A quick squeeze of the arm and off. My
dear. Perhaps, she said to his back view -- diminishing, vanishing,
dodging away among passers-by -- perhaps you'd like to come
and have a drink sometime and meet my brother. Oh well.
I am unpractised in these things, she thought, driving home. I
have forgotten the codes, if indeed I ever knew them. I don't
know the to and fro of it.
Aflame, she glared at the road ahead. Her mother, sitting
squatly in the passenger seat, told her she was fifty-two years
old, no beauty and never had been and would do better to pull
herself together and think about something else. Go away, said
Helen. I'm sorry but go away. This is something you know
nothing about, nor ever did.
She removed all her clothes and stood in front of the long mirror in her bedroom. She saw a body with heavy thighs, legs with the
purplish blotches of incipient varicose veins, breasts that sagged
and a belly that was far from flat. Viewed dispassionately, she

could not see how this body could arouse desire. It was demonstrably female, but very distant from the female bodies displayed in
advertisements or on the covers of magazines. It looked to her
more like an illustration in a medical journal.

Edward, returning at the end of his school day, found Helen on
the upstairs landing amid what appeared at first glance to be the
final sediment of a jumble sale. Shoes and clothing were spread
around in desultory heaps. Helen, her arms full, moved uncertainly
among them. Reaching the top of the stairs, Edward
recognised his mother's garments.

Helen looked at him uncomfortably across an armful of
pinkish-grey elastic net, boning and suspenders. 'It had to be
done eventually. I suddenly thought -- now. And get it over
with.'
'Yes, of course. Where can it all go?'
'Well . . . Oxfam, I suppose, except that I believe they're
rather fussy nowadays. And . . .' Her glance strayed guiltily to
a couple of black plastic rubbish sacks, stuffed full. She had
already come to the conclusion that very little re-cycling could
be done; Dorothy had been a parsimonious dresser at the best of
times.

Edward averted his eyes from what Helen was holding: distant malaise lurked there.
'I never realised she had any hats.'
Nor did I. They must have been for weddings, ages ago. I'm
afraid a lot of this has got the moth. Such as the fur coat. She
hardly ever wore it and it dates from before the war.'

'What is it, do you imagine?' enquired Edward with distaste.
He remembered the fur coat, which used to emerge in his
childhood for rare visits to the pantomime or the ballet. It gave
his mother the appearance of a small purposeful brown bear and
he had hated it.

Helen picked it up. There were balding patches and a rip in
one sleeve. Bear was still the animal that it most closely evoked.
She held it out to Edward, who shook his head and pulled a face.
Helen laughed. 'Whatever it was, it died an awfully long time
ago. Too long ago to get exercised about now.' She dropped the
coat on to one of the piles.
'That's not what I was thinking about,' said Edward. His
glance shifted from the coat to the pink tangle in Helen's arms. He took his glasses off and began to scrub them violently with a
grubby handkerchief.

The sensual feel of fur was one of his earliest memories. Live
fur. The warm flank of the cat from next door, to be precise, in
which he had buried his face and been rewarded with the
consoling reverberation of its purr. An amiable, unrejecting
maternal cat.

He had been under the impression, as a very small child, that
his mother was armour-plated, like the rhino in London Zoo at
which he had gazed in astonishment. You could not touch the
rhino, but it looked like his mother felt. Beneath her tweed skirts
and her thick jerseys there was a carapace, a plated stiffness that
rejected infant limbs and hands. Later in life he learned about
female corsetry and realised what it was one had been up against,
but the impression lingered yet of some unyielding natural
structure.

Dorothy did not encourage physical contact. 'Don't paw me
like that, Edward,' she would say. 'No, you can't hold my hand / sit on my lap/have a cuddle. Don't be silly. You're not a baby
now, you're two/three/four.' The cat never said things like that;
it simply provided a gently throbbing flank until called away on
more pressing matters. Hence, perhaps, the disturbing emotions
aroused by the sight of dead fur and, even more, that dingy
flaccid heap of canvas and elastic, which prompted, now, another
murky response, another distant moment. He had lain in bed
once, in infancy perhaps, and watched with furtive distress as
his mother dressed; presumably she had thought he was asleep.
Why was he sharing her room? Some crisis induced by visiting
relatives, maybe. At any rate, the sight was with him still: that
shadowy figure revealing undreamed-of clefts and protuberances.
He had cowered under the bedclothes, mesmerized, and watched
her flopping breasts as she stooped to haul pink drawers up over

heavy thighs, had seen hair where surely no hair should be, had
printed on his vision for ever the pucker of nipples and the black
valley between buttocks.
He started to retreat back down the stairs. 'You might at least
take some of the stuff down for me,' said Helen, in a tone of
reproach.
Edward grabbed the black plastic sacks. 'I'll help if you want,
but I'm sure I'd . .
Helen vanished into Dorothy's room, saying tartly that it
didn't matter; it was the nearest they had come to ill feeling for a
long time and Edward was left with a further layer of disquiet.
He dumped the sacks outside the back door by the dustbins,
called Tam and set off for the Britches.

He checked the nest-boxes. There was evidence that something
might already have been roosting in one of them, which was
satisfactory. They were sold by an organisation that provided
work for the mentally handicapped, which made them doubly
benign; the only displeasing thing about them was the aggressively
rustic appearance -- a cross between a cuckoo clock and a
miniature cottage orne. Edward had tried unsuccessfully to knock
off the superfluous gables and twiggy excrescences. They would
mellow, he hoped, in the raw winter climate of the Britches.

It was June now and still warm though past six. The evening
sunlight that came down through the leaves suffused the whole
place with a golden glow. Edward sat down on his usual log and
noted, while thinking of quite other things, that he could hear a
robin, assorted tits, rooks, a chaffinch and a magpie. He observed
a delicate collar of fawn and pink fungus around the base of a
dead tree, vivid green cushions of moss, the crimson flicker of a
cinnabar moth against leaf mould, a very small spider with white
spots on its back. He heard, but did not register, the screech of
the chain-saw in Ron Paget's yard, the rattle and thump of an
articulated lorry taking the bend in the road, the roar of an
American F1-11 fighter some two miles above his head. A few
feet away Tam was gnawing at something dubious he had found
in the undergrowth.

Edward tried to think of nothing at all; like Tam, like the
birds, the cinnabar moth, the fungus, the Britches itself. He felt


unsettled, uneasy, disquieted in his very depths, as indeed he
had felt since his mother's death. He had felt like this from time
to time all his life and had conquered the feelings eventually, on
each occasion, by stern application to other matters and by
refusing consideration of what he felt. If you denied a name to
something perhaps it would no longer exist. Thus, as a child,
had he driven away the shadows on the bedroom wall -- the
witch-shaped, wolf-shaped shadows. And thus, today, he sat on
his log -- a delicate pink-grey log furred here and there with green
moss -- and tried to concentrate on what he could see while
thrusting aside what he knew. He watched the moth and the
spider, followed the movement of the tits and the robin, saw the
valiant growth of a six-inch beech seedling. The Britches rustled
and flickered comfortably around him. Tam chewed the ancient
corpse of some small creature.

And Edward, not unfeeling, not impervious, began presently
to howl within. Nothing lasts, he wept, everything goes. My
mother is dead, who had always been there, for better and for
worse. Mostly for worse. And I am forty-nine and getting old
and soon it will be too late for all the things I know nothing of
but which torment me in the middle of the night and here now
in this place which is supposed to be a comfort and a solace. I am
lonely and hungry and I have never breathed a word of this to
anyone. Nobody knows or cares. I don't want anyone to know
or care.

Tam dug a hole and stowed away his prize. Then he came and
nosed at Edward's foot, ready to move on. Edward pushed him
away, quite violently, and Tam, unused to even such halfhearted
maltreatment, looked up in surprise.

FIVE
When, after eight days, Helen had heard nothing more from
Giles Carnaby she was bleakly self-contemptuous. Her heightened
condition persisted, there was nothing she could do about
that: the swerves of mood, the burning senses. In an animal, she
told herself savagely, it would be called being on heat. Her
mother, who had been fading hitherto, returned to fill the black
hole by the kitchen sink or to confront Helen on the stairs, saying
smugly that she could have told her all along what to expect.

Louise came again, towing Suzanne, who spent the entire time
shuttered off within the earphones of her Walkman; if spoken to
she smiled with bland and tolerant self-absorption, like the very
old. There was much complaint of Phil. And, obliquely, of Tim.
Helen, alarmed and suspecting infidelity (there had been an
episode in the past concerning which Louise had boiled away on
the telephone for months on end), asked what was wrong with
him.

Nothing's wrong,' said Louise irritably. 'Tim is precisely as he
always is. That's the problem, I suppose.'
'Don't you love him?' asked Edward.
Louise rolled her eyes in exasperation. 'God! You simply don't
know the first thing about marriage, do you? Well, bless you --
how could you? Listen -- tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse. Right?'
'What?'
'French expression suggesting instability.'
Edward appeared to think hard for a few moments and then
got up and left the room abruptly.
'And what's the matter with him, come to that?' said Louise.
'He's the nearest I've ever seen him to snappish, for someone
constitutionally incapable of bad temper. The trouble with


Edward is that he's practically a saint. I honestly think he's never
thought anything nasty about anyone in his life, which is what
makes him occasionally so impossible. Just as well he never got
married -- no one could have stood that. Not of course that it was
ever on the cards.'
'He has been a bit edgy,' said Helen. 'Mother, maybe.'
Louise sighed. 'He's left it about forty years too late to get
uptight about mother.'
'Is there some trouble with Tim?'
'Tim and I,' said Louise heavily, 'are going through what is
called a bad patch. We get on each other's nerves, to put it
bluntly. Hence me here and him there. He is not, so far as I
know, having it off with anyone and I certainly am not, more's
the pity in a sense, though to be honest I've never felt less
inclined in my life.' She stared glumly at the window. 'Frankly,
I seldom get a glow about anyone these days, including Tim,
which I daresay is partly what's wrong. How sex does bugger
things up . . . Sorry. I shouldn't talk like this. I know you . .
The sentence was left unfinished.

'You know I what?' said Helen tartly.
Louise gave her a searching look. 'Now you're starting to
sound like Edward. I don't know what's got into you both. I just
meant I know you're. . . it's not a subject you get very enthralled
by. Sex, I mean. There! Your expression's gone all peculiar at
once. Anyway . . . Tim and I are just simply out of sync at the
moment -- I can't think how else to put it. We're not connecting.
Don't worry -- we're not going to split up, at least I trust not.'
Suzanne came into the room, the earphones clamped to her
head, exuding a distant tinny jangle. She sat down by the
window, smiling vaguely.
It's not that we don't love each other,' explained Louise.
'Within the context of how long we've been together. It's
that . .
'Ssh . .' murmured Helen.
'She's dead to the world. Lucky little beggar. Extraordinary,
isn't it? Were we like that? No, of course we weren't. Not even
me. Anyway, as I was saying, Tim. .

Edward appeared, looking agitated. 'There's a boy digging up
the old kitchen garden.'
'Yes,' said Helen. 'It's Ron Paget's son. You know about it.
This is Saturday.'
'Do I? Oh -- yes. Is this a good idea? Surely we're not really
going to grow vegetables?'
'Ron Paget?' said Louise. 'Nobody told me about this. Anything
set up by Ron Paget has got to be suspect.'
Helen explained.
'One fifty an hour would be considered exploitation in London
but I daresay it's par for the course round here. I wouldn't put it
past Ron to be taking a cut for himself. Mind you give it to the
boy personally. What's he like?'
'I didn't notice,' said Edward. He went to the window and
stood there wiping his glasses: they could all hear, now, the
distant thwack and flump of spade-work. Edward turned round,
walked irresolutely around the room and then headed for the
door, where he halted. 'I'm off now. There's an RSPB field-trip
-- I won't be back till late. 'Bye Louise . . . and, er . . -- he
glanced at Suzanne, who smiled blankly and placatingly. 'Oh
Helen, by the way, I forgot -- that lawyer rang, he wanted you
to ring back.'

'When did he ring?' asked Helen after a moment.
'Um . . . Yesterday, the day before . .
Edward left. Suzanne, who had neither moved nor altered her
expression, continued to jangle by the window in her private
world. Louise began to recount further discontents, unheard now
by either her daughter or her sister.

Helen postponed telephoning, as one might hoard some delicacy,
to savour it the longer in anticipation. When at last she did
so Giles Carnaby was warmly effusive. 'Oh, what a relief! I was
beginning to think I must be in the doghouse for some reason.'
He spoke as though they knew each other well and over a long
period. 'You didn't get the message? I shall have to speak severely
to your brother. Anyway -- now that I've got you at last . . . I
have a proposition. The choir . . . my little Monday diversion
. . . We have our big night next week -- performance evening.
Towards which we've been striving for weeks. Will you come?


We all bring friends and family -- please come and be mine. We
perform and then everyone gets together over wine and cheese.
Usually quite good fun. Please say you will.'

Later, released from the spell of that voice, she was plagued by
niggling incredulity. Me? Me? Why? What does he mean by it?
Does he mean anything at all by it? Why me out of all the other
women in Spaxton?
They're all married, said her mother. Not that that would
bother most people nowadays. He must wonder why you're not,
come to that. And look at you jumping to conclusions, going the
right way to make a proper fool of yourself. Why should the man
mean a thing by it? You're a client, aren't you?
If he took all his clients out to expensive lunches, invited them
to concerts. . .
Maybe he does, said her mother. Once in a while. How are
you to know?
She was working in the library her regular three days a week
now. It seemed amazing to be able to leave the house each time
without feeling furtive, and irritable at being obliged to feel
furtive. Her mother had never grasped that a job is a commitment.
'I want you to put off the library today,' she would say. 'I
need help with bottling the plums.' In bad weather she would
watch Helen's preparations for departure with contempt: 'It's
completely ridiculous to go out in this. I can't imagine why you
don't leave it till tomorrow.' During her final illness, when Helen
took unpaid leave, she had announced to visitors, with satisfaction,
in moments of clarity: 'At least I've been able to make
Helen see sense about trailing off to that wretched library day
after day.'

Edward, on the other hand, had always been accorded a
mysterious potency: 'They do so depend on him at Croxford.'
This was curious; in all other areas she treated -- always had
treated -- Edward as negligible. If he embarked on a task she
stepped in and took it from him; she interrupted him when he
spoke. 'Let him do it!' Helen had raged, time out of mind ago,
aged fifteen, eighteen, twenty-one. 'Leave him alone. Let him
finish what he's saying.' He'll only break it,' would come the
reply. Or do it wrong: too fast, too slow, not in the prescribed
way. And he doesn't know what he's talking about: he's too
young, too inexperienced, too Edward.

When, in his thirties, he took driving lessons and passed his
test Dorothy refused to go out in the car with him: 'I intend to
live to a ripe old age, thank you very much.'
In fact, Edward was a good driver, if somewhat decorous.
Dorothy waited patiently and had her moment of triumph when
someone went into the back of his car at a traffic light -- clearly
his fault for not getting a move on quicker.

Helen worked because she needed the income, quite apart
from anything else. Her mother had never understood that,
either. 'You've got Daddy's money,' she would say. 'I can't think
why you want to go grubbing around for more.' Helen's dividends,
like her own, had dwindled to smaller and smaller sums;
even for someone as uncommitted to possession or luxury as
Helen was it had become necessary to top them up.

But the library was a refuge, most importantly of all. It was an
impersonal sanctum that was not Greystones. There, Helen
became someone else; she became brisk efficient well-liked
Helen. Helen who had been there years and years, knew all the
ropes, could be relied on to deal tactfully with difficult customers,
with the intransigence of the county library system, with
errant books and tiresome children. Helen who evinced endless
patient interest in others, who remained politely anonymous
herself. Her colleagues came and went; they had got younger
and younger, it seemed, as time went by; those who were career
minded departed for lusher pastures, more Susies and Karens
took their places, giggling in the cloakroom, muddling up the
reservation cards. Only the senior librarian remained constant,
Joyce Babcock, a contemporary of Helen's, stuck as far as she
would get on the ladder of professional advancement, suspicious
of the girls but tolerant of Helen, who offered no threat. Part
timers did not become senior librarian, however highly regarded.
She was a woman without vision or curiosity; her distaste for


books was equalled only by her dislike of people. She sat out her
days behind the central desk, complaining of her superiors, of
technological innovation, and of the weather. Helen, marvelling
at Joyce's capacity for self-protection, often wondered at her
choice of career. It had something to do with order, she decided;
Joyce mistrusted books for their content, but liked the way they
could be marshalled. The readers were simply an unlooked-for
hazard.

Now, she sensed a shift in Joyce's attitude towards her. 'I
suppose,' Joyce said, with studied carelessness, 'you may think
of going full-time now you haven't got your mother.'

Helen understood. Joyce feared potential rivalry; her status
might be threatened if Helen, a favourite of the county librarian,
were more available. 'Possibly,' she replied. With an uncharacteristic
spurt of mischief she added that she was considering the
matter. Joyce flipped feverishly through a reference book; her
neck had gone red with emotion. Helen, relenting, said 'I daresay
not, in the end. I rather like the idea of some time to myself.'

'I should think so!' cried Joyce. 'I mean, if anyone deserves it
you do. Oh, I don't think you should take on any more,
definitely. You want to spoil yourself a bit, that's what.' Restored
to normal confidence, she gave Helen a sharp look. 'You've had
your hair cut differently. It suits you. Was it that place on
Market Street? They're pricey, mind, but good if you want
something a bit out of the ordinary.'

'I'm glad you approve,' said Helen, applying herself to the
acquisitions file. The library was empty except for an elderly
man pottering in Biography and a couple of schoolchildren in the
reference section; there was opportunity for what Joyce called a
natter, and no escaping it.

'You'll miss your mother,' stated Joyce. 'I know. Paul wasn't
himself for months after his went.' Paul was her husband. 'It's a
shock, however much you know it's coming. It'll take you time
to adjust, you'll find.'
'Mmm,' said Helen. Comment was neither possible nor invited.
'Of course, you've got your brother. Let me see now, I always
forget -- is he older or younger?'
'Younger.'

'It's funny he's never married either -- funny coincidence, I
mean.'

'Isn't it,' said Helen. This was familiar ground. Joyce, frustrated,
moved on to consideration of yesterday's weather, complaints
about the new trainee and an attempt to enlist Helen's
support in resisting the county librarian's enthusiasm for a local
history section at Spaxton. Joyce had a special hatred for history.
She was interrupted, however, by a schoolchild in search of a
reference and had to break off to give grudging and limited
assistance. Helen returned to the new acquisitions. She had been
noting various titles during Joyce's discourse; there was a new
book about bats that Edward would want, and one or two things
she would like to get hold of herself -- the sole perquisite of this

trade was a surreptitious early pick of incoming titles before they
went on the shelves.

Helen read a great deal. The feel of a book in her hands was
an ancient solace -- not, originally, because of what lay between
the covers but as a screen, a defence, a shield. The book she was
reading had once been the physical barrier between her and her
mother. 'Head in a book as usual,' Dorothy would say with
contempt. 'You should be doing something, not just sitting
there.' Helen had drawn Edward into this sheltered place, and
read aloud to him. And presently what was within the books
became significant also -- quite small books would do, she
discovered, because of what they said, one did not always have
to get behind Bartholomew's atlas or the bound volumes of Punch that lurked in the bottom of the sitting-room bookcase. She read
her way through what was in the house -- not a daunting process,
given her mother's resistance to the printed word -- and then
resorted to libraries. Her choice of occupation, she realised, had
perhaps been fore-ordained, written into the scheme of things
like some genetic prescription, laid down by her mother's inclinations.
Dorothy did not care for books, so Helen became a
librarian.

She read anything; she read in all directions. She read to learn
and she read to experience. She identified areas of special interest
-- Greece and Rome, popular science, cathedral architecture,


arctic exploration -- and burrowed happily away; she reconsidered
herself and others through the lens of that well-constructed
lie that is a good novel. She became book dependent, for
better or for worse.
'Anyone would think we were some kind of free education
service,' grumbled Joyce, having disposed of the child and
returned to her central eyrie.
'That's just what we are,' said Helen.
Joyce shot her a look in which surprise and indignation were
nicely fused.
Edward, at the same time and eight miles away, was dispensing
some moderately expensive education to the Lower Fourth at
Croxford House. The Lower Fourth numbered eighteen ten- and
eleven-year-olds, sagging over their desks in assorted attitudes
that were meant to indicate intense attention, dreadful weariness,
shrewd insight or rapt admiration. Most of them weren't listening.
Some of them were whispering to each other. Edward was
talking about the Galapagos finch. This was a new series of
lessons, rather grandly called Biology, in which he wandered
happily around various special fascinations of his own and tried
to tell the children something about natural selection and the
origin of species. He had brought along several exhibits, including
a portrait of Darwin he had found in a junk shop and an
assortment of feathers and fossils that the children were passing
from hand to hand. None of them took any notice of Darwin,
but the feathers and fossils aroused mild interest. Edward was
now drawing a diagram of a feather on the board -- with some
difficulty and much rubbing out -- to illustrate its complexity and
lead up to a discussion of the evolution of birds.

Sandra Willmot put up her hand. Edward was not fond of
Sandra; she was a prissy little girl, always fastidiously turned out
and given to exclamations of disgust and revulsion. Her parents
were prominent local business people; her mother was chairperson
of the Parents' Association.

'Yes, Sandra?'
'Please, Mr Glover, my mother says things like feathers prove
there must be a God.'
'Really?' said Edward, stalling.
'Yes. Because they're so complicated. Somebody must have
made them.' Sandra stared smugly at the blackboard. 'I mean,
they couldn't just happen, could they? So someone must have
made them.'

'Who?' enquired Edward with resignation.
'God, of course,' said Sandra, buffing her fingernails on her
sweater. She looked round piously for support and approval.
Edward knew that he was on treacherous ground. Those of
the children who were not squabbling over fossils or sticking
feathers in their hair gazed expectantly at him. He said carefully
that while everyone was entitled to feel and believe what they
liked about God it really wasn't possible, given what we now
know, to say that His existence is proven by feathers or fossils or
by anything else in the world. He continued in this vein for a
couple of minutes, tripping himself up several times. The trouble
was that imprinted in Edward's own mind was a charming array
of creatures like a Noah's Ark procession, from ant to man, that
sprang from the illustration in a fatally misconceived nature book
he had had himself as a child. An image of the Great Chain of
Being was at the very heart of him; he often had considerable
difficulty in marshalling the arguments for apostasy. It must be a
bit like being a lapsed Catholic, he thought; you knew you were
right but felt you were wrong. He waxed vehement about
dinosaurs and extinction, about continental drift and the good
old Galapagos finch. He concluded by saying that if you believe
in God you have to find other ways to convince people that He
exists, and that was not something to be discussed in this lesson.

Sandra Willmot listened -- or appeared to listen -- with an icy
stare. Several hands shot up.
'Yes?' said Edward unwarily.
'Please, Mr Glover, don't you believe in God, then?'
'No,' said Edward, after a moment. A rustle of interest ran
around the classroom. One or two people announced that they
didn't either; others declared loudly that they did. Croxford
House was given to morning prayers and all the outward


trappings of Church of England belief; it even had a chapel. Now
that he came to think of it, Edward was surprised this point had
never cropped up before; Biology was obviously a dodgier area
than English and History.
'Anyway,' he said firmly, 'what I believe or don't believe is
neither here nor there. We were talking about feathers. I want
you all to get out your exercise books and copy what is on the
board . .

The children subsided, more or less. Most of them applied
themselves to their exercise books, their faces contorted with
intellectual effort. Some continued to daydream. Sandra Willmot
was whispering urgently to her neighbour, with occasional
furtive glances in Edward's direction. 'Would you please get on
with your work, Sandra,' said Edward with unusual severity.
She was a peculiarly unlikeable child, he thought; the sort of
child -- or person -- who refuted any notion that homo sapiens is the
pinnacle of creation. The Galapagos finch was a darn sight more
valuable than Sandra Willmot.
When Helen arrived at the hall in which the choir concert was to
be held she could not at first see Giles Carnaby. There were a
great many people milling around, the cream of Spaxton society,
indeed, many of whom she knew or recognised. She was about
to find herself a seat when she caught sight of him, in conversation
with a rather pretty dark young woman, both of them
laughing a lot. Looking at them, she experienced a curious sense
of exclusion; she wondered who the woman was; she wondered
how well Giles knew her. And then he looked in her direction,
smiled and waved over the woman's shoulder, continued to talk
to her for a few moments, then laid a hand on her arm for an
instant and moved towards Helen.

Later, she saw the woman among the sopranos, and noted her.
She noted everyone in the choir, indeed, as part of a determined
effort not to gaze all the time at Giles Carnaby, who was in the
back row, in the middle of the tenors, straight ahead of her,
where she could consider him in detail -- silvery hair, grey
herring-bone tweed jacket, greenish shirt, paisley patterned silk
tie (so much for not gazing. . .)
And then there was the wine and cheese, in an adjoining room
where tables were laid out and choir and audience enabled to
mingle. Giles seemed to know everyone. Indeed he seemed to
have to keep rushing off to have a word with this person and
that; Helen found herself on her own a good deal of the time,
glimpsing him across the room in spirited conversation. She saw
a lot of his back, of his distinctive head moving from one group
to another. She talked to various acquaintances. One woman
asked curiously 'Do you know Giles Carnaby well?' Helen,
faintly ruffled, replied that she didn't -- not all that well. 'He's
very charming, of course,' said the woman.

The room thinned out. Giles returned to her side. He seemed
cheerful and stimulated. 'Oh dear -- I kept getting caught by
people. Have you had enough to drink? Are you all right? And
there hasn't been a chance to talk . . . You will come back for a
cup of coffee, won't you? Or the tea -- the famous Earl Grey.'
He took her arm, shepherded her out of the building, into the
street. 'You've got your car? Bother -- so have I. We shall have to
go in a convoy -- it's only five minutes away. Sunderland Road.'

The house was unexceptional, one of those in Spaxton's
prosperous Edwardian suburb. Within, there was an atmosphere
of chintzy comfort. Helen, thinking of the wife, sat almost
apologetically on a plump sofa. On the mantelpiece was a photo
of a pleasant-looking woman, fair hair, not beautiful, not glamorous,
quite ordinary really.

Giles went to the kitchen to make coffee, refusing offers of
help -- 'I should get in a fuss and make a fool of myself if
watched.' Helen inspected the room. Other people's houses
always intrigued her by the contrast they offered to Greystones;
she would see suddenly -- with detached interest and quite
without envy or criticism -- the extent to which other people's
preoccupations differed from her own. Here, someone had gone
to considerable lengths to get the cushions toning in nicely with
the curtains. There was a fireplace with realistically, glowing
coals and the cosy flicker of flames around them that was, she
soon realised, a gas fire, no bother with cleaning it out, then. The


pictures were unprovocative landscapes or flower paintings that
neatly fitted the spaces allotted to them. The books were all
behind glass. A low table carried some tidily arranged journals
and newspapers; letters on the desk top were pinned down by a
silver paper knife. She felt again the presence of the wife, looking
kindly and securely at her from the photograph; don't resent me,
said Helen, I am really neither here nor there, I very much doubt
if I signify, you needn't mind.

Giles returned. There was a bottle of brandy on the tray as
well as the coffee. 'You will, won't you? We need warming up --
that hall is arctic, I perish every Monday evening.' He poured
out, sat back at the other end of the sofa, looked at her. 'Thank
you so much for coming, Helen. Did you enjoy it? I kept taking
quick glances but you always looked inscrutable. It went quite
well, I thought -- a bit shaky at points in the Britten. Good fun,
anyway -- but oh dear, people do nobble one, don't they? It was
wonderful having you as a defence. Provincial life is very
demanding, don't you find? All these nice people wanting you to
join things. But of course you've known Spaxton for so long.'

'Yes,' said Helen. 'I'm generally regarded as a lost cause by
now.'
He laughed. 'I wish I were! Anyway, you have your village to
cope with -- that must be quite enough. Except that you're
regarded as eccentric -- is that right? You and your brother -- I do
want to meet your brother, by the way. I think I must cultivate
eccentricity -- would I make an eccentric?' He beamed at her.
Charmingly. Helen gazed at him. The room lurked at the edges
of her vision -- chintz, pictures of woodlana or roses, that
paperknife. No, she thought. Something else brooded, indefinable,
padding doggily around; she tried to ignore it.

They drank the coffee, the brandy. Giles talked of Spaxton
acquaintances, of a visit to the opera, of an entertaining incident
in his office: bland impersonal discourse, given somehow an edge
of intimacy. It seemed to Helen that the room became very warm
and enclosed: she basked, as she later thought of it. And then
suddenly it was midnight, a clock delicately chiming outside in
the hall, and she was getting up, with him protesting -- really
quite fervently protesting. 'No, I must,' she said. 'Edward will
wonder where on earth . .
'Then if you must, you must. Please drive carefully. I'm
inclined to ring in half an hour to see you've got there safely, but
I suppose I'd have your brother hopping out of bed.' He helped
her into her coat; again, his arm lay on her shoulders after he had
done so. He escorted her out into the street, held the car door
open for her, leaning in the window as she started the engine,
exhorting caution. His hand closed on hers as it rested on the
wheel: 'Thank you again, my dear, God bless.' And he turned
and was gone, briskly, into the house.

Greystones, when she reached it, seemed even colder than
usual. The lights were all out and Edward in bed. Helen,
climbing the stairs, burned with a curious mixture of exaltation
and foreboding.
'You were very late last night. I didn't even hear you come in.'
'It was only about half past twelve. I went to that concert in
Spaxton.'
'Oh yes -- with the lawyer. What on earth for?' Edward added
after a moment. 'I mean, one pays lawyers, surely. There's no
need to go and hear them sing as well.'
Helen appeared to be distracted by the back of the cereal
packet.
'Well, it was very charitable of you,' said Edward. 'By the
way, we're out of bread. Is it my turn to shop or yours?'
'Mine. Edward, if people phone when I'm not here do please
remember to tell me.'
Edward looked across the table at her in mild surprise. 'Of
course. I thought I did. You always say you're glad they didn't
catch you.'
Helen was now bent sternly over a shopping list. She had
written 'bread' three times, Edward saw.
'I never realised you felt like this, Edward,' said Mrs Fitton

petulantly. 'It really is the most awful nuisance. Parents just
don't like it, you know -- quite a lot of parents.' From outside the
window came the shrill piping sound of the juniors playing
netball. The school secretary put her head round the door; 'No!' snapped the headmistress, 'I'm in a meeting.' She was a small
round woman, puffed out with frilly blouses and an energetic
hairstyle. When crises arose she went into a condition of sustained
fizz; you almost expected bubbles to come popping out of
her head. She was in this state now.

'I mean, Mrs Willmot won't be the only one -- or rather, Mrs
Willmot will see to it that she isn't the only one. I wish you'd
told me before, Edward, I mean, it's entirely your own affair of
course but if I'd known forewarned would have been forearmed
and we could have avoided this sort of thing.'

'You never asked me,' said Edward reasonably.
'Well, I suppose not . . . One just assumed . . . I mean, we
are a C. of E. school. Oh dear -- what a bother. And most other
parents one could have calmed down -- smoothed things over
somehow -- but Mrs Willmot, well, we know Mrs Willmot, don't
we? On the phone to all her cronies at this moment, I don't
doubt, and this is the year we hoped to get the swimming pool
appeal off the ground.'

'Sorry,' said Edward.
'What I can't understand is why God had to be dragged into it
in the first place. Can't you simply leave that sort of thing out? I
mean, tell them about natural selection and all that and don't
mention God. After all, it was biology, not Religious Education.
Charlotte Havering does R. E. She expects to cope with that side
and she's C. of E.'

'I was leaving God out,' said Edward. 'The children brought
Him in. Sandra Willmot, to be precise.'
'Tiresome child. Well, the damage is done now. All we can do
is hope that Mrs W. will cool off and in the meantime, Edward,
I'm sorry but honestly I think Mary or Janice had better take
over Junior Biology.'
There was a silence. Mrs Fitton began tetchily shuffling a pile
of letters. Edward looked out of the window, where rooks beat
across a turbulent sky. At last he said 'I suppose really I should
resign.'
Mrs Fitton bucked in her chair. 'What nonsense, Edward.
What absolute nonsense. Of course you don't even have to think of resigning. All right, we're a C. of E. school but that doesn't
mean every single one of the staff has to be a signed up
communicant. In fact come to that I myself. . . What I mean is,
it's a personal matter except in so far as it affects the syllabus. If you stick to English and History like you used to and . . . well,
just avoid the issue . . . then we shan't have any more problems.'

'I don't mean resign because I don't believe in God,' said
Edward. 'I mean resign because you won't let me teach biology
because I don't believe in God.'

Mrs Fitton gazed at him. Her hands twitched on the letters;
she blinked once or twice. 'Well, that I simply wouldn't have
thought of. I don't know what's got into you, Edward, you don't
seem to be quite yourself. You can't possibly resign. I won't hear
of it.'

'Then can I teach biology?'
'No!' cried Mrs Fitton. 'Edward, be reasonable!'
They stared at each other; Mrs Fitton crackling with emotion,
Edward apparently tranquil. Behind Mrs Fitton's head the rooks
were now tossing and tumbling like blown leaves. It occurred to
Edward that he knew little or nothing about rook behaviour.
'You're not serious?' demanded Mrs Fitton wildly. 'You're not
really going to resign?'
'No,' said Edward with a sigh. 'I don't suppose so.'
It was Helen who pointed out that Mrs Fitton would have been
concerned about the newspapers, as well as with her regard for
Edward and for Edward's welfare.
Edward looked incredulous. 'Would there really have been a
fuss?'
'Of course,' said Helen. 'Properly handled.'
'It would almost have been worth it. Perhaps I'll change my
mind. I'd have been a martyr, wouldn't I? Victimised for my
beliefs. But that wretched Sandra would have had a field day too
-- her picture in the local rag in her best dress. No, it's not worth
it, on reflection.'







Helen made no comment.
'You think I should have done, don't you?'
'Most people would have, I suppose.'
'But not me,' said Edward with sudden bitterness. 'Oh, I
know, I know. The thought of finding another job. . . And it all
seemed so silly. And I know perfectly well Croxford is a crummy
school, but it suits me and I suit it, which doesn't say a lot for
either of us.' He was pulling on his anorak now, no longer even
apparently tranquil. 'I'm going out for a bit.'

He drove to a favourite spot and walked, in the late afternoon,
up the long flank of a hillside, in the lea of an old hedgebank. On
one side of him was the complex inhabited thicket of the hedge
in which flocks of bullfinches competed for fodder and invisibly
singing warblers were stationed at thirty-yard intervals; on the
other was a great sloping reach of field, the earth a reddish
copper colour and patterned like a Japanese garden with the
swirls and furrows left by machinery. The sun, a scarlet disc,
was perched just above the horizon. The land folded in on itself
as far as you could see -- green and brown hillsides sinking down
in repetition, marked by the dark masses of trees and hedges.
Here and there a grey farmhouse or cottage was tucked into a
hollow. In the far distance was the blue outline of yet further
hills. The impression was of some sparsely populated, unchanging
landscape; it was hard to realise that Birmingham was less
than thirty miles away.

At the top of the hill the bridle-path entered a small copse.
Immediately, the sense of distance gave way to intimacy and
detail. Edward stood still; he had once seen a whole flock of long
tailed tits here, swinging like pink jewels among the flickering
leaves of a silver birch. He told himself that this was what he
was now searching for again.
In fact he was waiting for the place, its calm and its unconcern,
to make him feel better. To make him feel less alone, less
disturbed, less hungry. He was howling once more, within. And
the place did nothing, nothing at all. It simply went about its
business. And its business, of course, at this fecund point of the
year, was that of survival -- survival and reproduction. As
Edward looked around he saw everything determinedly perpetuating
itself -- buds forming, leaves unfurling, seeds setting, the
whole place off again on the same mindless uncaring cycle, while
Edward stood there in the midst of it, quite alone.

SIX
'I been having a little think,' said Ron Paget. 'About your patch
of waste ground.'
Edward and Helen gazed at him without expression, a practised
process. They were all three standing in the lane outside
Greystones. Ron had pounced from his car, screeching to a halt
ten yards ahead of them. He had opened with a solicitous
enquiry as to whether young Gary was giving satisfaction.
'I mean,' he continued, 'it's a bit of an albatross, isn't it? The
upkeep and that. What I was thinking was . .
'We don't keep it up,' said Edward. 'It keeps itself up.'
Ron shook his head censoriously. 'That's just the point, Mr
Glover, if I may say so. There's a lot of work needs doing in
there. You've got dead and diseased trees need felling, you've got
bramble and stuff needs clearing out. It's not healthy, the way it
is. But with a bit of money spent you could have a nice little
spinney there -- be pretty in the spring. You could do a bit of
landscape planting, azaleas and rhododendrons and that, camellias
maybe -- you know, like your National Trust sort of place.'

'Those things don't grow on limestone soil,' said Helen.

Ron opened his mouth and then closed it again. Behind him
the engine of his new red Rover was still running -- a barely
audible hum. Ron stepped aside, opened the door and turned the
Ignition. 'Point is, to do something about the place you need
finance, right? I know what it's like these days -- we're all
stretched as far as we can go' -- he sighed -- 'but I've had a little
think and I see a way round it for you. Now you've got quite an
area there -- two acres, is it, two and a half? What you do is you
make one half of it finance the other. You do a little development
on the far side -- three, four nice houses, something along those

lines. I can see to all the nitty-gritty for you -- I know you're not
a family for bothering your heads with that sort of thing, you've
got better things to do. I can handle it for you and see you clear
enough to lay yourselves out something really nice with what's
left, really classy bit of landscaping. And a fair bit left over to
put away for a rainy day, I daresay.'

'No,' said Edward.
Ron looked sadly at him. 'You're saying that off the top of
your head, Mr Glover. Think it over. There's the question of
what's good for the community, too. You'd be doing the community
a favour. Desperate shortage of housing these days.'
'Was it council houses you had in mind?' asked Helen.
'Well, no,' said Ron. 'I mean, what's needed in the village is
more by way of quality housing, isn't it? Another nice little
executive estate, like the Barratt.'
'I don't see that as fulfilling a social need,' said Helen.
Ron gave her a bad-tempered look. There was a sense of time
and patience running out. He opened the car door and got in.
The engine purred again. The driver's window slid down; 'Well,
think about it, anyway. It would be in your own best interests,
believe me.'

The Rover accelerated round the bend. Edward, who had
seemed despondent hitherto that morning, laughed. 'You have to
hand it to him, he's never short of a new idea.'

They were on their way to the churchyard. The firm from
whom the gravestone had been commissioned had telephoned
about dimensions and other details. Having reached the initial,
simple decision about lettering (plain, unadorned and to the
point) and material (unpolished limestone slab) they were now
floored over questions of layout and surroundings. Did they
want chippings? Did they want a flower container?

They walked slowly up the church path, past the old graves,
those so seared by time and weather that they stood as grey
shapes furred with lichen, names and dates no longer legible,
uniform in obscurity. Where the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries gave way to the nineteenth, things became crisper: you
read of a profusion of Elizas and Thomases, of beloved wives and
lamented parents: white marble crept in with the grey limestone.
It was round the back of the church, though, where the more
recent graves reached away to an expectant area of bare grass
ending at the village allotments, that variety and self-expression
were rampant.
'I realise what chippings are now,' said Edward. 'No. Definitely
not.'
Most of the newer gravestones presided over a neat granite
edged rectangle packed with green crystal chips. The effect,
from a distance, was disconcertingly like a series of little swimming-pools.
Closer to, memorial detail became apparent: elaborate
confections in the form of open books inscribed with the
particulars of the departed, weeping cherubs and angels, praying
heads and exuberant crosses. It disposed entirely of any notion
of the rural midland English as a phlegmatic and undemonstrative
lot. Many of the graves had flowers on them -- wilting asters and
marigolds in jam-jars, or vases of plastic roses and daffodils in
luminous colours. One unkempt mound bore a glass with a Harp
Lager insignia, filled with greenish water.

Edward and Helen approached the sycamore tree and stood
before the raw earth of Dorothy's grave. In the month since the
funeral, infant weeds had sprung up, and some blades of grass.

'No chippings,' said Edward. No thing for vase. I'm not even
sure about this kerbstone business.'
'You can have granite chips, but they're almost as bad. Just
grass, then?'
'Just grass, yes. It would be nice to try to naturalise some
fritillaries. Or those small grassland orchids -- Lady's Tresses.'
'Oh, Edward,' said Helen with a sigh.
'Just a thought.'
They stood there uncomfortably. Both had a fleeting vision of
what lay beneath the mound of earth: the varnished wood, the
brass handles, their mother. Edward, fighting the thought,
imagined decay; Helen remembered the posy of flowers from the
garden that she had tried to fix to the coffin lid with sellotape.
Sellotape will not stick to varnish, she had discovered; she ended
up with hammer and tintacks, shrinking at the unseemly noise
and violence. The flowers would be withered now, down there.

Both recalled the funeral, calculated time: a month, already,
when we have been without her. Both examined their feelings.
I am adjusting, thought Helen, I am stepping aside. But funny
things are happening. In some way she is more here than she
ever was. It is as though she had not died but been transformed.
Edward thought: It is as though I were adrift, untethered. I
don't think of her much, no more than I ever did, but something
terrible is going on. At moments all is well, and then at others I
think that I am flying apart.

Helen took a tape-measure out of her pocket and suspended it
above the grave.
'That height? Or a bit more? They want to know.'
'It doesn't matter,' said Edward.
Two foot six, then. And just "Dorothy Edith Glover: April
10th 1907--May 24th 1987". They seem to feel it's a bit stark.'
'It is. Compared with everyone else.' Edward looked around.
Deeply lamented. In loving memory. Pray for the soul of . . .
R. I . P.

Helen rolled up the tape-measure and pushed it into her
pocket. 'Well, I shall just have to be firm, then. They obviously
think it most inadequate.'
They turned and walked back towards the lych-gate. 'Presumably,'
said Edward, 'they take it to mean we weren't all that fond
of her.'
'Or else that we're hard up. More lettering costs more. Polished
granite is more expensive than limestone. The angels and open
books and things cost a packet -- I looked at the brochure.'
It was Saturday morning, which meant that the village was fairly
populous; on weekdays it was emptied of all but the old, the very
young and those tending them. The central green had cars
scattered all around it. Ron Paget's Rover stood outside the
Swan, the more plushy of the two pubs. A sinister looking
cluster of motor-bikes huddled in front of the other one, the Goat
and Compasses; as the Glovers passed two more arrived with a
deafening roar and two androgynous figures, clad in skin-tight
leather as though for a bout of deep-sea diving, went into the
pub, stripping off immense gauntlets. From within came the
crash of reggae music. A BP oil tanker was blocking the narrow
lane down to the Old Forge, towering over the thatched cottage
to which it was attached by its pipe-line as though with an
umbilical cord. Beyond, the post van hooted indignantly. An old
man sat on the bench by the War Memorial. From the gravelled
sweep of the entrance to the Old Rectory came Mrs Hadley on a
gleaming chestnut horse; she clattered past the Glovers, the old
man, other passers-by with the age-old superiority of the
mounted over those on foot. A car slowed down to pass her and
she raised her crop graciously.

'We need something for lunch,' said Helen. 'And dog food.
And cereal.' And detergent, she added to herself. 'You may as
well stay outside, there's an awful crowd in there.'
She stood in a queue at the single check-out; the village store
had supermarket aspirations without the amenities. Two young
women in front of her were murmuring confidentially. One said
'I gather Brown Owl has resigned . . .' It took Helen a moment
or two to realise the affairs of the village Brownie pack were
under discussion. She looked over their heads and caught the eye
of an acquaintance, who smiled faintly and dipped away in
embarrassment, observing the quarantine imposed upon those
recently bereaved. There we go again, she thought, mother is
still here, still making herself felt. She paid for her purchases,
tucking the detergent under the other things.

Outside, she found Edward in conversation with Peter Sidey,
the leader of the preservationist element in the village. The
preservationists, over the years, had lost ground -- quite literally.
They tended to be schoolteachers, academics and the recently
retired; against them were ranged builders, farmers and most of
those who, by luck or good management, owned a half acre or
derelict cottage ripe for profitable transformation. Such people
were adept at the manipulation of planning committees, the
lobbying of local government officers. The preservationists,
pinning their faith to moral superiority and persuasive argument,
were beaten back every time.

The cause at issue right now was the planning application for
half a dozen houses in the orchard attached to a cottage in the

centre of the village, the property of a local farmer. The farmer,
himself a member of the planning committee, had recently
removed his stockman from the cottage and built him a modern
bungalow on the farm, an arrangement now recognised as less
altruistic than it might appear. Peter Sidey was explaining all
this to Edward. Edward, Helen could see from his stance, was
bored: he had his head tilted on one side and was watching a bird
in a tree behind Peter Sidey's left ear. People believed that
Edward, as an ardent nature conservationist, must be similarly
passionate about all environmental matters. This was not so. He
found it difficult to get worked up about buildings and tended to
think of landscapes as habitats rather than objects of aesthetic
concern.

'Clegg will make about a hundred thousand,' said Peter Sidey,
'if his application goes through. And the village will lose its last
open space. I've seen the plans for the houses and they're
peculiarly insensitive -- more suitable for Milton Keynes.' He
was a retired architect, past seventy now, who had exhausted
himself over mainly fruitless endeavours to obstruct the likes of
this opportunist farmer. He would have had a much more
tranquil retirement, Helen thought, in some already brutalised
corner of the country.

The Glovers made appropriate noises of concern. Peter Sidey outlined the opposition plans and urged them to write letters and
attend a protest meeting. 'If that piece of land is developed there
will be no large open space left in the village except the Green
itself. And of course the Britches, thanks to your mother's public
spirited stand over the years. By the way, had you ever realised
the name is Saxon by origin? From braec -- a word meaning land
newly taken into cultivation.'

'Well, it's the opposite now,' said Edward. 'Extremely
uncultivated.'
'Quite. Interesting, though -- the indestructibility of a name.'
Helen and Edward broke away as soon as was decently
possible. They were both tickled at the image of Dorothy as a
defender of the public good. 'Perhaps we should have told him
she spent twenty years not selling the Britches simply to annoy
the people who wanted to buy it,' said Edward.


'Certainly not. The result remains the same, whatever her
reasons.'
As they approached the front door of Greystones Helen heard
the telephone ringing within. She felt a rush of excitement and
anticipation, and realised that in the preoccupations of the last
half hour she had not thought of Giles Carnaby once -- definitely
a record. Fumbling with the latch key, she rushed for the
telephone, thrusting the shopping basket at Edward.
It was Joyce Babcock. Reminding her at length, in case she
hadn't made a note of it, of the Christmas holiday schedule for
the library. When at last she put the receiver down and went
into the kitchen she found that Edward had unpacked the
shopping. The bottle of detergent stood in reproachful isolation
at one end of the table.
Thinking of Giles Carnaby, of course, was not so much a
considered process as an involuntary twitch. She did not want to
think of him but could not help it. Indeed he was there most of
the time, presiding within her head, dimming a little when her
attention was engaged, all-pervasive in times of relaxation. At
night he filled the room. She heard again every word he had
spoken; she reconstructed his face, his body, his clothes.

A man she had met three times. With whom she had spent six
hours or so. Who had displayed a friendly interest in her.
She saw herself, and did not care for what she saw. She stood
to one side and observed this pathetic self-deluding fifty-twoyear-old
in a state of romantic yearning and sexual excitation.
Given to the observation of others, she now observed herself, but
without charity. She agreed with her mother: riding for a fall,
driving nails in her own coffin, only herself to blame.
And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to be done.
Edward, offended by the detergent, wandered out into the
garden and was instantly distracted by the sound of digging from
beyond the yew hedge. Rather desultory digging. Of course --
that boy was here. He went to the gap in the hedge and saw

Gary at the far end of the kitchen garden. He was not digging at
all now but taking a breather, evidently. A prolonged breather,
during which he took a bar of chocolate out of his pocket and
unwrapped it in a leisurely way.

Edward stood there.
Gary half-turned, spotted him out of the corner of one eye and
began to dig again with great fervour.
Edward continued to stand there for another minute or two.
Then he plunged off into the Britches to check the nest-boxes.

'He what?' exploded Louise. 'A row with the headmistress about evolution? Only Edward could have a row about evolution.'
'On the contrary,' said Helen. 'It was the stock subject for
argument in the late nineteenth century, in some circles.'
'Oh, then . . Trust Edward. I wish he had resigned -- it would
have been hilarious. So what else is new?'
Helen reached out for Edward's anorak, lying on the oak chest,
and put it round her shoulders. She wished, not for the first
time, that the telephone was not in the hall, always the coldest
place in the house. The telephone was in the hall because
Dorothy had said that telephones had to be in halls; it occurred
to Helen that there was no longer any reason for this to be so. In
one moment of combined panic and acceptance she knew that
the telephone would stay exactly where it was.

'I've ordered the memorial stone.'
'The what?'

'Gravestone. Sorry -- it's what the brochures say.' She
described the choice. 'Do you think that sounds all right?'
'I suppose so. God! What a thing to have to do. I'm sorry --
everything gets shoved on to you.'
'Edward helped.'
'Well, good. But now I'm feeling guilty. I ought to be there.
Actually life has been fairly murderous lately. The office. And
Tim has been having a go of his sinus plus conjunctivitis and
something else he describes as angst and is being generally
unsupportive. And Phil is playing up. Actually I think I may
come down this weekend, just to escape. So . . . anything else?'
Helen put the anorak on. 'Ron Paget tried to get us to build on
the Britches again.'
Louise laughed. 'Tell him Edward's turning it into a conservation
area for endangered species. Actually, Ron doesn't know it,
but he's got a point -- you really ought to think about money a
bit. Tim wants you to see some people he knows who do
investment advice -- then you'd get more out of those shares.
Apparently they're all in the wrong things.'
'We don't want. . .' Helen began.
'Don't be silly. Tim's going to fix it up. You can have a nice
day out in London -- do you good.'
'We don't . . .' But Louise was off on another track. Helen
stared at the oak chest and wondered what was in it. She couldn't
remember anyone having opened it in years. There was a torn
squab cushion on the top and it was traditionally used as a place
to dump coats, scarves and gloves. Helen thought she could
distantly recall having seen it open with her mother upended
over it, rummaging. It had been Dorothy's territory, as indeed
had all of the house, except for areas of communal use. It
occurred to Helen -- listening to Louise, contemplating the chest
-- that in all the years she and Edward had lived at Greystones
they had fully occupied only their own bedrooms; elsewhere,
they perched.

As soon as Louise had rung off she removed the cushion and
opened the chest. The contents reeked of damp. On top was a
rug, colourless with age and stained with mildew. Helen picked
it out and dropped it on the floor; beneath was a tangle of string.
So that was where mother had kept all that string from parcels
which must not be discarded lest it be needed. There was a stack
of crumpled brown paper, some of it addressed to herself and to
Edward or Louise and bearing injunctions about not opening
before Christmas; she recognised the handwriting of aunts and
godmothers.

Beneath the layer of string and paper was a foetid mass of
material: old curtains and cushions, felted blankets, a porridge of
gloves and belts, garments decayed almost beyond identification.
Moth and mouse had thrived down here. Helen reached in and
stirred with distaste; a brown knitted pixie hat surfaced that her
mother used to wear long ago, unravelled now to a skeletal
condition. She spotted a sweater she once gave Edward for a
birthday, and various throw-outs of her own. She remembered
her mother, standing squarely at the front door, fending off
supplicants from the village school Parent-Teacher Association,
the Darby and Joan Club, the summer Fete; Greystones never
had jumble. Had her mother harboured some primitive

superstition about the totemistic quality of one's possessions?
Rejected the thought of her things in other hands?
She poked again -- dug right down to the bottom and up
through the shambles came something that signalled with painful
clarity. Honey-coloured muslin. Mousseline de soie, to be precise; a
grandeur of definition that she had cherished, aged eighteen.
Faded now to dirty cream, and thrust down in a crumpled ball
to the base of the chest -- but still instantly known. That dress.

She pulled it up and shook it out. There it was -- complete
with the taffeta underskirt that had once (once only) rustled so
satisfyingly. She sat down and examined it minutely -- spread it
over her lap and investigated. It was undamaged; creased into a

wrinkled network, yes -- its honey glow extinguished -- a poor
drab thing but unstained, untorn, unshrunk.
She smoothed the dress across her knees and pondered this.

The cupboard in which it was not. The moment of surprise, of
faint alarm. The rail of intimately known clothes -- her two tweed
skirts, her three cotton frocks, her winter coat, her wool pinafore
dress. And an airy space at the end where should have hung, in
all its glory, the honey-coloured muslin -- her first and only

evening dress, the amazing, unexpected, enhancing present from
her godmother.
'Mother! My evening dress isn't in my cupboard!'
Dorothy's back view, squat and priest-like before the altar of
the kitchen stove. Stirring a pan, her head wreathed in steam,
hairpins jutting from the bun at the nape of her neck.
'Mother!'

heard you. No need to shout. That dress went to the
cleaners.'
'But mother. . . It didn't need cleaning. I've only worn it
And I need it for Saturday -- for the Clarks' dance.'
'It had perspiration marks.'
'Oh mother, it didn't . . . Never mind, I'll go and get it. It
will be ready, won't it? Where's the ticket, I . .
And Dorothy turns, red-faced from her brew, or so it seemed.
'They had some disaster with it, apparently. No point in going
round there. It was spoiled. The stuff they use -- these chemicals.'
And turns again to the stove, furiously stirring.

'No! Oh no . . . Oh, mother . . . But then I've nothing for
Saturday. Nothing at all.'
'Nonsense,' says Dorothy. 'I'll take in my old brown silk for
you. There's a good hem on it, too, it can be let down. That'll
be perfectly all right -- Rose was out of her mind buying you that
ridiculous creation anyway, far too low cut and tight in the bust.'

And what, one now wonders, happened to the brown silk, of
which there is no sign -- neither here in the chest nor upstairs
among mother's things. It is all too well remembered: the slimy
feel of it, hanging limp and unfitting around her as she stands
awkward on the threshold of the Clarks' drawing-room, where
the carpets are rolled back, the parquet gleams and in the corner
the big hired radiogram is asserting that the lady is a tramp. She
prays to be noticed; she prays to be ignored. Gone is the
rapturous unfamiliar feeling of equality, of authority, induced by
the mousseline de sole at her cousins' dance two weeks before. She
does not look nice; she knows that she does not look nice. A few
yards of material have changed her from one person into another.
Is one's grip of things to be always so fickle?

'I've emptied the hall chest. I thought you might use it for your
files.'
'I didn't know there was anything in it,' said Edward.
'It was bung full.'
'Stuff of mother's, I imagine.'
'Not entirely. There was a dress I had when I was eighteen.'
Edward looked at Helen warily, alerted by her tone.
'A dress mother said the cleaners ruined. Not the case, it now
seems.'

Edward, shying away from disagreeable exposures, supposed
that mother must have made a mistake.
'Mother didn't make that kind of mistake.'

'So long ago,' murmured Edward, sidestepping. 'I don't know
how you can remember. .

'Since when,' said Helen, 'does one forget?'

He remembered now, though would not have done so otherwise.
He left Helen and went to have a bath and in the cold steamy
bathroom there came to him this vision of a distant unreal Helen
looking -- well, radiant was the unexpected word that came to
mind -- looking not her usual self at all in some frock that glowed
and billowed and rustled as she came in at the front door late,
pink-cheeked, a touch dishevelled and greeted by the stone wall
of Dorothy's disapproval. Where had he been then? Lurking on
the stairs; listening from his bed?

Edward lay in the bath as the water cooled around him -- as
usual it had never been adequately hot -- and allowed physical
discomfort to complement his state of mind. He thought of
Helen, with distress and in helplessness. He did not know quite
what was implied by all this business of dresses, but he sensed
something ugly -- and flinched. His mother trundled around on
the edges of his thoughts and he tried to push her away. She
came back, unquenchable and impervious.

When he was very small Helen had been all that he was not;
wise, mature, equipped with skills and resources. He sheltered
under her wing; above all, he sheltered from their mother. And
then had come the awful perception that Helen too was vulnerable;
he had seen her exposed, humiliated, disappointed. He had
realised that the refinement of distress is that you are obliged to
suffer not just for yourself, which is the easier part, but for
others as well. He suffered for Helen, and suffered again now --
in retrospect in the chill bathwater in the dank Greystones
bathroom where condensation sent rusty trails from the pipes


down every wall. He thought of Helen, and felt for Helen, as
some wincing extension of himself. If anyone had asked him --
God forbid -- what were his feelings for his sister he would have
replied that he was fond of her.

When Edward was about twenty he had once intercepted the
look exchanged by a young married couple. He could no longer
remember who they were, but their faces were with him still,
and that look: those two pairs of eyes, from which shone a

brilliant collusive intensity -- an intensity that excluded the rest
of the world.

On that occasion he was awed and intrigued; he hoped and
expected that one day he too would share such a look with
someone. Subsequently, he came across the look on various faces
-- a mother lifting a baby from a pram, a child running towards
its father, a woman sitting beside a hospital bed, lovers by the
dozen. Awe gave way to a certain bleakness; he felt the excluding
quality of those eyes -- they were never looking at him. The only

eyes that ever gazed thus into his were those of a succession of
dogs.

Nor did he ever so gaze himself. At the only time in his life
when he would have liked to he was so crushed by doubt and
diffidence that he kept his eyes scrupulously trained upon the
ground, or the table in front of him, or the wall behind the
shoulder of the person concerned. Whole conversations took
place during which Edward stared out of windows, or at carpets
or pavements or the branches of trees.

'Do you realise that you have this exasperating habit of never
looking at one, Edward?'

Oh yes. Only surreptitiously, when unobserved -- soaking up,
then, the tilt of the jaw, the structure of the hairline, the
wonderful singularity of nose, of mouth, of eyebrow.

'Edward, are you with me or are you not? I sometimes
wonder.'

Only too much so, alas. Only too much so.

Those times were reduced now to a swirl of unchronological
slides -- images of a room, a street, a skyline -- some with
accompanying sound.
A tube train. Circle Line. Paddington, Bayswater, Notting

Hill . . . An advertisement about Amplex: two people staring in
distaste at an unsuspecting third. 'Well, Edward -- what about this Italian trip . . . Would it be fun?' And the whole scene
becomes incandescent: the cheerful rocking train, the interesting
faces of people, promise and potential.

The Chinese restaurant. Waiting; alone. Watching the door.
Through which, at last, comes the expected face and with it
another, known also, and the evening is dashed, the stomach
twists, the chop suey smells sour.

Greenwich Park. The perfect ginger circles of autumn leaves
beneath the trees. A tug hooting from the river. Sparrows at
their feet. His own hand reaching out in despair to touch another,
which is instantly withdrawn. 'Sorry, Edward . .
Trudging from one grey day into another, on and on, until at
last it doesn't matter any more, or so it seems.

SEVEN
'This is a complete waste of time,' said Edward.
'Louise arranged it -- at least Tim did. We could hardly say
no.'
'Couldn't you just have written these people a letter?'
'Apparently they like to see you once to begin with.'
Edward, still rebellious, gazed out of the train window. He
hadn't been to London in years, and didn't wish to.
'It's your money too,' said Helen reprovingly.
'There isn't much of it anyway.'
'That's the whole point. These investment people can make
the capital produce more -- put it into different things.'
Edward grunted, apparently intent on Didcot power station.
In fact he was observing a flock of lapwings in a flooded field; his
spirits lifted a notch. The lapwings were followed up by some
tufted duck on a reservoir -- a frustrating snatched glimpse but
enough to dispel most of his gloom. By the time they reached
Paddington he was more cheerful. They studied the Underground
map to see how to reach their destination. Both were
made nervous now by the prospect of the appointment and the
tricky matter of timing. How long would it take to get there?
Should they go at once or have a cup of coffee first? Too late
would not do; too early would be awkward. They stood amid
the station crowds, arguing. Edward was in favour of coffee;
Helen wanted to go.

'It takes half an hour to get anywhere in London on the tube,'
said Edward.
'Twenty years ago. And anyway we don't know exactly where
it is. I forgot to ask Louise.' Helen was becoming flustered. 'Ring her up then.'


This presented a further problem. Neither of the Glovers had
used a public telephone for a long while and were astonished to
find themselves confronted by a totally unfamiliar contraption.
They stood before it in perplexity, Edward banging his head
against the plastic hood, and tried to work out what to do from
the illustrative diagram shown, like foreign tourists. Behind
them, other intending users glared in contempt. Eventually
Helen got through; Louise was in a meeting, she was told, and
could not be reached.

They took the tube. Emerging at the station in the City (with
fifteen minutes in hand, Helen noted to her relief) they found
themselves in an alien landscape. Blank-faced office blocks reared
around them; everyone else carried a briefcase and a daily paper.
They hesitated, getting in the way of this purposeful world.
Eventually, Helen asked directions of a newsvendor.

Their destination turned out to be one of the largest and
glassiest of the office blocks. The Glovers approached it with
apprehension, unused to such places. The central lobby was
several stories high. It included a number of thirty-foot trees and
a tide of foliage that would not have disgraced Kew Gardens.
One entire wall was constructed as a glass cliff down which fell a
waterfall some six feet wide; the pool into which it tumbled
smoked with spray and the whole effect was disconcerting, as of
some plumbing disaster on a majestic scale. The Glovers stood
around at a loss; this did not seem to be the sort of place in which
business could be carried on. Eventually Helen spotted a reception
desk, discreetly tucked away behind a large weeping fig;
they advanced across wastes of polished marble and were directed
to a lift. As it rose Edward sad thoughtfully, 'One gets the
impression that this sort of place must cost rather a lot of money.'
The lift stopped. The doors opened and they stepped into a
thickly carpeted, perfectly silent and very large room, again
rampant with greenery, in which a girl was sitting behind a desk
smiling brightly. At the sight of them she sprang forward and
offered to get them a cup of coffee. She ushered them into deep
leather chairs, offered Edward a copy of the Financial Times (which he took, cravenly) and pranced off down a corridor. She
wore an emerald green silk shirt, a very short black leather skirt
and black tights.
Edward dropped the newspaper on to the carpet. He gave
Helen a look of reproach and accusation. Helen stared doggedly
at a Swiss cheese plant.
The coffee arrived, followed a few minutes later by two tall
and thin men who introduced themselves and led the Glovers to
another room, barely identifiable as an office except for one
discreet filing cabinet. An immense window overlooked the river.
More foliage. A large low glass table to one side of which the
Glovers were directed. Their hosts drew up chairs on the other;
the one who was apparently the senior of the two said, 'Julia, I
think we could manage some more coffee . . .' The leather
skirted girl tripped off.
Courtesies were exchanged. The Glovers, cautiously, observed
their hosts; both wore suits that spoke of much expense, the
senior and thinner with a striped shirt, the other with a lilac shirt
and pink silk tie. They sat there drinking coffee and looking at
the Glovers with detached interest. Edward wore his green suit,
Helen her camel coat. Both, in fact, were dressed as for their
mother's funeral except that Helen had a new white blouse with
a frill down the front and her pearl necklace. Edward's shoes
were dirty and bits of the Britches still clung to his trousers.

The striped shirt man now began to talk about the portfolio.
Pink tie tapped at a calculator. Striped shirt said that the position
could undoubtedly be improved, with a judicious mixture of
playing safe and maybe doing something a bit interesting with
Japan or the Far East but of course unfortunately there wasn't all that much room for manoeuvre. He wondered if there were any
other assets. Helen explained about the house. Striped shirt
nodded. He asked if there was anything else. Edward looked
warningly at Helen and Helen heard herself say that there was a
small piece of land. Striped shirt and pink tie perked up a little.
They asked for particulars; pink tie made some notes.

But there's no question of selling it,' said Edward.
Striped shirt raised an eyebrow.
Edward lapsed once more into strangled silence. Helen
explained why it was impossible to sell the Britches. This took a
couple of minutes, during which striped shirt and pink tie sat
back, long legs crossed and polite smiles of amusement or
possibly incredulity on their lips. Pink tie tapped again at his
calculator and wondered, with a quick glance at striped shirt, if
Miss Glover and her brother had considered that realisation of
the asset would bring in . . . well, at a conservative estimate
around ten, fifteen thousand extra income? Helen replied that
they had.

There was a short pause. Edward, who appeared to have
detached himself from the proceedings, stared out of the window.
Helen now had a curious prickling sensation up and down her
spine. I am not to be intimidated by house plants and silk ties,
she thought. Striped shirt tapped a gold pencil thoughtfully
against his teeth and said that of course one had every respect for
someone wishing to take such a stand and that in that case we
must see what could be done with the portfolio as it was. Such
as it was. He flashed Helen a nice white smile: 'We can certainly
get the income up on what it is now. And I don't imagine you
have particularly expensive tastes, either of you -- vintage claret
or fast cars.' Both men were now smiling genially; the sort of
smile people give to earnest but not very bright children, or to
social inferiors.

And why the hell shouldn't I have a penchant for claret?
thought Helen. She felt as though, had she been a dog, all her
hair would have been standing on end. She looked stonily across
the table, telling herself that all she and Edward had to do was
get out of here, as soon as possible compatible with the observance
of social niceties and the maintenance of civilised behaviour.
She forced herself to sit tight and retain a noncommittal but not
overtly offensive expression while striped shirt talked about unit
trusts and pink tie came in once or twice with deferential followups
or corrections. She counted to a hundred, in her head, twice,
and tried to think about something wonderfully different.
Edward was now looking at the river with great intensity; he
leaned forward a little, as though to see something better.
And then at last everyone was shuffling chairs on the pile
carpet and getting up and there was a lot of shaking of hands and
Edward and Helen were in the lift once more, smoothly and
silently descending.
Edward said, 'What terrible people.'
'Mmm.'
'Do we have to pay them a lot of money?'
'I imagine so.'
But it was clear that his attention was now elsewhere. He set
off across the marble lake at a canter, with Helen panting behind.
Outside, he headed for the bridge and there, halfway across, he
came at last to a halt, with traffic rushing past, the river gleaming
below and the city reaching away in an infinite complex parade
of shining white and pearly grey with light snapping from
windows and cars. He leaned over the parapet and gazed.
Helen joined him. 'What are you looking at?'
Edward pointed. 'Terns.'
Helen looked down. The water was a greyish-green, streaked
with gold by the sun, and above it wheeled and drifted numbers
of birds. Others floated slowly downstream, sitting upright like
bathtoys amid a flotsam of bottles and skeins of plastic and what
seemed to be sandwiches, while several more patrolled a little
shingly beach almost beneath the piers of the bridge.

'I thought they were just gulls at first,' said Edward. 'I could
see them from the window in that place. Then I realised they
were terns.'
'I thought terns liked coasts and estuaries, not the middle of
cities?'
'They do. That's the point.'
The Glovers stood alone on the bridge and watched the terns.
They dipped and swirled over the golden water, disappearing
sometimes under the bridge, sweeping off in a flock to examine
the wake of a passing launch. One small colony remained all the
time on their beach, an isolated solitary place of grey pebbles
below greenish breakwaters; high above them the blind-eyed
office blocks glittered pink and yellow in the sun. Edward was
enthralled; he leaned his head on his hands and gazed. Once, he
turned to Helen and smiled apologetically; 'Sorry . . . We'll go
in a minute.'

But Helen was in no hurry. She stood there beside him,

acknowledging the marvellous presence of the terns, and as she
did so the thought came to her that striped shirt, and pink tie,
and Julia of the leather skirt, presumably passed them by five
days a week without knowing that they did so. One is supposed
to feel a charitable surge at revelations of deprivation, but oh
how satisfying not to do so.

Edward straightened. 'I'm hungry -- aren't you?'
'Yes. We'll find somewhere for lunch.'
They were both, now, in a state of mild exaltation. This
curious fusion of experiences had made them elated and slightly
feverish. Helen clutched Edward's arm as they dodged through
the traffic. They remembered details of the past hour, giggling.
'What are unit trusts?' said Edward. 'I couldn't understand a
word he was saying.' I'm not sure -- but did you notice his socks? I never saw such smooth socks on a man.' Forging onwards in
this way, they found themselves away from the river and in a
hinterland of commercial London that was as alien to them as
New York or Hong Kong. Money reared up all around; it
towered in the form of plate glass, stainless steel, polished
marble, Portland stone, concrete, brick and slate. For Helen,
London meant the leafy calm of Twickenham, where they had
lived in early childhood, subsequent rare excursions to the Royal
Academy or the Tate and occasional visits to Louise in Camden
Town. For Edward, it was a bed-sitter in Bayswater, the rioting
children of the secondary modern and the distresses of those
disturbing years. For both of them the landscape in which they
now stood was quite unrelated to any of this. They came to a
stop. Edward said 'This doesn't look like the sort of area for
restaurants.' He gazed at a glass block, soaring upwards, in
whose mirror cliff-face swam the distorted white reflection of a
Wren church spire.

'No. Where was that French place Louise used to take us to?'
'Somewhere near South Kensington tube station, wasn't it?'
Clutching at the safety of recollection, the Glovers set off for
more familiar regions. And indeed, surfacing again at South
Kensington, some atavistic instinct for the lie of the land took
them directly to the street in which Louise had had an office,
fifteen years or so ago, and where two or three times a year they
had met for a meal.
'That's it!' said Edward. And then, more doubtfully, 'Isn't it?'

'I think so. The outside's different, somehow. Better go in and see.'
Once in, there was no going back. Handed from one briskly
obsequious waiter to another they found themselves tucked into
an upholstered corner, served up with menus and dealt drinks
that neither of them was conscious of having ordered. It was very noisy; every other table was full and music babbled from the
walls.
'It used to have check tablecloths,' said Edward. 'And artificial
onions and fishing nets hanging from the ceiling.'
'Well, they're gone.'
'Never mind.' Edward picked up the menu. 'It's called Maggie's
Wine Bar now, apparently. Looks rather expensive, I'm
afraid.'
They ordered. Edward finished his glass of sherry; he seemed
quite restored now.
'You were very good with those men. I'm afraid I rather
backed down.'

'You did,' said Helen.
'They made me feel like. . . some species that had got into the
wrong time slot. That ought to be extinct.'
'Do you feel more comfortable now?'
'Marginally,' said Edward, glancing round. 'I could put up
some sort of valiant struggle for survival.'
'You'd have to adapt, not just survive. Even I know that.'
'True. That might be more difficult.'
They grinned at each other. 'So what do I say to Tim?'
enquired Helen.
'Say we were too small fry for them. He ought to have known
that anyway.'
'He meant well.'
'People are always meaning well,' said Edward. 'That's often
the trouble.'
The food arrived, and a bottle of wine. Edward looked warily
at It. 'Do you think we'll manage all that? I ordered a half carafe.'
'They've taken the cork out now.'
'Oh well . .
'The problem about us,' said Helen, 'is that we've never felt
the same way about money as most other people seem to.'
'I've never thought of it as a problem.'
'It's the only way we seem to be like mother.'
'I hope so,' said Edward fervently.
'Louise isn't interested in money as such, but she quite likes things. Buying things. You and I can't manage even that to any
extent.'
Edward was tucking in to his meal. 'This is rather good.
Perhaps eating in restaurants is nicer than I think it is. I suppose
the difficulty about us is that so far as money and possessions are
concerned we're at a more primitive stage than the rest. We're
not interested in surplus. It's like being aborigines or North
American Indians after the colonists have arrived. When everyone
else is busy accumulating they get bothered about anyone
who is quite happy with a modest sufficiency.'

'And look what happened to the aborigines and the Indians,'
said Helen.

'Mmm. Perhaps that's why I felt so uncomfortable with those
men. But then there were the terns getting away with it on the
other side of the window.'
'The terns get away with it because they aren't noticed.'
'I've always thought I did quite well at being inconspicuous
myself,' said Edward. 'But I take your point. One hasn't a hope,
really. With the likes of Ron Paget around, and those chaps in
their glass skyscraper.'

Plates were removed. More wine was poured. Helen caught
sight of a silver-grey head at the far side of the room and
twitched; not Giles Carnaby, of course not, how could it be --
here? And I hadn't thought of the blessed man in the last two
hours -- at least barely thought. Ten days now and he hasn't
telephoned.

'What's wrong?' enquired Edward.
'Nothing. Do you imagine that we are the way we are about
money because of mother or because we would have been like
that anyway?'
'Interesting. I don't know. Conditioning must have something
to do with it -- it always does. We weren't trained to be
acquisitive.'
'Presumably the children of the poor aren't either. And we've
never been the poor, in a proper sense. Tim obviously thinks
we're going to be, in our old age -- that's why he got us involved
with these investment people.'
Edward sighed. 'Old age will be quite bad enough without
being patronised by people like that. I think I'll settle for
poverty.'
'It's not just conditioning,' continued Helen. 'Presumably
inheritance comes into it too. Inherited characteristics. Like
we've both got slightly flat feet, the same as mother, and Louise
has her wiry hair.'
'We'd better not push this too far,' said Edward. 'Or we shan't
like what emerges.'
They were both now inflamed by the unaccustomed wine.
Neither particularly wanted any more but a lifetime's resistance
to waste went deep. They drank, doggedly.
'Flat feet and a tendency to be frugal are nothing very terrible.
You aren't like her in any other conspicuous way. Nor is Louise.'
'And nor are you,' Edward put in, promptly.
'Look at us, though -- sitting here talking about her.'
Edward pondered. 'When she was alive we hardly ever did, do
you realise?'
Helen nodded. Tacit acceptance; the occasional glance of
collusion; unspoken shared expertise in methods of evasion and
camouflage. 'There was no need, was there?'
'Then why do we do it now?'
'Exorcism, said Helen briskly. 'Or something of that order.'
'Don't you feel guilty? I do.'
'Of course.'
Edward tipped the last of the wine into their glasses. 'When
did you first realise other people's mothers were different?'
When I was about five, I think.'
'You were always more sophisticated. I was twenty-one at
least.'
'In any case,' said Helen, 'we mustn't exaggerate. Other people
have difficulties with their parents.'
'Do they? Good.'
'We could always have moved out, both of us, but we didn't.
Why not?'
'Inertia,' suggested Edward.
'Do you honestly think so?'
Edward avoided her eye.
'In your case, possibly,' she went on. 'Or at least inertia
certainly comes into it. In mine, I think the whole situation is
more dubious.'
'Helen. . .' Edward began, warningly,
'I can see, with detachment, a certain lack of enterprise, to put
it mildly. Perversity, even. Masochism.'
'Oh, don't be silly,' said Edward.
'What woman of any initiative would have spent almost her
entire adult life living in discord with a difficult mother?'
'You. . . coped with her. She'd have been lost without you.'
No she wouldn't,' said Helen. 'Mother was entirely self
sufficient,
and you know it.'
They regarded one another. 'I told you we shouldn't push this
too far,' said Edward.
'At the time one justified it in various ways. There was always
next year, and the one after. One was just biding one's time.'
'Of course,' agreed Edward. 'And anyway. .

'One was always about to get the serious, definitive job.'
'Exactly. And in any case . .
'Or get married.'
Edward, furiously scouring his plate, rambled on about
Dorothy.
'Instead of which suddenly I'm fifty-two and mother isn't there
any more. I wish I could subscribe to your theory of mother-as-obstacle.
It would be comforting. It looks to me, frankly, like a
clear case of chronic timidity, laced with apathy.'
'Oh, well in that case, what about me?' said Edward wildly.
They looked at each other.
The waiter, practised at the disruption of moments of intimacy,
plumped the bill down beside Edward's plate.
'In fact,' said Helen, 'I'm not feeling particularly glum about
all this. It's a question more of assessment. Taking stock.'
Edward picked up the bill and examined it.
'Mother's part in it is one thing. One's own is quite another.'
'This seems to say three hundred and seventy-five pounds,'
said Edward. 'Can that be right?'
Helen took the bill from him and indicated a decimal point.
'Oh, I see.' He examined his wallet. 'I still don't have enough.
I hope this doesn't mean you're going to rush off and become
County Librarian now. Or. .

Helen laughed. 'I shouldn't worry. Neither is likely.'
The waiter hovered. Helen fished in her purse. Between them
they came up with a pile of notes and coins. Neither of them
possessed a credit card, and it did not occur to them to offer a
cheque. The waiter watched this display with patient interest
and carried the loaded saucer away ceremoniously, as though it
were a church collection plate.

Outside the restaurant they paused. 'I rather enjoyed that in a
funny way,' said Helen. 'Have you ever noticed that we seldom
talk to each other at meals normally?'
'Of course we don't,' said Edward. 'What is there to say?'
'Quite a lot, it seems. Oh well . . . What shall we do now?
It's only half past two. We could go to an exhibition or
something.'

Edward looked unenthusiastic.
'Or do some shopping.'
'Shopping!' Now he was aghast.
'It's Louise's birthday next week, you know. And she's coming
down this weekend. We ought to buy her a present.'
'We don't know what she wants,' said Edward, fighting
desperately.
'As a matter of fact I do. She's got all these photos she took
with that new camera -- all jumbled up in an envelope -- and she
was saying she ought to put them into something. We'll get her a
photo album.'
'We -- you -- could get a photo album in Spaxton.'
'We can get a better photo album in London. A more Louise
sort of photo album. An up-to-the-minute photo album.'
Eward gave her a surly glance. 'It's the wine. I knew a whole
bottle was a mistake. All right, then, if you insist. Where?'

'We're not far from Knightsbridge,' said Helen. 'Big smart
shops. That should do.'

She still felt interestingly exhilarated. Maybe the wine. Or
maybe the sun on white stucco (really London was much prettier
than one remembered) or the cheerful scarlet of buses or the
continuously satisfying recollection of the terns and the oblivious
complacency of pink tie and striped shirt in their sealed air
conditioned office. Or maybe something else; this curious sensation
one had all the time now of the blood running a little faster,
the senses being more keenly tuned, of tomorrow or next week
being more inviting. Giles Carnaby might be phoning Grey- A
stones at this very moment, the phone ringing in the empty hall
. . . Maybe he was putting the receiver down and picking up his pen to write a quick note instead, handing it to his secretary to

pop in the post, saying 'Mind you don't forget that one, it's
rather urgent.'
Or maybe not.

'Surely this'll do?' said Edward. 'It looks quite big enough and
smart enough.'

Hoisted back to the London street, she saw them both reflected
in the plate-glass of the shop window, superimposed in transparency
above silk and fur, gilt and leather, the swaggering dummies
with blind inscrutable gaze in their preposterous clothes. Their
reflections, gliding above these sumptuous displays, showed a
shabby pair, distinctly down-at-heel, as sharply contrasted as the
proletarian flotsam in some Victorian street scene, dingy spectators
of the nobs in their satin and feathers. The dummies in the
windows wore clothes so unlike Helen's that they might have
stepped from some other culture: rainbow colours, fabrics of
wondrous texture and design, skirts like puffballs or split like a
dancer's. The chairs upon which they sat or leaned were gilded
or of shining chrome and glass; bales of material were half
unfurled to spill around more silk and satin; jewellery was flung
down in handfuls upon tables or simply on the ground. Prices,
where stated at all, were scribbled in decorative script upon tiny
cards, an afterthought. Helen watched her own face swim above
these rich and glowing caverns; did it have a lean and hungry
look, deprived, excluded? Well, no, not really. It was her usual
face, homely, familiar -- diminished merely and made incongruous
by the setting; it wandered ghostly, with Edward's
alongside, across the Aladdin's caves beyond. Any more of this,
thought Helen, and I shall have doubts as to who I am, like
Alice. I'll be getting into conversation with one of these fibreglass
ladies. 'Explain yourself!' she'll say, and I shall be hard put
to it to do so. Her preoccupations would not be mine at all.
'What are you worth?' she'd ask; I'd certainly have trouble with
that one. 'What do you cost?' would be a bit easier; around £4.50
an hour would be correct I think. Plus second-hand value of what
I stand up in, which by current jumble sale rates would be
maybe ten pounds or so. She, on the other hand, top to toe,
comes out at well over two thousand; as for structural costs . . .
does one buy or hire her, I wonder?

'Come on,' said Edward. 'I can't hold this door for ever. You're
the one who wanted to come here.'
Within, there was that rich smell of better-class department
stores: an expensively achieved amalgam of perfume, out-of-season
flowers, new leather and virgin fabrics. Pace seemed to
have slowed up; people did not walk but drifted; sound was
muted, mopped up by space and carpeting. The Glovers hesitated.
Edward looked accusingly at Helen. 'This way,' she said
firmly, and plunged off into a perfumery hall of gleaming marble,
as lush as some Byzantine church. Edward followed; she heard
him skid on the floor, in whose black and shining depths were
reflected the chandeliers above their heads. All around were Arab
women, heavily robed, sniffing their wrists. A bottle of perfume,
Helen saw, could cost £110. Edward now wore the manic look
of some animal transferred into the wrong environment, as
though he might run amok, or bite. Each counter had an assistant
behind it, none of them doing anything. Helen headed for the
nearest one and asked about photograph albums. They were
directed onwards.

Perfumes gave way to leather goods, and leather goods to food.
The air was scented now with chocolate, coffee and freshly baked
bread. They passed a counter above which hung trusses of

pigeons, pheasants and other less identifiable but more disturbing
birds; Helen grabbed Edward's arm to hurry him on but he was
already gazing at a row of hares suspended by their feet from a
rack. He turned and caught her eye. 'The butcher in Spaxton
has hares,' she said defensively.

The assistants behind the counter wore what appeared to
Helen to be fancy dress: boaters with scarlet bands and elaborate
aprons. One of them -- an adolescent with the fair, downy looks
of a choir boy -- reached up with a pole to bring down a clump of
unidentifiable silvery speckled birds. Both Glovers had come to
a halt now, mesmerised despite themselves. The boy reached for
a chopper and began briskly to decapitate the birds. Enough!
thought Helen; she turned to Edward -- and he was not there.

She looked round. Everywhere, expensively dressed people
were buying food with an air of dedication. She couldn't see
Edward. She walked from one end of the hall to the other; no
Edward. Irritation gave way to a feeling of panic. She told herself
to calm down: at the worst they had lost each other and would
have to go home separately. She had Edward's ticket, which was
a nuisance, but never mind. But even as she went over all this
she continued to hurry from one section of the store to another,
searching, her heart thumping. It was ridiculous. Once, when
Edward was five, she and Dorothy had mislaid him in Woolworths.
Dorothy had glared phlegmatically around and said that
would teach the silly little wretch to wander off on his own; it
was Helen who had rushed to and fro and eventually found
Edward, white with shock, cowering beside one of the tills.

She moved from handbags through gifts to the flower shop
and eventually reached a men's outfitting department where,
suddenly, she saw Edward. He was sitting on a chair beside a
display of furled umbrellas; he had his head in his hands and was
being eyed dispassionately by two male assistants in dark suits.
As she approached, one of them broke ranks and went to stand
over Edward, apparently addressing him. Edward neither looked
up nor moved.

Irritation now displaced concern. 'I've been looking everywhere
for you,' Helen snapped.
'We have a First Aid Room on the second floor, if the
gentleman isn't feeling well.'
Edward took his hands from his face and sat up. He was
shaking, Helen now saw. He quivered, very slightly, all over, as
though he were perished with cold. He simply sat there, shaking.
'The nurse is always in attendance.'
'I'm not ill,' said Edward. He glanced at Helen as though he
had never seen her in his life, and made no attempt to get up.
The assistant inclined his head diplomatically and when an
American was heard to make enquiries about cashmere sweaters
he stepped aside.

Helen said, 'Are you sure you're all right?'
Edward nodded. He stood up. She put a hand on his arm and
felt the rhythmic shivering through the stuff of his jacket. 'Let's
get Louise's photo album and then go.'
She steered him into a lift. She tracked down, at last, the right
department. Photograph albums, it turned out, could also cost
£.110, or thereabouts. They came in tooled leather, they came
gilded and embossed and with special paper made in Florence.
They also came, if you insisted and were prepared to accept a
measure of mild public humiliation, in plastic and plain paper.
Edward stood in silence while Helen negotiated. The shaking
appeared to have stopped but he looked dazed. She guided him
back to the lift, down to the ground floor and the street and into
a taxi.

Just before they reached the station she said, 'Was it the birds?'
'Birds?' He seemed almost normal again; he had been staring
out of the window and had commented on a street name he
remembered from his London period.

'Those silver birds. At the butcher's.'
'They were guinea-fowl,' said Edward. He spoke quite composedly.
The whole thing, Helen saw, whatever it had been, was
to be ignored. 'I can't imagine why anyone would want to eat
them,' he went on. 'There'd be nothing on them. You'd get twice
as much off an ordinary chicken.'

In the train, Helen thought about money. Money, she realised,
had changed its nature over the years. There was both less of it
about, and more. Today's world was one in which five-pound
notes gushed benignly from the walls of banks at the touch of a
button, in which people had only to scribble their names and
anything they wished for was theirs; a world in which -- as she
had seen on a television programme -- unimaginable sums of
money flew about the globe at the whim of shirt-sleeved young
men who sat tapping idly at keyboards. A world in fact in which
the stuff itself-- the coins, the notes -- seemed barely relevant and
indeed a trifle indecent. Sayings of Dorothy's came to mind: 'It
doesn't grow on trees, you know.' You've got to learn the value
of money.' Impossible nowadays to say such things to children,
presumably. As a child she had had a piggy bank; she could
recall the physical satisfaction of its jingling weight in her hands.
That was wealth. The child of a neighbour in the village had
showed her last week his newest share certificate; he had bought
British Telecom, he told her gravely, and was thinking of going
into Gilts. The family lived in one of the Barratt houses and did
not seem to Helen unduly prosperous, but clearly one was losing
one's eye for these things.

She looked at Edward. He seemed quite all right again. He
had bought himself the latest issue of Wildlife and was immersed
in an article about otters. The day would be held against her, she
knew, if only in the muted way in which Edward was capable of
bearing a grudge.


'Thank you,' said Louise. 'It's exactly what I need. However did
you guess? Mind, God knows why I keep on recording the
children for posterity, the way they are now. When I look back I
could weep -- dear little things tottering about on beaches. Phil
hasn't addressed a civil word to us in weeks. Anyway -- thanks.'
'It's from Edward too.'
'I took that as read. Since when did Edward go shopping on his own behalf? Where is he, anyway?'
'In the Britches, I think. He's been trying to do something
about the brambles and nettles.'
I
Louise flopped on to the sofa. 'How did you enjoy your day in
London?'
'It had its moments,' said Helen evasively.
'What about the investment people?'
'They made it fairly clear we were too small fry for them. And
I the place was more like a botanical gardens than an office.'

Tim knows some other people. I'll tell him to . . .'

'No,' said Helen. 'We have still to recover from those.'
I
'Think about it,' conceded Louise. 'So what did you do after
that at -- it can't have taken you all day?'

'We had lunch in that restaurant in South Kensington.'

'It doesn't exist any more.'
'Exactly,' said Helen. 'So we discovered. We had lunch on its
ashes, as it were. Then we went shopping.'
'Well! Quite a spree! Very good for you both.'
'Don't patronise,' said Helen. 'We're less socially disadvantaged
than you imagine. The village provides resources
undreamed of in Camden Town. Though I will admit that I find
London disconcerting these days. The landscape. Everything
seems to be built of mirrors -- what on earth has happened to
brick? But I grant you that I'm behind the times in some ways.
Architecture and offices full of botanical specimens are the least
of it. Social etiquette, for instance . . . What's done and what
isn't.' She shot her sister a crafty glance. 'Most of it is quite
irrelevant to me, of course, but one keeps a sort of technical
interest.'

'Huh?' said Louise. 'What are you blathering on about?'
'Oh, I don't know . . . How people behave . . . Men and
women, for instance. Such as . . . Do women take the initiative
nowadays?' She felt the beginnings of a disastrous blush and
busied herself with a dirty mark on the window, getting out her
handkerchief and scrubbing, her back to Louise. 'I mean -- time
was, you wouldn't . . . Nowadays, would they ring up first --
that sort of thing?'

'How should I know?' said Louise sourly. 'I'm married, aren't
I?'

'Well . . . your friends . . .' Helen persisted. 'For instance, if
someone hadn't heard from a man friend for -- oh, for a couple of
weeks or so -- when he'd said vaguely he'd ring -- I mean, she
might wonder if there was something wrong, if he was ill, or if
she'd offended in some way. Would she feel nowadays it was up
to her to make contact?'
'Look, what is all this?' demanded Louise.
'I'm just curious. Detached interest. One ought to know how
things are. If they've changed or not.'
'You are a funny old thing,' said Louise. 'You're making that
window worse, you know. Haven't you got any Windowlene?
Actually so far as I can see it's sod's law for women, just as it
always has been. You know my friend Judith? Well, she's been
having an affair with this bloke for the last year or so and then
out of the blue he turned round and . . Here's Edward. Open
the window and he can come in this way.'

Edward was advancing across the lawn. 'What did he turn
round and do?' said Helen.
'Oh, some other time . . . Hi! Thanks for the birthday
present.'
Edward came in at the french window and stared blankly at
his younger sister. After a moment he said 'Oh . . . Yes.' And
then, 'Many happy returns of the day. How old are you?'
'It's next week, not today. And I'll be forty-three for Christ's
sake. There's this piece of contemporary mythology that the
forties are the best time of your life. A load of cock, so far as I'm
concerned. What about you?'

But Edward had lost interest, apparently. He turned to Helen.
'Have we got any wire anywhere? I want to mend the fence.'

The question of age, in fact, filled his head these days, but it was
not a matter he wanted to discuss with Louise. Or indeed with
anyone. He did not want to be young again -- that time had had
particular and transcendent horrors -- but the thought of being
any older filled him with panic. He could not imagine finding
tranquillity of soul in old age; if he could only be allowed to mark
time for a while all might yet be well, one might suddenly
achieve equilibrium, certainty, serenity. There would still be
possibilities. Hopes.

When his mother died it was as though his youth began to slip
out of sight. Her existence, he now realised, had implications far
beyond her abrasive and insistent presence: it had tethered him
to a distant shore. Now, the shore was fading and there was no
going back.

And every now and then there came these appalling moments
when feeling boiled, when, it seemed to him, he became slightly
mad. Most of the time one was all right -- or at least as all right
as one had ever been -- and then out of the blue it struck, a
hideous uprush of fear, of longing, of shame. It could be
prompted by anything, or nothing. It could come in the wastes
of the night, or at the most humdrum moments of the day. It
had surged forth in that dreadful shop in London, when he had
stood transfixed -- not, as Helen thought, by bunches of guineafowl
but by the bare arms of the butcher's lad adroitly trimming
a carcass on a block beneath. The boy was done up in a long
striped apron and straw boater in arch Victorian pastiche but his
arms were all that Edward saw: young, dusted with golden hairs
and somehow indisputably male. Beautiful arms; he looked at
them and wanted to cry.
He could fend them off, the appalling moments. Fight them.
The thing was to keep occupied. He banged about in the scullery,
hunting for wire. He would make the Britches impenetrable,
tackle the dead trees and plant saplings.

As soon as Louise had left, Helen went to the telephone. She
picked up the receiver, dialled Giles Carnaby's number, and then
replaced the receiver before the connection was made. She wasn't
quite ready yet, after all. In fifteen minutes' time, she told herself
sternly. Just a little longer to get oneself into the right frame of
mind, run over the right casual, uncommitted phrases. 'It just
occurred to me you might like to . . .'; 'If you're free on
Wednesday, I thought maybe. .

She too resolved on activity. She had been intending for days
to make a start on clearing out the cloakroom; now was the
moment -- she would make a preliminary survey, set aside what
should be kept, see if there was anything good enough for
Oxfam. Then, suitably relaxed, she would telephone Giles.
Properly.

The cloakroom led off the hall. It was large exception
ally
cold, and housed a primitive washbasin; the lavatory was
separate, an internal room of its own. The walls were lined with
layers of raincoats of a uniform dun, as though their colours had
run together; they went back years -- some had even belonged to
her father and were so stiff and cracked that they could have
stood unsupported. There was a pair of mackintosh waders; there
were shooting-sticks and an Egyptian fly-whisk and an alpenstock.
The pegs above the raincoats were occupied by assorted
headgear -- berets and peaked caps, a riding bowler, sou'westers,
knitted hats, deerstalkers. Everything had associations -- Dorothy's,
Edward's, given by so-and-so, bought on a particular
holiday, left behind by relative or friend; Helen saw an insistent
kaleidoscope of references, shimmering tiresomely behind the
garments and the implements, as ineradicable as the blackberry
stains on a sleeve or the ingrained mud on everything.
And the whole lot smelt -- a pervasive stench of damp and
I
mildew. High time something was done about it. Starting in one
corner, Helen began to lift garments from pegs and drop them
on the floor in a pile -- a mack of her father's, something of
Edward's not worn within living memory, a very ancient corduroy
jacket of Dorothy's, also unused for many a year. It occurred
to her that it might be wise to go through the pockets; her father's
garment yielded an old penny and a broken pipe. In Dorothy's
jacket was a letter.

Unopened and addressed to Helen.

She knew the handwriting at once, of course. Until ten years
or so ago a bundle of similar envelopes had lain in a drawer of
her desk; one day in a fit of vigour she had torn them up and
thrown them away.
She sat down on the battered settle and opened the letter.
'Dearest Helen,' he began; that was interesting -- the letters in
the destroyed bundle usually began with 'Dear' or 'My dear'. He
went on to say that he felt they were both being rather silly and
he wanted to make amends. He was missing her, he said. He had
phoned a couple of times but she had been out. Anyway, maybe
he could say what he felt more easily in a letter. She knew he
wasn't good at expressing himself. If she was still cross with him
please would she stop. He was sorry about what was mainly a
misunderstanding. He wanted very much to talk to her. There
was something in particular he wanted to talk about. Please
would she meet him for a long dinner on Friday -- he would
expect to hear from her tomorrow or the next day. He signed
himself 'With a great deal of love -- Peter.'

The postmark on the envelope was March 10th 1965.
The hand of fate is brutal but impersonal. The hand of one's
mother is something different. Witting or unwitting? Carelessness
-- the thing picked up off the hall mat, thrust into her pocket
and forgotten -- or deliberate appropriation? If the latter -- why
had she not gone the whole hog and burned it? Well, one would
never know and either way the effect was the same.

Helen began to shake. She saw her own hands with a certain
detachment, holding the letter and trembling convulsively. She
did not otherwise feel at all detached. Her mind raced. A number
of things fell into place -- click, click, click -- with distant muffled
echoes like stones dropped into a well. That time. The tiff. The
coolness about . . . about what had it been? 'A misunderstanding'.
Those weeks, not seeing him, wondering, too proud to
make the first move. And weeks becoming a month, two months,
three . . . a year. Anger giving way to misery and then to regret
and eventually to . . . nothing. Until now, when one sat here in
the cloakroom, surrounded by old raincoats, shaking as though
struck down by fever.

One could, presumably, trace Peter Datchett. It would be
relatively simple -- she could think at once of how it could be
done: the casual enquiry of a mutual friend with whom she still
exchanged Christmas cards, the phone call to the college at which
he had been a lecturer. And then the reply: 'Dear Peter, I have
at last received your letter of March 10th 1965. I hope it is not
too late to say yes, I'd like very much to have dinner on Friday
and I too feel we've been rather silly and it has all been a
misunderstanding. .

And there is Peter, on the receiving end, opening it over
breakfast with his wife and children . . . no, children if any are
flown by now, Peter is fifty-six . . . with his wife (and the wife
one is of course assuming, merely, but the assumption seems
reasonable enough, things being what they are), who says 'Who's
that from?' And he shoves it in his pocket with some dismissive
remark and wonders what the hell he is to do. How embarrassing,
he thinks. God -- poor old Helen.
No, one will not set about tracing Peter Datchett.
At this precise moment, thought Helen, I hate my mother. It
was a refreshing feeling -- invigorating, even. And worth indulging:
it stifled various other feelings.

She knew that she would not have lived happily ever after
with Peter Datchett. No one lives happily ever after. Very likely
there would have been a further coolness or misunderstanding
and they would have parted. The point was that one would never
know, now. And so would wonder, and go on wondering. One
would construct alternative scenarios, and brood about them.
One would furnish houses and arrange landscapes; one might go


dangerously far and people them with . . . children. One would
conjure up occasions; things would be said and done.
All this thanks to Dorothy. Still ordaining.
No, said Helen. She rose from the settle. She put the letter in
her pocket. In due course she would dispose of it, but not just
yet. Think of what was, she told herself, since only that is
relevant. What might have been is neither here nor there. She
tried to reconstruct the physical Peter Datchett: tall, thin, black
hair that tended to flop forwards, a mole on one cheek. He taught
at the College of Further Education a few miles from Spaxton;
she had met him through a rambling club. His physical presence
was all mixed up with muddy tracks, overgrown woodland paths,
rain and barbed wire fences and glasses of beer in steamy pubs.
And then of course the relationship had become more personal
and exclusive: lunches and dinners, films, visits to stately homes
or places of scenic interest. Intimacy, of a kind; they were both
reserved people, they didn't rush things. She did not remember
passion, but a certain eroticism -- that, definitely. They were on
the brink of sex; it was a matter of time, she had known -- next
week, the one after. She had explained to him about her mother;
he had met her mother; he had seemed to size up the problem,
had said the right things in his oblique way. Dorothy had
referred to him as 'that chap with the birthmark on his face.'

Love? It had been in the air, certainly -- around the corner,
along with sex. What she remembered was a sense of expectancy,
of confident expectancy. They had been a unit, had shared jokes,
exchanged small gifts, written to each other when unable to meet
for a week or two; the assumption was always that this would
continue, and expand.

Why didn't he write again? Telephone? Arrive on the doorstep?
Because, thought Helen, he was as he was. Reserved; a
touch diffident. And why did I do nothing? Ditto.

She went out into the hall. She picked up the receiver and
dialled Giles Carnaby's number. The ringing tone came: once,
twice, six times . . . Out, she thought. Good. Reprieved. But
honour is satisfied. You can put the thing down.

'Hello?' said Giles.

Ill
'Oh.' The prepared words evaporated. 'Is that . . .? Could I
speak to Giles Carnaby?'
'You are.'
'This is Helen Glover.'
'But how very nice. I didn't recognise your voice.'
'I was wondering. .
'And I'd been thinking of you only yesterday. How are you?'
'Very well. I wondered if. .
'Your mother's affairs progress. Slowly, as I'm afraid is always
the case. The Probate Office moves in its own mysterious way.'
'Actually,' said Helen, 'that wasn't what I was ringing about.
My brother and I are having a few people in for a drink before
lunch on Sunday. I wondered if you might be able to come.'
There. No going back now.

'But I'd be delighted. What fun. Last weekend I was away but
this one I'm as free as air. I shall look forward to it. By the way
I've finished the Earl Grey. Things are getting desperate. And
you never did come and have a cup.'
'Oh. No. You can buy it at the delicatessen in Long Barton,
you know.'
'I'm never in that direction. Do you think you could get me a
packet next time you're passing?'
'I'll try. I mean yes, I will.'
'Bless you. And thank you so much for ringing. What time?'
'Time?'

'On Sunday.'
'Oh -- twelve, I think.'
'Twelve. Splendid. Till then.'
'We're having some people in for a drink on Sunday. Before
lunch.'
Edward, dealing out Puffed Wheat to the birds, swung round
sharply. 'Whatever for?'
'I thought we should.'
'But we've never done it before.'
'It's the sort of thing that's done all the time, in other
households.'
'I can't think why. Who, then?'
'Doctor Taylor and his wife, I thought. A few others from the
village. And our solicitor, Giles Carnaby.'
'But you went to hear him sing,' said Edward. 'Surely that
was quite enough.'
'They will arrive at twelve and stay probably for an hour and
a half or so. I'll get the drink but you'll have to help pour it out.
Is there anyone you'd like to ask?'
'Certainly not. And I hope this isn't going to be a precedent.'

She made telephone calls. She hoovered and dusted the sitting
room. She found glasses that were unchipped and as nearly
matching as possible. She bought sherry and white wine and
whisky. She bought bags of little biscuity things. 'You make me
laugh,' said her mother. 'I never saw such a carry-on. Who do
you think you're fooling?' Nobody,' Helen replied. Least of all
myself. 'And that chap -- Giles Thingy -- do you imagine he's
going to be taken in? A man like that.'

'Enough,' said Helen. 'You have no right. Nor ever did. From
now on I'll be mine own executioner.'

'Whatever have you done to the cloakroom?' complained Edward.
'Cleared it out.'

'I liked it the way it was.'
'We've still got nine raincoats and anoraks between us. And
eight different hats and an alpenstock and a flywhisk and four
walking-sticks.'
'I used to enjoy the way you never knew what you'd come
across next.'
'I don't share your feelings,' said Helen.

She considered making a ceremonial pyre. She would burn Peter
Datchett's letter and that dress in one fine condemnatory blaze.
There you are, mother -- there they go, properly disposed of at
last. A few years too late. Or did you always think they had
been? Were you careless or calculating? And what did you do it
for? Were these sins of omission, or a devilish scheme? I can't
know if you succeeded in changing the course of my life, but it's
possible. And for a person in a somewhat delicate emotional
condition, as I believe myself to be, this is hard to contemplate.
She did not believe that marriage, or pairing, or however you
cared to define a sexual relationship, was the key to happiness
and fulfilment; you only had to look around you to see that this
was not so. Which was worse -- to have tried and failed or never
to have tried at all?

She thought of her father -- that grey and distant figure
associated only with anchovy paste and a rustling newspaper. It
was not comfortable to consider her parents' intimate life; she
could recall no demonstrations of affection or indeed even of much displayed interest in one another. Usually, Dorothy had
been engaged in shifting her husband around like an inharmonious
piece of furniture. His own image was one of compliant self
effacement. He went out to work by day, conveniently, at a firm
of accountants; in the evenings and at weekends he made himself
as unobtrusive as possible. God knows what went on at night.

In the end she pushed the letter into the drawer of her desk
and left the dress where it was, in the corner of the wardrobe.
All in good time.

Edward, practised in self-deception, forgot about the guests until
Sunday morning and was therefore surprised to discover Helen,
at ten-thirty, wearing unexpected clothes and straightening cushions
in the sitting room. She was also flushed and evidently in a
state of unrest, which made him feel chivalrous and sympathetic.
He decided to be nice about the whole business, though he still
could not see the point of it, and offered to put the little biscuity
things into bowls. He gave some of them to Tam in the process.

It was not so much that he had anything against people in
general, more that he saw no purpose in deliberately setting up
occasions on which you stood around trying to think of something
to say. Moreover, the whole process was self-perpetuating;
the guest became the host in an act of social revenge and thus it
went on for ever. The only sensible course was never to start it
in the first place. He could not think what had got into Helen,
normally as rational as himself about all this, or so he had
thought.
Nevertheless, when the doorbell rang he was ready and
waiting, with an agreeable expression and a fluent command of
what to offer by way of drink. He had been feeling a bit better
for the last few days. He had repaired the fence between the
Britches and Ron Paget's yard, filled two black plastic sacks with
rubbish and had embarked on a vigorous assault upon dead and
decaying trees. It all felt very positive and forward-looking.

The visitors arrived. There were not enough of them to make
the large Greystones sitting room look as though much was going
on; people stood in small clumps, eyeing one another; awkward
silences broke out. I told you so, thought Edward, ploughing
valiantly around with a bottle in each hand. Tam scrabbled at
each pair of legs in turn, remembering the biscuits; the more
uninhibited guests kicked, furtively. Apart from the doctor and
his wife and Giles Carnaby they were all people from the village
who had not had an opportunity for a good look at the inside of
Greystones for quite a while and were busy taking note. 'I s'pose
you may be thinking of selling the Britches now, Edward?' asked
a neighbour. 'Oh no,' said Edward. 'There's no question of that.'
He couldn't remember her name; her face was as familiar to him
as the frontage of the village shop or outline of the church tower;
he had always been hopeless at names. The solicitor detached
himself from another group and joined them. 'Giles Carnaby --
we haven't met. Your sister is busy hostessing so I'm introducing
myself.' Oh,' said Edward. 'Yes. Hello. This is Mrs . . .' He
gazed wildly at the neighbour who said crossly, 'Jean Powers.
Actually Edward's known me for ten years, but there we are.
You live in Spaxton, don't you?' Edward, thinking with relief
that he could leave them to it now, began to withdraw, clutching
the bottles that gave him a certain exemption, free to come and
go. The solicitor laid a hand on his arm, making Edward wince:
he didn't like to be touched. 'Were you talking about the famous
Britches? Helen's told me so much about the place. May I have a
conducted tour sometime?' No you certainly can't, thought
Edward, and what's all this 'Helen' stuff? He said, 'There's
absolutely nothing to see and it's awfully full of nettles'; at the
same moment Jean Powers was saying noisily that not a solitary
soul had been into the Britches in years and the village wondered
what Edward got up to in there -- ha ha! -- some people said he
must be into black magic, or maybe he was growing cannabis.
Edward laughed politely, slid from Carnaby's grip and edged
towards the group by the window, who were talking about
hedges in tones of some desperation. As he did so Helen passed
him; her neck was red, a sure sign of agitation. She hissed, 'Do
do something about the Taylors and old Mrs Phipson. They've
been stuck together for hours.' How?' enquired Edward; he
meant it -- he had absolutely no idea of the mechanics involved.
Helen gave him a look of fury. The group by the window turned
to him anxiously: 'Is that hedge yew, Edward? None of us can
decide.' Really, thought Edward, people must be out of their
minds, submitting themselves to this sort of occasion quite
voluntarily.

Kill or cure, Helen had thought. As soon as she set eyes on Giles
Carnaby again she knew that whatever it was it was not a case of
cure; her heart thumped, she felt unstable. There he was. Here
he was. Smiling at her over people's shoulders while she could
not move because someone was telling her at length how much
she must be missing her mother. And then she saw him talking
to Edward and Jean Powers and then someone had mislaid their
glass and she had to find another and then there was the problem
of the Taylors and old Mrs Phipson. And then eventually she
could cross the room towards him. 'There you are,' he said. 'I have been most restrained -- I could see you had your hands full.
But I have met your brother at long last and Mrs Powers has
been regaling me with the most fascinating pieces of village
gossip.' This set Jean Powers off on a torrent of exclamations and
denials so that Helen could not have got a word in had she
wished to; she stood and looked at Giles Carnaby and tried to be
calm. She tried to see him dispassionately as a grey-haired
solicitor rather too well endowed with easy charm; indeed, she
saw him thus, but she also saw him otherwise, and could not
help herself. When he turned to look intently at Jean Powers she
felt a twinge of jealousy; his arm, brushing momentarily against
hers, made her tingle all over. This sort of thing was bad enough
at eighteen, she thought; at my age it is ludicrous and
humiliating.
Jean Powers moved away. Giles said 'Dear me, what a
demanding woman. She's not a great friend, I hope? Anyway,
now that I've got you to myself for a moment can we make some
plans? First of all, am I going to be able to persuade you to. . 'Oh Helen!' cried the doctor's wife, appearing at their side,
'We're going to have to rush off, I'm afraid. John's on call today.
But first I must just have a word with you about. .
She attended to the doctor's wife. She got the doctor and his
wife into their coats and saw them out of the front door. She
returned to the sitting room and struck Tam, who had knocked
the bowl of biscuits from the table and was wolfing them off the
carpet. She refilled three glasses. She went into the kitchen to
gee if there was another packet of biscuits. I am not enjoying
myself, she thought -- but then I was never supposed to, was I?
She sought biscuits in the bread bin, the vegetable rack, on the dresser. No damn biscuits.
Giles appeared. 'Is there anything I can do? You look harassed.' 'I am harassed,' said Helen. 'Edward's wretched dog has
eaten the biscuits.' People can live without biscuits.' I know,'
she replied. 'But it doesn't seem so at this moment.' I just may
burst into tears, she thought. I just might, appallingly, sit down
on the kitchen chair and start to weep. . . Giles put his hand on
hers: 'Stop worrying about the biscuits and talk to me. We were
interrupted. I was in the middle of trying to find out if you'll
come and have dinner with me next week. At home. I'm not
much of a cook but I do a passable roast. Thursday? Friday?'
She subsided onto the chair. She was not, she found, going to
burst into tears after all. The biscuits became unimportant, and
the guests. 'Thursday,' she said. 'I'm not doing anything on
Thursday.' The kitchen became a warm and friendly place; she
sat in it smiling at Giles Carnaby. I'm happy, she thought in
surprise, at this precise moment I am happy.
NINE
Hemp agrimony -- Eupatorium cannabinum -- flourished in the
Britches, as it happened; Jean Powers was not so wide of the
mark. Edward of course was unaware of its connotations and
encouraged it as a handsome and relatively uncommon plant. It
grew in a boggy area where there was a spring and a small stream
which flowed in a desultory way after the autumn rains but
almost dried up in summer. Other water-loving species turned
up here from time to time also -- Mimulus and forget-me-not and
Water Speedwell. The Mimulus was in fact a garden escape, but
he allowed it all the same, while conceding that a purist would
not. Once there had been kingcups, but none had been seen now
for at least ten years. The whole area was much dryer than it
used to be, and Edward suspected that something had interfered
with the water table; there had been nesting moorhens at one
time -- now only the occasional toad was left. But the hemp
agrimony continued to grow strongly, rather swamping the more
genteel species, indeed. Now and then he was obliged to curb it
in order to give a chance to the bluebells and the wood anemones,
which were both getting sparse to the point of extinction. He
sometimes had the feeling that all the more delicate growths were
being quenched and ousted by the rougher stuff, if one did not
intervene. He saw himself as a wise and benign deity, presiding over his kingdom and seeing to it that evil did not always prevail;
a hollow symbolism of course and anyway he rather liked hemp
agrimony and ground ivy. The real war was waged against nettle
and bramble -- now there you really could persuade yourself that
some malign force was at work, set upon reducing the whole
place to a rank and thrusting wilderness, in which the weakest
went to the wall.
Edward felt that he and the malign force were fairly evenly
matched. In a few hours of concentrated assault he could destroy
months of determined surreptitious growth; but then he would
discover some other, overlooked area where things had been
going to the dogs unheeded and some valiantly struggling patch
of wood anemone or bluebells had been choked to the last gasp.
One thought, of course, in such terms: malign, surreptitious,
struggle, valiant. He was well aware of the anthropomorphism
and indeed found it satisfying; it was as though, in the Britches,
thigh-deep in lashing nettle and octopus strands of clutching
bramble he was coming to grips at last with a great many things
and, as often as not, getting the upper hand.

He spent the afternoon in the Britches, as soon as the last of
the party guests had departed. Half of a perfectly good Sunday
had been wasted, but there were still several hours till dark. He
was working in a thicket of briar, elder and dead wood from a
fallen tree. From time to time he resorted to the saw; the noise
he was making deafened him to Ron Paget's approach. When he
spoke Edward jumped so violently that the saw fell from his
hand.

'You're not getting far with that, are you?' said Ron. 'Tell you
what, I'll have one of the men come over with some proper
equipment. Have that lot out in no time.'

Edward picked up the saw. 'Thanks, but I can manage
perfectly well.' And get out, he fumed, you've no business
marching in here like this. Through the gap in the fence, I
suppose, the place I didn't wire up.
Ron gave him a look of amusement. 'You do like to do things
the hard way, don't you, Mr Glover? I heard you at it so I
thought I'd pop in and pass the time of day. How's Miss Glover,
then?'

'She's very well,' said Edward.
'I'm glad to hear it. I've a lot of respect for your sister. Quiet
but got a mind of her own, know what I mean?'
Edward stared coldly.
'I've lost track of how long it is now we've been neighbours. I
was saying to Pauline the other day, there's some people you

grow old with, willy-nilly, without noticing it -- not that we
aren't all wearing pretty well.' Ron laughed.
Edward thought of the previous, discarded Mrs Paget. He
made no comment.
'You remember my first wife, of course. Well, these things
happen, don't they? You pick yourself up and soldier on, don't
you? Of course, you're not a family man yourself . . -- Ron's
eyes flickered momentarily -- '. . . but we all have our ups and
downs, I daresay life's dealt you out one or two, one way or
another.'

Shut up, thought Edward. And go away.
'Anyway -- it's nice to have a word from time to time. I miss
your mother, I really do -- we had our differences but we'd got
the measure of each other, as you might say. I often think of her.
Gary doing his stuff all right in your vegetable garden?'
'I think so,' said Edward. 'It's my sister's preserve.'
Ron's glance had fallen upon the huge mound of nettle roots
and bramble stems that was the product of Edward's afternoon.
'I don't know why you bother doing all this by hand. Half an
hour with a drum of selective weed killer and a spray and you'd
put paid to that lot for good and all.'

'Plus much else.'
'What? Oh, the wild flowers.' Ron smiled indulgently. 'A year
or two and they'd be back. But you wouldn't catch me sweating
my guts out like that when there's an easy way to set about it.
Take advantage where you can, that's what I say.'

'I'm sure you do,' said Edward.
Ron looked at him narrowly. There was a brief silence. 'Well,'
said Ron. 'I'd better be off -- Pauline'll be after me. And
remember, any time you feel like changing your mind about
what you're going to do with this place, let me know. I'll be
ready and waiting -- put a cheque in your hand any time you
want it.'

Edward sighed. 'I'll remember.'
He listened to Ron crashing his way out of the Britches. At
last there was silence. A robin began to sing, and presently a
chaffinch. The light was fading and it was getting cold; Edward
decided to pack it in. But first he would have a few minutes of
self-indulgence. He sat down on a log and tried to perform what
he thought of as the vanishing act, whereby you became insofar
as it was possible a part of the surroundings: breathing, seeing,
hearing only -- merely an aspect of the place, a dimension, like
the robin or the moss-covered log or the leafmould on which his
feet rested. You tried not to think or to feel -- just to be. Whimsy,
as he well knew -- an affectation, even -- but satisfying
nonetheless.

There he sat, and the Britches darkened around him.

For Helen, all that week, Saturday shone like a distant sunlit
hilltop. She was in no hurry to reach it -- contemplation was
almost as satisfactory as arrival. Anticipation is one of the
choicest forms of pleasure; it was a long time, she realised, since
she had experienced it. Conditioned to observe, she noticed what
it did to her; the feeling of vigour, the brisker step, the tendency
to be nice to others, to talk to those whom one usually avoided.
In the library she negotiated a cease-fire between Joyce Babcock
and the new trainee, a girl fatally endowed with enthusiasm both
for books and for people, and therefore threatening the entire
ethos of Joyce's empire. The girl, Lorna, announced her intention
of applying for a transfer: "I don't know how you've stuck it with
her so long, I really don't.' Helen replied enigmatically that it
was all just a question of experience.

Monday gave way to Tuesday, the day on which she did
not go to the library. She walked to the village shop to collect the
bread and was waylaid four times and treated to opposing viewpoints on the two current matters of local dispute. Helen,
neutrally listening, anaesthetised by her state of uplift, thought
that they nicely illustrated the condition of the place. One
controversy was about visual amenities; the other concerned
noise. Both had implications about prosperity and the power of
cash. Someone had applied for planning permission to knock
down an old cow-byre in his garden and build a bungalow; the
environmentalists raged at this further desecration, the laissez
faire element saw no reason why people shouldn't do what they
wished with their own. The village youths had taken to roaring

round and round of an evening on highly powered Japanese
motorcycles from which the silencers had been removed; those
distressed by this were invoking the law, the youths laughed,
their friends and relations pointed out that they'd paid their road
tax, hadn't they, like anyone else? Words like freedom and rights
were bandied around on both sides.

'Your mother would have been with us,' said one of the
waylayers with a touch of reproach, presumably sensing Helen's
lack of commitment. He was right. Dorothy, in her time, had
been an active member of an organisation called the Noise
Reduction Society, which had campaigned valiantly and indiscriminately
against lawnmowers and jet aircraft. It had disintegrated
(in despair, one assumed) many years ago, but Dorothy
continued to bawl furiously at passing vehicles and to write
letters to the commanding officer of the local airbase, who
returned each time the same duplicated reply of infinite courtesy
and obscurity.

What is at the bottom of all this, thought Helen, is that people
-- some people -- have inappropriate expectations. This is the
country. The country is supposed to be peaceful and beautiful.
Traditionally people -- some people -- have retreated to it in
search of spiritual solace. Others, of course, have seen it quite
differently -- as a source of income or a place of work. These
points of view are now fatally and perhaps finally opposed.
Money and technological advance intensify the problem.

She considered all this as she listened to the heated opinions
forced upon her outside the shop (where the throbbing engine of
the Findus delivery van obliged everyone to shout), on the corner
by the church and at two other points on her route back to
Greystones. And at the same time, behind her own thoughts and
over the faces of those who spoke to her there hovered the mirage
of the distant sunlit hilltop: promise and expectation. 'How are
you, Helen?' people said, without waiting for a reply, and
silently she answered: I am really quite extraordinarily well,
thank you, I have something to look forward to, I believe I am
happy.
Edward was crossing the hall as Helen came down the stairs. He
halted and stared at her. She had put on a pale green dress that
she seldom wore. She had added a largy floppy white collar
bought in Spaxton, and one of her few pieces of jewellery -- a
Victorian cameo on a gold chain. The effect of the collar and the
cameo were remarkable, as Helen herself had dispassionately
noted a few minutes before in her mirror: they made her look
softer, prettier and younger. She saw this again in Edward's
stare.

'I'm going out,' said Helen defensively. 'I'm having dinner
with Giles Carnaby. I told you.'
Edward snatched off his glasses and began to scrub them. He
peered again at Helen. She could see fly across his face a whole
sequence of emotions and responses. 'What shall I eat?' he
enquired petulantly.

'Anything you like. There are fish fingers in the fridge. Or
some ham. Or tins in the cupboard.'
He put his glasses back on and rallied, with dignity. 'What
time will you be back?'
'I've no idea.'
'I won't lock the front door, then. I hope he isn't going to
expect you to listen to him singing again.'
'Don't be silly, Edward,' said Helen.
He looked at her bleakly and turned back into the kitchen. As
she put her coat on she could hear him rattling about in a
conspicuous way with pans and dishes, and talking to Tam. Just
as she was about to leave he came out and complained that he
couldn't find the tin-opener. 'Try the right-hand drawer,' she
said.

'Where does he live?'
'In Spaxton. I told you that, too.'
'It's pouring with rain.'
'I'm intending to drive there,' said Helen. Not walk.'
Edward returned to the kitchen, banging the door. Helen,
ruffled but in control, hurried into the car.

By the time she reached Spaxton her control was a little less
certain. She stood paralysed for several moments on Giles
Carnaby's doorstep. Her mother stood behind her, giving tongue:
'He's got you on the end of a string, that fellow, hasn't he? Like
some silly schoolgirl. You're fifty-two, Helen. I don't know what
you think's going to come of it. Riding for a fall, I'd say.'

She rang the bell, and there he was, suffused in the warm
golden light of the hall, his sleeves rolled up, pushing that silver
forelock back from his eyes. There was the smell of meat
roasting. They both spoke at once: cries of welcome from him,
apologies for lateness from her (she was, by sixteen minutes). He
drew her inside, removed her coat, shepherded her into the
sitting room. 'So here you are,' he said, beaming. 'What a
becoming dress, if I may say so.' He glanced at his watch,
became distracted: 'Forgive me just a moment -- kitchen duties.
Make yourself comfortable. A drink? On the side there. Oh, I have been looking forward to this evening. .

He went. She sat. Then rose and strayed around the room.
She looked again at his wife, securely smiling behind the glass of
her photograph. She noted the flowers agreeably disposed in a
vase on the mantelpiece, the recent issues of magazines arranged
upon the table, the Radio Times open upon the desk with a
programme encircled in red biro (a talk on Handel operas). An
orderly man. I know nothing about him, she thought, nothing at all; he could have robbed banks for all I know.

He came back into the room. 'All is well. I tend to panic unnecessarily. And you haven't given yourself a drink. Sherry?
Vermouth? Sherry -- right.'

No, country solicitors don't rob banks. But there are other
offences, less conspicuous. The point is, I seem to be past caring.
'And what has your week been like?' he said. 'Mine has been
unspeakably mundane. By the way, we progress a little with the
Probate Office -- but I'm not going to talk business tonight. That
will do for another time.' He came to sit beside her on the sofa;
she felt him look at her, intently.

'I've had a good week', Helen said. She told him about
dissension in the library, about the village feuds. He appreciated;
he laughed; he pressed for further details. She was made to feel
witty and entertaining. She expanded like a plant turned to the
sun; she flourished and was gay. The room enclosed them both:
exclusive and private.
The door bell rang.
'Oh, my goodness!' he said. 'The Watsons. I'd almost forgotten
about them. You know them, I daresay? James Watson who's
headmaster at St Bartholomew's and, urn, Julia.' He hurried out.
She heard the opening of the front door. Greetings. The closing
of the door.

The Watsons. Ah. No, I don't as it happens know the
Watsons.
He never said, she told herself, that it would be just you and
him. Never once. So why did you assume that? You have not
been misled. You can't complain. So continue to smile and be
gay.

The evening progressed. They moved from the sitting room to
the dining room. They consumed avocado pears followed by
roast lamb followed by a fruit salad and assorted cheeses. Julia
Watson, who evidently knew Giles quite well, insisted on
popping in and out of the kitchen to help; laughter and exclamations
could be heard from beyond the hatch. James Watson told
Helen about unrest in the teaching profession, at some length.
They moved back into the sitting room and drank coffee. Julia, a
dark woman in her early forties, asked Helen in a kindly
interested voice about the extension plans for the library. Giles
offered brandies; Julia said, 'Giles, you are a wicked man, you
know I can't resist -- be it upon your head if I have a hangover
tomorrow.' Giles said, 'My dear, we shall suffer together.
Helen?' Helen replied that she had better not, since she had to
drive.

The Watsons eventually rose, and Helen with them. Giles
made no attempt to restrain her; he said, 'You're all going . . In the hall, he helped her on with her coat, his hand resting on
her shoulder for a moment -- or so it seemed. The Watsons got
into their car, and Helen into hers. She had to drive to the end
of the street to turn round; when she passed Giles's house on the
way back the door was closed.
She drove home through further rain. Her mother rode in the
back seat -- silent, exuding complacency.

As soon as Helen had gone Edward was overwhelmed with self
contempt. Bleakly, he sat at the kitchen table eating spaghetti
bolognaise out of a tin. Tam watched, drooling. Half way
through Edward gave up, scraped the rest into Tam's food bowl
and put the kettle on for a cup of tea; behind him, Tam slurped
as though rescued from the brink of starvation.

Edward, leaden with gloom, waited for the kettle to boil; as he
did so he watched the steady progress of a wood-louse across the
wall behind the sink. There were many wood-lice at Greystones;
the wood-louse is a kind of prawn, surprisingly -- hence its
preference for damp places. In an age of central heating and
renovation Greystones presumably featured as a rare unspoiled
habitat. Dorothy had persecuted the wood-lice, in Edward's
view; she stamped on them, swept them up and even poured
boiling water upon whole colonies of them. Edward, observing
the patient journey of this one (from whence? and why?),
experienced a momentary consoling detachment. He put his
reading glasses on and looked more closely at it; there were, he
knew, dozens of different kinds of wood-lice, all classified, all
named, distinguished by minute anatomical refinements, small
but significant differences in the antennae or the genitalia.
Goodness only knew what this particular one was, toiling down
towards the crack behind the sink, but it seemed profoundly
satisfactory that it should have the dignity of documentation.
Even more important was the fact that people had devoted their
lives to establishing the identity of such creatures; that for
someone the original distinction between Porcellio and Armadillidium had been a matter of life-consuming importance. Edward
envied such people.

Those who knew of his predilections often wondered why he
had not become a botanist, an entomologist, a biologist. At
school, the few masters who had noticed him at all had tried
vaguely to direct him towards science. In fact, Edward did rather
worse in scientific subjects than in others. He was not systematic;
formulae and calculations confused him. Presented with a diagram
of the alimentary canal, he tended to marvel at its artistry
rather than study its efficiency. As an amateur ornithologist he
knew himself to be far behind those people who could identify
from a snatch of song or flicker of a wing. He could never
remember the names of rarer plant species.
The kettle boiled, spurting scalding water everywhere, as
usual. The wood-louse had vanished, and with it Edward's
temporary distraction from his gloom. He felt alone. He felt a
recurring flash of resentment towards Helen. Tam brushed
against his leg in passing and Edward leaned down to pat him
but Tam, replete, was staggering towards his favourite sleeping
place by the cooker -- he shrugged Edward's hand off and
collapsed with a noisy sigh. Edward observed him with a certain
bitterness; such simplicity of need could seem enviable.

He switched on the radio. The kitchen was filled instantly
with a loud snuffling noise, interspersed with grunts; Edward,
perking up, poured out his tea and listened attentively. After a
few moments the snuffles and grunts were overlaid by a voice
explaining in sympathetically conspiratorial tones that we were
listening to the sounds made by mating koalas in the Pilliga
Nature Reserve in New South Wales. The koalas faded and their
place was taken by a studio discussion about threatened habitats
and imperilled creatures. The pig-footed bandicoot, the trumpeter
swan, the scimitar oryx, the sperm whale, the cheetah, the
bower bird . . . the list went on and on. Such has been the
destruction of the Brazilian rain forests that only about two
hundred of the golden lion tamarin survive in the wild. Their
relative, the cotton-top tamarin, fares little better. Edward, who
had seen both of these creatures on the television screen, pictured
the tiny animals, with their sad wise old men's faces framed by
silky manes, their long, long tails, their agility. A few hundred
of them, and five billion human beings. The tamarin will be
preserved, in all probability, only if zoos throughout the world
cooperate in breeding programmes. The programme concluded
with a snatch of birdsong, a low trill, repeated several times
before dwindling into silence; this, the presenter announced, was
the song of the dusky seaside sparrow, a species of which the last



survivor had died a few days before in its aviary at Disney World
in Florida. This sound would never be heard again on earth.
Edward, much affected, switched off the radio. The unutterably
sad sound of the sparrow lingered in his ears. His own
depression was compounded now with this global malaise, a
process he found paradoxically satisfying; it was acceptable to
weep for the dusky seaside sparrow, but not for oneself.

He went to bed, and lay awake. At one point tears rolled from
his eyes; they crept down the side of his face, and into his ears;
he continued to lie rigid. Tam snored at his feet.

Did you have a nice evening?'
'Quite,' said Helen.
'What's the matter?'

'Nothing.'
'There's no need to snap,' said Edward piously.
Helen poured herself another cup of tea in silence. The phone
rang. She jumped up. 'I'll go.'
Louise, in Camden, was in full torrent immediately. 'Is that
you? God! As if I hadn't got enough on my plate with Tim
throwing a mid-life crisis and Phil doing the disturbed adolescent
bit -- now if you please Suzanne comes in at three-thirty in the
morning, and me lying there sick with worry, she having never
thought to phone, and London with rapists on every street corner
or so one's told. And then her only response is to burst into
tears.'

'Why?'
'She's in love. I thought she was the one with some sense.' 'Ah,' said Helen.
'What's the matter?'

'Nothing,' stated Helen, 'is the matter.'
'Well, you're not being very sympathetic. I'll go, then. I only
wanted a shoulder to weep on. I've been awake all night and I've
got a hell of a day ahead, meetings from morning till night.'
Helen returned to the kitchen. The phone rang again. She said
to Edward, 'You can go this time.'

'It won't be for me.'
'Then let it ring,' said Helen.
Edward rose and went into the hall. He returned. 'It's that
man.'
'What man?'

The solicitor.'
Helen stared at him. The kitchen, which had been a uniform
grey, was dappled with sunlight, she saw; outside, a blackbird
sang.
'He's waiting,' said Edward. 'I suppose.' He dropped a half
eaten piece of toast into Tam's bowl.
Helen went back to the phone. 'Hello.'
'It's me -- Giles. Am I interrupting your breakfast?'
'No.'
'Bless you for helping me out with the Watsons. You were
heroic -- he is unstoppable, once in full flow. I saw you enduring.
But then you rushed off and left me without a chance to say the
most important thing of all . .
Edward appeared, clad for school, briefcase in hand, scowling.
'I'm going.'
'Excuse me a moment,' Helen said to Giles. 'I'll see you tonight then, Edward.'
He went out, banging the door.
'I'm sorry . . . Edward was just leaving.'
'Please give him my regards. We didn't get enough chance to
talk at your party. Anyway . . . the thing is, I have tickets for
the opera on Friday -- are you free? Don Giovanni -- it's the touring
company, you know, usually very good.'
'Well . .' she said. 'Yes. Yes, I'd like to.'

And so there shone yet another distant sunlit hilltop. How do
people endure this switchback of emotion? Helen wondered.
They have no choice, of course. She felt as though flung from
health to illness and back by the day, by the hour. She thought
of Giles Carnaby both continuously and not at all; he was
permanently in the head, but as some unavoidable elemental
force -- she could not consider him as a person, reflect upon



character or deeds. He was there, simply. For better or for
worse.
She telephoned Louise, who was grumpy. 'And the school
terms ends in another week, which means the children either
mooching around the house all day under-occupied or vanished
and one's wondering where the hell they are.'

'Is Suzanne still . . .?'
'Besotted. Yes, poor little wretch. Thank God one is beyond
all that. Getting older has some compensations. I occasionally
find myself eyeing some bloke and thinking I wouldn't mind
popping into bed -- but passion. . . no thanks.'

Edward's term too would end shortly. It was high summer. A
year ago Dorothy had been in the first, ominous stages of her
illness, furiously denying that anything could be wrong, her
normal ill temper exacerbated by discomfort and increasing
disability. It had not been a pleasant summer. Helen had
attended Dorothy and tried to be as patient as possible; the
doctors told her, privately, what to expect. Edward kept out of
the way. When confronted by his mother he was propitiating to
the point of servility.

'What's wrong with him?' demanded Dorothy. 'Why's he
being so obliging? I suppose he imagines I'm going to die or
something.' She laughed.

Edward had not taken to Giles Carnaby. His usual attitude
towards people casually encountered was one of absent-minded
indifference. In this case, though, hostility had festered. He told
himself that the man was arrogant, self-satisfied, and smelled of
after-shave stuff; Helen was an idiot to let him pester her like
this. Also he appeared to have corrupted her: she was alternately
prickly and forgetful. She snapped at Edward; there was no
bread. Edward, brooding, remembered a summer long ago when
Helen had brought back a schoolfriend and he had felt pushed
aside, abandoned. He saw himself then, and now, and did not
like what he saw.
Act One concluded. The curtain came down. Giles said, 'We'll
stretch our legs, shall we?' The little theatre was full; they joined
the crowd moving towards the bar. A woman alongside Helen
said uncertainly, 'Well! What a commotion!': the stated purpose
of the enterprise was to bring opera to those who do not often
experience it.
He went to buy drinks. Helen was greeted by an acquaintance; 'Hello! We spotted you from above -- we're in the circle. Isn't
that Giles Carnaby you're with? My sister knows him.' Helen
said 'Yes.' There was the slightest pause. 'He's very popular,
apparently,' said the woman, moving away.

Giles returned, his hands full. 'There -- worth the struggle,
let's hope. Well -- what do you think of it? Personally, I'm
wallowing. It never fails, with me. And this isn't a bad production
is it? Elvira is a bit weak, but the Don is doing fine, and the
orchestra has plenty of dash. And the best is yet to come.'

'The flames of hell . .
'Exactly. Operatic plots are so satisfying. Everyone getting
their just deserts. Perhaps that's the secret of its appeal -- opera,
I mean.'

'Oh no,' said Helen. 'It's the singing, so far as I'm concerned.'
Giles shot her a look tinged with disappointment. 'Well, of
course, yes. The music . .
'I don't mean music. I mean all that systematic expression of
emotion. That's why you come away with a sense of release.'
The look changed, rapidly. 'How true.' After a moment he
added, 'I don't know you all that well as yet, of course, but I
imagine you're not a person who throws emotions around,
yourself?'

'No, I suppose I'm not.'
Infinitely preferable,' said Giles. 'Operatic behaviour in real
life is intolerable, of course. One has experienced it occasionally.'

Helen nodded. An image flew into her head of Dorothy as
some Wagnerian virago; it was not entirely inappropriate -- there
had been a whiff of the Valkyrie about her mother, with her
alternating hairstyles of frayed bun or plait wound around the
head and tendency to long brown shapeless garments. She
smiled.

Giles also smiled, enquiringly.
'I was thinking of my mother. She was uninhibited in that
respect.'
'I wish I had known her. I get the feeling that I have missed
quite an experience.'
'Possibly,' said Helen.
'Well, at least she brought us together.' He beamed at her, and
took her arm. 'Come along -- they're ringing bells at us. Let's go
back in and wallow.'

He stopped the car outside Greystones. Only the hall light was
on, Helen saw; Edward must have gone to bed -- or at any rate
was in his room. She hesitated. Giles got out and came round to
open her door.

'Would you like to come in for a . . . cup of coffee or
something?'
'Do you think I should?'
The query seemed enigmatic. Not knowing how to deal with
it, she began to walk towards the front door. Giles followed her.
They went in. Instantly, Tam flew from the kitchen and
embarked on a histrionic welcome display. 'Be quiet!' ordered
Helen. 'Get down!' Tam continued his staccato barking. If
Edward had gone to bed he certainly would not be asleep. Helen
waited to hear a door open. The house remained silent. Tam lost
interest and returned to his basket. She led Giles into the kitchen.

'No coffee,' said Giles. 'Nothing, in fact.'
'Then we should go into the sitting room. It's not very
comfortable in here.'
'But I love your kitchen.'
Helen thought of his -- fragrantly warm, humming with
appliances. Behind her, both taps dripped. Tam was snoring.
There was a smell of rotting dishcloth. Like Dorothy, Helen and
Edward used swabs of mouldering grey stockinette; they festered
by the sink and were known as dead rabbits. She saw one now,
and shuddered.
'It has a sort of museum appeal. One almost expects a mangle,
or a posset stick.'

And me? thought Helen. Am I one of the exhibits? Of
nostalgic charm?
'The thing about you, Helen, if I may say so, is that you are
so refreshingly detached from all that one finds disagreeable
about contemporary life.'
'Unfashionable,' said Helen.
'Is that what it is? Then do please stay that way.'
'I doubt if there's much chance of anything else.'
Giles laughed. He moved closer. 'You're not acquisitive. You
appear to have no pretensions whatsoever. Your opinions are
your own. You're the most attractive person. And you seem not
even to know it.'
She stood there. He put his hands on her shoulders. And then
leaned forward. He laid his cheek against hers; she felt his
warmth, and smelled him. He turned his head and kissed her
cheek. At the same time his hand slid down her arm and reached
behind her; it slid swiftly over the curve of her buttocks. The
erotic effect was electrifying; it could not have been greater if he
had plunged his hand into her crotch.

He stood back, releasing her. 'What a lovely evening, my dear.
We must talk very soon. Don't let me out -- I know my way.
We've probably disturbed Edward as it is.'
She heard him close the front door gently behind him. She
continued to stand in the middle of the kitchen, ablaze.
'Where are all the dead rabbits?' complained Edward. 'There's
nothing to wash up with.'
'I threw them away. We're going to use those scourer things in
future.'
'Why?'
'They're more hygienic. And they don't smell.'
He looked affronted.
'Don't you ever realise,' said Helen, 'that the way we live is
unlike the way other people live?'
'On the whole I should have thought that was cause for
satisfaction.'
'Actually,' she continued, 'when I come to think of it -- you
never go into other people's houses, do you? Anyway, if a
sanitary inspector came in here I should think the whole place
would be condemned.'
'What else are you going to chuck out?' enquired Edward,
with resignation.
Helen sighed. 'Oh, I don't think I have the stamina for a full
scale assault. Aren't you going to be late? It's after half past.'
Edward glanced at her with reproach. 'It's the sports day.'
The Croxford House sports day, the culminating event of the
year and last) day of term, was his annual torment. All the staff,
whether sporting or not, were required to be in attendance.
'So it is,' said Helen. After a moment she added, in an offhand
tone, 'By the way, have there been any phone calls this week
when I've been out?'

'No.'

In other years she had displayed appropriate sympathy about
sports day. Edward, resentful, set off in an even more dour frame
of mind than usual. He knew all too well what to expect: several
hours of bad behaviour from the children -- over-excited and
freed from the constraints of routine -- and importunate conversation
from the parents. He would have to dredge up an interest
in his least favourite pupils and submit himself to a barrage of
child-obsessed monologues from people he barely remembered
from the year before. Parenthood brings out the worst, it seemed
to him; vicarious ambitions and frustrations raged all over the
lawns and games fields of Croxford House on sports day. The
sports were in fact more of a backcloth than the central event;
the real purpose of the day was for the parents to prowl around
the school inspecting the various displays of work set up in the
classrooms, and compare the achievement of their offspring with
that of others. They all expected each member of the staff to
express -- discreetly -- particular and intense interest in their
child.

The whole process was, it seemed to Edward, a fine manifestation
of the single-minded ruthlessness of species in pursuit of
survival and improvement -- if you considered Willmots and
Handley-Smiths and Stannards as species.
He arrived late. Things were in full swing. Posses of girls
rushed about shrieking. The parents moved in couples, greeting
one another with false enthusiasm and competing for the attention
of the staff. Mrs Fitton patrolled continuously, displaying a
feverish combination of anxiety and benevolence. From time to
time she hissed instructions at teachers or senior girls. Edward,
hoping to slink past unnoticed, was pounced upon and told to
hurry to his classroom, where the Lower Fourth had an exhibition
with a literary theme. Edward had conceived and arranged
the exhibition himself and was aware that it lacked verve: he was
not good at these things. In desperation, the previous week, he
had ordered the children to select a favourite passage from books
he had been reading with them, write it out in their best
handwriting and then add some comments on what they enjoyed
about the piece and about the book in general. Those with artistic
inclinations were encouraged to illustrate as well. Most of the
children said they couldn't remember any bits they liked; eventually,
with much prompting and nagging, everyone came up
with something. The results were pinned up around the walls of
the classroom. Edward, re-inspecting them, saw even more
clearly the perfunctory effect, and blamed himself. He sat down
gloomily behind his desk to await custom.
He knew that he would never have survived as a teacher in the
state sector: he was both not good enough and not bad enough.
He could never have been one of those charismatic men and
women who inspire and enthuse; equally, he could never have
achieved an indifferent acceptance of failure. At Croxford House
the luxuries of small classes and lavish facilities, plus moderately
compliant children, cushioned his inadequacies. Here, he was
not a particularly good teacher, but he was by no means a
disaster. He did the best he could. Quite often he enjoyed what
he was doing.

Not, though, at this particular time. Small groups drifted
through the classroom: mothers and fathers, large numbers of
children -- Edward's pupils along with older and younger siblings.
It was all very noisy. No sooner had Edward attended to
one lot than he was seized upon by another. In addition to the
literary exhibition the class performance lists were displayed, at
Mrs Fitton's insistence. Edward disliked these intensely. Croxford
House deployed a competitive system within which girls
were ranked according to performance in every conceivable area;
since intellectual ability was not all that highly valued, marks
were given for trying, for behaving well, for being punctual and
helpful and energetic and tidy, indeed for anything at all. These
various ratings adorned the walls. The parents studied them
intently.

Edward, spotting Sandra Willmot's mother, hastily crossed to
the other side of the room. He was at once ambushed by the
Stannards. Mr Stannard was a partner in one of the leading
county estate agencies; his name graced the pages of the local
paper each week, spread like a banner above photographs of
houses all priced, it seemed to Edward, at a quarter of a million
pounds. He was a big man, crammed into a tweed suit despite
the weather, and flanked by his wife, done up in what even
Edward recognised as a seriously competitive dress. Their daughter
Caroline lurked behind them; she was a small pale child of
determined anonymity. Edward rather liked her. She appeared
to have no qualities at all to speak of, either positive or negative,
and spent her time trying not to be noticed. He had made various
bids at drawing her out, to no avail; now he felt in sympathetic
collusion -- thus had he survived his own schooldays. Today the
entire Stannard family was present -- three more children, all
strapping creatures like the parents. Caroline, evidently, was the
runt of the litter.

'You've seen Caroline's display?' Edward enquired. Caroline
smiled wanly.
Her choice had surprised him. She had been the only one to
choose a piece from Alice in Wonderland. Mr Stannard was
inspecting it closely.

At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing
in his notebook, called out, 'Silence!' and read out from his book,
'Rule Forty-Two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.'
Everybody looked at Alice.
'I'm not a mile high,' said Alice.
'You are,' said the King.
'Nearly two miles high,' added the Queen.

Beneath this Caroline had written: 'I like this bit because it is
funny. The reason it is funny is because a person could not be a
mile high. I like Alice in Wonderland because of the funny
creatures and because they talk like people except it is not what
you expect. Mostly in real life you know what people are going
to say.'

Edward had been startled when first he read this. Now,
reading it again, he was positively awed. One could only pray
for Caroline, given her circumstances.
Mr Stannard turned from the display and said heavily, 'The
second line isn't good grammar.'
Edward explained that in order to encourage freedom of
expression he preferred not to jump on every solecism.
Mrs Stannard said, 'Don't you read Roald Dahl with the
children?'


Edward replied that he did not.
'He's very good, you know.'
Edward inclined his head, without comment.
The books from which the children had taken extracts were
laid out on Edward's desk. Mr Stannard picked up Alice, riffled
through the pages and put it down again. His expression was
that of a bibliophile rejecting a volume of neither commercial nor
idiosyncratic appeal.

'It's a classic,' said Edward craftily.
Mr Stannard's confident manner faltered for an instant. His
hand hovered over the book as though to give it a second chance.
'The boys adore Roald Dahl,' said Mrs Stannard. Caroline's
brothers grinned alongside her, clones of their father. Behind, an
older sister manifested sophisticated boredom.
Mr Stannard had turned his attention to the class performance
lists. Edward, knowing that Caroline's name appeared towards
the bottom of all these, sought a distraction. He tried to interest
Mrs Stannard in some art work.

'The best Caroline's done,' pronounced her father, 'is thirteenth
for effort.'
'It's a shame,' said Mrs Stannard. 'The boys were in the top
three for everything this term, and Emma had the tennis trophy.'
Mr Stannard shook his head. 'Is she being pushed enough, one
asks oneself?'
Edward, who could see Caroline cringing behind the blackboard,
lost control.
'Frankly,' he snapped, 'if I had my way those lists would go
into the dustbin, the lot of them. They serve no purpose
whatsoever.'
The Stannards stared at him, evidently rocked by this heresy.
Even the boys dropped their look of unshakeable well-being and
gaped.

'If a child can't see how it's performing,' demanded Mr
Stannard, 'how's it to know if it's doing well or not? Just tell me
that?'
'Achievement isn't necessarily measured by competition,'
returned Edward.
'Oh, I can't agree with you,' said Mrs Stannard. 'I mean, in

this day and age you don't get anywhere by just sitting back, do

you? We've always felt Caroline's got it in her if only she's
handled right.'
Mr Stannard was now contemplating Edward with the air of a
man who wonders if he is getting his money's worth. There was
a silence. 'Well,' continued Mrs Stannard briskly, 'we'd better
get on. We've not had a chance for a word with Mrs Fitton yet.
Nice exhibition, Mr Glover.'

The Stannards departed. Before Edward had time to simmer
down he was buttonholed by Mrs Willmot, who had been
lurking. Sandra was at her side, looking smug; her name topped
several of the lists. If that woman utters one word about God or
evolution, thought Edward, I shall do something irrevocable.
But Mrs Willmot had more important things on her mind, it
seemed: she wished to enlist Edward's support for the Parent
Teacher Association fund-raising concert in the autumn. 'Do you
sing, Mr Glover? We're in desperate need of a few more tenors
for the choir.' Edward declared himself without musical talents
of any kind. Sandra stood by, quietly amused: she wore a sugar
pink track suit with matching plastic hairslides in the shape of
elephants. Edward could see quite clearly behind her shoulder,
like the aura visible to spiritualists, the woman she would be in
thirty years time. There is probably nothing to be done about
people, he thought, nothing at all, nor ever has been: processed,
from the cradle to the grave. Most neither know nor care, which
makes it worse. Mrs Willmot was now going on about a film
evening in October: 'I thought you could lay on some nature
things -- I know that's your forte.' Sandra, from time to time,
performed a little pirouette, as though warming up for Swan
Lake. Nature, nurture . . thought Edward, and God knows
which does most harm. He had a sudden vision of families in
endless reproduction -- Willmots and Stannards and the rest
replicating themselves down the years, perfecting their most
infamous capacities. Sports like Caroline, of course, would be
quietly extinguished, a dead-end. And that, of course, was the
other side of the coin: what people do to their children. Wittingly
or not. He stood there in the crowded classroom, half listening
to Mrs Willmot, and thought of the inexorable process going on

all round him -- the lives whose courses were being decided at
this moment, behind the innocent-seeming chatter, the smiles,
the faintly carnival atmosphere of families having a day out. He
knew that those who are not parents only glimpse the awful
forces at work. Equally, he was never sure if he had missed
something or escaped it. He thought, inevitably, of his mother.
At the same moment he became aware that Mrs Willmot was
talking about Helen.

'I know your sister, of course. I see her in the library. Such a
nice unassuming person.'
Don't, thought Edward dangerously, patronise my sister.
'And we waved to each other last week at the opera. She was
with Giles Carnaby, wasn't she?'

'I believe so.'
'Charming man,' said Mrs Willmot. 'Slightly elusive. I've tried
without success to recruit him for the CPRE and the Friends of
Spaxton Theatre. Anyway, it was nice to see your sister looking
so relaxed.'
'She enjoyed the opera,' said Edward in frigid tones.
'Oh, of course -- it was super.' Mrs Willmot smiled knowingly.
'Well, I mustn't monopolise you. Now don't forget about that
film, will you? Come along, darling -- I want to see your art
display.'

Edward, his nerves jangling, turned to his next client.

When, by Thursday, Helen had heard nothing from Giles the
words that rang in her head began to turn from music to
mockery. 'I don't know you all that well as yet'; 'We must talk
very soon.' She ceased to savour them and tried to drive them
away. Unsuccessfully. Equally, half a dozen times a day she felt
again his hand on her, and she burned. She also raged. She raged
because she no longer controlled her thoughts or her body. She
felt humiliated. It seemed perverse that love -- if this was love --
should be a state traditionally celebrated in literature. She did
not feel as though she had anything to celebrate.

She went to the library with some relief. At least, there, one
was busy and distracted. During her lunch hour she shopped,

deliberately avoiding the part of town in which Giles's office was
situated. When she returned Joyce Babcock sought her out at
once.
'A man came in, asking for you.' Joyce's eyes glittered with
prurient interest.
'Oh?'
'Fiftyish. With that sort of greyish-silver hair. Very friendly.
We had quite a chat about the Lakes. He was asking for a fell
walking guide. Our only one is out.'
'That would have been my solicitor,' said Helen crisply. 'Giles
Carnaby.'
'He's very attractive, don't you think?'
'That's not the sort of thing I notice about a solicitor. Professional
efficiency is what one is after.'
'Well, I thought he was a real charmer. Lucky Helen, I
thought.' Joyce eyed her closely. 'He seemed very disappointed
to have missed you. I suppose there's a lot of to and fro over your
mother's affairs?'
'A fair amount,' said Helen. She began to sort through some
reservation cards. After a moment she added, 'Was he going to look in later? There is something we're supposed to discuss.'
'He didn't say,' replied Joyce. She continued to observe Helen
with attention. 'You could always ring him up at his office, of
course.'
'It's nothing that can't wait,' said Helen.
The afternoon progressed, but was moved now on to a
different plane, lit by the glow of expectation. Helen watched
the door, through which Giles did not come. She checked that
the fell-walking guide was indeed out on loan. Each time the
phone rang she reached it before Joyce. Eventually it was five
thirty. She drove home to find Edward returned from the sports
day.

'How did it go?'
'It was awful,' said Edward morosely. 'Worse than usual.'
'Well, at least you've got it over with for another year.'
'I suppose so.'
'Cheer up. It's the holidays now, at any rate.'
The six weeks of the summer school recess were the high spot

of Edward's year. He would settle down to a contented programme
of long walks, daily spells of observation in the Britches,
and some leisurely reflection on work projects for his pupils next
year. He usually also went off somewhere under the auspices of
some ecologically minded group. This year he was not doing so,
claiming that he had left it too late to make arrangements.

'You should get away for a bit,' Helen continued. 'Surely
there's still something you could fix up.'

Edward shrugged. Helen felt a wash of irritation. Come on
now . . . I have my own troubles. Edward made himself a cup
of tea and vanished to the Britches, where he stayed late into the
dusk. Helen listened to a concert on the radio, with the sound
turned low lest she should miss the phone ringing.
It did not ring. Neither then nor for the next four days. All
right, she said to her mother, who trailed Helen once more,
watching her with an impassive stare, all right -- you win.
Consider yourself vindicated.
Why, then, did he say those things? Do what he did?
Perhaps he didn't, said her mother. You always had a ridiculous
imagination, as a child.
I am not a child now, said Helen.
On the Wednesday of the following week Joyce Babcock said,
'That Lake District book's back, by the way -- Wainwright. I
should think you'd want to give your friend a buzz.'

Helen put the book on one side. It lay there, inescapable.
After lunch, she told herself -- at three, at four. Eventually, at
four-thirty, she telephoned Giles's office. 'Could I speak to Mr
Carnaby?' Her stomach churned.
'Mr Carnaby's away this week. Can I take a message?'
'Oh. It's not important. It's the library here, just to say the
book he asked for is in. Wainwright on fell-walking.'

'Oh, what a shame,' said the girl. 'I expect he wanted that for
his holiday -- he's up there now, in the Lake District. Anyway,
I'll tell him.'
'Thank you,' said Helen. She put the receiver down and placed

the book on the pile due for shelving. Where, later, Joyce would
see it, with tedious inevitability, and ask questions.
Funny he didn't mention, said her mother. That he was going
on holiday. You'd think he'd have said. You'd think he'd have
told you he wouldn't be around for the next week or two. More,
maybe. 'We must talk very soon'; so much for that.
Wonder who he's with? said Dorothy. He'd be with some
woman, no doubt, a man like that.
That's all he came into the library for, of course -- to get that
book. Not looking for you at all.
What's the matter, Helen? I know that po-faced look.

It turned hot. A sullen grey July gave way to sultry August.
Everything shot into growth, fortified by weeks of rain. The
Greystones garden was like a jungle, parts of it as impenetrable
as the Britches. When Gary Paget reappeared, offering his
services again, Helen accepted with alacrity. She had planted
some runner beans in the patch of the old vegetable garden he
had dug earlier; they were flowering energetically and seemed to
have been worth the trouble. She set him to work on a further
area of deep neglect. 'I'm afraid it's very weedy. You'll have to
dig it over more than once.' Gary, a stoically silent boy, merely
nodded. He peeled off his T-shirt, revealing a chunky tanned
torso that reeked of Lifebuoy soap.

Helen went into the kitchen and began to cut up onions. She
had bought a recipe book and was attempting a rather complex
casserole, involving red wine and many ingredients. When in
low spirits, seek gainful employment. The Lord helps those who
help themselves. The only cookery books at Greystones were
yellowing volumes from the twenties and thirties, smelling of
damp and telling you how to make spotted dick or pickle eggs in
isinglass. No wonder we have always eaten as we have, she
thought; if nothing else comes out of my malaise I may at least
learn how to cook in the spirit of the times.

She was struggling to cut the meat into what the book
described as bite-size chunks when Edward appeared at the
kitchen door.

'Why has that boy come back?'
'Oh, for goodness sake!' exclaimed Helen, maddened by the
recalcitrance of the meat as much as by her brother. 'He's come
back because I want him. And he's called Gary. You know that.'
'I simply don't see the point.'
'The point is to get things cleared up a bit. The garden is a
disgrace . '

'We could do it ourselves.'
'Yes. But we aren't going to, are we?'
'He's digging up all the groundsel. There'll be no cinnabar
moths next year.'
Helen flung down her knife. 'Oh, Edward, don't be ridiculous!
The point of a garden is to grow things. We'll have potatoes
instead of moths, which makes a lot more sense.'
He was panting, she now saw, as though he had rushed from
somewhere. He clutched the door frame. We're having a quarrel,
Helen thought. This hasn't happened in years. Whatever is the
matter?

Edward wiped a hand across his forehead. He walked into the
room and headed for the door, without looking at her. She heard
him cross the hall and go up the stairs. A moment later a flop on
the mat announced the arrival of the post. Helen stood over her
bleeding bite-size chunks of meat in a state of agitation; annoyance
with Edward was fused with some nameless, indefinable
anxiety. She went into the hall. She could hear Edward overhead,
moving about in his room. She hesitated. No, she thought,
he's being absurd. She stooped and picked up the post. There
was an electricity bill and a postcard from Giles Carnaby.

He said: 'I won't say wish you were here since it rains
incessantly and I am not a sadist. However, we contrive to have
a very pleasant time. But perhaps you too are kicking up your
heels elsewhere by now. If so, I hope all goes well. Do you know
this lovely spot?' It was signed, merely, Giles.

She turned the card over. Tarn Howe glowed beneath an
unsuitably blue sky.
Helen returned to the kitchen. She had forgotten Edward. She
put the card upright on the dresser and gazed at it.
We? said Dorothy. Who's we, I wonder? Funny he should
think you might be on holiday. He never enquired, did he? Take
it or leave it sort of fellow, if you ask me.
Be quiet, said Helen. She returned to her task. She chopped
herbs; she peeled mushrooms. Every few minutes she glanced
again at the postcard.

Upstairs, Edward sat on his bed. He sat quite still, with his
hands clenched in his lap. Tam, excluded, scrabbled indignantly
at the door. Eventually Edward heard, and let him in.

'What is this?' said Edward. He put his knife and fork down and
stared at his plate.
'It's called Boeuf something or other. Don't you like it?'
'It's very nice.'
'Then aren't you going to finish it?' she asked, a few minutes
later.
'I'm not particularly hungry. Sorry.'
Helen cleared the plates. 'Look -- I'll tell Gary to leave part of
the vegetable garden undug. For the moths or whatever. All
right?'
'It doesn't matter,' he said. 'It's not important.' He looked at
her -- evasive, placating -- and picked up the local paper. He
began to read a piece about the proposed transformation of a
disused mill into a luxury hotel. Helen started to say more, and
then changed her mind. Oh, Edward, she thought impatiently.

The days inched by. Helen went to the library, did what had to
be done, returned from the library. She persisted in her relationship
with the new recipe book; the kitchen at Greystones was
filled with strange aromas. She was experimenting with a risotto
when Ron Paget appeared at the door. He was so tanned that for
a moment Helen failed to recognise him. The whites of his eyes
gleamed from a chestnut face. He stepped into the kitchen and
put something on the table.

'Thought I'd bring round the little brown envelope -- for the

guttering and that.' He inspected the pan simmering on the
stove, and sniffed. 'Very nice. Pauline used to be keen on that
sort of thing, but she's gone off it since we gave up Italy as a
holiday venue. She's into seafood at the moment. We tried the
Seychelles this year. You ever been out there, Miss Glover?'
'No.'

'Amazing skin-diving. Quite something, let me tell you. I
should think your brother might fancy that, being as he's so keen
on wildlife.'

'I doubt it,' said Helen. 'Scotland's more Edward's line.'
Ron nodded sagely. 'It's pricey, of course, but I said to Pauline
-- come on, we owe it to ourselves.'
'I thought Gary was looking very sunburnt,' said Helen.
Ron laughed. 'Oh, Gary's been in Wales with the school
camping trip. I'm not for taking the kids on holiday. Grown-up
amusements, that's the idea. Pauline likes some fun at the discos.
Fair enough -- it's not exactly the bright lights living down here,
is it? I'm not fussed for myself, but Pauline's younger and she's
been used to town life, see what I mean?'

'Really?' No, Helen thought -- I will not ask where Pauline
hails from because that would prolong the conversation and
anyway I don't want to know.
'East Croydon, Pauline grew up. I daresay you're wondering
how we ever came to meet -- Club Mediterranee it was. I'd gone
along with some of the lads -- my first wife was never that keen
on travel -- and there she was. So abroad's always a bit nostalgic
for us. You going away this year?'

'No, I'm not.'
A strained expression appeared on Ron's face which Helen
eventually interpreted as being intended to convey concern, or
sympathy, or both. 'I've kept that bill as low as I possibly can,
Miss Glover. I think of you as a special customer.'

Helen turned to the stove; the risotto looked to be heaving
over-enthusiastically. She wished Ron would go. 'Very kind of
you. I'm-not doing without a holiday because I'm feeling hard up
though, but because I don't particularly want one.'
'Well, I suppose you don't miss what you've never had. You've
always been one for a quiet life, haven't you?'

This is impertinent, she thought. My mother would have
thrown you out by now. If indeed you had ever got in.
'Still -- it's never too late to break loose, is it?'
Helen faced him. Enough. 'Look, Mr Paget, I don't think. . .
'And you've got the means right there at the bottom of your
garden.' He waved a hand in the direction of the Britches. 'You
should give yourselves a chance, you really should. And I'll tell
you something else in my opinion there's going to be funny
things happen to the market in a year or so. You might see prices

fall.'
'That's a risk we'll have to take, then. I wish I could convince
you, Mr Paget, that we're not interested in selling the wood. Not
now and quite probably never. There really is no point in going
on about it.'
Ron shrugged. 'You're a mystery to me, Miss Glover, you
really are.' His glance strayed around the kitchen. Assessing the
extent of our poverty, thought Helen. Wondering how long we
can hold out. He moved towards the door. 'I'd say you could do
with a touch more garlic in that, by the way -- Pauline always
used to go quite heavy on the garlic. Cheers, then.'

Later that day, she went into the Britches. Edward had gone to
a meeting of the local ornithological society. Looking from the
sitting room window at the shaggy mass of the copse, she thought
again of Ron, and, on an impulse, opened the french windows
and walked across the garden to the gap that marked Edward's
comings and goings. She hadn't been in there for months. It
seemed a good idea to see what it was she was defending with
such tenacity.

Edward's regular trail led to the nest-box area in the centre,
where there were old trees and the open space with the big fallen
mossy trunk on which he sat. Helen, too, sat for a few minutes.
Less attuned than Edward to the internal noises of the Britches --
the birdsong, the hum of insects -- she was conscious of the
insistent presence of the world beyond. She heard distant traffic
from the road that skirted the far side of the wood; she heard
machinery and men shouting in Ron Paget's yard; she flinched as
an aircraft ripped the sky, miles above. When she got up and
walked again -- struggling through the exuberant growths of high
summer -- she noted Edward's recent efforts at clearance and
control. Left alone, the place would rapidly choke itself to death,
it seemed. Edward's interference in fact made adjustments that
favoured his own view of the direction nature ought to take;
nature itself generated a free for all. And in a free for all there
are those who survive and those who perish. Edward's attempts
to manipulate seemed both touching and, eventually, fruitless.
The Britches will outlast us both, Helen thought, carrying on in
its mindless way until scuppered at last by economic circumstances
and the likes of Ron Paget.

She started back towards the house. The telephone might ring,
with no one there to pick it up. She forged her way through the
tangle of growth and decay, thinking of Giles Carnaby.

ELEVEN
'I saw your friend,' announced Joyce Babcock, 'that solicitor.'
She watched Helen, covertly. 'Crossing Market Street. Going to
his office, I should imagine. He had a briefcase.'
Helen continued to check through a publisher's catalogue.
Quite calmly. 'Did you? He must be back from his holiday then.'
I wonder when? said her mother. Hasn't hurried to get in
touch, has he? It's Wednesday now. He'd have come back at the
weekend, most likely.
'I thought you'd like to know, anyway. Of course it's too late
for that book. But I suppose he might want it just to see what
he's missed. It's still on the shelf. Shall I put it in Reserve?'
'I shouldn't bother,' said Helen.

She took her lunch an hour late. There were some food items
to be bought; she was persisting, doggedly, with the recipe book.
She made her purchases carefully, forcing herself to consider the
quality of meat, to search out some stem ginger. Then she set off
back to the library. There were two routes she could take. One
kept to the main streets; the second, marginally shorter way,
passed through the side road in which Giles's office was situated.
She took this one.

They met, in fact, in the main shopping street, several minutes
from his office. She saw him from fifty yards away, coming
towards her; then he spotted her and when they came together
he was smiling and had a hand outstretched with which he took
her elbow. 'So there you are! What a nice surprise! You're not
off gadding somewhere, then. . . Did you get my card?'

'Yes. Thank you.'
'And you rang about that book. My secretary said. Bless you.
Frankly, with the weather the way it was fell-walking lost its

charms. We had to find other diversions. I was about to get in
touch with you -- there are faint signs of life on the part of the
Probate Office. Which way are you going?'
She walked beside him past Boots, past Baxters, past Rumbelows.
Giles talked about Rydal Mount and Ruskin's house. She
listened to him intently -- and not at all; I am not cured, she
thought, indeed things are worse if anything.
He halted. 'Well, I must leave you here. So -- I'll be writing
you a boring letter about business matters, but can't we meet?
Saturday I am tied up, but Sunday . . . How are you fixed on
Sunday?'
Helen said that she was not fixed on Sunday. Not at all.
'Then let us do something nice together.' He pressed her
elbow. 'I'll give you a ring. Goodbye, Helen.'

That was a bit of luck for you, wasn't it? said Dorothy. Running
into him like that. Good luck or good management. But now
you'll never know whether he'd have made a move or not, will
you?
Edward started to make unusual entries in his diary. All his life
he had kept a diary; it was a detached record of matters like the
arrivals of the first migrants, the occurrence of various plant
species in the Britches, and the prevailing weather. The years
went by in a bundle of exercise books, seasons succeeding one
another as flycatchers came and went, orchids were noted and
then vanished, temperatures varied from the normal. He himself
featured not at all. It would have been a sad disappointment to
anyone ferretting in the top drawer of his desk. He had at one
time suspected his mother of doing precisely this.

Now, no one would pry. Edward, alone in his room in the
long wastes of those summer days, looked back into the exercise
books and noted his own absence. The first chiff-chaff had shown
up exceptionally early in 1970, he saw; the last kingcup had been
seen in 1967. Neither of these facts seemed, now, of much
interest. He had been thirty-two in 1970; there had been certain

events that were crucial to his life. Suddenly he wanted to
recover his responses to these, not the arrival of the chiff-chaff.
He would have liked to be able to confront and examine his own
previous self. The diary was mockingly silent.
'August 15th,' he wrote. 'Cleared bramble from area by the
big beech. Very few speckled wood butterflies this year. Counted
four young magpies. Cool; thunderstorm p.m.' He put the pen
down. And so on and so forth, he thought. As though I did not
exist; as though it were an automaton who cleared brambles and
counted magpies. He began to write once more. 'Next year I
shall be fifty years old. I shall die when I am between seventy
five and eighty, in all likelihood; Helen will outlive me -- women
live longer, it seems. Neither of us will leave progeny. Less
successful, in that way, than anything around.' He looked out of
the window, at the fecund garden. 'If the purpose of life can be
said to be replication, then we have both failed dismally.' He sat
motionless, staring out at the Britches, for five minutes. He then
wrote: 'It is only so, of course, in a biological sense.'

'Had you forgotten?' said Giles. 'You hadn't -- oh good. And the
weather forecast is promising -- now, what do you fancy? A long
walk? Some gentle carriage exercise and a pub lunch?'
'I could make a picnic,' Helen said.
'What a lovely idea! Excellent! Should I collect you at about
eleven, then? In that case. . . Wouldn't your brother like to join
us.

She hesitated. 'I doubt it. But I'll ask.'

'I'm making a picnic. Giles Carnaby is coming. Do you want to
come?'

'No,' said Edward without hesitation.

Giles drove decisively, with a hint of aggression; the car was

powerful, and more fully furnished than any Helen had experienced. He put on a tape of Vivaldi and then switched it off
because he said they had too much to talk about. It was he, in
fact, who talked. He was a considerable talker, Helen realised.
What he said was informative if a touch inconsequential; you
didn't remember too much of it but the effect was cumulative. It
was a kind of verbal display; listening, she was disconcertingly
reminded of a bird idly preening, limbering up with bursts of
song, stretching a wing . . . It came to her, in fact, with dry
detachment, that Giles was a somewhat self-centred person.
Most of what he said pertained to himself. Occasionally he asked
a question or sought an opinion; you had the impression that the
answer had glanced off his surface. He appeared to listen with
flattering attention; you also felt that possibly he had not heard.
Perceiving all this, she knew also that it made no difference.
None whatsoever.
They had decided to make for a small river valley in which
there was an isolated church reached by a footpath across fields.
Helen had gone to some lengths over the picnic; the recipe book
included a relevant section, she discovered. Flaked tuna with
mayonnaise was new to her but she had managed and was quite
proud of the results. Giles, when they had parked the car, dived
into the back and produced a bottle of wine. They set off across
a water meadow rich with buttercups and decorated with Friesian
cows, like a television advertisement for some environmentally
dubious product: petrol or fast cars. A heron rose from the river
and flapped away into a clump of tall trees in the distance.
They inspected the church. Giles was not, evidently, much
interested in churches. Helen, for a moment, came into her own;
she pointed out salient features, found some medieval paving and
a battered Norman font. Giles listened -- or not -- and then put a
hand on her arm to steer her towards the door. 'Come on, I'm
starving -- time to find an idyllic spot in which to eat.'
The river seemed the obvious place. They chose a point at
which the bank reached steeply down to a pool, a slight bend in
the course having eaten away a miniature beach on the far side.
It was thick with alder and willow; the water, green and shaded,
flashed from time to time with coins of reflected sunlight.
'Perfect!' said Giles.

Helen unpacked the food. He poured the wine (he had
remembered glasses, too). They ate and drank, sitting tucked
into long grass that screened them from the river; they could hear
the flow of it, and the occasional plop of a fish. I suppose, Helen
thought, this is one of those moments in life that will live in the
head. Whatever comes of it. Giles declared the sandwiches
excellent. He ate everything she had brought, and then lay back,
glass in hand. 'What heaven!'
Helen said, 'We've got company.'
On the far side of the river a dog appeared -- a collie, leaping
in excitement. Followed at once by a young man, dark-haired,
sunburnt, wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
The man, if indeed he realised they were there, paid no
attention to them. He threw a stick into the river and the dog
went after it in a flying leap, landing with a huge splash and
paddling furiously, its black head sleek like a seal. It came out,
shaking so that water spun off in silver spray. The man threw
more sticks and it jumped again, ecstatic, diving and swimming,
in and out. And then he sat down and stripped off his shirt.

Now he's going in too,' said Giles. 'I wish he'd go away. Our
peace is wrecked.'
The man pulled off his jeans and stood up. He was naked. It
seemed to Helen that he must surely be aware of them; if so,
they were of no interest whatsoever. She heard Giles say --
embarrassed? -- 'A proper child of nature, evidently . . .' The
young man stood for a moment on an overhanging ledge of the
bank, looking down at the water; the dog swam round and round
below; the man's body was flecked all over with light and the
shadow patterns of leaves, so that he seemed some human
extension of the place. He was spare, muscular, young. Then he
threw up his arms and dived into the river.

He swam vigorously, ducking his head in the water and
flinging back his wet hair. The dog circled him, barking. At last
they both climbed out onto the little beach. The man dressed,
put on his shoes, stood up, and then bounded up the bank into
the field, followed by the dog. They were gone as suddenly as
they had come. The water of the pool was still muddy and
heaving where they had swum.

'I don't think I'd fancy it,' said Giles. 'Too much weed.'

It had been, while it lasted, electrifying; now, it was as though
neither man nor dog had ever been. The shape and texture of the
man's body were still before Helen's eyes, but as an image, a
picture once seen. Giles reached for the wine and emptied the
rest of it into their glasses.
She was intensely conscious of him. When his leg brushed
against her it seemed to bum her. I'm not sure how much of this
I can endure, she thought. She glanced at Giles; she had no idea
if he felt anything, or nothing. He was sipping wine and talking
about dogs. He had seen a sheepdog trial in Cumbria: amazing
creatures. It seemed to Helen that they might sit there thus for
ever. All my life, she thought, I have let things pass me by.

They were sitting side by side. She turned to face him. He
stopped talking and, presumably, saw. Afterwards, she thought
perhaps she had touched him, but could not remember. Giles
leaned forward; he took her face between his hands and kissed
her on the mouth. She felt his tongue. Then he drew back and
looked intently at her. 'Helen, my dear . . .' he said. He sighed, 'We mustn't . . .' He stood up. She heard herself say, 'Why not?'
but if the words reached him he made no sign. He began to pack
things into the picnic basket. He said, Now what I have in mind
is a stroll to the end of the valley just to see what goes on there,
then back to the car and home for tea, how about that?'
South of France anyway. The children are a pain, frankly, and
Tim has sinus and won't give you the time of day. So what's new
with you?'
South of France anyway. The children are a pain, frankly, and
Tim has sinus and won't give you the time of day. So what's new
with you?'
There was a spell of hot weather; mosquito larvae hatched in the
stagnant pond on the far side of the Britches. Some children broke in and trampled down the surviving patch of ramsoms. A
cat killed one of the young magpies. A decaying treestump
sprouted a collar of saffron fungus of a kind Edward had never
'I'm coming down for a night,' said Louise. 'Thursday. O.K.?

I've got to get out of London. The office can bloody do without

me for a couple of days. Everyone else is swanning around the
seen before. He observed all these happenings but wrote: 'Dogs:
four including the one that got run over when only six months.
Tam is fifth. I have always wondered if mother left the front
door open deliberately; he was a spaniel mixture, very nice.
Pickle was first -- tan and white terrier, died of cancer at eight.
Best, too, in many ways. Then Jess -- collie from Canine Defence,
had to be put down eventually. Then the run-over puppy. Then
Minnie -- terrier type again, very loving, strayed a lot, died
suddenly, probably ate something. Cats: the tabby next door,
when I was a child -- but of course that wasn't mine. Then the
ginger kitten I hid in the garden shed and mother found it and
there was a monumental scene and Helen called her a beast;
funny, I can hear it now, mother going on about the kitten and
Helen suddenly exploding and mother's face. It was Louise who
said things like that, not Helen. The kitten lived to be nine, so
came out of the whole business best, I suppose. Then Prince --
black and white tom. Then no more cats because of problems
with birds.' He paused. He pushed his chair back and wandered
around the room. Everything in it was old and shabby; little had
been chosen by Edward himself. There were some World
Wildlife Fund posters and a carving of a red-throated diver he
had once bought in Orkney. There was a small case of books.
The candlewick bedspread on his bed dated from his schooldays;
an area at the end was worn completely bare by the five dogs.
The rug on the floor had once been in his father's study. A
Victorian jug on the mantelpiece had been given him by Louise
one Christmas. The dressing-gown on the back of the door had
been bought by Helen to replace one twenty-five years old.

Edward returned to the desk. He wrote: 'I cannot sleep at
night. There is nothing to be done. The boy came again last
week.'

He could not remember now the precise moment at which he
had realised, once, time out of mind ago, that he found male
bodies inviting and female ones not. He could remember a period
of engagement with art -- with Greek statuary and the young
gods of Renaissance paintings, those bodies officially sanctified
on the page or given sexual neutrality as museum displays. Here,
you were licensed to admire without discrimination: the body as

aesthetic object, pure and simple. Edward had come to realise
that he found some bodies more appealing than others, and that
the contemplation of them aroused feelings that had nothing to
do with artistic appreciation. He made the connection between
these bodies and those he saw all around him -- clothed, partially
clothed, or unclothed in the roaring maelstrom of the school
changing rooms. He had had to conceal his revulsion at the
creased and thumbed photographs handed round from desk to
desk at school -- those grey girls with their balloon breasts and
gaping hairy forks. And presently revulsion gave way to indifference:
he ceased to see the flaunted female bodies of advertisements
and magazines because they had nothing to do with him,
they were irrelevant. It was other images, now, that disturbed,
from which he turned in anxiety and in guilt.

And, over the years, he had learned to avert his face, to
sidestep, to damp down the fires. On the rare occasions when
sharp eyes had penetrated his facade, when complicity had been
invited, he had fled in panic. When, once, he had thought himself
on the brink of an alliance for which he yearned, he was suddenly
and shatteringly rejected. Thereafter, he turned inwards.

Five days after the picnic Helen received a postcard from Giles
Carnaby. The picture was of a well-known local church. Giles
said: 'I can see I must brush up on my Perp and Dec if I am to
keep up with you. Thank you for a gorgeous outing. Will be in
touch very soon.' No signature.

You don't know where you are with him, do you? said
Dorothy. From one week to the next. Blowing hot and cold like
that. Time to put it to him, fair and square, I'd say. Mind, you
may not like what you hear.

She loomed large these days, as in the weeks after the funeral.
Her airy presence filled the house. Above all, her comments rang
in Helen's ears.

'Is Edward all right?' said Louise. 'There's something distinctly

odd about him lately, you know. I mean, even odder than usual.

He never was much like other people. And you're looking a bit
off-colour, to be honest. Seedy, as mother used to say. Not that
I can talk -- I've got almost as many spots as Phil. Maybe
adolescence is contagious. God -- what's going on here?'
They were walking through the village. Louise wished to visit
Dorothy's grave, where the memorial stone was now in place. A
confusion of lorries and cement mixers defaced the area just past
the green. Helen explained that someone was converting the
disused Baptist chapel into a house. They entered the churchyard.
She said: 'Is Phil still being . . . difficult?'

'Of course he's being difficult. And Suzanne. Do you know, I
am nostalgic for nappies and broken nights. I look in prams, with
a soppy smile on my face. At the time, I thought one had hit
rock bottom. There's a bloody great silent conspiracy that goes
on, and it's the conspiracy of those who've had children against
those who haven't yet. What you don't know, till you're in it, is
that it's a life sentence. The other thing of course is that you
haven't got any choice anyway, because the yen to have children
is about as basic as the yen to have sex. It's all devilishly neat.
Contraception is merely cosmetic. You breed, willy-nilly, and lo
and behold! you find life isn't ever going to be the same again.
Even mother -- even mother -- I now realise, must have gone
through some of this. Even mother must have had the odd
twinge, incredible as it seems. And the whole process is made as
simultaneously agonising and amazing as it could be -- you labour to give birth, that's the right word all right, and it's about as
ghastly as possible and then at the end there's this absolutely
wonderful feeling, that the conspiracy has never hinted at, when
you hold it and see it and you suddenly realise there's a whole
new emotion you didn't know anything about. Nobody's ever
mentioned that. And from then on you're done -- they've got you
by the short hairs. You're going to spend the next few months
hanging over them with your heart thumping in case they've
stopped breathing and the next few years after that stopping
them committing suicide because a perfectly ordinary house has
turned into a minefield of electricity and stairs and windows and
boiling kettles. Every day the newspapers are telling you what
happens to other people's children. They're being run over and
raped and burnt; there's leukemia and meningitis and muscular
dystrophy; it's all out there waiting to spring, if you're fool
enough to relax. But at the moments you wish you were shot of
the whole thing you know perfectly well that it's precisely because you couldn't endure to be without it, now you know
about it, that you've got to go through all this. You've lost your
innocence. And then they get bigger and they start thinking and
watching and you realise you're fouling them up yourself too and
there's not much you can do about that either. And you know
that at the same time as you could clout them you'd actually die
for them also if it came to the point. It's a fiendishly clever
system for making sure the human race continues and most
people over twenty never have a tranquil moment. God -- what a
spiel! I don't blame you for looking edgy.'

'Sorry,' said Helen. 'I didn't realise you were talking to me, in
fact.'
They had arrived at the grave. 'Do you think it's all right?'
Helen enquired, after a moment.
The stone? Fine. Nice lettering. Simple and straightforward.'
'It's considered a bit austere by some.'
'Of course. Look around. It sticks out. Offends against the
prevailing taste. Well, that would have given mother quiet
satisfaction.'
They stood in contemplation. 'You know something?' said
Louise. 'She's changing. In the head, that is. I'm beginning to
see her differently. She's losing her edge, somehow. Fading.
What about you?'

'Fading? I wouldn't say that, no. I'm seeing her differently. I
wouldn't say that I'm seeing her faded. Interesting. And even
more interesting is the way in which I see myself differently.
What I am and what I'm not, and why. All of which slots in
with what you've just been saying. Did mother foul me up? As
you put it. Or does one hammer the nails into one's own coffin?
As mother used to have it. Sorry about the language. Inept. It
slipped out.'

'What do you mean -- fouled up? You're not. .
'Of course I am. As are we all. To a greater or lesser extent.'
'Oh, gawd . . .' said Louise, turning from the grave. She


dumped herself down on the low stone wall that skirted the
churchyard.
Helen joined her. 'Mother, I now discover, once scuppered
my romantic prospects. Do you remember Peter Datchett? No --
I daresay not -- and in any case who's to say what would have
come of it? I might at this moment be living in anguish with
Peter Datchett. Perhaps I should thank mother. But one would
prefer to have made one's own mistakes. And there's the question
of the yellow muslin dress -- not on the face of it a central matter
but . . . but again there is this sense of one's fate having been
manipulated by another. By mother, to be precise.'

Louise was staring intently. 'I do remember Peter Datchett. I
always wondered why he disappeared without trace. What did
she do? And what yellow dress? I simply can't see you . .
'No, I'm sure you can't. And you would have been about
seven at the time. What bothers me is not so much the loss of either Peter Datchett or the yellow dress, but the awful glimpse
of my own acquiescence.'

'I don't understand,' said Louise after a moment.
'Why should you? Neither do I, in a sense. I see, simply, that
at some point I became pathologically compliant. The habit of
avoiding confrontation with mother became a habit of not
confronting anything. Of accepting without question. You used
to go on at me about getting out. You were of course entirely
right.'
'Oh, goodness. . . One said that sort of thing. I didn't always
mean . .

'It's all right,' said Helen. 'I'm not bemoaning the past. I'm
merely casting a beady eye on it. Hoping, perhaps, to learn
something.'
Louise, dissecting a cushion of moss, laid green fronds upon
her knee -- and switched tactics. 'What did mother do?'
'Oh -- failed to hand over a letter. A sin of omission rather than
of commission, quite possibly. One will never know. I'm more
interested now in what I didn't do. Put up a fight. Rage against
the universe.'

'You aren't that kind of person,' said Louise.
'Ah, there you have it. And why not?'

'Nor is Edward . . .' continued Louise, shredding the green
fronds, sweeping them to the ground.
'Precisely. Whereas you are. Odd, isn't it? I can see you now
-- it's my earliest memory of you, incidentally -- I can see you
now biting mother. Aged about one.'
Louise laughed. 'What did she do?'
'She put you in a cot and shut the door on you. You yelled for
an hour without stopping.'
'No wonder. It's surprising I'm as normal as I am. That we all
are.'

. . .' Helen rose. 'We'd better get back. I haven't done
anything about supper. Edward will be getting restive.'
'Where is he, anyway? He was around for five minutes when I
arrived and then he vanished.'
'In the Britches, I expect.'
'Edward's relationship with that place would keep half a dozen
psychiatrists busy. Oh, that sounds snide. It's not meant. You know. When I was little I thought the light shone out of Edward's
eyes. Now I get frightened for him. The world's a brutal place
and he wanders around worrying about toads and orchids. He
wouldn't have enough sense of self-preservation to come in out
of the rain. In the dark ages people like Edward got crucified or
burned as witches. He lives in a jungle today and he doesn't
know it.'

'Hardly,' said Helen. 'Here.' They were turning out into the
village street again now, leaving behind them the stone ranks of
the dead, with their propitiatory offerings of flowers and foliage.
A clutch of young mothers gossiped outside the shop, with
children eddying around them. Radio One leaked from the open
windows of a house.

'Of course. Social violence is universal, and I don't mean
mugging and burglary. A place like this has fangs like anywhere
else, given the circumstances.'
'Edward's rather popular in the village.'
'That's not what I'm getting at,' said Louise. She appeared to
lose interest in the subject and began to talk about Suzanne.
Suzanne wished to leave school at sixteen and become a hairdresser.
Louise fulminated. Helen heard Dorothy, twenty-three
years ago, screaming at Louise. Louise, glancing at her sister,
caught the silent comment and said, 'There is absolutely no
parallel. Mother was obstructing, purely and simply. I'm trying
to stop Suzanne making an idiotic mistake.' Then she started to
laugh and added, 'Do you always know what I'm thinking? God
-- it's as bad as marriage!'
By the time they got back to the house it was past eight. There
was a rich and spicy smell; Helen had left the dinner in the oven.
'Coriander . . .' said Louise, sniffing. 'You really are into contemporary
cuisine, aren't you? Mother would have a fit. Here -- I'll
lay the table.'
Edward came down from his room. Helen served the meal.
They began to eat. After a few mouthfuls Edward put his knife
and fork down and said, 'Oh -- the lawyer rang. Half an hour or
so ago.'
'Funny time to ring up,' said Louise. 'Out of office hours.'
Edward started to eat again. 'She goes to the opera with him.'
Louise turned sharply to Helen, who felt herself turn a
treacherous red. 'What's all this?'

'And picnics,' said Edward.
'The probate thing will be sorted out in a month or so,' said
Helen in strangled tones. 'Apparently.'
'Picnics?' demanded Louise. 'Picnics where?'
'He uses after-shave stuff,' said Edward. 'I don't really like
him.'

'So what?' snapped Helen.
Louise, wide-eyed, looked from one to the other. 'What on
earth is going on?'
'Nothing,' said Helen, 'is going on.' She got up. 'Would
anyone like some more of this?'
Louise turned to Edward. 'What did he want?'
'He didn't say,' said Edward smugly. 'He just chuntered on a
bit and then rang off.'
Helen dumped a spoonful of stew on to each plate except her
own and sat down again.
'This is delicious,' said Louise, in a social tone. 'You must give
me the recipe.'

After three days Helen dialled Giles Carnaby's number. There
was no answer. The next evening, too, he was out. She rang his
office, and then panicked at the secretary's voice, and put the
receiver down without speaking. This, she thought, is how
adolescents behave; to this is one reduced.

'I hate August,' said Joyce Babcock. 'Nothing but overdue books
and kids fooling around. And the town jammed with coaches.
Nothing happens in August. Everyone's away -- even the people
you never think you'd miss, like the neighbours. I've not spoken
to a soul in the last fortnight, except for you -- sorry, no offence
meant. No, I tell a lie -- I saw Kate Blackford outside Marks. You
know -- from Oxford Central. She's living up here now. So we
had a nice chat. Oh -- and this'll interest you -- while we were
talking who should go past but your solicitor friend. Again. I'm
always seeing him, aren't I? Anyway, he didn't see me but Kate
recognised him too -- her sister works in his office, apparently.
And the thing is he wasn't alone, he had someone with him --
that woman who runs the Choral Society, I can't remember her
name, with black hair, youngish. And Kate says her sister says
he's quite a one for the ladies. Apparently he led his wife an
awful dance. You know his wife's dead? Apparently she was ever
so nice. Anyway, I thought you'd be interested.'

I know, said Helen to Dorothy. Of course I know. I've always
known, probably. It makes no difference. Unfortunately. No
difference whatsoever.

And how do I know she's not just a friend? Like I'm just a friend.

Why did he send another postcard? Telephone? He didn't have

to. And of what value is the testimony of Kate Blackford's sister?
Why does he not telephone again?

'So . . .' said Louise. 'Back in the nest. Where things have not
changed. Tim has seen a new specialist and is going in to have
his tubes drained. Phil disappeared for twenty-four hours and
had me ringing up the local police station. Who demonstrated
what you might call a profound lack of interest. So I took it out
on Phil when he did show up which was natural enough I
suppose but probably unhelpful. Now he's off again. God knows
where. It was lovely seeing you. Listen -- what is going on? This
bloke . . . You haven't gone and fallen, have you? I remember
him now. The Older Man type who came to the funeral. I know
you were getting pissed off with Edward needling you like that,
but you can tell me, surely. I worry about you.'

'Continuing humid,' Edward wrote. 'Cuckoo-pint in the corner
near the road has increased -- eight specimens this year. Wood
spurge also doing better. Green woodpecker fledglings have
flown. Neither spurge, cuckoo-pint nor woodpeckers will feel
satisfaction at this, of course, nor indeed anything at all; they
exist, simply, and that is that. Exist, replicate -- if circumstances
permit, and expire. The entire wood does that and nothing else,
year after year -- the dominant emotion is fear. When it sings and
blossoms in the spring it is not happy; it merely does what its
genes tell it to do. Such subtleties as happiness and misery are
contributed by me, along with satisfaction at increase of cuckoo
pint and survival of woodpeckers. The point of all this being that
. . .' He put down his pen and stared out at the Britches, which
shifted gently and continuously in the light wind. Edward was
not a great reader but he knew quite well that he was broaching
the oldest and most central concern of literature; he felt appropriately
diffident. . . I don't know if it is a comfort or a mockery.
The beauty of it. The permanence. Everything that is in my
head, everything that I feel; the fact that the natural world thinks
nothing and neither laughs nor cries.' He pondered again.
'Though that is true only up to a point -- last year after the dog
fox was killed on the road the vixen called for three nights, the
saddest sound I ever heard.' He paused again. On his bookshelves
were the tattered copies of Tarka the Otter and the works of
Cherry Kearton that he had read and re-read as a schoolboy,
weeping the while. 'But is the vixen sad or do I attribute sadness
to her? All that can be said for certain is that I respond to all of
it -- vixen, trees, plants, birds, the lot -- but it does not respond
to me.' Tam, who had been sleeping on the bed, woke suddenly,
scratched himself, jumped down and marched to the door, where
he stood, whining imperiously. 'All right,' said Edward. 'In a
minute.' He wrote: 'And also that it sustains me, in ways that I
can't explain. Especially now. Things still bad. Not sleeping etc.
Was churlish to Helen.' Tam, at the door, continued to whine.
TWELVE

I suppose, Helen thought, that the interesting thing about my
condition is the loss of self-control. Eventually one will see this
as interesting rather than demoralising. It will be possible to look
back and observe that those in love become utterly self-destructive.
Oneself in love. At the moment I can no longer act with
common sense and deliberation, because there is only one course
open, and that is determined by obsession. I am obsessed by
Giles; all I can think of is whether I shall see him again, and
when. What the outcome of seeing him might be is beside the
point; I have become incapable of calculation. Normally behaviour
-- or at least my behaviour -- is governed by certain processes;
weighing one course of action against another, thinking about
consequences. In this predicament, one does nothing of the kind.
One responds to some basic drive, like an animal. In youth, I
found this exhilarating, I remember.

She tried, as therapy, to recall previous experiences. She was
probably, she realised, shorter on this than most people. Apart
from that early sexual encounter, which did not count as love,
there had been Peter Datchett and two others. With Peter
Datchett, it had been a question of ripening interest rather than
obsession. The others, in so far as she could recover her feelings
of the time, seemed to have involved love -- inflammation of the
senses, certainly. At eighteen -- the period of the mousseline de sole dress -- she had found herself hanging around a certain area of
Twickenham, where they were then living, in the hopes of
encountering the doctor's son, with whom she had had a strangled
conversation at some social gathering. He had subsequently
taken her to the cinema, where she had been startled to feel his
hand creep into hers. Four weeks later she had seen him in the

cinema queue with another girl, and had perceived that her day
was over; in between, she had known disorientation and obsession,
diagnosed her trouble, and felt exhilarated. Later, in her
twenties, she had become quietly and patiently infatuated with a
married colleague. The man had never behaved towards her in
other than a friendly and decorous way; nevertheless, she
burned. When after a year he moved away to another job, she
felt acute distress and thought continuously of him for many
months. It was that experience, in recollection, which most
closely reflected her present state.

Late one afternoon Giles came into the library. Helen had
taken over the 'Returned Books' counter temporarily from one of
the juniors and looked up to find him standing in front of her,
smiling.
He held up empty hands. 'I'm not a customer. Nothing to
declare. But I did have something in mind -- a biography of
Mahler.'

'We have Donald Mitchell. I'm not sure if it's on the shelf.
You'll find it in. .
'I'd hoped for personal service,' said Giles.
Helen glanced round. 'When Janice comes back from her tea I
can hand over here.'

'Good. I'll fend for myself till then.'
Five minutes later she joined him in the Biography alcove. 'I'm
sorry I was out when you phoned -- Edward did remember to
tell me this time.'

'Did I phone? Yes, so I did -- this week has been hectic, though
not in any interesting way. Nothing to report on your mother's
affairs, I'm afraid. Now -- what do you advise? Mahler is out.
Shall I embark on two volumes of Henry James?'
They discussed books for a few minutes. Giles made his
selection. He glanced at his watch. 'I must be off. Choir night,
so I get myself an early supper. Thank you for your invaluable
help -- what luck to find you. I was afraid I might have struck
one of the days you aren't here.'

There was to be no arrangement made, then. Choir night.
Helen thought of the dark woman; in the mind's eye she saw her
-- laughing and talking with Giles. She felt a gust of despair. For

a moment she was quite faint; the library rocked around her --
the browsing readers with shopping baskets set down beside
them, the books in their bright rows, the humming strip lights.
She took a deep breath, gathered herself, the room settled; Giles
was tucking his pile of books under his arm, picking up his
briefcase. She said, 'Then what were you telephoning about?'
'About?' He looked at her in surprise. And something else:
something chilly, something that warned. Stop, she told herself,
stop.

And continued. 'If there's nothing to report. .
'Oh,' said Giles. 'Yes . . . Let me see now, what did I have in
mind? Mahler, perhaps. And to say thank you for that lovely
picnic. I was telling Edward about the heron we saw.' He was
about to go; he turned to her. Well -- goodbye, my dear, he was
about to say, so glad I found you. And would be gone, leaving
her to stare into blank days ahead. No, she thought, no.

'I should like to see you,' she said.
'Helen . . . Of course.' He laid a hand on her arm, placating.
'Very soon. It's difficult to talk here, isn't it? And I have the
blessed choir. We must organise something -- very soon.'
'And you've given me the impression you wanted to see me,
too.' Appalled, she heard herself forge on.
Tut my dear . . .' A woman edged past them into the alcove,
murmuring apologies. Giles continued, his voice losing its solicitous
intimacy. 'We must talk again. Soon. Definitely. And thank
you again for your help.' He smiled: a public, neutral smile. The
woman looked at them for a moment over the book she had
pulled from the shelf.

He went. 'I can never find R to Z,' said the woman plaintively.
'Something funny happens after P.' Helen supplied assistance.
She could hardly hear the woman's queries; her stomach twisted;
his bland little words ticked in her head -- soon, very soon. Well,
said her mother, I should think you may have gone and done it
now.

She was having dreams of unabashed sexuality. It was not Giles,

though, who featured in these dreams. She consorted, these
nights, with strangers -- men who were temporarily vivid when
she awoke but who faded as the day progressed until, after a few
hours, they vanished entirely. Since the picnic, the young man
by the river had joined her twice; she herself, interestingly, had
not been the Helen of today but her own younger self and indeed
not even that -- some other girl who was both alien and deeply
familiar, a doppelganger, a mirror-Helen. She had bathed naked
from a deserted beach with this man, and lain with him afterwards
among sand-dunes. In the morning, while the dream
remained with her, she felt searingly deprived, as though she had
been abandoned, as though she had lost someone known and
loved. And the loss was in part the loss of some aspect of herself,
as irretrievable as past happiness.

She remembered that somewhere Dorothy had kept old photograph
albums and, on a whim, began to search for them. They
were not where she had expected to find them, in the big tallboy
in the sitting room, in which lurked an unvisited confusion of old
magazines, moth-eaten balls of knitting-wool, paper patterns,
Edward's school reports, Louise's sketch pads, buttons, string.
She ran them to ground eventually in the bottom of Dorothy's
wardrobe, an area she had not yet steeled herself to clear. Pulling
them from under some old blankets, she sat down on the bed and
began to leaf through the pages: photographs fell out, battered,
uncherished, not stuck-in -- this was no lovingly tended relic.
Here was a curly-haired Louise, smirking in a sunsuit on a grey,
shingly beach; here was Edward in knee-length shorts, hair
clipped to his scalp and ears sticking out. And here was Helen, a
forgotten Helen with anxious chubby adolescent face, wearing a
crumpled cotton dress and tilted sideways -- her mother had been
a careless photographer. All these prints, indeed, were under- or
over-exposed, with their subjects askew; heads were chopped off,
feet and hands loomed giant in the foregrounds. Nevertheless,
photographs had been taken; there had been a deliberate attempt
to record, to retain. Helen, shuffling through them, remembered
Louise in the churchyard: even mother must have had the odd
twinge . . .

Here was her father, too. Always on the edge of things. He
stood diffidently to the side of a group, or featured as a

background -- the pair of legs clutched by baby Louise, a blurred
figure in a field beyond Helen and Edward who sat on a rug
eating sandwiches. That particular snap prompted the memory,
the afternoon returning as she stared at it -- the sandwiches had
been of marmite, Edward had found a hawk-moth caterpillar.
But what was their father doing, lurking indistinctly over there
under a tree? That Helen could not remember. And nowhere did
he appear alone: never, it seemed, had Dorothy turned the viewfinder
of the old box Brownie deliberately upon her husband.

Equally, she was absent herself; naturally enough -- she had
been the photographer. At the back of the album was a clutch of
glossy professional pictures, and in these Dorothy could be
found, glaring out from Louise's wedding group, standing rigid
beside Edward on his graduation day. For both occasions she
had worn the same hat -- an uncompromising chenille turban;
Helen had disposed of it a month ago with the rest of her things
and, as she looked at the photographs, felt again the curious dry
but slimy touch of it. And there also, in an earlier picture, was
the brown bear fur coat: Dorothy, flanked by Helen and Edward
as children, stood on a pavement against a background of London
taxis and buses -- they must have been caught by a street
photographer on one of those pantomime or ballet outings.
Dorothy looked determined rather than festive; she would have
been in her forties at the time but already stood as though
planted, like an elderly woman. She had never seemed young,
Helen realised; not even in the haziest reaches of recollection.

But it was not for Dorothy that she searched, nor even for her
father. She hunted herself, putting aside all those pictures in
which she appeared -- not as child but as a grown woman. There
were not so many. The sequence ended abruptly in the late
fifties; the camera had packed up. Helen could even remember
the occasion; the shutter jamming, her mother's fit of temper, the
thing flung into the dustbin. And never, of course, replaced;
such a purchase would have been an unjustifiable extravagance.
The last photograph of herself showed her at about twenty-five,
here in the garden at Greystones, sorting apples into baskets.
Clearly Dorothy's principal intention had been to record the
apple harvest -- a prodigious one; Helen's presence was incidental,
like one of those figures introduced for purposes of scale or
composition. But she had turned her face to the camera and it
had caught a look that she could find nowhere else and indeed
that seemed to belong to another girl; she barely recognised
herself. She saw a person who was young, yes, but -- more than
that -- who wore an expression of arresting vivacity and expectancy.
And who looked thus at her mother -- what had she seen?
Of what had she been thinking? Helen turned the picture over
and saw that Dorothy had pencilled on the back '181bs Laxtons;
271bs Coxes.' One of those trees had blown over in a storm a few
years later; the other survived as a diseased and sterile relic.

She sat on her mother's bed and studied her own distant and
alien face. The eyes, indeed, met hers -- alive, expectant,
vulnerable. She felt as though confronted by a child: it'll be all
right, she wanted to say, I'll see that it's all right.
A letter came from Giles: a typed, official letter concerning her
mother's affairs. But folded within it was a handwritten note --
'So good to see you at the library, albeit briefly. Though I
thought you seemed not quite yourself, and trust all is well now
-- do let me know if there is anything I can do. Yours affec.
Giles.'
What am I supposed to make of this? she wondered. And with
the thought came a spurt of irritation. I am supposed to make
anything, or nothing, of it; obscurity and ambiguity are built in,
whether deliberately or because that is his habit. Just as he has
behaved since we met in a manner that avoids interpretation.

She telephoned that evening, before she could change her
mind. She picked up the receiver without planning what she
would say.
'This is Helen.'

There was no hesitation, no coolness to his voice. 'How nice --
and how are you? You've had my letter? As I explained -- we
should be able to get those shares transferred next month, and
then you can go ahead and sell them, or re-invest or whatever
you wish. It might be as well to. .
'I understand,' she said. 'And thank you for your note.'
'Ah .
'There is, in a sense, something you can do. Perhaps we could
meet.'

Giles said at once, 'Of course. Let's see . . . Tomorrow? What
about tomorrow -- Saturday? I am bespoke in the evening, but
the daytime is free, once I've done my domestic chores. Why
don't we have a pub lunch and a breath of fresh air somewhere
pleasant?'

He had suggested the landscaped grounds of an eighteenth
century house, noted for their expression of the picturesque: 'I'm
not a great one for stately homes, but you can have a good walk
there.' They had lunched in a crowded riverside pub, where
Giles had talked smoothly and continuously on a general level.
He continued to talk thus now, as they walked down the grand
vista, away from the formal gardens and into the woodland rides,
where classical figures loomed from the undergrowth and the
serpentine rill wound away towards a distant temple. They
stopped at the balustraded terrace overlooking the small lake, and
leaned over; below, enormous golden fish lay around in the green
water.

'Carp?' wondered Giles. 'Or orfe, are they? There's something
called an orfe, isn't there?'
Helen said, 'I think I should find myself another solicitor.' She
had not considered the words; they arrived, simply, and once
said, seemed right.
He turned to her. She saw him, for the first time ever, startled.
There was a sudden nakedness to his face. Then the nakedness
was covered: he had seen what lay ahead. He said, with
deliberate care, 'But of course, my dear, if you feel we are not
coming up to scratch. You have a perfect right.'

'It's nothing to do with professional things. It's because I am
in love with you.'
There was a silence. 'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Giles. He
sounded entirely artificial. He looked down at the fish. 'My dear
Helen . .

'Which is my fault,' said Helen. 'But it makes life difficult.
And I have to say that although what I feel is my fault, and my
responsibility, you have, up to a point, encouraged me. Or at
least you have left me not knowing what to think.'
Giles sighed. 'Then I am to blame. Please let me say, Helen,
that I have the very greatest affection and respect for you. Please
realise that. I value your friendship enormously, and I'd hoped
to continue to do so.'
She watched the fish. Carp, or orfe. They lay at angles to each
other, drifting very slowly so that the gold-splintered pattern of
the lake changed continuously. She heard what he said and she
thought, so that is how it is, and how it is going to be. She felt
nothing very much, except the sense of moving inexorably from
one moment to the next, and accepting what each brought. She
followed the slow gyration of one very large, cream-coloured fish
and said, Tut you aren't in love with me, which would make it,
I'm afraid, an awkward friendship. Of course, my feelings may
change -- I'm well aware of that -- in which case all this will seem
rather silly. I'll probably wish I'd never mentioned the matter,
but it seems necessary to me at the moment, so there it is. What
isn't very important to you has become important to me --
disturbingly important. There is an imbalance, and I feel that I
can't allow it to go on. For my own sake, I suppose.'

It was surprising how easily the words came, now that she had
allowed them. She did not look at Giles at all as she spoke and
the sentences piled one upon another, without restraint, like a
flow of thought; there was even a low level of enjoyment in the
sense of release.

'Another woman would cope with this differently, I daresay.
You have appeared at a time when things are rather . . . odd.
For me, I mean. Maybe that's partly why I've reacted like this.
I'm conscious of not abiding by rules, in saying all this. You'd
much prefer that I didn't.' She caught, out of the corner of her
eye, his gesture of disagreement. He started to speak but she
interrupted. 'Don't think, though, that I am dishing out blame.
The problem is -- has been -- that what was one thing to you was
quite another to me. Probably I misinterpreted, from time to
time. Thought you meant things you didn't mean.'

She paused, and Giles leapt in at once. 'I am at fault. The

trouble is . . . my trouble is . . . Oh dear. I'm susceptible, I
suppose. Even now I'm finding your honesty charming. Does
this really have to end our friendship? Surely not. As you rightly
say, your feelings may change. Oh -- will change, certainly.' Was
there an edge of doubt or complacency to his tone?
'I don't really think,' said Helen, 'that either of us would feel
very comfortable after this.'
Giles sighed. 'You're so much nicer than I am, Helen. You
make me seem insincere. But I'm not, you know. I'm just . . .
well, I meet someone like you with whom I feel instant affinity,
to whom I'm instantly attracted and . . . I get carried away, I
suppose. It isn't insincerity. It's . . . susceptibility. A weakness,
I suppose, but there we are.' He turned on her a rueful expression
-- rueful but placating, like a boy caught out in a misdemeanour.

She was to be wrong-footed, she saw: made to feel ponderous,
portentous. 'I never saw you as insincere. Merely perplexing, at
times. At least perplexing to me, but that is probably to do with
my own shortcomings. In relationships, that is. That's what I
mean by things being different for you than for me.'
She was watching the fish again. And now she caught him in
another gesture, but a surreptitious one this time -- the quick
shooting of a cuff to glance at his watch.
At some other level of consciousness she registered amazement,
a flick of anger, and the distant recognition of her own recovery:
eventually, she would remember that movement. A pair of
collared doves were moaning in the trees overhead; the day was
absolutely still -- sunless and oppressive.
Giles laid his hand on her arm. 'You know, I have this feeling
that too much introspection will get us nowhere. Shall we move?
I'm getting rather tired of these fish.'
They walked on into the thickening woodland. Giles still had
his hand under her elbow; she stopped to adjust the strap of her
sandal as a pretext to shake it off. I can get through all this, she
thought, so long as he doesn't touch me. I think I can.
They were following the concrete channel of the serpentine
rill, which emptied itself into a pool of stygian blackness. Giles
paused to peer into it. 'No fish. Really, this place can be


extraordinarily melancholy on occasion. Perhaps I shouldn't have
brought you here.'
'I would have said what I have if we'd gone to a fun-fair,' said
Helen.
He laughed. 'There! That's what's so engaging about you --
but of course you're the one person who can't see that. I hope I
am not to be cast absolutely into the outer darkness, Helen -- I
should find that very wretched.'
I see, she thought, he is to be the one who is rejected; that is
how it is to be.

They came out into the open. A little temple presided over a
sloping hillside with a prospect of open fields and river lined with
reeds and willows. A pair of swans cruised, with cygnets, and
swallows were zipping to and fro above the water.
Giles said, 'Something's on fire.'
'Stubble burning.' Helen realised now that the sky was overcast
not by cloud but by hanging palls of smoke. The edges of
the landscape fumed. At the far end of the valley, beyond the
river and the water-meadows, was a rim of red; they could hear
crackling.

'It's a disgrace,' said Giles. 'It's been allowed to get quite out
of hand. There should be new legislation.'
They walked on, past a classical arcade, past an Apollo and a
sequence of nymphs. Waterlilies swung at the edge of the river;
willows rained down. The air was now quite acrid; Helen saw
that the sleeve of her shirt was covered with dark specks of ash.
Giles was talking of childhood holidays in Devon; hayfields filled
with wild flowers, corn-sheaves, butterflies. A vanished countryside.
And horse-drawn waggons and smocked farmworkers, I
daresay, thought Helen: everything is embroidered by recollection.
Even today, no doubt. Eventually.

They reached the car. He drove her back to Greystones, still
talking fluently of things that mattered not at all. As he opened
the door of the car for her to get out he smiled, a smile that
appeared eloquent both of regret and appeal. Then he laid his
hand on her shoulder for an instant, got back into the driving
seat, and was gone.
She walked up the path towards the front door. You could
smell burning here, too. The sky above the Britches was sepia
coloured, as though a storm were imminent. She registered all
this, opened the front door and knew also, immediately, that
there was something alien about the house. She called 'Edward?',
and then remembered that he had gone out with the ornithological
group. She walked into the kitchen and Phil was sitting at the
table.
He got up. His green crest, she saw, was now tinged with
brown at the roots. So it did grow out. He looked extremely
unhealthy; the anxious eyes of a child peered at her from a white
mask. He said 'The front door was locked, so I got through the
window at the back. Edward wasn't there either.'

Helen removed her coat and filled the kettle. She felt an
unusual surging lust for a cup of tea. 'We weren't expecting you,
Phil.'
'I thought I'd come and stay here for a bit. You and Edward
don' min', do you? I mean, I thought since it's my house, sort of,
it would be all right. But if you don' wan' me I'll go somewhere
else. I mean, I don' care one way or the other. Fact is, I'm a bit
pissed off at home.' He watched her, tensely; his eyes were those
of a five-year-old.

She took two cups and saucers from the dresser and put them
on the table; she got the milk from the fridge. 'That's all right.
You can stay if you want to. I'll find some sheets presently and
you can make up a bed in the spare room. But I do think you
should tell your parents. Ask your parents,' she amended.

'That's fine,' said Phil. 'I rung mum. She said it sounds like a
good idea, till I get myself together.'
'She did, did she?' said Helen in a different tone. The kettle
spurted. She made the tea, poured two cups.
'Thanks,' said Phil.
Helen took a gulp of tea, and felt herself begin to rally. She
looked at Phil; he was encased from top to toe in black leather, as
always. 'Don't you want to take your jacket off -- you must be
awfully hot?'

Phil, vaguely, shrugged off the jacket which fell to the floor
with a metallic clatter. Beneath it he wore a T-shirt of quite
astonishing filthiness.
'The thing is, I'm not getting on with Mum and Dad. I mean,
we're all pissed off with each other.'
'That can happen.'
'spect,' he continued magnanimously, 's'partly my fault too.'
'I daresay,' said Helen. After a moment she added, with
sudden hope 'What about school? Surely the term starts soon.'
'I can't remember,' said Phil evasively. 'Anyway, that's not
important. The thing is to get myself together. I got problems.'
Helen refilled both cups. Phil slurped his with one gulp. He
seemed restored; his crest stood perkily again. 'I got to sort
myself out, see.'
'Well,' said Helen. 'We've all got problems, but you're welcome
to stay here for a bit.'
Phil looked at her over his cup with kindly reproach. He
ignored the first part of her statement. 'Thanks, Helen.'

'Actually,' said Louise, 'it's the perfect solution. I don't know
why I didn't think of it myself. I mean, you and Edward aren't
involved emotionally like we are, and he's not going to get up
your nose in the same way and I'll know where he is and that
he's all right. It's the obvious arrangement. At least he rang.
Though of course you would have done anyway. Not that he
was what you'd call forthcoming. A series of grunts, which is
mainly what I get these days. There are points when I wonder if
he actually hates me, or if he's not yet got beyond the level of
contempt and indifference. I look at him -- when I can bear to
and frankly if you can persuade him to use a clean T-shirt you'll
be doing all of us a favour -- I look at him and I remember dear
little chubby hands clutching one, and the way their faces used
to smell of soap and milk. What happened to all that? Anyway, at
least he rang. Maybe it indicates some normal human responses.
And I'll know where he is and roughly what he's up to. Though
. . . is there a drug scene in the village vet? All right, I daresay
you don't -- but there's no need to snap, I have been pretty well
at the end of my tether. You don't know what it's like --
wondering what the hell he's up to now and where he's gone and
when he'll be back. And the grunts and the glares and the

slammed doors and that bloody T-shirt. Do try and get him to
eat some decent food. And keep me informed. Unless of course
he deigns to ring again himself. You might point out that one has
feelings. Anyway. . . So how are things with you?'

'How long for?' said Edward.

It was Helen who made up the spare room bed, in the end. Phil,
it appeared, had spent his life under a duvet; the technical
problem posed by sheets and blankets defeated him. He dumped
himself in the battered armchair and watched her, chatting cosily
the while. He seemed to have taken on a new lease of life. 'I like
it here. 'S'a nice house. S'not smart. I don' like smart houses.
Actually, that's what I like about you and Edward. You're not
smart either. Not like Mum and Dad's friends. They know some
shocking people, really shocking.'

'Mmm. Could you pass me that pillow.'
'All right if I put up some posters? S'a bit boring the way it is,
this room.'
'I suppose so. I can't think quite what you're going to find to
do here, you know, Phil.'
'You don' need to worry about me,' said Phil reassuringly. 'I'll
probably be spending quite a lot of time writing poetry.'
Oh. I see. What sort of poetry do you write?'
'Protest poetry, mos'ly,' said Phil in a business-like tone.
'Edward won' min' if I borrow his typewriter, will he?'

She had given tea to Phil. Had drunk tea herself, telephoned
Louise, taken Edward aside and explained, made up the spare
room bed. And all through this she did not think of Giles. She
did not take those hours out and contemplate them; she simply
let them lie somewhere in the head, to surface no doubt at some
point of low resistance. The small hours of the morning, conventionally.
From time to time that evening she was visited by the
sight of the lake with its gold fretwork of fish; she wondered how

many years it would be before she could go to that place with equanimity. And, thinking this, she knew that the thought itself
was the first, faint, early signal of recovery. It was as though, at
the height of a fever, you experienced a fleeting moment of wellbeing.
Eventually, she thought, it will all be over. I shan't care.
But before then there is a long way to go. Now, tonight, there is
nothing to look forward to, no reason to get up in the morning or
move from one day into the next. I have been someone else these
last few months; now I have to learn to be myself again.
'No thanks,' said Phil. 'I've had something.' It was the following
evening; he was declining, with all civility, the cottage pie that
was on offer for supper.
'Basically, I jus' eat fish and chips,' he explained. 'There's a
van comes to the village at tea-time. I sussed it out yesterday.'
Edward, impressed, said, 'I never knew that. It might be
useful.'
'Outside the pub. I'll bring you some tomorrow, if you like.'
Edward glanced guiltily at Helen. 'Well, we'll see . .
Helen, pushing her way through the day, had forgotten all
about Phil for long periods. He had vanished into the village for
a while, then had come back and wandered around the garden
and even penetrated the Britches, she noted.
Later, he could be heard clacking away on Edward's old
Remington, which he treated with the reverence usually accorded
to rare works of art: 'S'a lovely job, this. Dad's only got a stupid
Amstrad.'
Edward, after his initial alarm, appeared to be unaffected by
Phil's arrival. When he came across him, he looked surprised but
not especially put out. Helen, through the encompassing distraction
of her own feelings, was aware that he too seemed locked
into some private anxiety. She found him gazing out of windows.
When the milkman appeared at the back door he swung round in
agitation. Helen found him irritating; she felt as raw as an
invalid, stepping cautiously from hour to hour in a daze of self
protectiveness. Edward and Phil were impedimenta she would
have preferred to be without at this particular time; she would
have liked to crawl away somewhere, like an animal, and sit

things out. As it was there were meals to be provided, interruptions
to be faced. When the phone rang her spine crawled. She
said to Edward, 'Could you answer that?' Edward, as though
deaf, continued on his way across the hall and up the stairs.
Helen picked up the receiver and heard Joyce Babcock's voice
with a curdling mixture of relief and disappointment.

Did you really think he was going to ring? said her mother.
After that? You've burned your boats now, haven't you? Didn't
you realise? You're your own worst enemy, you are, Helen.
What's that you're muttering about? Self-respect? Well, if you
want to use language like that you're welcome, but a fat lot of
good it'll do you.

Another day passed. And another. Helen went to Spaxton,
drove unflinchingly past Giles Carnaby's office, attended the
library and carried out her duties. Back at Greystones, the
kitchen drain flooded and Tam discovered one of Helen's trapped
mice and began to eat it before he was noticed. Helen, dealing in
succession with both these crises, was surprised to find Phil at
her elbow, offering assistance. He rummaged enthusiastically in
the drain and then embarked on a brief and vigorous tussle with
Tam, from which he emerged triumphant with two-thirds of the
mouse. Tam, snarling hideously, slunk out into the garden. Phil
disposed of the mouse in the dustbin. 'That's an awful dog. I
mean, I don' like dogs anyway but that one's really disgusting.'

'Edward's very fond of him.'
Phil nodded. There was a silence. Helen continued mechanically
to prepare the supper (or lunch, was it? or breakfast?) She
rather wished Phil would go away but could think of no means
of dismissing him and anyway it didn't matter to her all that
much. She had been visited by one of those moments of
desolation that struck, out of nowhere, at irregular intervals,
crippling both thought and action; she peeled a potato, put it in
the kettle, stared at it for several seconds and then took it out
again.

Phil said, 'Edward's a nice bloke.'

'Yes, I know.'
'He don' go on about things. That's what's wrong with mos'

people. They're so pretentious. I mean, almos' everybody I know
is pretentious. Edward jus' doesn't bother.'
'I see what you mean,' said Helen. The desolation was ebbing
a little, like a fever, but she didn't feel up to a considered review
of Edward's character.
'I don' mean you're pretentious,' Phil continued solicitously. 'I
mean almos' everybody else excep' you. You're pretty much like
Edward.'
'I'm glad to hear it.' It was time, she decided, to wrench the
conversation in a different direction. 'Are you . . . do you feel
you're anywhere nearer . . . getting yourself together? Since
you've been here.'
Phil gave her a look in which injury and dignity combined.
'Takes time, dunnit? I mean, if it's psychological.'
'I suppose so,' said Helen meekly.

Edward was having difficulties with chronology. He slept so
badly that he moved around in a continuous grey fog of weariness.
He never knew where he was within the day. Sometimes
he found that he had lost his way within the year also. He would
surface from his churning thoughts and look blankly at the world:
what date was it? What month? He had to turn his eyes to the
window and learn whereabouts he was from the state of the
vegetation beyond: high, straggling growth, leaves tinged with
yellow -- early September. He realised that he was probably
unwell in some way, but it did not seem to be a state of ill health
about which anything could be done; you could not go to the
doctor and say that you didn't know what season it was. He
seldom left the house, except to visit the Britches. The previous
week he had been out with the ornithological society; the bird
watching had been therapeutic but he had found the company
disturbing. It was preferable, on the whole, to be alone. Helen
did not count, really. Phil's arrival had been briefly disconcerting,
but he was easily ignored. After a few days Edward ceased
to notice him. He was not noticing much except his own grinding
needs.
'I thought I'd get a bus to Spaxton,' said Phil. 'Get myself some
new tapes. All right with you?'
They were having breakfast. The back door was open on to a
golden morning; the garden glowed; the hedge was white-veiled
with spiders' webs; a robin sang piercingly from the apple tree.
'S'a nice day,' Phil continued breezily. He embarked on his
third piece of toast. Helen glanced at him in surprise; one would
not have expected sensitivity to the physical world to come high
on Phil's list of responses.
'What's that bird singing, Edward?'
It's a robin,' said Edward after a moment.
Phil smiled benignly. 'S' nice. Well, I'll push off, then. See
you later.'
He rose, and at the same moment they all heard footsteps on
the garden path. Edward was drinking tea; he put the cup down
with a slight crash. Gary Paget appeared at the door. He simply
stood there, as was his custom, awaiting instructions. Helen,
with an effort, concentrated her attention on the matter in hand
and told him which bit of the vegetable garden he should dig.
Gary and Phil looked straight through each other, like dogs
whose territories have embarrassingly overlapped. Helen was
aware, as she talked, of the violent contrast between them. Gary,
two years younger than Phil, appeared to come from another
decade -- another century, even. Seen together like this, both
seemed to be wearing fancy dress. Gary, in his baggy brown
cord trousers and open-necked cotton shirt, with his thatch of
corn-coloured hair and well-scrubbed face, looked like some
Youth Hostelling hiker on a railway poster of the thirties. Phil,
in skin-tight black leather glinting with metal chains and zips, his
hair shaved pp the scalp at either side and rising to a green crest
at the top, his eye-sockets perfunctorily daubed with rainbow
colours, recalled an operatic demon. They appeared not to see
each other at all. Phil said 'Cheers, then,' and departed. Gary
stumped away to the vegetable garden.

Helen had decided to redecorate the bathroom; activity was
the thing. She brought up a bucket and some sugar soap and set
about washing down the walls. Obstructed by the bathroom
cabinet, she took it down. Within was a welter of half-empty pill
bottles with obscure labels, all of them Dorothy's, and sundry
ancient packets of aspirin or indigestion tablets; neither she nor
Edward resorted much to medication. The whole thing should
be turned out, but could wait. She scrubbed the wall energetically,
creating great pale swathes down which trickled rusty
water. She thought of nothing at all, lost in this satisfactory
redemptive action. When she paused for a moment she could
hear through the open window that robin, and the intermittent
thwack of Gary's spade.
When she had cleaned a whole wall she ran out of sugar soap
and went to search for more. As she rummaged in the scullery
cupboard she heard Edward come downstairs with an odd
hesitant step. She said 'Edward?' but he did not, apparently,
hear. He crossed the hall into the sitting-room; Helen heard him
opening the french windows.
Unsuccessful in her search, she went into the kitchen. She
looked into the garden; there was no sign of Edward; he, too,
must be standing at the window. Gary's spade could be heard
now only spasmodically; several times it ceased altogether as he
took a lengthy breather. The enthusiasm with which Gary
worked depended on how closely he thought himself to be
observed.
Edward appeared suddenly on the lawn. He stood there for a
moment. Helen expected him to head for the Britches. Instead,
he began to walk slowly towards the gap in the hedge that led to
the kitchen garden. Helen watched him; she felt a little creep of
mistrust. Why?
Edward vanished through the gap. The spade sounds were
resumed and then ceased. There was silence. A long silence, it
seemed, overlaid by blackbird song, shrill and metallic. And then
Gary came through the gap, empty-handed, walking fast, putting
on his anorak as he went. Helen froze. It was ten to eleven; Gary
should not be leaving until twelve. She heard the click as he
closed the garden gate and then the whirr of his bicycle. And
then Edward walked slowly through the gap and across the lawn
towards the house.
She met him in the hall. She said, 'Why has Gary gone?'
He stared at her. 'I don't know.'

Her heart was thumping, she noticed. Bang bang. Bang
wallop. 'You'll have to tell me, Edward. What happened?'
And his face contorted. He turned away. He muttered something.
She couldn't hear.
She pulled him into the kitchen, pushed him into a chair. He
sat there at the table with his head in his hands. She sat down
opposite. And saw that he was crying. Trying not to cry. She
thought: I cannot endure this. I have borne a good deal in my
time, but this is beyond all of it. 0 God, what sort of swine are
you?

'Please tell me. It's better if you do.'
'I touched him,' said Edward.
There was a long silence.
'Just that?'
He nodded.
Helen got up. She put the kettle on, waited for it to boil, made
tea, poured it for them both. Then she sat down again. All this
while Edward remained silent. Tam wandered into the room,
pushed his food bowl around noisily and then leaned against
Edward's leg in sycophantic appeal. Edward put a hand on his
head.

'What will happen?' said Edward at last.
'I don't know. I should think Gary may tell his horrible dad.'
She saw Edward flinch.
'Don't answer the phone,' said Helen. 'Don't go down to the
village for a day or two. I'll deal with Ron Paget, if it's necessary.'
Edward raised his head. 'No. I did this, not you.'
'Yes. But you must let me, all the same. I'm better at Ron
Paget than you are. And it may not come to that. Nothing may
happen at all. More importantly . . .' She stopped.
Edward looked directly at her. 'More importantly what?' His
voice was bleak.
More importantly, what is to be done about you? Now and
forever. How are you to be got through whatever it is that is
going on within?
'I've always known, you know.'
'Yes,' said Edward. 'I realised you did.'
They sat in silence, not looking at one another. Helen thought

of Gary Paget, and winced. Edward, as though she had spoken
aloud, suddenly put his head in his hands and groaned. 'Oh God,
that boy. .

Helen reached for the teapot. She refilled both their cups.
'There's nothing you can do about him. And I doubt if he's been
done any irreparable harm, if what you say happened is what did
happen.'
'It is,' said Edward dully. 'That was all.'
'Then Gary will recover, I daresay.'
But you may not, she thought. And I cannot help. She would
have liked to walk round the table and put her arms about him,
and knew that this would not do. Edward shrank from physical
contact. Even Louise had learned, long ago, to keep her hands
off him.

The hall clock thrummed, and then struck eleven. The last
note came out as a strangled clunk, owing to some fault in the
mechanism; it had been like that for ten years now. Helen,
awaiting the sound with maddened fatalism, thought suddenly
that it symbolised everything that was wrong at Greystones. She
determined, wildly and too late, to get something done about the
wretched thing. From outside came the sound of a passing car
and children shouting. And out there, she thought, are thousands
-- hundreds of thousands -- of people like Edward who live in
perfect tranquillity with their natures, at least in so far as any of
us do. Who are neither guilty nor lonely, or no more than the
rest of us. It is not fair. It is deeply and profoundly unfair. Why
Edward? Why harmless Edward, when people like Ron Paget
walk the earth unscathed? Ron Paget, and muggers and rapists
and child batterers and swindlers and drug pedlars and corrupt
politicians. Villains are going their way unhindered the world
over, and the axe has to fall on Edward.

The phone rang. Both Glovers froze. Edward looked at Helen;
his face was a pasty grey colour. He rose. No,' she said. She
went out into the hall and lifted the receiver.
'What on earth are you doing?' said Louise. 'I was just going
to give up. Is he all right?'
'All right? Who?'
'Phil, for heaven's sake. I don't want to talk to him, I'm not
geared up for that yet. I just want to know he's O.K. Helen? Are
you still there?'
'Yes, I'm here. Phil seems fine. He's gone to Spaxton.'
'Spaxton?' cried Louise suspiciously. 'Whatever for?'
'He wanted to buy something. Tapes.'
'Oh. Well, let me know when he's back, will you. Are you
sure there's nothing wrong? You sound funny.'
Edward came out of the kitchen. Helen put her hand over the
mouthpiece and said, 'It's Louise.' Edward looked at her without
expression. Then he walked over to the front door and opened

it. Helen said 'Where are you going?' Edward hesitated: 'I don't
know.'

Louise was quacking inaudibly. 'I've got to go,' Helen said to
her. She put the receiver down. 'Don't go out, Edward. Not just
for the moment.' As soon as she had spoken she regretted it; of
course Edward had to go out -- now or tomorrow or sometime.
She waited for her mother to say 'He's made his bed and he's got

to lie on it,' or words to that effect. But Dorothy was curiously
absent today.

'I don't mean don't go out,' she amended. 'I mean if you see
Ron Paget just don't get involved.'
Edward stood for a moment, irresolute. He said nothing and
seemed barely aware of her. Then he turned and headed up the
stairs. She heard the door of his room close. Tam also went up,
and sat outside, whining. The door did not open.

'I bought something for you,' said Phil. 'It's a present.' He stood
by the kitchen sink, grinning complacently. On the draining
board stood a chrysanthemum in a pot, partially shrouded in a
tube of white paper. 'S'a flower,' Phil explained, lie delved in
the pocket of his jacket and produced a small box of Cadbury's
Dairy Milk chocolates: 'That's for Edward.'
Helen felt, for a few seconds, dangerously close to tears. She
swallowed, blinked, and said 'Thanks very much, Phil. That's
very nice of you. Edward will like those.'
Phil continued to smirk. He gave the chrysanthemum a
proprietorial prod: 'You got to give it water sometimes, she said.'
'Yes. I won't forget. By the way, I think you should give Louise a ring. She called this morning, wondering how you
were.'

'Will do,' said Phil dismissively. He sat down. 'Where's
Edward? Isn' it time for supper?'
'I'm afraid it's just soup and cheese tonight. I haven't got round
to cooking anything. Perhaps you'd like to go up and tell Edward.
He's in his room.'
'Will do.'

After a minute Phil came clumping down the stairs again. 'He
says he don' wan' anything to eat. He's got a bit of a headache. I
gave him the chocolates. I should think he'd eat those.' Wearing
a benign expression, Phil picked up a spoon and began to slurp

tinned tomato soup with relish. 'S' good, this. You had a nice
day, Helen?'

She murmured something noncommittal. Phil continued to
radiate well-being. 'I been lookin' round Spaxton. S'a funny little
place, innit? I mean, it's got really stupid shops and there's
nowhere you could hang out with your friends, but you can't

help quite liking it. But I should think people would get pissed
off if they got to live there.'

Helen said, with an effort, 'Actually it's rather sought after.
People retire to it, or commute to London from it.'
'I mean people like me,' said Phil kindly. 'All right if I have
some more soup, Helen? Anyway, I seen Spaxton now so I don'
need to go there again. There's mos'ly rubbish there but I got
myself some tapes. So tomorrow I won' be busy an' I thought I'd
help you here. Do things for you.' He beamed graciously.

'Oh,' said Helen, startled into response. 'I don't know really
that . . . I mean, I can't think of anything that needs doing.'
Phil looked hurt. 'Mum's always on at me about doing things
for her. Never stops. It's a real pain. That's one of the reasons I
got pissed off and come here. But you an' Edward don' go on at
people. You're not bothered. Anyway, it's partly my house,
innit, so I ought to do things, right? I could paint this room,' he

continued with enthusiasm. 'I like painting. An' it's a bit of a
mess, innit?'
'Well,' Helen replied hastily, 'I'm not sure . . . We'd have to

think about that. I'd need to talk to Edward. Maybe. . . Perhaps
you could cut the lawn. I was thinking the other day that it badly
needs doing. The old mower's in the garden shed.'
'O.K.' said Phil. 'Will do. All right if I watch the telly now?'
Helen nodded. She began to wash the dishes. From the sitting
room came the sound of the television, tuned to some unfamiliar
programme; periodically it would burst into staccato cracklings
and she would hear Phil clout the side of the set, wise now to
local practice. Edward remained in his room.

That night, both Helen and Edward lay sleepless through long
hours. Helen, noting that anxiety had either alleviated or blunted
her other distress, decided that accumulated trouble must be a
perverse form of mercy. The thought of Giles Carnaby was still
painful, but it had receded to a dull undefined ache somewhere
behind and beyond the sharp drill of worry. Her mind flitted
between Gary Paget (compunction), his father (uneasy speculation)
and Edward (raw chafing pity). The entire soup of emotion
served to give her a grinding headache and a sick stomach. Once
or twice she got up, took aspirin, drank water or visited the
bathroom. The night passed, measured out by the hall clock.
Eventually, towards dawn, she fell into a stormy sleep, passing
from unquiet but rational thought into the frenzied illogical
landscape of dreams. Her mother featured, restored to youth and
vigour, and Giles, who walked arm in arm along a river bank
with a strange woman, and passed her without acknowledgement,
and Edward, who had turned into a dog, and howled.

Edward lay flat on his back and stared at the ceiling. He made
no attempt to sleep, knowing it to be probably fruitless. He too
thought of Gary Paget, with horror and something far beyond
compunction. He thought of Gary's father not at all; formal
retribution, at this point, was the least of it. He forced himself to
go over what had happened, or what he thought had happened.
The whole episode seemed now quite unreal; he doubted the
testimony of his own memory, which made it all the more
nightmarish. He could remember sitting up here, in his room,
tense and restless; hearing the sound of the boy's spade from
beyond the yew hedge. He remembered getting up, going
downstairs, standing for a while at the sitting-room window.
There was some idea in his head, he knew, of going out there to
talk to Gary, simply talk, he had barely ever exchanged more
than two words with him. He had this compulsion to look at
him, to stand there in sunshine and watch him digging. He
remembered opening the french windows, walking across the
lawn. Then, somehow, he was beside Gary. Had he spoken?
Gary had turned towards him -- there had been an expression of
surprise on his face. And that whiff of Lifebuoy soap, and the
swell of his brown arms below his rolled-up shirt sleeves. But
then what had happened? Edward had wanted to touch him, that
he knew. He had wanted, overwhelmingly, to lay his hand on
that blooming flesh, to feel its warmth, to make contact. The
boy, indeed, had at that moment ceased to be himself at all -- to
be Gary Paget -- but had become universal, anonymous and
accessible. Edward had been filled with tumultuous thoughts and
feelings, topped by an overwhelming need. And affection, there
had been that also -- a compulsive, joyous affection. He had seen
Gary as someone else, as everyone: as a specific person known
and lost, as a person unknown and of wondrous promise. He had reached out and his hand arrived not on Gary's arm but at his
crotch.

If anything had been said, Edward could not now remember.
He had a vague impression that he might have spoken. The next
distinct memory was of Gary's disappearing back, his anorak
hooked over his shoulder. And then, of standing there alone
beside Gary's spade, which lay where he had dropped it. Going
back at last into the house. Being with Helen in the kitchen. By
which time that suspended moment of madness and of hope had
passed, and he was hitched once more to the remorseless world
in which everything is related to everything else, in which actions
beget consequences, in which we are all answerable for what we
have done, but some of us are called upon to answer more fully
than others.
When Helen woke the clock was striking nine and rain battered
the windows. From the back door came muffled staccato barks;
Edward must have let Tam out and failed to let him in again,
cavalier treatment so unusual that Helen was instantly wide
awake and apprehensive. She washed and dressed hastily, admitted
the soaking and indignant dog, and went up to knock on
Edward's door. 'Don't you want any breakfast?' Edward replied
that he would be down presently; partially reassured, Helen
returned to the kitchen where Phil appeared, yawning. 'Stupid
rain. I can't cut the grass.'

'Phil,' said Helen sternly, 'did you telephone Louise
yesterday?'
Phil, looking evasive, began to slice bread. 'Do you an' Edward
wan' toast, Helen?'
'Then you must today. She's worried about you. And you've
really got to think things out, you know -- how much longer
you're going to stay here.'

'If you don' wan' me I'll go,' said Phil in an aggrieved tone.
, 'It's not that we don't want you. But your school term either
has started or is about to start, your mother is concerned, and
frankly you wouldn't be at all happy living here indefinitely.'

Phil, sidestepping neatly, said in conversational tones, 'I s'pose
Edward'll be going back to work soon. I should think he's a really
good teacher. Not like ours. There's some horrible blokes at our
school.'
Helen was silent; she had forgotten until that moment about
Croxford House. Yes, Edward would be going back next week,
presumably. A further complication. Or perhaps a blessing.

Phil, through a mouthful of toast, said indistinctly and in an
offhand tone, 'What did mum want, then?' Helen looked across
the table at him and his eyes met hers. To her amazement, her
mother looked at her for an instant out of Phil's face: a curve of
the nostril, something about the set of the mouth. Then it was
gone: Phil was not really like his grandmother at all -- he
resembled his father, had his hair, his build. But even so . . .
Well, thought Helen, well, well; genes, hurtling through body
after body, willy-nilly, set on a course of their own.

'She just wanted to know how you are. Naturally. She's your


mother. Mothers -- most mothers -- are like that. And she's
missing you.' This piece of poetic license was not only justified
but expedient, Helen decided.
Phil stared at her. The five-year-old peeked again out of his
eyes. 'You think so?'
'I do,' said Helen firmly.
Phil took another slice of toast and appeared to reflect. After a
few moments he remarked that he would give Louise a buzz this
evening.
The rain continued to fall. Phil vanished to his room, from
which came the muffled rhythmic thump that passed for music.
Edward also remained upstairs. Helen sat for a while in the
kitchen and watched the rain. It drove across the garden in white
curtains. If it had rained yesterday Gary Paget would not have
come; what happened would not have happened. Thus does the
world dispose. Except, Helen thought, that it would probably
have happened at some other point, or differently and maybe
worse -- it was part of a programme whose flexibility is maverick
and unpredictable. She thought again of genes, simmering away
in the body like invisible volcanoes, harbouring intelligence and
irascibility and shape of nose and the tendency to particular
diseases.

It will pass. It may pass without further ado. Leaving damage
but not destruction. She wandered into the sitting room where
rain still lashed the windows. The dark mass of the Britches
heaved and shuddered. From time to time rooks were shaken
from it and rowed desperately across the slate-grey stormy sky.
Helen returned to the kitchen, made a fresh pot of tea and some
more toast and put them on a tray which she carried up to
Edward's room.

'I've brought you some breakfast.'
He opened the door. He was dressed but unshaven. 'I'm not

'!know you're not ill.'
'I'm just not hungry.'
Helen marched into the room and put the tray down on the
table. 'I daresay you're not. Neither was I. But it helps to keep
up the blood sugar level. I read it in a magazine.'
'It's just that I dislike myself so much,' said Edward in a blank
tone.
'Then you shouldn't. Nobody else does. You're about the least
dislikeable person I know.'
Edward shrugged. He seemed about to say something else,
and then sat down.
'Thanks, anyway. I'll have some tea.'
Helen stood for a moment at the door. 'Look . . . things have
to go on. It's the only way. This isn't the end of the world. It
seems appalling to you -- to us -- because of the way we live.
Have lived. If you'd lived differently . . . What I mean to say is
that most people who -- feel like you -- live perfectly ordinary
happy lives.' She stopped, floundering. Better shut up than utter
such banalities.

'I'm glad to hear it,' said Edward. 'Nice for them.'
'I mean that you don't have to feel all this guilt, Edward. All
that happened is that you touched . .
'Please go away,' said Edward, in tones of the utmost courtesy.
She returned to the kitchen and washed up, violently. As she
did so she saw that the leaden clouds had split and were tipping
away; crevasses of pale blue appeared, infused here and there
with the suggestion of sunlight. The rain stopped; the garden
began to glitter; a blackbird patrolled the grass, head cocked. She
could hear Ron Paget's yard, which had been silent, start into
life: the chainsaw, a lorry revving up. Tam whined to go out; he
chased away the blackbird and completed a bossily investigative
circuit of the garden. Helen felt a flicker of the spirit, a
momentary reviving uplift. We just have to get through all this,
she thought. Time has to pass, for both of us. The world must
turn.

Phil appeared. 'It's not raining now. Where d'you say that
mower was?'
'In the shed. But I should wait till after lunch -- you can't do it
when the grass is still sopping wet.'

They had eaten together, the three of them -- Helen and Edward

perfunctorily, Phil with zest. Then Phil had bustled off to the

garden shed, had returned demanding an oil can, disappeared
again. Edward had said, with an effort, 'Sorry. It's just that
I . . ."Forget it,' Helen said. 'It doesn't matter. You know, Phil
grows on one in the most unexpected way. But I am beginning
to wonder how much longer he intends to stay here.' Edward
nodded uncomprehendingly, back in his private prison; he went
upstairs again.

Three minutes later Helen heard a step on the garden path.
She stiffened. Not Phil -- Phil could be seen on the lawn,
wrestling with the old hand mower.
There was a knock at the door. She stood for a few seconds,
gathering herself, then opened it. Ron Paget. Of course. He was
wearing a suit, she saw at once, not the usual jeans and anorak;
this seemed, as no doubt it was intended to be, indefinably
threatening.

'I'd like to come in for a few minutes, Miss Glover. I think
you'll know what I'm here about.'
She held the door open for him, closed it.
'You're on your own. I'm glad of that. I wouldn't like to
answer for myself if I were face to face with your brother just at
the moment. You do know what I'm talking about, Miss Glover?'
'I know that something happened with Gary yesterday,' said
Helen. 'And I know too that whatever it was my brother is
deeply distressed and sorry.'

Ron drew in his breath sharply. Then he shook his head. 'Oh
dear, dearie me. That won't do. That won't do at all. This is a
bad business. Being sorry isn't going to do, is it, Miss Glover?'
So this is how it is to be, she thought: extract the last ounce of
blood. 'Mr Paget, my brother would make no excuses, and
neither would I, all I can say is . .
Ron pulled out a chair and sat down. 'You know what your
brother did, Miss Glover. He groped him. Not to put too fine a
point on it. Know what I mean? Made a grab at his goolies.' He
watched her. 'No point in being mealy-mouthed, is there? We're
both grown-up people.'

'Yes,' said Helen. 'I gathered that was what had happened.'
'The lad's fourteen. Your brother's illegal, apart from anything
else. I could go to the police.'
'You could indeed. And if that's what you want to do then I
have no doubt that you will.'
Ron spread his hands. 'Now look -- have I said that's what I
want to do? We've been neighbours for a long time, haven't we?
I'm as upset about this as you are. But I've got my boy to think
of.'

'Nothing like this will happen again, that's out of the question,'
she said. Unwisely.
He pounced. 'It's not what might happen, is it? It's what's
already happened. But I'm going to look at things reasonably,
Miss Glover. I want to behave in a neighbourly way. Right? Do
you a good turn -- you and your brother. And you may well feel
you want to show you're a bit grateful.'

There was a short silence. 'I'm not sure that I understand,'
Helen said.
'You might want to do a bit of business over that waste ground
of yours.'
'Let me get this straight,' she said slowly. 'Are you saying that
if we sell you the Britches you won't go to the police about
Edward?'

Ron's expression was that of a man being offered suspect
goods. 'You're tying things up, Miss Glover. Nothing's ever that
cut and dried. I'm saying that we can help each other out. I don't
want to see your brother dragged through the courts any more
than you do.'

Helen stared at him for a few moments in incredulity. Of
course. One should have thought of it oneself. It even inspired a
perverse kind of awe. Eventually, she could speak. 'What my
brother did was wrong. Whatever it was he did. Gary is not
much more than a child and it is wrong to make sexual overtures
to children. But what you are doing is wrong also. Quite
differently wrong. You are attempting blackmail. How do you
justify that?'

'Oh come on, Miss Glover,' said Ron. 'That's strong language,
that is. What I'm suggesting is an arrangement between ourselves,
for mutual convenience.'
'That is not how I see it,' she replied coldly.
'I mean, if I was to do the right thing, I'd be reporting your

brother to the police straight off. But I've got some sympathy for
the both of you. I'm prepared to . . . well, to turn a blind eye.
I'll take your word for it there'll be no more. I have to think of
the boy, right? I'll do you a favour and you do me one.'

'Paternal concern seems to be being overridden now by other
considerations,' she retorted. 'I find myself getting quite interested
in this. I wonder who is to decide the price for which we
sell you the wood. I imagine it will be you?'
Ron eyed her. Unpleasantly. Gone now was the look of pained
indignation. He rose. 'I'm sorry you're taking this line, Miss
Glover. You're making a big mistake. I don't see how I've any
choice left but to . .

'You'll have to act according to your principles, won't you?'
snapped Helen. 'As indeed we all do. And now please go.'
Ron walked to the door. He turned, looked full at her and
shook his head. The expression of regret and moral outrage had
been recovered. 'It's up to you, Miss Glover. And your brother.
I'd talk it over with him if I was you.' He went. She heard him
go down the path. From the lawn came the sound of the mower;
Phil's cockatoo crest could be seen, bobbing up and down above
the shrubbery as he heaved the machine through the long grass.
And now Edward was coming down the stairs. She turned to
face him.

'That was Ron Paget, wasn't it? I've just seen him out of the
window. Why didn't you tell me he was here, Helen?'
'There was no point.'
'What happened was my fault, not yours. Why should you
have to see him? You should have called me.'
'There was no point,' she repeated.
'What did he say?'
'Oh . . .' She turned away. 'He was being offensive. What
you'd expect. I said you were distressed and . . . sorry.' She
could not look at him.
'What else did he say?'
'Nothing much else.'
'What else, Helen?'
'All right,' she said. 'I suppose you've got to know. He
threatened to go to the police. And he tried to blackmail us. If
we sell him the Britches he'll . . . do nothing. I said he'll have
to. . . do whatever he intends to do.'
Edward stood there. 'Yes. I do have to know.'
Phil appeared at the window. 'S'a stupid thing, this. It don'
work properly. You can't do a good job with it. Why don' we get
a real one, with an engine?'

FOURTEEN

So now we simply sit and wait, Helen thought. The whole
process will now begin, in its own time. There is nothing to be
done, no decision to be made, no course of action to adopt --
which is a curious sort of relief. It will happen; the worst part
will be not knowing in exactly what way, or how quickly. Or
what, precisely, the outcome will be. Will Edward lose his job?
That is a possibility that has to be faced. If he does, it will not
be easy to get another teaching position, and if he does not teach
what else is he to do? Fifty-year-olds are not readily employable.
There will be sympathy -- and those inclined to sympathy may
well include that scatty headmistress and her board of governors.
They may decide to close ranks. But there will also be condemnation,
now and for ever. There will be the averted eyes, the
muttering. Down in these parts, there is neither the anonymity
nor the tolerance of metropolitan life. Edward is visible, and will
be watched with interest, and judged.

'He rang,' said Louise. 'As no doubt you've gathered. I could
hardly believe my ears. "That you, Mum? How's things, then?"
First civil word I've had in months. What on earth have you been
doing to him? We talked. We actually talked for about five
minutes. It could be called a chat. We chatted. This is communication,
I kept saying to myself. Real, person to person stuff.
Nothing much was said, mind. All strictly neutral. I didn't dare
raise the question of coming home. Or school. One step at a
time, I thought. I felt quite weepy afterwards, I don't mind
telling you. And furious, as well. The way they can do what
they damn well like with you. Because all the cards are stacked

their way. Parents haven't a hope. Well, they'll find out. Their
turn will come. Though frankly the notion of Phil as. . . But it's
all in the scheme of things. Even Phil, I daresay. Breed, and be
damned. Well, no, not damned but deprived of free will. Watch
yourself join the animals. Except that of course for them there's
an end to it. Get the offspring fledged or self-supporting and
then they're shot of them. Ready to start all over again. The
extra bonus for the human race is that it's for ever. That's the
price of intelligence. Intelligence plus instinct is a wicked refinement.
You're nailed. Hooked. Strung up and crucified. Not a
thing you can do about it. Reason suggests one thing, and the
body rages for another. Reason, frankly, told me not to get
involved in the first place. And then the day I realised I was
pregnant I was on cloud nine. And now listen to me. No, on
second thoughts, don't. I'm hours late for the office already.
Anyway, he rang. We'll talk again soon, Helen. Everything O.K.
with you? I must fly.'

We wait. It is just possible, of course, that nothing will happen.
That Ron Paget will decide that the whole thing is too much
trouble, or that the glare of publicity might be distressing for
Gary, or that he might be stricken with charitable feelings. It is
possible, but unlikely, I'm afraid.

She continued with her work on the bathroom. It did not
occupy the mind, but it passed the time. She finished washing
the walls, moved the medicine cabinet, its contents, and all other
small items out on to a table on the landing, and prepared the
room for painting. There was a tin of emulsion in the cloakroom
which would do -- left over from some distant and abandoned
project. She fended off Phil's enthusiastic offers of help. Edward
emerged from his room, glanced vacantly at her and walked past.
She said, 'We'll have to use the cloakroom for general purposes
till I'm finished.' He nodded. She saw that he was quite
unreachable, and flinched. She had known him like this before:
that time long ago, and in the weeks after he left that school in
the north. She heard him go downstairs, wander from room to
room, and come up again. She said, 'Were you looking for

something?' He shook his head, and went back into his room.
She had no idea what he might be doing in there; the silence was
absolute.
Half way through the afternoon she realised that she needed
white spirit with which to clean paint brushes. The village shop
would probably have some. She disliked the prospect of going
out, and fought it. I cannot skulk in the' house for ever, she told
herself. Do it now and get it over with. She put on a sweater,
picked up her purse and walked out of the front door into the
sunshine. A van passed, driven by one of Ron Paget's men, who
lifted a hand in greeting. Helen waved back. She made her way
to the shop, bought white spirit, exchanged comments on the
weather with two people, smiled at three more. Ten minutes
later she was back in the house. Now Edward has to do it too,
she thought. Going upstairs again she saw that the door of his
room was open; he was not there. She went down again.

Phil appeared. 'I been looking for you. We got a spanner
anywhere? I found this old bike in the shed. I thought I might
use it, but the seat's all funny.'

'Where's Edward?'

'I think he went into the wood.'
'Oh,' said Helen, relieved. 'There might be a spanner in the
kitchen drawer. Or in that box in the scullery.' She went back
up to the bathroom.
Phil put his head round the door. 'I can't find it, Helen.'
'Edward may have moved it. I seem to remember he was using
it the other day. I should go and ask him.'

'O.K. Will do.'

She selected the largest brush, loaded it with paint, climbed
on a chair and set to work on the area above the window. Recharging
the brush, she saw Phil cross the lawn and plunge into
the Britches. She swept the brush up and down, creating a
glossy silken surface; there was a bland and mindless satisfaction
about the activity. I should do more of this sort of thing, she
thought.
Outside, a blackbird repeated a snatch of song, then improved
it with a final flourish. A wood-pigeon climbed from the Britches
and tumbled, clapping its wings -- once, twice. Helen got down
from the stool to stir the paint. She watched the pigeon. Why do
they do that? Edward would know.
There was movement, suddenly, on the track into the wood.
Phil came bursting out of the shrubbery. Not just Phil -- Edward
also. But Phil was supporting Edward, dragging him -- Edward's
arm was hooked about Phil's neck, his feet weaving around in
some sort of stumbling dance.
She dropped the brush, ran down the stairs. She met them
half way across the lawn.
'Can you get round his other side . . Phil panted. 'I keep
dropping him.'
They heaved Edward through the french windows and into
the sitting room and lowered him into a chair. His head lolled.
Helen said, 'Has he hurt himself? What . .
'He's eaten something.' Phil reached into the pocket of his
jacket; Helen recognised pill-bottles from the pile she had
dumped on the table outside the bathroom. 'We got to make him
sick.'

They hauled Edward to his feet again and got him across the
hall and into the cloakroom. 'You got to put your fingers down
his throat,' said Phil in anguish. 'I dunno how. You do it.'
They propped Edward over the basin. She reached into his
mouth. 'I'm sorry,' she told him. 'I've got to do this.'
He retched. A trickle of vomit appeared. She reached again.
Edward heaved and was copiously sick. 'That's better,' said Phil.
He kept patting Edward's shoulders. 'Poor ol' Edward.'

She went on, brutally. He kept slipping from their grasp, so
that they had to prop him up again. At last she said, 'I think
that's all.' They dragged him back into the sitting room and
lowered him into a chair again. He seemed dopey to the point of
oblivion. Phil straightened and looked at her. He said, 'Edward's
tried to kill himself, hasn' he?'

'Yes, I suppose so. I think he'll be all right, though. In a
minute I'm going to ring the doctor and find out what we should
do next.' She felt dizzy. She sat down.
'Thank goodness I went to look for him then.'
'Yes, thank goodness.'
Edward groaned. Helen went out into the hall and dialled the

number of the surgery. Phil followed her. She talked to the
doctor, put the receiver down. 'An ambulance will come. He'll
have to go into hospital overnight. Where are those bottles?
They'll need to see them.' She put the pill-bottles in her bag. 'I'll
go with him . . . No, I'll follow in the car so I can get back. You
stay here, Phil.'

'But what's the matter with him?' he said. His eyes were
enormous, horror-struck. He was almost as white as Edward. 'I
mean, it's awful when someone's so miserable they want to kill
themselves. I didn' know. Did you know, Helen?'

She gathered herself. 'Yes. That is -- I knew he was unhappy.
I didn't think he was going to do this.'
'But what's wrong with him?'
She took a breath. 'Edward is homosexual. He -- made
advances to Gary Paget. Gary's father came round here yesterday.
He is probably going to the police.' She started back to the
sitting room.
'But that's awful!' cried Phil. He trotted behind her. 'I mean,
Edward can't help it if. .
'I know. Let's not talk about it now. The doctor says Edward
must be made to walk up and down. He mustn't go to sleep.'
Phil nodded. They got Edward up again and slung him
between them. They trundled him up and down. Look, Helen said to her mother: your son, your grandson. Now what have
you got to say? But Dorothy was nowhere, today; nowhere at
all.

When, two hours later, she let herself into the house again Phil
was waiting in the hall. 'How's Edward?'
'He's all right. They pumped his stomach out, to be on the
safe side. He can come home tomorrow.' Tam was greeting her
with exaggerated enthusiasm, drowning what she said in a volley
of barks. 'Shut up, Tam.' She had to repeat herself before Phil
could hear. 'I must have some tea.' She headed for the kitchen.

Phil stumbled behind. 'D'you know what that dog was doing,
when I found Edward in the wood? It was just sat there chewing
something it had dug up. An' Edward might of been dying.'

'Well, he isn't, thank heaven.' She felt drained, wrung out.
She didn't want to revisit the previous hours, not yet. She
wanted tea; rest. She put the kettle on.

'I mean, what I can't understand is why he's so pissed off
about being gay. I been thinking. I mean, so what? S'matter of
fact if you ask me as many people's gay today as aren't. Actually
when I was younger I thought I was probably gay. In the end
it's turned out I'm not, but there you are. You see what I mean?
It's no big deal, being gay.'

'Edward didn't try to commit suicide because he's gay. He did
it because he's unhappy.'
'But he's unhappy because he's gay,' said Phil sagely. 'Right?'
'Up to a point,' said Helen, after a moment. 'It's also because
he's the sort of person he is. And you have to remember that
Edward grew up at a time when . . . when homosexuality was
illegal. Quite apart from being socially unacceptable -- at least in
the circles we moved in.'
'That's ridiculous. You can't help it if you're gay.'
'Reasonable people have always thought that.'
'Exactly. Poor ol' Edward. S'a shame. An' Gary's a right berk.
Why didn' he jus' tell Edward to sod off? He didn' have to go
running to his dad. He should've jus' told him to push off, he
wasn' interested. I mean, that sort of thing happens all the time,
doesn' it? It isn' anything to get in a sweat about.'

The kettle was boiling. Helen got up and made the tea while
Phil babbled on about the prevailing sexual climate. This isn't
happening, she thought; surely I'll wake up soon. It's some
nightmare. Soon I'll come to and I'll be upstairs in bed, not down
here in the kitchen, and none of it will have happened. Edward
will be out in the Britches, attacking nettles or whatever it is he
does there. Phil will be at home in North London, doing
whatever it is he does.

'You feeling all right, Helen?'
She opened her eyes. 'Yes. I'm a bit exhausted, that's all.
Perhaps you could give us both some tea.'
'Sure. Will do.'
'You've been a great help, Phil. Thank you.'
He presented her with a cup of tea, most of which was slopped

into the saucer. He was beaming graciously. 'No sweat, Helen.'
He sat down. 'You know what? Edward ought to go to a
therapist. You got therapists down here?'
Helen took a long drink of tea. 'What would a therapist do?'
she enquired. 'Show him how to be happy?'
'What a therapist does,' explained Phil, is help you come to
terms with yourself, see.'
'Ah,' said Helen. They sat in silence. Tam pushed his food
bowl around the floor, ostentatiously demonstrating its emptiness.
Phil shoved him with a booted foot. Tam withdrew to the
door and sat there with his ears back, twitching. Helen thought
of Edward, ten miles away: doing what? Feeling how?

Sunlight flowed through the slats of a blind and made a rectangular
golden stain on the wall beside his bed. The rim of this
stain dissolved into a blur of rainbow colour. He tried to
remember the principle of the refraction of light, failed, and saw
that some small winged insect was making its way slowly across
the rainbow. It turned from red to blue and yellow as it moved;
he could see lacy wings and the quivering of antennae. Then it
arrived on the unlit part of the wall and became an undefined
grey blob.

There was a curtain round the bed. He could hear the clack of
shoes on linoleum floors, voices, the rumble of a trolley. The
sounds were loud and individual; they rang in his head. In the
same way light was very bright, shape and texture were distinct
and interesting; he stared at the shadow cast by a fold of the
sheet, at the glinting silver surface of a tray on the bedside table.
There was a glass of water. The water itself contained light --
circles and streaks of light -- and the enlarged distorted brilliantly
blue image of a pen lying beside the glass.

It had been like that all along: the exaggerated, insistent sense
of the physical world. And he had known, also, that he was
clinging to it, clutching with his finger tips: that he had been
wrong, wrong. He heard a blackbird, and the clapping of pigeon
wings, and then Helen's voice, and Phil's. He felt himself
moving, being moved. He felt himself vomit. He tried to say

something, and could not. He wanted to sleep, and fought to
continue hearing and feeling. He saw light and movement.
He had begun to slide into that fog so quickly. He had
crammed the pills into his mouth -- two of the bottles were almost
empty so he had shaken everything out, frantically, chewing and
swallowing as fast as he could. And then he had sat there,
watching Tam digging under a bush. And the fog had closed in.
But through it had come the blackbird, that pigeon.

The curtain parted. A nurse stood there. She smiled. She
spoke. Edward turned his head. He said, at last, 'What time is it?'

'I could come now,' cried Louise. 'I want to come. I can get in
the car and be there by midnight. I want to talk. How can this
have happened . . .? Edward . . . And I'm going to strangle that
man Paget. I'm going round there to strangle him with my bare
hands. You what? Going to bed. . . I don't know how you can
go to bed, frankly. I doubt if I shall. I mean, how can none of us
have realised that he might . . .? How can we have been so
bloody ignorant? Yes, of course one always had the odd twinge
. . . the way he would shut himself up inside himself, you know
what I mean? You couldn't ever talk to him about it. And after
the debacle with that school one realised how vulnerable he was.
But this I never imagined. You know what I want? I want to get
him up here to see a marvellous man I know about who does a
new sort of. . . Well, there's no need to be quite so dismissive.
You always condemn things you don't know anything about.
Oh, I'm sorry. God, what's the matter with me? It shows what a
state I'm in. Can't I come now? All right, then -- tomorrow. And
go to bed and sleep, you need it.'

Edward is coming home today, she thought. Who might not
have been. I might be waking into an entirely different day. It is
not a good day, it is dangerous and difficult but it might have
been something quite other. It feels in some curious way like a
beginning, not an end. All is not right with the world, not by

any means, but nevertheless I have this interesting sense of a
future. A sense that things can be done: by me, by Edward.
And her mother, she noted, remained absent. Dorothy had
nothing to say about all this; she was elsewhere, on another plane
of time and experience, going about her business. With a jolt,
Helen realised that she could not conjure up her face. She could
no longer see her, or hear her.

He sat beside her. She found herself driving with exaggerated
care. She said, 'Louise is coming this afternoon.'
'Why?'
'Oh, Edward. . . Why do you think?'
'I'd rather there wasn't any fuss,' he said after a minute.
'There isn't. There won't be. She wants to see you, that's all.
See us.'
He made no further comment. She saw him looking intently out of the window, as though they were passing through new
and intriguing landscapes. And Edward, for his part, saw not
the familiar reaches of the road from Spaxton to their home but
strange and arresting conjunctions of tree and skyline, of field
and hedge. He saw the pale rim of the horizon, grey clouds
tipped with lilac, the golden flare of stubble, rich brown plough
sweeping up to the dark cushion of a wood. He feasted. His
mind was blank; he seemed to be the passive vehicle for a pair of
devouring eyes.

The phone was ringing as they came into the house. She saw the
look in Edward's eyes. 'I'll answer it. If it's anyone for you they
can leave a message.' Edward went into the sitting room.
She picked up the receiver. 'Hello?'
'Helen?' said Giles Carnaby. There was a pause; I knew this,
she thought, I knew it before I answered.
'You sound a little . . . distracted. I hope I haven't picked a
bad moment.'

'No,' she said. No more than any other.
'Ah. Then I'll be brave and plunge. I wondered if we could
meet. I ask with great diffidence. But it would make me very
happy if you'd say yes.'
Helen noted the pattern of light on the hall floor: shifting
spheres and bars -- like fish, like golden fish in a pond. 'I'd rather
not,' she heard herself say.
'Oh.' There was a silence; the fish rippled and flickered. 'I was
afraid you would say that. It wasn't, of course, a business
meeting I had in mind. Things progress, on that side. We'll be
in touch, in due course. What I had in mind was entirely selfish.
That last occasion was . . . well, not very satisfactory, was it? I
was hoping you might have had a change of heart.'

I see, she thought: I am intransigent, insensitive. 'I don't think
it would be a good idea.'
He sighed. A delicate, regretful sound; quite natural, to the
untutored ear. She would hear it, she accepted, for quite a while.
'Then I'll say goodbye, Helen.'
'Goodbye.' She put down the receiver.
Edward appeared, and at the same moment Phil came clumping
down the stairs. Edward said, 'Tam doesn't seem to be
anywhere about.'
Helen looked at Phil. 'Have you seen Tam?'
He shook his head. 'I think it went in the garden. You all right
now, Edward?'
Edward blinked. He looked away. 'Yes thanks. I suppose so.'
'That's good,' said Phil. 'Oh -- I forgot. Mum rang -- they're all
coming, Dad and Suzanne too. S'a bit much, innit? They'll be
here for lunch, she said.'

The fridge was all but empty. There seemed to be nothing in the
larder but decaying potatoes. Helen went to the shop, bought
cold meats and the wherewithal for a salad; Louise, on this
occasion, would be uncritical. She set off home, rounded the
bend in the road, and there twenty yards from the Greystones
gate was Ron Paget. Waiting, it would seem. She walked towards
him, resolute.

'I gather you've had a bit of an upset. Your brother better
now, Miss Glover?'

She eyed him. Who? The doctor? Impossible. Phil? Equally
so. One would never know. Villages have eyes and ears. They
have their own methods.
'He's all right.'
'I been talking things over with Pauline. We've decided we'll
not take this business to the police. It's not going to do our boy
any good, and that's the main thing. So I thought I'd let you
know.'

'You must do what you want,' she said.
'So the best we can do is put it behind us. You and us both.
We're neighbours and have been for a long time and I'm not a
man that likes trouble. So that's the way it is.'
'It's entirely up to you. We are not making any sort of bargain.'

He looked pained. 'Miss Glover, who's talking about bargains?
I told you, we don't want to see our boy put through any more.'
'Very well,' said Helen. 'And now I must go. I'm expecting
my sister.'
'There's something else I've got to tell you. I'm afraid there's
been a tragedy with that little dog of yours. One of my men
found him just now, outside the yard. Dead. They reckon he'd
eaten something. Likely someone's been putting rat poison down.
Shame . . . Never rains but it pours, does it? Would you want
the men to bring him over or shall I ask them to deal with it
quietly, not to worry your brother?' His expression was inscrutable.
No, not inscrutable; there was a tremor of concern.
Carefully calculated concern.

She took a deep breath. 'I'd appreciate it if the men could see
to it.'

He nodded. 'No problem. Right, then. Let bygones be
bygones, right? And so far as your bit of land goes -- well, you
know how things stand where I'm concerned.'
She stared at him, incredulous, and then walked past him to
her own gate. She let herself into the house, put the shopping
basket down on the kitchen table and went upstairs. The door of
Edward's room was closed. She knocked. 'Edward? I have to talk
to you.'


They had come, and they had gone: Louise, Tim, Suzanne. And
with them went Phil. He had appeared in the kitchen as Helen
was clearing the table; the others had gone into the sitting room.
'I thought I'd get a lift to London with Mum and Dad. There's
some things I got to see to.'
'Oh, I see. Right you are, then, Phil.'
'S'a pity about Tam. I mean, he was an awful dog but Edward
liked him, so it's a pity.'
'Yes. We could have done without that just now.'
'Anyway, thanks for having me. And take care. .
She had been reminded, wryly, of the hours after the funeral.
There they all were, gathered together again in an atmosphere of
ritual ceremony in which were combined elements of unspoken
relief and of mourning. Nobody referred to what had happened.
Louise flung her arms around Edward on arrival; Edward
stoically endured this without overt signs of rejection. Tim shook
him by the hand. Suzanne gleamed at him from behind a newly
reconstructed coiffure which almost obliterated her face. Phil
was startlingly genial; he welcomed his parents with the air of
some benign Edwardian uncle receiving poor relations. He
pressed refreshments upon them and suggested a tour of the
garden. Louise, cornering Helen in the kitchen, hissed: 'He
claims he cut the grass. Is that true? I don't believe it. What the
hell have you done to him? And he says he's coming home.'

They had sat around in the sitting room, that least inhabited
of the Greystones rooms, always tinged with damp, always chill.
They had talked with animation of anything except that of which
all were thinking. Edward, from time to time, had joined in. It
had been agreed that Helen and Edward should come up to
London for Christmas. Helen had heard herself saying that she
planned to get a new washing machine and see about some
electric storage heaters for the winter. Periodically someone
would refer to Dorothy, but her presence now was dimmer, she
was no longer the insistent unavoidable black hole that she had
been on the earlier occasion. And then eventually there had been
shiftings and glances at watches.

And so they were alone. Conspicuously alone -- it was Tam who
was now a hole, a silence, a small absence. His food bowl,
standing by the sink, was a mute reproach. Helen, putting it into
the scullery, met Edward; they exchanged looks that were filled
with some odd kind of guilt. Edward said, 'Do you think Ron
Paget poisoned him?'

'We'll never know, will we? I suppose he may have done.'
Edward sat down at the kitchen table. He was still pale, and
had the translucent look of someone emerging from illness, but
there was also an alertness about him; he had lost the frozen
passivity of recent weeks. He kept staring out of the window.
'Poor Tam. I feel as though it were my fault.'
'I know. One does. It may be no one's. Better to assume that.
Anyway, Tam is the least of it. You can get another dog.' As
soon as she had said it she saw the flaw, and winced.
'Yes,' said Edward. 'I daresay I shall,' he added, quite
neutrally.
'By the way . . . I ought to tell you -- I've found us some new
solicitors. People called Wyndham and Fowler.' Their eyes met.
She looked away.
'I see.' Edward paused, then went on with sudden violence. 'I
never liked him. I couldn't see what . .
'I know you didn't. Let's not talk about him, if you don't
mind.'
'He was the sort of person who is all over everyone. Anyone.'
'Possibly. I was aware of it myself. But makes no difference,
you know, under the circumstances.'
Edward looked straight at her. He was trembling slightly. 'If I
ever saw him again, I'd punch him on the nose.'
She laughed. 'I shouldn't. We've had enough trouble as it is.'

The room was stuffy. She got up and opened the back door.
Outside, everything shone in the late afternoon sunshine. She
stood for a moment, seeing that the chestnuts in the Britches
were showing autumn colour, that the yew hedge was swagged
with spiders' webs. She searched for something else; she scanned
the garden for her mother, invited that familiar, forbidding
brown figure to come stumping across the grass. But Dorothy
was not there, nor had been, Helen realised, for any of the last
days. She had ceased to comment, had removed herself, it
seemed, to some other plane -- from which, Helen saw, she might
continue to dispose, but differently.
She said, 'Why do pigeons fly upwards and then come hurtling
downward clapping their wings?'
'It's a mating display.'
'But this isn't the nesting season.'
'They do it all the year round. Don't ask me why.'
Edward, too, looked out. For him, the world blazed; he saw
and heard, in one bright intricate living clamour, leaf and branch,
flower and fruit, sunshine and wind and creatures that crept or
flew. He saw and heard the pigeons, the silver blink of the big
poplar, the quivering shadows on the grass. He was numb,
neither sad nor glad; he did not know what he felt -- only that all
this was here, and so was he.

Helen closed the door and sat down again. The hall clock
struck. As its last discordant note died away Helen thought, I
shall sell that thing. Edward can spend the money on new trees
to plant in the Britches. Edward barely heard it; he saw, now,
the room -- the bat calendar, the Coronation biscuit tin, that sink.
Everything was the same, and yet was not.

The Glovers sat opposite one another, silent, and pursued,
independently, the same theme. They saw that there is nothing
to be done, but that something can be retrieved. Both sniffed the
air; each, gingerly, made resolutions.