A Change of Climate: A Novel

NINE

Julian telephoned home from a call box in a pub on the coast road. “Mum, is everything all right at home?”

“Where are you?”

“In the Ship,” he said, confusing her.

“When can we expect to set eyes on you?”

A pause. “In a day or two.”

“Robin seems to think you’ve moved out for good.”

“He’s no reason to think that.”

“Julian, is there some problem over there?”

Another pause. “We’ll have to have a talk sometime. But not just … not just yet. Till I know what’s happening here. But look, don’t worry. It’s just that I can’t come home at the moment.”

“Julian,” she said, “if you are trying to reassure me, stop now. All you are achieving is to alarm me wildly.”

“Mum, don’t tell Dad I called, okay?”

“Why ever not?”

“I only wanted to know if you were all right.”

“Julian …”

No answer. The line went dead. I’ll drive over, she thought, see what’s what. It occurred to her that she wasn’t entirely certain

where Mrs. Glasse lived. Still, she could find it, it wasn’t beyond her capacities … but then, she thought, there’s Melanie, and it’s getting urgent to find some clothes for her, I ought to take her shopping; and even if I put it off for another day, I can’t leave Kit at home with her while I go chasing after Julian, it’s not fair. What does it matter if he doesn’t come home for a few days? It’s not like him to make mysteries, but perhaps it’s something to do with Sandra’s mother, family business, something he doesn’t want to talk about. Not trouble with the police again, surely? Another thing went through her mind, that goes through the mind of every woman with a grown-up son on the loose: could Sandra be pregnant? Probably I’m being melodramatic. I wonder … would Ralph have time to drive over? She looked at her watch. I’ll catch him at Mrs. Gartree’s, she thought.

Mrs. Gartree was an old woman, very deaf and vague. She had been a friend of Ralph’s parents, and a great churchgoer in her prime, and Ralph had taken it upon himself to call on her once a month. Mrs. Gartree liked to discuss parish politics in her strident bellow, and was assiduous in filling out forms for obscure state benefits to which someone had told her she might be entitled. She had a fortune in the bank, Ralph said, but he helped her with the forms all the same; she had few pleasures left in life, he said, just this one and planning her funeral.

Mrs. Gartree’s voice: indignant, very loud. “My telephone flashed at me. Who are you? What do you want?”

“It’s Anna. ANNA. ANNA ELDRED. Ralph’s wife.”

“Oh yes.” Mrs. Gartree sounded mollified.

“Is he there?”

“Mrs. Gartree dwindled into vagueness. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

“Has he left?”

“What?”

“Have I missed him? Has he been and gone?”

“Missed him? Oh, I’m sure I would,” Mrs. Gartree said skittishly. “But he was here last week. I think so. Within the month.”

“But today?” I should have known better than to get into this, Anna thought. “Today—he said he was going to call on you.”

“No,” Mrs. Gartree said. “You called me. I haven’t spoken to Ralph. No, not for many a moon.”

Anna turned up her eyes. “Okay, Mrs. Gartree. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“I wouldn’t, except I’m deaf,” Mrs. Gartree said.

“Goodbye,” Anna said.

“Toodle-oo,” said Mrs. Gartree.

Anna went into Ralph’s office and found his diary. He really is beginning to move in mysterious ways, she thought. In the afternoon, at two o’clock, he was due for another meeting in Norwich about the Home-from-Hospitals scheme. The Trust was funding a project to create networks of helpers for the old and chronically sick; discharged from hospital to isolated cottages, or to homes in villages with no shop or chemist, they needed failure-proof rotas of visitors if they were to be kept free from anxiety, hypothermia, and the risk of falls.

She flicked through Ralph’s address book; the Norwich number came to hand. “Pat? It’s Anna. Ralph’s wife.”

“Oh, yes. How are you, Mrs. Eldred?”

“Look, when Ralph arrives for your meeting, would you ask him to ring home? I’d like a quick word.”

There was a silence. “Just a minute.” A pause. Then “Mrs. Eldred? I think there must be a mix-up. We haven’t got a meeting today.”

“Are you sure?”

“No—yes, I mean—I’ve just checked my diary.”

“I’m sorry,” Anna said. “I must have got the dates confused.”

“That’s okay.” The woman sounded relieved. “For a minute I thought I’d made some awful mistake. I’d hate to make a mistake about a meeting with Mr. Eldred, he’s always got so much to do.”

“Yes, hasn’t he?” Anna said. She put the phone down. Well now, she thought. But she did not like what she thought. Mrs.

Gartree could be discounted, as a witness; but it was strange that Pat Appleyard wasn’t expecting him. It was agreed between them that he would always leave his diary for her, and update it each evening, in case there was an emergency at the hostel, in case she needed to contact him; and he had always stuck to that diary, he was known to be reliable and punctual and to save his severest strictures for people who were not.

I am not quite an innocent, Anna thought. I have read a novel or two, in my time. A disappearing husband—unless he’s a drunk or a criminal—means another woman; yet there’s something farcical about it, isn’t there, if a disappearing husband covers his tracks so badly, or doesn’t try to cover them at all? But no doubt, if Ralph took to lying, he wouldn’t be very proficient at it. Not at first. As far as she knew, he’d had no practice.

Anna sat down in the hard chair at Ralph’s desk. Her mind moved slowly, cautiously. Opportunity? He had plenty. He met hundreds of people in the course of his year, clients, social workers, journalists. Routine to fetter him? He had none; each week was different, and the diary was all that constrained him.

Anna tried to smile—as if there were someone in the room to see her effort. You are being ridiculous, she thought. Yes, he meets women, but so he has done for years; he meets women, but if he were interested in one of them, who in particular would it be? No answer suggested itself. I would have imagined, she thought, that though you cannot know people, not really, I would have imagined that I did know Ralph.

She felt very cold, and went upstairs to fetch a cardigan.

The day must continue, though the cardigan somehow failed to warm her. She said to Kit, “Are you doing anything this afternoon?” Silly question; when was Kit, this summer, ever doing anything? She sat around, she slept, she made herself intermittently useful. “Because if you’re not, would you come shopping for

clothes with Melanie and me? I thought, you see, as you’re nearer her age—”

“Sure,” Kit said. “We’ve got a lot in common.”

“Where do you think we would do best?”

“Depends what she wants. If she wants another leopard-skin-print T-shirt, we could try Woolworths in Dereham.”

“Such snobs, my children.”

“Okay,” Kit said grudgingly, “I’ll come. What does she need?”

“She needs a coat of some sort. And some shoes to wear in the house.”

“To spare us the clatter of the boots.”

“A sweater, as well, in case it turns cold.” She pulled her cardigan around her. “And another pair of jeans, perhaps, and a couple of shirts or T-shirts. And underwear, I feel sure—I’ve not inspected, I don’t feel up to it.”

“She doesn’t wear any,” Kit said.

“Who says so?”

“Robin.” Kit sighed satirically. “He’s of an age to notice. Well then … we could go to Norwich, and catch up with Dad after his meeting. We could make him take us out, for tea and iced buns, so Melanie can see us behaving like a family in a picture book. We could have anchovy toast, and dote on each other.”

“No,” Anna said. “Not Norwich. I tell you what we’ll do—it’s a nice day, let’s go to the seaside. Get some fresh air. We’ll go to Cromer. She might like it.”

“She’ll be crying for cotton candy, and to ride on the donkeys, I suppose,” Kit said. “Honestly, you do have a strange idea of what constitutes a treat for a person like Melanie.”

“You know what your father said. Try to be kind.”

Anna went upstairs. She stood outside the closed door for a moment, gathering herself. Then she tapped on it. No answer. Softly she turned the handle. “Melanie?”

The curtains were drawn, and the room was dark and close and tainted; no one, so far, had seen Melanie wash. She had hauled her mattress onto the floor, and heaped the sheets and blankets and pillows into the middle of it. At first Anna thought that the bed was empty, and Melanie had somehow escaped; but then there was a slight movement at the center of the heap, and the girl stuck her head out. “Do you prefer to sleep on the floor?” Anna asked.

Melanie stood up amid the wreckage. Sheets fell away from her body. She was wearing a pink T-shirt that belonged to Becky. It was painfully tight under her arms, and rode up to show the frail rack of her ribs. “Where did you get that?” Anna asked. She wondered if it had been on the washing line, but thought not. “You shouldn’t go into Becky’s room without telling her, you know. She won’t like it.”

“She won’t like it,” the girl mocked, aping her tone.

“You’re welcome to borrow anything. Anything you like. But you should ask.”

“Why?”

Because, Anna thought. Because … for a thousand reasons. Because it is what civilized people do. She heard the flat anthropologist’s tone of the question: why? Passing no judgment: just, why?

“Besides, you’re a big girl, Melanie, Becky’s things won’t fit you. Would you like Kit to lend you something?”

“Borrow. Lend,” the girl said. “Snobby cows.”

“I was thinking we’d go out.” Anna tried to make her tone easy. “Go to the seaside.”

“For kids,” Melanie said.

“Yes, but a shopping trip. To get you some clothes.”

“I had clothes.”

“Yes, but you burned them.”

“Before that. My own clothes.”

“I know you did. Don’t pick your fingers like that.” Melanie’s fingertips were raw: the skin peeling, the nailbeds inflamed. She constantly tore at them, tormenting each one with her other nails and her teeth; it was a habit she had picked up in her amphetamine phase, it was something that these children did. And it hurt; Anna remembered—memory like a needle under the skin—her own

fingernails, cropped to the quick. And then a picture flashed into her mind of Enock standing in the compound with a scythe in his hand, wasted nature at his feet: the torn-out blossom that would only have annoyed him, anyway, for a few hours before the sun killed it.

“What’s the matter with you?” the girl said. Anna looked up and met her eyes. What she saw shocked her; almost evidence of humanity.

“It’s nothing,” she said.

But the girl persisted, her tone cold. “Did you think about something you shouldn’t have?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of thing?”

“I can’t say.”

“I can’t say.” Again the imitation, cruel and strangely exact. “A bad thing, was it?”

“Yes … if you like.”

“How bad?” The girl’s face was intent: for once, she was asking a proper question. She needed evidence of iniquity, Anna thought, of fallibility at least. How not? She needed comparisons and juxtapositions, if she were ever to find her own place in the scale of things. “Like killing somebody?” Melanie inquired.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever killed somebody?”

“What a question! I’d be in jail.”

“Have you ever been in jail?”

“Yes.” The answer surprised Anna. “I have.”

“For nicking things?”

“No. Not that.”

“You’d have no need, would you? You’ve got everything.”

“You may think so.”

“You’ve got a house,” Melanie said.

“Yes, that’s true.”

“I haven’t got a house. I’ve been in homes.”

Anna’s face softened. “Yes … they shouldn’t call them that, should they? Homes. Look, Melanie, your mum and dad … how long is it since you saw them now?”

At this question, Melanie’s eyes dulled; but behind her locked-and-barred expression Anna sensed a small movement of mind, the dawn of a precarious desire for cooperation: saw the mind moving, vaguely, around the months and years. Perhaps she was trying to come to terms with an alien chronology, the dates of court orders and social inquiry reports. “I’ve forgot them,” she said.

“No. You can’t have.”

“I can. I have.”

“So, now … what about this day out we’re going to have?” She smiled with a professional brightness. She had learned from Ralph to talk in this way: to presume assent to any initiative, to state always the positive, never to consider the possibility of no for an answer.

“Are we? Us? Going out?” Melanie’s eyes were like two big gray pebbles; she rocked back on her heels, as if Anna might try to haul her by force into the open air.

“Yes. Why not?”

“I like it here.”

“You do? That’s something.”

Melanie saw that she had lost an inch of ground. “And these clothes, I like these clothes, I don’t want any others.”

“I’m sure you know why that is quite unreasonable,” Anna said. “You’re clearly not without intelligence.” Ralph’s tone was less evident; she was cool, at the end of her patience. “You know perfectly well that you can’t spend the rest of your life wearing a T-shirt that belongs to a child two or three years younger than yourself, so it’s only a matter of when you get new clothes, isn’t it, not whether?”

They surveyed each other: level ground. Anna calculated that Melanie might hit her: it would not be unprecedented, in a Visitor. She weighed the prospect: the pale stringy arms below the tight sleeves, arms laced with cuts, and the torn hands, the right middle finger with its cheap heart-shaped ring. She knew that she should step back a few inches, beyond Melanie’s reach. The girl’s arms hung at her sides, and Anna—who had seen men fight—imagined that she might jerk one fist up, straight-armed, to catch the point of her jaw. But I will not step back, she thought. I will not give way. Melanie whispered, “Tell me what you thought.”

“What do you mean, what I thought?”

“Before. When you thought about killing somebody.”

“What will you do, if I tell you?”

“Come with you. Get clothes.”

“No, you’ll break your promise.”

“I won’t. I’ll come. But tell me.”

“All right.” Their eyes locked: Anna thought, I’ll tell you something you don’t know. “I had another child once,” she said. “A boy. A baby. He was taken from my house and murdered.”

The girl nodded. Her eyes slid away. Stayed on the floor: on the heap of crumpled bedding. “That was hard,” she whispered.

And it was that—the very poverty of her response, the laughable poverty of her vocabulary—that made Anna speak again. “Hard. Yes. Extremely hard. You ask me what I was thinking about—I’ll tell you, Melanie, why not? I was thinking about the man who did it. About how I would kill him, if I had him.”

Melanie watched her. “And how would you?”

“I don’t know. I think about it, but I can’t choose. You see, there are so many ways.”

The girl dropped her head again, and for the first time Anna saw it as a frail, living thing; half destroyed, bruised, but a blossom on the stem of her thin neck. Her skin was white and fine, her hair, no doubt, had a color of its own, and only parts of her body were cut and marked. She is retrievable, she thought: possibly, in some small way. But I should not have said what I did, I should have found some way to lie; I should have tried to retrieve her, but not by that method.

She moved to the door. “You made a promise,” she said. She held the door open. “Come on now, Melanie, you drove a bargain and you got more than you asked for. You made a promise that you’d come and buy some clothes.”

Melanie nodded. Again, there was no expression on her face now: no reaction to what she had been told. She will suppose it is a dream, Anna thought; she lives from moment to moment, perhaps, her memory constantly erased. Behind her, the big boots descended the stairs. In the strong sunlight that shone through the kitchen window, she observed the girl’s flawed, bluish face, and put up her hand to touch her jaw. “Do you not sleep, Melanie?”

“No. Cough keeps waking me.”

“Keep off the glue, and your cough will clear up,” Anna said briskly.

Anna lapsed into silence as she drove; Melanie was silent anyway. When they arrived in Cromer she lifted her feet in the big black boots and locked her arms around her knees, wrapping herself into a knot in the backseat. She didn’t want to see the sunlight on the cold North Sea, or hear the ice-cream van chimes and the gulls’ cries. Kit saw the birds’ bodies floating and skimming, mirrored in the high windows of the old seafront hotels: skimming the turrets and dormers and gables of the red-brick houses, wheeling inland to swoop and cry among the pines. The gulls leave an afterimage, on the ear and eye, and the waves have the sound of a labored breath; trippers tramp over mastodon bones, and plaice is fried in cafes with plastic tables.

Melanie shut her eyes tight; she wasn’t getting out of the car. Anna seemed to have run out of energy to coax her.

“You know you need clothes,” she said feebly.

“I’ve got clothes,” Melanie said. “I told you.”

Kit said, “You’ve got what you stand up in, and some of that stolen. Come on, you silly bitch! What you’re wearing has to be washed, for our sake if not for yours.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Kit said mildly, “if you start to smell any more we’ll make you go and live in one of the bike sheds.”

Surprisingly, this seemed to have an effect on Melanie. She unwrapped her body like a stiff uncurling fist, and tumbled from the car. Kit, having warned her about the sea breezes, had brought along a spare jacket of her own. She tried to put it around the child’s shoulders. Melanie bellowed, “Get off me. Murdering pig.”

“Not quite,” Kit said. “Not yet, but don’t try me, honeybunch, I’m bigger than you and if I wallop you round the head you’ll know about it.”

Anna shivered. She had abdicated to Kit now, lost control: she was terrified by the thought of what she had said to Melanie, the ease with which it might seep from that pale inarticulate mouth.

Kit took Melanie by the arm. What a formidable wardress she would be, Anna thought; very strong and very sure, with that hand that sinks into the tender female flesh above the elbow joint. She felt that bruises might blossom out again, on her own flesh. She asked herself, have I something for which I must forgive Kit? Have I forgiven her for living?

They headed off into the town. Kit released her prisoner, and strode out smiling equably. Melanie slouched, sullen and furious, her green-twig arms whipped by the wind. Anna had made a move to pick up the coat, for use when Melanie changed her mind; but Kit, almost imperceptibly, shook her head at her, and Anna let it lie on the front seat of the car.

An hour later they had managed, after a fashion, to get Melanie equipped. They had to apologize for her rudeness to the people in the shops, and received commiserating smiles. “They think she’s my retarded little sister,” Kit whispered.

Melanie at least was willing to carry her own parcels. The day darkened, there was drizzle on the wind; now, while the trippers turned blue and rubbed their hands, the local women leaned into the squall in their quilted jackets and wool scarves. Anna swept her collar up to her throat, and glanced at Melanie’s white arms. Norfolk may teach forethought, in a way London never does.

“Look!” Kit put a hand on her shoulder. “Mum, look at that washing machine!” She arrested her before the electricity showroom. “Sixteen cycles! Just think!”

Anna said, “Yes … but you know, with the twin-tub still going strong—”

“Going strong?” Kit was outraged. She glanced over her shoulder, to ask Melanie—their relationship had flourished in the last half hour—if she’d ever heard of such a thing as a twin-tub washing machine, where you hauled the sodden shirts with tongs and rubber gloves from … but Melanie wasn’t there. Kit spun around. Her long hair flew out in the wind. “Run,” she said. “It’s thirty seconds since I saw her, so how far can she have got?”

They gaped up and down the street. No trace, no sign. “In a shop,” Kit said. “Quick.”

They put their heads into the neighboring shops, gabbling questions, apologies: “Have you seen a young girl, short reddish hair, jeans, pink T-shirt? The queue turning: what, your daughter is she, how old would she be? A woman behind a counter stood with her hand poised, ready to drop Norfolk shortbread into a paper bag. Blank faces. “Sorry, my dears,” the woman said.

“We’re wasting our time. Where would she go?”

“Anywhere,” Kit said. “She doesn’t know her way about, so she’d go anywhere.”

They looked into each other’s faces. “I don’t want to sound like a silly film,” Kit said, “but why don’t you go that way and I’ll go this way? And if you see her, grab her, don’t hesitate, just hold on to her, okay?”

“Where will I meet you?”

“Here,” Kit said. “By the washing machine. Give it ten minutes, then start walking back. I’ll see you in fifteen, twenty. If we don’t find her by that time we may as well give up, she’ll probably have got on a bus and gone somewhere. Has she any money?”

“A fiver,” Anna said.

“Oh, right, a fiver.” Kit pounded off down the street, her head turning from side to side. Anna watched her for a moment and then skittered awkwardly in the opposite direction, high heels uncertain over the paving stones. She hadn’t known it would come to this, or she’d have dressed for it.

A few minutes, and her efforts were over. She leaned against a wall. I can’t run, she thought; never could. Still, she had done what her heart allowed, her ribs heaving and her chest sore, her head swivel-ing from side to side to see if she could catch a glimpse of Melanie’s orange hair. Surely, she thought, if she tries to hitch a lift out of town, no one will give her one? She’s too peculiar, she looks deranged. Unless, perhaps, they take pity on her. For people do, of course. They do the most amazing things; prisoners escape, and people give them lifts, and every runaway gets money and shelter somehow.

Fifteen minutes later, distressed, her lips almost blue, she was back with Kit before the washing machine shop. Kit put her hands on her mother’s shoulders, then under her elbows to hold her upright. “Are you all right? I didn’t say kill yourself.”

“Fine,” Anna said. “I’m fine.” She pulled back and held her midriff, one thin hand folded protectively over the opposite wrist.

“We’ve lost her. I questioned bus queues, in a melodramatic fashion. Ought we to go to the police?”

“No. She’s not done anything wrong.”

“But she might. Or something might happen to her.”

Anna straightened up. Breath was coming back. “Nobody’s obliged to take their holidays with us,” she snapped.

“No, but—”

“Kit, if we get the police involved it is almost sure to land her in some sort of trouble. And what would your father say? She’d never trust us again. We should give her—I don’t know—we should just stand here for a quarter of an hour. She might come back.”

“She won’t be able to find her way back.” Kit rubbed her hands together, to warm them. “Okay, but we should let someone know—I don’t suppose you’ve got Dad’s number in Norwich?”

“No.”

“We can call Directory Enquiries. Get him back home. Listen, you stand here. There’s a phone box over there—Red Cross, isn’t it? What’s the name of the person he’s meeting?”

“I don’t know.”

“Never mind. I’ll tell them to turn him round and send him home.”

“No, Kit.” Anna tore at her daughter’s arm. She thought, if my daughter phones Pat Appleyard asking for him, that’ll be twice in a day, so she’ll know there’s something wrong, she’ll be asking questions, starting gossip … “Kit, he’s not in Norwich.”

“Where is he then?”

“I don’t know.”

“But he said he was going to Norwich! This morning!” Kit swept her hair back, then flung out her hands, exasperated. “Robin said, bring me a Wisden Cricket Monthly and he said, all right, but if I can’t see one, will anything else do, and Robin said no. Rebecca said, bring me something. He said, what? She said, a surprise. Dad said, Okay. Robin said, you spoiled brat.”

Anna drew herself gently from her daughter’s grasp and leaned back against the plate-glass window of the washing machine shop. She covered her mouth with her hand, and a little, bitter bleat came from her; laughter?

Kit tried to pull her hand from her mouth, to claw it away, as if her mother were a baby that had eaten something it shouldn’t: earth or soil or a stone. On and on it went, the little noise: the heave of the narrow ribs, the out-breath like a moan, the breath sucked in as if air were poison. Anna’s ribs drew up, into a panic-stricken arch, and for a moment she was frozen, paralyzed, eyes closed. Then she let out her breath—with more than a gasp, with a muffled scream heaved up from her stomach. She sucked in the air, the raw salty Norfolk air. “I knew I should lose everything,” she said. “I knew I should lose everything, one of these days.”

Late afternoon, someone came to the door. Anna let Kit answer it. She noticed that Kit had changed out of her jeans into a neat skirt, and had tied her hair back, as if she anticipated a sudden transition into adult affairs.

Anna sat in Ralph’s study, in the old wooden swivel chair he used at his desk. It had come from Emma’s surgery, this chair: given to him when it was too disreputable for the patients to see. In better times, they had joked that it was impossible to sit in it without the urge to swing around, to say, “That sounds a very nasty cough.”

But these are worse times. Anna was exhausted by the effort of imagination chasing its own tail. I can formulate no sensible ideas about Ralph, she thought, and my head aches; Kit will never trust me again, never trust me not to break down and start screaming in the street. And the girl has gone, Melanie, and somehow I will be held responsible; screaming doesn’t get me out of that one. Now with each little breath she took, the chair swayed under her, sedately. Each movement brought forth its ponderous, broken, familiar complaint.

Kit came in: two policemen followed her. She looked grave, pale, very correct. “They’ve found Melanie. She made it as far as Norwich. She’s in hospital, I’m afraid.”

Anna stood up. “What’s happened?”

“Mrs. Eldred?” one of the policemen said.

“Yes. What’s happened to her?”

“She gave us your name,” the policemen said. “Mr. Eldred’s name, I should say.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Anna said. “Answer my question.”

“She’s taken something, swallowed something maybe, that’s what we’ve been told. Would you have any idea what it might be?”

“I told him,” Kit said. “I’ve already explained how she ran off.” She turned to the policemen. “She was fine then. I told you.”

“How is she?”

“She’s comfortable.”

“Comfortable?” Anna stared at the man. “How can she be?”

The other policemen spoke. “The hospital won’t let us interview her. She’s drowsy, you understand.”

“Is she in any danger?”

“That’s not for us to say.”

“We understand,” the first man said, “that Mr. Eldred would be in loco parentis.”

Anna nodded. The other policemen said, “Mr. Eldred not home from work yet?”

“He doesn’t work. That is, he doesn’t go out to work.”

The men looked confused. “He’s an invalid?” one suggested.

“My husband is an officer of a charitable trust. He works from home.”

“That’s why we have Melanie,” Kit said. “I tried to explain.”

“Would it be all right if we looked round, Mrs. Eldred? Around your house?”

“No, I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”

“They want to look in Melanie’s room,” Kit said. “In case there’s something there that she might have taken, a bottle of pills or something.”

“Yes,” Anna said. “I know what they want to do.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Kit said uneasily, to the men.

Already, Anna thought, she is treating me as if I were of unsound mind, unable to speak up for myself. I must expect it, I suppose. “Go and get the proper warrants,” she said. “The papers. Then come back. And then you can search.”

At once the atmosphere changed; the men changed, their natural obstructiveness and obtuseness giving way to a sneering hostility. “Why do you want to make it difficult?” the first man said.

“I don’t want to make it difficult. I just want things done properly.”

“If the young girl dies,” the second said, “you’ll be to blame.”

“I thought there was no question of her dying. I thought she was comfortable.”

“Mum—” Kit said. Her face was shocked; she thinks I’m a new woman, Anna thought. “Mum, look. It’s just to help Melanie.”

“There’s a principle,” Anna said to her daughter. “There’s a correct way. Once you depart from it, you leave yourself open.”

“It’s not South Africa,” Kit said.

“Not yet,” Anna snapped.

Her daughter was silent. A policeman said, “Well, madam, perhaps it would be better if we talked to your husband. What time are you expecting him?”

“No particular time.”

“Doesn’t he keep regular hours?”

“By no means.”

Kit said, “We usually know where to contact him, but today there seems to be some mix-up with his diary.”

“Oh yes?”

“So we don’t know how to get hold of him, you see.”

“That’s unlucky,” the second man said. “We’ll have to radio in. Say he can’t be found.”

“I can come to the hospital,” Anna said.

“Yes, madam, but it’s not you that’s in loco parentis, is it? Well now, we have got a problem.”

None of their language, Anna thought, means what it says. It is a special dialect, charged with implication. One of the men was looking over her shoulder. He seemed to be staring at the wall. She turned to see what he was looking at. “That picture there,” the policeman said. “That photo. That wouldn’t be Mr. Eldred, would it?”

“Yes.” She picked up the photograph, defensive, startled: Ralph on the stoep at Flower Street. “If you’re thinking of putting out a wanted poster, I’m afraid it won’t be much use to you. It’s twenty years old, this picture—more.”

“Is it, now? It’s not a bad likeness, not bad at all.” He turned to his colleague. “Brancaster way? Down the track? The market-trader?” He turned back to Anna. “We’ve had a few dealings with Mr. Eldred. We’ve seen him coming and going from a smallholding, just off that loop of road before you get to Burnham Deepdale. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where we’ll find him, madam.”

Each time he said this—“madam”—it was like a kick or a blow with his fist. He meant it so; he was watching her face, waiting for her to flinch. “Would you know a woman over that way, involved in market-trading?”

“A Mrs. Glasse?” Anna’s face seemed frozen. She nodded. “Will you go over there now?”

“It might be worth a try.”

“Kit,” Anna said, “when Rebecca comes home from her friend’s, will you see that she has something to eat? Then take her over to Foulsham and ask Emma to put you both up for the night.”

“What for?”

“Because I don’t want her here. Okay?”

“Can I take your car?”

“No. I need it.” She turned to the men. “I’ll follow you,” Anna said to the men.

“We can’t stop you, madam.”

Anna said to Kit, “You can bike over, can’t you? Just take your toothbrushes.”

“I’ll leave Becky with Emma, and I’ll come back.”

“No. Stay with your sister. Kit, look—do this one thing for me, please?”

Anna was brittle, exasperated; Kit knew the tone, it was familiar. But she saw how Anna’s nerves were stretched—tight, tight. “What shall I say to Emma?”

“I don’t know. Must I think of everything? Aren’t you old enough to help me?”

“No,” Kit said. “Not really.”

Anna picked up her car keys from beside the photograph. She has been waiting for this, Kit thought, waiting to go out, her bag ready and to hand.

Anna followed the police car. They could have lost her, at this junction or that, but they preferred to dawdle and let her stick with them.

It was evening now. The sky was striated, precise overlays of color working from regal purple to the palest blush. Amy Glasse woke and sat up in bed, stretching her arms and fingers, rippling her fingers through the liquid light like a stage pianist preparing to play. Ralph turned and reached for her as she slid from the bed; sleeping, he followed the heat trail of her body across the sheets. His arm, empty, cupped the space from which she had moved.

From below, there was a monotonous thumping, a solid hammering, like the copulation of giants in a myth.

“Oh, God,” Amy said. “We’re back in the old routine.”

Ralph woke to see her shape against the window. Her long back, white in the dusk: “Sweetheart, come back to bed.” He put out a hand for her, drowsy; didn’t see why his peace should be disturbed.

“Sorry,” Amy said. “I don’t know, shall I go down, or shall I pretend I’m not here? Ralph, you’re not awake, are you?” She cast around, snatched up the T-shirt she had taken off, and swabbed the area between her thighs. She looked around the room for something else to wear, then with a little laugh pulled the T-shirt over her head. She reached for her skirt. “What shall I do? If I don’t go down now they’ll only come back later.”

“Who?” He had focused now, on that sound of fist on wood. “Who is it?”

“Purvis and his mate,” she said. “The constabulary, my dear. Sometimes I wish I lived in the city, then you’d get a choice of bastards. Not always the same old pair.”

He pushed back the covers. “Ralph,” she said, “don’t go down. No, listen to me.” She was at the window, the curtain parted minutely. “There’s two cars here. Just get dressed, but stay up here and be quiet. If they come up say nothing—don’t antagonize them.”

Buttoning her skirt, she flitted from the room. No one could crouch and hide, and listen to that destructive thump-thump-thumping; Amy couldn’t do it, and neither’ could he. Panicking, he began to pull himself into his clothes. He must get there before her; feared violence. Once before he had imagined hitting Purvis. Once, a long time ago … his hand, clenched to pull in and fasten his belt, felt itself sink into belly flesh: propel a bully toward ridicule and the stoep door, one foot in a wastepaper basket. The body has its own memories; muscle and bone, marching its own ghost trail.

He put his shoes on, straightened up: randomly buttoned his shirt, skittered down the stairs after Amy. The front door was open: he went out into a September evening, a confrontation, the air a golden rose; the past summer a memory, bloom of sea lavender, scent of tourist tires on narrow burning roads. Purvis said, “Mr. Eldred, isn’t it?” Yes, it is, he said, yes, I do: what’s happened, how is she?

Anna’s car drew up behind the police car. It rattled to a halt. After a moment, Anna stepped out. She did not move away from the car, held the vehicle’s door before her like a shield; but she took the time to let her eyes rest on everything. She raised one foot, tucked an ankle behind her, balancing it on the car’s rusting door-sill. The policemen’s eyes slid like snakes over Amy Glasse, her creased homemade cotton skirt and her breasts bouncing beneath the stained white cloth. “Fuck off out of here, Purvis,” she said. “You were here last week and into everything, so what the fuck do you want now?”

Ralph put his hand out, to take Amy’s wrist. “Calm down. It’s nothing. They want me, not you.”

Amy’s eyes traveled: to Purvis, to Ralph’s face, to Anna still as a statue in the fading light.

I have lost track of the time, Ralph thought; I should have been home an hour ago. Anna, without a word, climbed back into the car and drove away.

When the police had given their news, and driven away in their turn—their eyes roaming around the farmyard and outbuildings— Ralph said to Amy, “I must go right now. You understand, don’t you? I have to go to Norwich and sort this out.”

“Of course you must go.” Her smile was twisted, bleak. “Then you’ve your wife to face.”

“Yes. That will be later.”

“I’ll not be seeing you, then?”

He didn’t reply. “We’ve seen it on the television,” she said. “Me and Sandra. Men always go back to their wives.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He felt shaky, weak; was not sure whether he was lying or not. “Unless I’m at the hospital, that is. There’ll be all sorts of people I have to talk to—social workers, and her parents if she’s really ill, and my own people, the Trust committee, because if there’s any possible legal problem I like them to know about it. I’ll be on the phone all day.”

“Anna, she’s beautiful,” Amy said. “Sandra didn’t tell me. I had no idea. I thought she was some biddy in a print frock.”

“I can’t talk about it. I haven’t time. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

“I’ll not count on it,” Amy said. Her voice was light and bright. She was fighting back tears. Ralph felt inside him a great rolling mass of nausea and cold, of apprehension and self-hatred.

At a phone box on the outskirts of Fakenham, he stopped the car and rang his home. He calculated that Anna would just have arrived; if she were walking in, he thought, that would be best, that would be the best time to get her.

He let the phone ring for a long time. He checked his watch again. She should be home by now. Where would she go, except the Red House?

As he was about to replace the receiver, he heard it picked up. “Anna? Anna, are you there?” Silence. “Please speak to me.” Silence. “I’m going to Norwich,” he said. “I have to. To the hospital. I’ll call again from there. Anna, please …”

She had put the phone down. He got back in the car and drove away.

I would have spoken, she thought: I would have spoken, except that I could not think of a single thing, not one thing to say. She went into the kitchen and made herself some instant coffee. She drank it standing up, by the sink. Then she washed her cup. There was a long night ahead, and she would be alone. Robin was playing in a school match, he would not be back, he was staying over in King’s Lynn. Julian, she supposed, was at the farm; and she had sent her daughters away. She dried her hands, folded the towel, laid it over the back of a chair.

It is in the nature of betrayal, she thought, that it not only changes the present, but that it reaches back with its dirty hands and changes the past.

She could not be still. She wandered through the rooms, then returned to the kitchen to make herself some more coffee. She sat at the table, trying to subdue her ragged breathing. She got up and went to the sink again. She saw from the kitchen clock that only half an hour had passed since she put the phone down on Ralph. You cannot pass the time like this, she thought: washing your cup and washing your cup.

Darkness had fallen. Autumn would choose a day like this, to announce its presence: stealthy feet, chilling the rooms. Ralph had lit the boiler this morning, but she had forgotten to attend to it. A major salvage operation would be needed now. She felt she did not have the strength for it. She took a blanket from the airing cupboard and walked downstairs with it gathered about her, African-style. She went into the sitting room. Did not put on the light. Chose herself a chair. She wrapped the blanket around her and pulled it almost over her head. She was swaddled now, like an ambulance casualty.

There had been times before, when she had thought they could not survive. There had been times when she had wished to erase her husband and children, her whole biography. There had not been a day, in twenty years, when she had not thought about her lost child. Sometimes on the television—they often watched the ten o’clock news together—they had seen the parents of missing children, shaking, bleating, heads sagging: making what was called an appeal, trying to wring some killer’s heart. No such appeal had been open to her. They had left the corpse behind, in another country. The verdict was final. When you have suffered together as she had, she and Ralph, what lies between you can’t be called romance. You can’t talk about a marriage, in the normal terms people use: a happy marriage, a marriage under strain. You are not partners, but the survivors of a disaster. You see each other and remember, every day. So how can you live together?

But how can you not?

She fingered the blanket’s satin-bound edge, and sat, apart from this fingering, without moving. When the room grew quite dark she put a hand out of her wrappings and switched on a lamp which stood by her on a round table. This table had a white cloth, on which Sandra Glasse had embroidered a scatter of daisies, violet and deep blue, their centres black like poppies: fantasy flowers, bouquets from an alternative world. Ralph said that every action contained its opposite. That nothing was fixed, nothing in creation; that cells made choices all the time. If we could rewind the tape of the universe, play it over again, we might find ourselves to be different: six-legged intelligent creatures, crawling on the sea bed, and speaking like birds, in song. But no, she thought, perhaps that is not what Ralph says. Perhaps I have got it wrong, he would be talking to the children and I would not be listening properly, that is usually the case with me. Have I not imagined, often enough, a universe in which other choices were made? The girl, Felicia, we turned out of the house. Some instinct warned me, so that night I kept my son in my arms. Or, Ralph took no pity on the wanderers in the storm, kept the bolts drawn, the key turned in the lock. She shivered. She felt closer to that night, now, than she did to the light and air of this morning: to the sea wind and coastal showers, the truculent girl in the backseat of the car, Kit with her hair streaming about her as she ran calling for Melanie through the streets.

The telephone rang, in the next room. She did not stir. It would be Emma, perhaps, wanting to know what was happening. Or Ralph, calling from the hospital. She still had nothing to say to him, so what was the point of answering? She withdrew her hand into the safety of her blanket. An hour passed. The phone rang again. It was raining outside, and now the house was very cold. Anna thought of nothing at all. Her ideas seemed to have stopped, as if chilled and narrow conduits no longer carried blood to heart and brain.

Very late—it must have been toward midnight—she heard the doorbell. She sat listening; someone had a finger pressed on it, insistent. Ralph would have his key, so would the children. Emma? She pulled the blanket around her. She did not want to see Ralph’s sister. Emma had a key for emergencies, but who was to know what she would consider an emergency? The person was knocking now, thudding at the door.

The police again? That’s possible. She could not ignore the noise. She extricated herself from the blanket. Her legs felt stiff. She fumbled for the light switch in the hall. “I’m coming,” she called. “Don’t break down the door.” Her voice sounded peculiar, precarious. She opened the door.

“Anna? Kit telephoned me from her aunt’s.”

He was the last person she had expected. “Daniel, come in from the night.” Rain blew in with him. “What did Kit tell you?”

“About the young girl you have staying. And that the police came. That you had gone off after them to find Ralph. You did find him, I suppose.”

“So Kit knew.”

“Had an idea.”

“A shrewd one, I’ll bet. And Julian would know of course, and Robin, I suppose. And you, now. The whole county, soon.”

“No, Anna, it’s nothing like that.”

She began to fasten her hair up; saw herself dimly in the hall-stand mirror. “I used to laugh at Ralph because he went on for

years without knowing about Emma and your father. Now the laugh’s on me, isn’t it?”

“Believe me, I knew nothing,” Daniel said. “Not until today. When Kit telephoned I found it hard to take in. Ralph, I mean … it doesn’t seem possible.” He looked down at his shoes. How young he is, Anna thought. A boy.

“And Kit asked you to come here, did she?”

“She wants to come home herself, but she promised you she’d stay and look after Becky. Becky’s asking all sorts of questions, but Emma can deal with that.”

Questions suitable to her time of life, Anna thought. Between us, we will have to come up with some suitable answers. “Yes, I made Kit promise to stay at Foulsham … you see, I can’t face anybody.” She looked up at him. “I have to prepare myself, Daniel. I have to think out what I am going to say.”

“I don’t think you should stay here on your own. Have you … I mean, Ralph, has he been in touch?”

“The phone’s been ringing. I didn’t answer it.”

“He’s probably still at the hospital. Kit would like to know how the child is.”

“I don’t care,” Anna said.

“Don’t you?”

“No. I’ve had enough of all that.”

“Yes, I can understand. But you’re doing yourself an injustice.”

“Oh, I’m not good, Daniel. I’m not a good woman. Not at all.”

Daniel hesitated. “It—your standard of goodness, Anna—I think it would defeat most of us.”

“Oh, my standard, yes. But what I live up to, that’s another question.”

Daniel became brisk. “Have you eaten? No, of course not. The house seems very cold. I think I ought to try to track down Ralph. The hospital’s number, do you have it? They could find him and bring him to a phone. You don’t have to speak to him. I’ll do it. Just to see what the situation is, what his immediate intentions are.”

“Don’t bother.” She turned away. “As for the child—I’ve told you, I don’t want to know. Year after year he’s inflicted these dreadful children upon me, awful, hopeless children—” She stopped. “He will come home. Eventually.” She leaned against Daniel. He put an arm around her. She began to cry. “I can’t face him. I feel ashamed. It’s as if it’s me who’s done something wrong. I won’t be able to look him in the eye.”

“Then you don’t need to stay here. Let me drive you over to Blakeney.”

“To Ginny’s? Oh no, it’s late … and besides …”

“She wouldn’t ask you questions, you know.”

“Daniel, how can you believe that?”

“I’m an optimist,” he said. His face looked grim, as if he were aging in a night. “Come back to my flat, then. Just bring what you need for now. I’ve got a spare bed. I’ll make you comfortable.”

“Yes, take me to your flat. I want to be gone before Ralph gets here. I must be.” She moved slowly back down the hall. “I’ll be five minutes.”

As she packed her toothbrush, nightdress, a change of clothes, she remembered the policewoman, standing over her in Elim: telling her what she would need. She should have a policewoman now; directionless, enfeebled, her hands moved among her possessions. She heard Daniel downstairs, talking on the telephone. “No, Kit, I don’t think she should come there to you, she’d have to think of something to say to Becky, she can’t face it … Just you and Emma hang on for now, can you? … Its very late, we’re all tired, tomorrow things will be … Yes, to Blakeney, why not? If she still feels she must keep away from Ralph.”

They are making arrangements for me behind my back, she thought. As if I were a sick or injured person. Which I am, of course. She had an image of herself and Ralph, two sick or injured animals yoked together: dragging their burden, sometimes in circles.

In the car she began to cry. The lanes were dark, the trees dripping, puddles shining in their headlights; the half-hour journey seemed a lifetime. Holt was deserted: a few shopfronts dimly lit, the pub doors bolted. Daniel parked his car, walked around it to help her out. She needed the help; slumped against him, leaned on his arm. “It’s clearing,” he said, looking up at the sky.

“Yes.” She scrubbed at her face. Tried to smile.

Daniel unlocked his door and flooded the night world with a vast, white, hard light. She climbed a steep staircase, seeing the phantom outlines of drawing boards through a glass door. “Up to the top,” Daniel said.

“You are being very kind to me.”

“It’s nothing, Anna.”

The staircase opened into a large and lofty room, sparely furnished: the walls of exposed flint, the timbers exposed, the floor bare and waxed: its expanse broken only by two dark fringed rugs, their design geometric, their colors somber. Flying carpets, she thought. No clutter anywhere, just those matte black machines that young men have: no windows, but skylights enclosing the weather and the night. Anna stood considering it. “Kit never told me about this.”

“A way of being outside when you’re inside. Kit hardly comes here.”

“True. I know.”

“Do you like it?”

“Very much.” A life free of complexity, she thought. “Can you keep it warm?”

“Not easily. Can’t have everything. Would you like to bathe your face?” She nodded. She sat on the sofa, and he brought her a bowl of water, some cotton balls, and a small cream towel. He sat down next to her, as if she must be supervised. “Lukewarm water is best,” he advised. “If you have ice, it makes your eyes swell even more.”

“I’m sorry, Daniel,” she said.

“Nothing to be sorry for. Better to cry among friends. Look, Anna—all this, with Ralph, it’s ridiculous. An aberration.”

“You think so?”

“I know it is. Just one of those things that happen in marriages.”

“The marriages of middle-aged people, you mean.”

“Look, everything is easier to face in daylight.” He ventured a smile; took from her fingertips one of the sodden balls of cotton. “In the morning you can have your choice. The greengrocer will be open, so you can have cucumber slices for your eyes. Or tea bags, if you like. I have Earl Grey, Assam, or Darjeeling.”

“Goodness. What a lot you know about female grief.”

“My mother, you see.”

“Since your father died?”

“Mainly before. Years before—always, really. We’d be alone in the house and she’d cry buckets. Horse troughs. Oceans. So,” he said, with a soft bleakness, “I’m used to comforting.”

She looked up. “You mean … this, it would be when your father was with Emma?”

“Where else?”

“She always appeared—I don’t know—so self-possessed.”

“Yes. Of course, the tea bags helped. The cucumber slices. And the fact that she’s got a nice sort of flippancy, my mother, a sort of veneer of stupidity. So you wouldn’t know—why should anybody know? Emma broke my mother’s heart.”

She took his hand. After a while he said, “Brandy, that’s the next thing. Can you drink brandy? It will warm your heart, Anna.”

He gave her a glass. It did warm her, stealing through to feelings, levels of comprehension, she had not known were there. “It would be nice to get drunk,” she said. “I don’t think I ever have. I see the attraction, though.”

“The bottle’s at your elbow.”

“One doesn’t know … one doesn’t know other people’s histories at all.”

“No, of course not. Not the half of what goes on.”

“I feel I have been stupid.”

“You were misled. People do mislead you, don’t they, they have an instinct to cover up the mess. It’s how we’re taught to live. I’ve always thought, or rather my concern is, that history shouldn’t repeat itself. I’ve thought, I don’t want to marry some poor girl who I’ll end up leaving for Kit.”

Anna tried to answer him, but the effort was almost beyond her. “I’m exhausted,” she said flatly.

“It’s emotion. It is exhausting. I dare say that’s why we try to get by without it.”

He helped her up. Her legs were jelly. He took her into the little spare room. “The bed’s made up. Do you want anything?”

“I’ll be fine.”

He touched her cheek. “You should know, Anna, that Kit’s going to Africa. She had a letter, she says, this morning. Some volunteer project has accepted her. She wants to see the place where she was born.”

Anna shuddered.

“I know,” he said. “Emma’s put me wise.”

She looked up. “Wise. And Kit? Has Emma put her wise?”

“That’s more than I can say. In the circumstances it would be very wrong of me to make assumptions about what other people know or don’t know.” He paused. “I think, Anna—for what it’s worth—that you are a very brave woman.”

She shook her head. “My heart failed me, Daniel. I had to be rescued from myself. And my kindness has failed me, many a time. I’ve harbored such thoughts—I couldn’t tell you, thoughts that there are no ordinary words for. Only this thing—with Ralph—I don’t deserve it. I know I don’t.”

He left her to put on her nightdress. She promised that if she could not sleep she would come for him. We can see the dawn together, he said. She eased herself into the narrow bed. He had put two hot-water bottles in it, one for her feet and one for her to hug to herself, burning her ribs, slapping and washing itself against her. The Red House is empty, she thought: for the first time in years. And she had not slept in such a little bed since she had been in prison.

There was another skylight above her, its glass containing the night. Oh, Daniel, she breathed, I might see the stars. She was afraid she had spoken out loud; but she was past that, too tired to have a voice at all. Her heart hammered, but then lay still: obedient creature. She turned on her back. The blankets were heavy; she pushed them back a little, to free her chest with its great weight of misery. The air was clearing, it was true; still, she was looking up through a veil of water. She saw two stars, then more. Very faint, old stars: light attenuated.

Kit woke her. She brought a tray with a glass of orange juice and a pot of coffee.

“Daniel promised me cucumber slices.” Anna said.

“You need them. You look awful.”

“What do you expect?”

“It’s ten o’clock. What would you like to do?”

Anna pushed herself upright in the bed. “What are the choices?”

“You could go home. I understand if you don’t want to. Daniel had to go and see a client, there was an appointment he couldn’t break. You can stay here, you’re welcome, he says. You can go to Emma. She’s very worried about you.”

“I seem to be homeless.”

“Not at all,” Kit said. She thought, it’s everyone else who is homeless, waiting for what will occur.

“Robin will be back, you know? Maybe five or six o’clock. He won’t know what’s happening.”

“I can intercept him. Don’t worry about that.” Kit seemed impatient. “Worry about yourself. What do you want to do?”

“What do I want to do? With the glorious prospect that stretches before me?”

“Dad rang. Last night. Said he was calling you but you wouldn’t answer. He was very upset, very concerned about you.”

“A bit late for that.”

“Melanie’s going to be okay, they’re pretty sure, but they’re keeping her for a few days, because she still won’t say what it was she took. Dad spent the night at the hospital.”

“At the hospital, did he? That was blameless, at any rate.”

Kit blushed. She looked stern, set. “How can you?”

“What?”

“Make these weak sarcastic little jokes?”

“I don’t know how I can. Do you happen to know your father’s schedule for the day?”

“He’s got a lot of calls to make.”

“He’ll want his office, then. To be at home.”

Kit sat down on the bed. The tray wobbled; she put out a hand to steady it. The coffee cooled in its pot. “You think we’ve let you down, don’t you?” she asked. “By not telling you?”

Anna didn’t reply. Kit said, “We would have told you. But it was too difficult. We couldn’t think of the right words.”

“Yes, I understand.” Anna sounded sad, remote, resigned. “It explains some things, though. This summer we’ve had.”

Some things, Kit thought, but not that uprush of strange fear. Who knows where a crisis comes from? The world should be more predictable. “Let me pour your coffee,” she said.

“I’d be sick,” Anna said. “How can you ask me to eat and drink?”

“Look, you must fight for him.”

“What? Like a dog with a bone?”

“No, but you must let it be known—let it be known that—” Kit pushed her hand back through her hair.

“Oh, Kit,” Anna said. “Don’t talk about what you don’t understand.”

“What will you do?”

“Go and see Ginny,” she said, unexpectedly.

Ginny’s house was a low, sprawling complex of buildings—boat-houses once, no doubt—by Blakeney Quay. It had been built for Ginny and Felix by a local firm, and its additions and extensions had been crafted with reverence for the vernacular; but its most startling feature was a huge picture window of staring, blank plate glass, which looked out over the creek to the invisible sea.

This window was one of the great acts of Ginny’s life. Some women die and leave only their children as memorial; but Ginny, like some anointed saint, would have a window. It represented a moral choice, an act of courage. Some would shudder at it, though secretly they would crave the vista. Questions of taste would cow them: questions of vulgarity, even. Ginny simply said, “Why live at Blakeney, if you don’t have the view?”

Midmorning, Ginny began to issue large drinks. When her hands were unoccupied, without a glass or a cigarette, she rubbed them nervously together, so that her rings clashed and chimed: her engagement ring with its gray solitaire, her broad yellow wedding ring, the “eternity rings,” studded with chips of sapphire and ruby, that Felix had given her at a constant rate through the years. She was never without these rings; perhaps, Anna thought, she used them from time to time to deliver a scarring blow. But Felix had never appeared scarred. She remembered his handsome, bland, betraying face.

“I’ve heard,” Anna said, “of women who came home to find a note on the table. Until then, they had no inkling.”

“Had you an inkling?”

Anna smoothed her hair back. It was very smooth already. Ginny thought, she seems to be the one in charge here.

“As I see it,” Ginny said, “you have three courses before you. When you choose which to take, you must bear in mind that this affair of his will very likely not last.” Anna raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you know my situation,” Ginny said. “It was different with me. Felix and Emma, they were old flames.”

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

“Why else are you here?” Ginny lit another cigarette. “Really, Anna, I don’t mind. I know you’re here because—well, whatever did Daniel tell you?”

“He gave me a version of your life that was different from the one I knew. I’m sorry. It is an intrusion on your privacy.”

“Bugger that,” Ginny said. “It’s a relief to talk about it. More gin?”

“Why not? Ralph’s not here to see me.”

“He stopped you drinking?”

“Not exactly. It was more the weight of tradition. Our families. And his uncle, Holy James, the total abstainer. Who’d seen otherwise competent missionaries go out to the tropics and be pickled in spirits within the decade.”

“Yes, I remember James—whatever happened to him?”

“He went abroad again. Back to Africa. After, you know … a year or two after we came home.”

“But he was old! Wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“He died.”

“Of course. Well …” Ginny breathed smoke. “You see, with Ralph, you’ve been married all these years, and now you’re in a position to renegotiate. I say it won’t last, because they don’t— these affairs between men of fifty, and young girls.”

“She’s hardly that.”

Ginny looked hard at her. “Comparatively.”

“Oh yes—comparatively.”

“You see, there’s a pattern to it. These men of fifty—they never fall for women of their own age, you notice. It’s always someone who makes them feel young.”

“How comforting to be part of a pattern,” Anna said. “I always wanted to be.” It struck her, then, that Ginny did not know the course of her life, not in any detailed way; that if she had ever known, she had forgotten it. “But Mrs. Glasse,” she said. “I haven’t an idea of what her attractions might be. And so, I have no idea how to combat them.” She picked up her drink. “Well now, Ginny, you said there were three courses I could take.”

“Yes. Bearing in mind that it won’t last, you can negotiate with him. You can ask him to live with you and let him see her when he wants. That may prolong the agony—it did for me. Or, you can let him stay with her for the while, and sit it out—keep your home and finances intact, and prepare for a return to normal on the day he says he wants to come back.” Ginny ground her cigarette out. “Or, of course, you can give him the push.”

Anna shook her head. “I’m not patient, Ginny. I couldn’t sit it out. What do you do, while you’re sitting it out?”

Ginny reached for another cigarette, flipped it into her mouth. “This,” she said. She flicked a nail at her glass. “And this. Alternatively, you can count your blessings. Think of people less fortunate than yourself. Cripples.” She smiled. “Women who work in launderettes.”