Collected Stories

A Meeting in Middle Age

‘I am Mrs da Tanka,’ said Mrs da Tanka. ‘Are you Mr Mileson?’

The man nodded, and they walked together the length of the platform, seeking a compartment that might offer them a welcome, or failing that, and they knew the more likely, simple privacy. They carried each a small suitcase, Mrs da Tanka’s of white leather or some material manufactured to resemble it, Mr Mileson’s battered and black. They did not speak as they marched purposefully: they were strangers one to another, and in the noise and the bustle, examining the lighted windows of the carriages, there was little that might constructively be said.

‘A ninety-nine years’ lease,’ Mr Mileson’s father had said, ‘taken out in 1862 by my grandfather, whom of course you never knew. Expiring in your lifetime, I fear. Yet you will by then be in a sound position to accept the misfortune. To renew what has come to an end; to keep the property in the family.’ The property was an expression that glorified. The house was small and useful, one of a row, one of a kind easily found; hut the lease when the time came was not renewable – which released Mr Mileson of a problem. Bachelor, childless, the end of the line, what use was a house to him for a further ninety-nine years?

Mrs da Tanka, sitting opposite him, drew a magazine from an assortment she carried. Then, checking herself, said: ‘We could talk. Or do you prefer to conduct the business in silence?’ She was a woman who filled, but did not overflow from, a fair-sized, elegant, quite expensive tweed suit. Her hair, which was grey, did not appear so; it was tightly held to her head, a reddish-gold colour. Born into another class she would have been a chirpy woman; she guarded against her chirpiness, she disliked the quality in her. There was often laughter in her eyes, and as often as she felt it there she killed it by the severity of her manner.

‘You must not feel embarrassment,’ Mrs da Tanka said. ‘We are beyond the age of giving in to awkwardness in a situation. You surely agree?’

Mr Mileson did not know. He did not know how or what he should feel. Analysing his feelings he could come to no conclusion. He supposed he was excited but it was more difficult than it seemed to track down the emotions. He was unable, therefore, to answer Mrs da Tanka. So he just smiled.

Mrs da Tanka, who had once been Mrs Horace Spire and was not likely to forget it, considered those days. It was a logical thing for her to do, for they were days that had come to an end as these present days were coming to an end. Termination was on her mind: to escape from Mrs da Tanka into Mrs Spire was a way of softening the worry that was with her now, and a way of seeing it in proportion to a lifetime.

‘If that is what you want,’ Horace had said, ‘then by all means have it. Who shall do the dirty work – you or I?’ This was his reply to her request for a divorce. In fact, at the time of speaking, the dirty work as he called it was already done: by both of them.

‘It is a shock for me,’ Horace had continued. ‘I thought we could jangle along for many a day. Are you seriously involved elsewhere?’

In fact she was not, but finding herself involved at all reflected the inadequacy of her married life and revealed a vacuum that once had been love.

‘We are better apart,’ she had said. ‘It is bad to get used to the habit of being together. We must take our chances while we may, while there is still time.’

In the railway carriage she recalled the conversation with vividness, especially that last sentence, most especially the last five words of it. The chance she had taken was da Tanka, eight years ago. ‘My God,’ she said aloud, ‘what a pompous bastard he turned out to be.’

Mr Mileson had a couple of those weekly publications for which there is no accurate term in the language: a touch of a single colour on the front – floppy, half-intellectual things, somewhere between a journal and a magazine. While she had her honest mags. Harper’s. Vogue. Shiny and smart and rather silly. Or so thought Mr Mileson. He had opened them at dentists’ and doctors’, leafed his way through the ridiculous advertisements and aptly titled model girls, unreal girls in unreal poses, devoid it seemed of sex, and half the time of life. So that was the kind of woman she was.

‘Who?’ said Mr Mileson.

‘Oh, who else, good heavens! Da Tanka I mean.’

Eight years of da Tanka’s broad back, so fat it might have been padded beneath the skin. He had often presented it to her.

‘I shall be telling you about da Tanka,’ she said. ‘There are interesting facets to the man; though God knows, he is scarcely interesting in himself.’

It was a worry, in any case, owning a house. Seeing to the roof; noticing the paint cracking on the outside, and thinking about damp in mysterious places. Better off he was, in the room in Swiss Cottage; cosier in winter. They’d pulled down the old house by now, with all the others in the road. Flats were there instead: bulking up to the sky, with a million or so windows. All the gardens were gone, all the gnomes and the Snow White dwarfs, all the winter bulbs and the little paths of crazy paving; the bird-baths and bird-boxes and bird-tables; the miniature sandpits, and the metal edging, ornate, for flower-beds.

‘We must move with the times,’ said Mrs da Tanka, and he realized that he had been speaking to her; or speaking aloud and projecting the remarks in her direction since she was there.

His mother had made the rockery. Aubrietia and sarsaparilla and pinks and Christmas roses. Her brother, his uncle Edward, bearded and queer, brought seaside stones in his motor-car. His father had shrugged his distaste for the project, as indeed for all projects of this nature, seeing the removal of stones from the seashore as being in some way disgraceful, even dishonest. Behind the rockery there were loganberries: thick, coarse, inedible fruit, never fully ripe. But nobody, certainly not Mr Mileson, had had the heart to pull away the bushes.

‘Weeks would pass,’ said Mrs da Tanka, ‘without the exchange of a single significant sentence. We lived in the same house, ate the same meals, drove out in the same car, and all he would ever say was: “It is time the central heating was on.” Or: “These windscreen-wipers aren’t working.’ ”

Mr Mileson didn’t know whether she was talking about Mr da Tanka or Mr Spire. They seemed like the same man to him: shadowy, silent fellows who over the years had shared this woman with the well-tended hands.

‘He will be wearing city clothes,’ her friend had said, ‘grey or nondescript. He is like anyone else except for his hat, which is big and black and eccentric’ An odd thing about him, the hat: like a wild oat almost.

There he had been, by the tobacco kiosk, punctual and expectant; gaunt of face, thin, fiftyish; with the old-fashioned hat and the weekly papers that somehow matched it, but did not match him.

‘Now would you blame me, Mr Mileson? Would you blame me for seeking freedom from such a man?’

The hat lay now on the luggage-rack with his carefully folded overcoat. A lot of his head was bald, whitish and tender like good dripping. His eyes were sad, like those of a retriever puppy she had known in her childhood. Men are often like dogs, she thought; women more akin to cats. The train moved smoothly, with rhythm, through the night. She thought of da Tanka and Horace Spire, wondering where Spire was now. Opposite her, he thought about the ninety-nine-year lease and the two plates, one from last night’s supper, the other from breakfast, that he had left unwashed in the room at Swiss Cottage.

‘This seems your kind of place,’ Mr Mileson said, surveying the hotel from its ornate hall.

‘Gin and lemon, gin and lemon,’ said Mrs da Tanka, matching the words with action: striding to the bar.

Mr Mileson had rum, feeling it a more suitable drink, though he could not think why. ‘My father drank rum with milk in it. An odd concoction.’

‘Frightful, it sounds. Da Tanka is a whisky man. My previous liked stout. Well, well, so here we are.’

Mr Mileson looked at her. ‘Dinner is next on the agenda.’

But Mrs da Tanka was not to be moved. They sat while she drank many measures of the drink; and when they rose to demand dinner they discovered that the restaurant was closed and were ushered to a grill-room.

‘You organized that badly, Mr Mileson.’

‘I organized nothing. I know the rules of these places. I repeated them to you. You gave me no chance to organize.’

‘A chop and an egg or something. Da Tanka at least could have got us soup.’

In 1931 Mr Mileson had committed fornication with the maid in his parents’ house. It was the only occasion, and he was glad that adultery was not expected of him with Mrs da Tanka. In it she would be more experienced than he, and he did not relish the implication. The grill-room was lush and vulgar. ‘This seems your kind of place,’ Mr Mileson repeated rudely.

‘At least it is warm. And the lights don’t glare. Why not order some wine?’

Her husband must remain innocent. He was a person of importance, in the public eye. Mr Mileson’s friend had repeated it, the friend who knew Mrs da Tanka’s solicitor. All expenses paid, the friend had said, and a little fee as well. Nowadays Mr Mileson could do with little fees. And though at the time he had rejected the suggestion downright, he had later seen that friend – acquaintance really – in the pub he went to at half past twelve on Sundays, and had agreed to take part in the drama. It wasn’t just the little fee; there was something rather like prestige in the thing; his name as co-respondent – now there was something you’d never have guessed! The hotel bill to find its way to Mrs da Tanka’s husband, who would pass it to his solicitor. Breakfast in bed, and remember the face of the maid who brought it. Pass the time of day with her, and make sure she remembered yours. Oh very nice, the man in the pub said, very nice Mrs da Tanka was – or so he was led to believe. He batted his eyes at Mr Mileson; but Mr Mileson said it didn’t matter, surely, about Mrs da Tanka’s niceness. He knew his duties: there was nothing personal about them. He’d do it himself, the man in the pub explained, only he’d never be able to keep his hands off an attractive middle-aged woman. That was the trouble about finding someone for the job.

‘I’ve had a hard life,’ Mrs da Tanka confided. ‘Tonight I need your sympathy, Mr Mileson. Tell me I have your sympathy.’ Her face and neck had reddened: chirpiness was breaking through.

In the house, in a cupboard beneath the stairs, he had kept his gardening boots. Big, heavy army boots, once his father’s. He had worn them at weekends, poking about in the garden.

‘The lease came to an end two years ago,’ he told Mrs da Tanka. ‘There I was with all that stuff, all my gardening tools, and the furniture and bric-à-brac of three generations to dispose of. I can tell you it wasn’t easy to know what to throw away.’

‘Mr Mileson, I don’t like that waiter.’

Mr Mileson cut his steak with care: a three-cornered piece, neat and succulent. He loaded mushroom and mustard on it, added a sliver of potato and carried the lot to his mouth. He masticated and drank some wine.

‘Do you know the waiter?’

Mrs da Tanka laughed unpleasantly; like ice cracking. ‘Why should I know the waiter? I do not generally know waiters. Do you know the waiter?’

‘I ask because you claim to dislike him.’

‘May I not dislike him without an intimate knowledge of the man?’

‘You may do as you please. It struck me as a premature decision, that is all.’

‘What decision? What is premature? What are you talking about? Are you drunk?’

‘The decision to dislike the waiter I thought to be premature. I do not know about being drunk. Probably I am a little. One has to keep one’s spirits up.’

‘Have you ever thought of wearing an eye-patch, Mr Mileson? I think it would suit you. You need distinction. Have you led an empty life? You give the impression of an empty life.’

‘My life has been as many other lives. Empty of some things, full of others. I am in possession of all my sight, though. My eyes are real. Neither is a pretence. I see no call for an eye-patch.’

‘It strikes me you see no call for anything. You have never lived, Mr Mileson.’

‘I do not understand that.’

‘Order us more wine.’

Mr Mileson indicated with his hand and the waiter approached. ‘Some other waiter, please,’ Mrs da Tanka cried. ‘May we be served by another waiter?’

‘Madam?’ said the waiter.

‘We do not take to you. Will you send another man to our table?’

‘I am the only waiter on duty, madam.’

‘It’s quite all right,’ said Mr Mileson.

‘It’s not quite all right. I will not have this man at our table, opening and dispensing wine.’

‘Then we must go without.’

‘I am the only waiter on duty, madam.’

‘There are other employees of the hotel. Send us a porter or the girl at the reception.’

‘It is not their duty, madam –’

‘Oh nonsense, nonsense. Bring us the wine, man, and have no more to-do.’

Unruffled, the waiter moved away. Mrs da Tanka hummed a popular tune.

‘Are you married, Mr Mileson? Have you in the past been married?’

‘No, never married.’

‘I have been married twice. I am married now. I am throwing the dice for the last time. God knows how I shall find myself. You are helping to shape my destiny. What a fuss that waiter made about the wine!’

‘That is a little unfair. It was you, you know –’

‘Behave like a gentleman, can’t you? Be on my side since you are with me. Why must you turn on me? Have I harmed you?’

‘No, no. I was merely establishing the truth.’

‘Here is the man again with the wine. He is like a bird. Do you think he has wings strapped down beneath his waiter’s clothes? You are like a bird,’ she repeated, examining the waiter’s face. ‘Has some fowl played a part in your ancestry?’

‘I think not, madam.’

‘Though you cannot be sure. How can you be sure? How can you say you think not when you know nothing about it?’

The waiter poured the wine in silence. He was not embarrassed, Mr Mileson noted; not even angry.

‘Bring coffee,’ Mrs da Tanka said.

‘Madam.’

‘How servile waiters are! How I hate servility, Mr Mileson! I could not marry a servile man. I could not marry that waiter, not for all the tea in China.’

‘I did not imagine you could. The waiter does not seem your sort.’

‘He is your sort. You like him, I think. Shall I leave you to converse with him?’

‘Really! What would I say to him? I know nothing about the waiter except what he is in a professional sense. I do not wish to know. It is not my habit to go about consorting with waiters after they have waited on me.’

‘I am not to know that. I am not to know what your sort is, or what your personal and private habits are. How could I know? We have only just met.’

‘You are clouding the issue.’

‘You are as pompous as da Tanka. Da Tanka would say issue and clouding.’

‘What your husband would say is no concern of mine.’

‘You are meant to be my lover, Mr Mileson. Can’t you act it a bit? My husband must concern you dearly. You must wish to tear him limb from limb. Do you wish it?’

‘I have never met the man. I know nothing of him.’

‘Well then, pretend. Pretend for the waiter’s sake. Say something violent in the waiter’s hearing. Break an oath. Blaspheme. Bang your fist on the table.’

‘I was not told I should have to behave like that. It is against my nature.’

‘What is your nature?’

‘I’m shy and self-effacing.’

‘You are an enemy to me. I don’t understand your sort. You have not got on in the world. You take on commissions like this. Where is your self-respect?’

‘Elsewhere in my character.’

‘You have no personality.’

‘That is a cliché. It means nothing.’

‘Sweet nothings for lovers, Mr Mileson! Remember that.’

They left the grill-room and mounted the stairs in silence. In their bedroom Mrs da Tanka unpacked a dressing-gown. ‘I shall undress in the bathroom. I shall be absent a matter often minutes.’

Mr Mileson slipped from his clothes into pyjamas. He brushed his teeth at the wash-basin, cleaned his nails and splashed a little water on his face. When Mrs da Tanka returned he was in bed.

To Mr Mileson she seemed a trifle bigger without her daytime clothes. He remembered corsets and other containing garments. He did not remark upon it.

Mrs da Tanka turned out the light and they lay without touching between the cold sheets of the double bed.

He would leave little behind, he thought. He would die and there would be the things in the room, rather a number of useless things with sentimental value only. Ornaments and ferns. Reproductions of paintings. A set of eggs, birds’ eggs he had collected as a boy. They would pile all the junk together and probably try to burn it. Then perhaps they would light a couple of those fumigating candles in the room, because people are insulting when other people die.

‘Why did you not get married?’ Mrs da Tanka said.

‘Because I do not greatly care for women.’ He said it, throwing caution to the winds, waiting for her attack.

‘Are you a homosexual?’

The word shocked him. ‘Of course I’m not.’

‘I only asked. They go in for this kind of thing.’

‘That does not make me one.’

‘I often thought Horace Spire was more that way than any other. For all the attention he paid to me.’

As a child she had lived in Shropshire. In those days she loved the country, though without knowing, or wishing to know, the names of flowers or plants or trees. People said she looked like Alice in Wonderland.

‘Have you ever been to Shropshire, Mr Mileson?’

‘No. I am very much a Londoner. I lived in the same house all my life. Now the house is no longer there. Flats replace it. I live in Swiss Cottage.’

‘I thought you might. I thought you might live in Swiss Cottage.’

‘Now and again I miss the garden. As a child I collected birds’ eggs on the common. I have kept them all these years.’

She had kept nothing. She cut the past off every so often, remembering it when she cared to, without the aid of physical evidence.

‘The hard facts of life have taken their toll of me,’ said Mrs da Tanka. ‘I met them first at twenty. They have been my companions since.’

‘It was a hard fact the lease coming to an end. It was hard to take at the time. I did not accept it until it was well upon me. Only the spring before I had planted new delphiniums.’

‘My father told me to marry a good man. To be happy and have children. Then he died. I did none of those things. I do not know why except that I did not care to. Then old Horry Spire put his arm around me and there we were. Life is as you make it, I suppose. I was thinking of homosexual in relation to that waiter you were interested in downstairs.’

‘I was not interested in the waiter. He was hard done by, by you, I thought. There was no more to it than that.’

Mrs da Tanka smoked and Mr Mileson was nervous; about the situation in general, about the glow of the cigarette in the darkness. What if the woman dropped off to sleep? He had heard of fires started by careless smoking. What if in her confusion she crushed the cigarette against some part of his body? Sleep was impossible: one cannot sleep with the thought of waking up in a furnace, with the bells of fire brigades clanging a death knell.

‘I will not sleep tonight,’ said Mrs da Tanka, a statement which frightened Mr Mileson further. For all the dark hours the awful woman would be there, twitching and puffing beside him. I am mad. I am out of my mind to have brought this upon myself. He heard the words. He saw them on paper, written in his handwriting. He saw them typed, and repeated again as on a telegram. The letters jolted and lost their order. The words were confused, skulking behind a fog. ‘I am mad,’ Mr Mileson said, to establish the thought completely, to bring it into the open. It was a habit of his; for a moment he had forgotten the reason for the thought, thinking himself alone.

‘Are you telling me now you are mad?’ asked Mrs da Tanka, alarmed. ‘Gracious, are you worse than a homo? Are you some sexual pervert? Is that what you are doing here? Certainly that was not my plan, I do assure you. You have nothing to gain from me, Mr Mileson. If there is trouble I shall ring the bell.’

‘I am mad to be here. I am mad to have agreed to all this. What came over me I do not know. I have only just realized the folly of the thing.’

‘Arise then, dear Mileson, and break your agreement, your promise and your undertaking. You are an adult man, you may dress and walk from the room.’

They were all the same, she concluded: except that while others had some passing superficial recommendation, this one it seemed had none. There was something that made her sick about the thought of the stringy limbs that were stretched out beside her. What lengths a woman will go to to rid herself of a horror like da Tanka!

He had imagined it would be a simple thing. It had sounded like a simple thing: a good thing rather than a bad one. A good turn for a lady in need. That was as he had seen it. With the little fee already in his possession.

Mrs da Tanka lit another cigarette and threw the match on the floor.

‘What kind of a life have you had? You had not the nerve for marriage. Nor the brains for success. The truth is you might not have lived.’ She laughed in the darkness, determined to hurt him as he had hurt her in his implication that being with her was an act of madness.

Mr Mileson had not before done a thing like this. Never before had he not weighed the pros and cons and seen that danger was absent from an undertaking. The thought of it all made him sweat. He saw in the future further deeds: worse deeds, crimes and irresponsibilities.

Mrs da Tanka laughed again. But she was thinking of something else.

‘You have never slept with a woman, is that it? Ah, you poor thing! What a lot you have not had the courage for!’ The bed heaved with the raucous noise that was her laughter, and the bright spark of her cigarette bobbed about in the air.

She laughed, quietly now and silently, hating him as she hated da Tanka and had hated Horace Spire. Why could he not be some young man, beautiful and nicely mannered and gay? Surely a young man would have come with her? Surely there was one amongst all the millions who would have done the chore with relish, or at least with charm?

‘You are as God made you,’ said Mr Mileson. ‘You cannot help your shortcomings, though one would think you might by now have recognized them. To others you may be all sorts of things. To me you are a frightful woman.’

‘Would you not stretch out a hand to the frightful woman? Is there no temptation for the woman’s flesh? Are you a eunuch, Mr Mileson?’

‘I have had the women I wanted. I am doing you a favour. Hearing of your predicament and pressed to help you, I agreed in a moment of generosity. Stranger though you were I did not say no.’

‘That does not make you a gentleman.’

‘And I do not claim it does. I am gentleman enough without it.’

‘You are nothing without it. This is your sole experience. In all your clerkly subservience you have not paused to live. You know I am right, and as for being a gentleman – well, you are of the lower middle classes. There has never been an English gentleman born of the lower middle classes.’

She was trying to remember what she looked like; what her face was like, how the wrinkles were spread, how old she looked and what she might pass for in a crowd. Would men not be cagey now and think that she must be difficult in her ways to have parted twice from husbands? Was there a third time coming up? Third time lucky, she thought. Who would have her, though, except some loveless Mileson?

‘You have had no better life than I,’ said Mr Mileson. ‘You are no more happy now. You have failed, and it is cruel to laugh at you.’

They talked and the hatred grew between them.

‘In my childhood young men flocked about me, at dances in Shropshire that my father gave to celebrate my beauty. Had the fashion been duels, duels there would have been. Men killed or maimed for life, carrying a lock of my hair on their breast.’

‘You are a creature now, with your face and your fingernails. Mutton dressed as lamb, Mrs da Tanka!’

Beyond the curtained windows the light of dawn broke into the night. A glimpse of it crept into the room, noticed and welcomed by its occupants.

‘You should write your memoirs, Mr Mileson. To have seen the changes in your time and never to know a thing about them! You are like an occasional table. Or a coat-rack in the hall of a boarding-house. Who shall mourn at your grave, Mr Mileson?’

He felt her eyes upon him; and the mockery of the words sank into his heart with intended precision. He turned to her and touched her, his hands groping about her shoulders. He had meant to grasp her neck, to feel the muscles struggle beneath his fingers, to terrify the life out of her. But she, thinking the gesture was the beginning of an embrace, pushed him away, swearing at him and laughing. Surprised by the misunderstanding, he left her alone.

The train was slow. The stations crawled by, similar and ugly. She fixed her glance on him, her eyes sharpened; cold and powerful.

She had won the battle, though technically the victory was his. Long before the time arranged for their breakfast Mr Mileson had leaped from bed. He dressed and breakfasted alone in the dining-room. Shortly afterwards, after sending to the bedroom for his suitcase, he left the hotel, informing the receptionist that the lady would pay the bill. Which in time she had done, and afterwards pursued him to the train, where now, to disconcert him, she sat in the facing seat of an empty compartment.

‘Well,’ said Mrs da Tanka, ‘you have shot your bolt. You have taken the only miserable action you could. You have put the frightful woman in her place. Have we a right,’ she added, ‘to expect anything better of the English lower classes?’

Mr Mileson had foolishly left his weekly magazines and the daily paper at the hotel. He was obliged to sit bare-faced before her, pretending to observe the drifting landscape. In spite of everything, guilt gnawed him a bit. When he was back in his room he would borrow the vacuum cleaner and give it a good going over: the exercise would calm him. A glass of beer in the pub before lunch; lunch in the ABC; perhaps an afternoon cinema. It was Saturday today: this, more or less, was how he usually spent Saturday. Probably from lack of sleep he would doze off in the cinema. People would nudge him to draw attention to his snoring; that had happened before, and was not pleasant.

‘To give you birth,’ she said, ‘your mother had long hours of pain. Have you thought of that, Mr Mileson? Have you thoughts of that poor woman crying out, clenching her hands and twisting the sheets? Was it worth it, Mr Mileson? You tell me now, was it worth it?’

He could leave the compartment and sit with other people. But that would be too great a satisfaction for Mrs da Tanka. She would laugh loudly at his going, might even pursue him to mock in public.

‘What you say about me, Mrs da Tanka, can equally be said of you.’

‘Are we two peas in a pod? It’s an explosive pod in that case.’

‘I did not imply that. I would not wish to find myself sharing a pod with you.’

‘Yet you shared a bed. And were not man enough to stick to your word. You are a worthless coward, Mr Mileson. I expect you know it.’

‘I know myself, which is more than can be said in your case. Do you not think occasionally to see yourself as others see you? An ageing woman, faded and ugly, dubious in morals and personal habits. What misery you must have caused those husbands!’

‘They married me, and got good value. You know that, yet dare not admit it.’

‘I will scarcely lose sleep worrying the matter out.’

It was a cold morning, sunny with a clear sky. Passengers stepping from the train at the intermediate stations muffled up against the temperature, finding it too much after the warm fug within. Women with baskets. Youths. Men with children, with dogs collected from the guard’s van.

Da Tanka, she had heard, was living with another woman. Yet he refused to admit being the guilty party. It would not do for someone like da Tanka to be a public adulterer. So he had said. Pompously. Crossly. Horace Spire, to give him his due, hadn’t given a damn one way or the other.

‘When you die, Mr Mileson, have you a preference for the flowers on your coffin? It is a question I ask because I might send you off a wreath. That lonely wreath. From ugly, frightful Mrs da Tanka.’

‘What?’ said Mr Mileson, and she repeated the question.

‘Oh well – cow-parsley, I suppose.’ He said it, taken off his guard by the image she created; because it was an image he often saw and thought about. Hearse and coffin and he within. It would not be like that probably. Anticipation was not in Mr Mileson’s life. Remembering, looking back, considering events and emotions that had been at the time mundane perhaps – this kind of thing was more to his liking. For by hindsight there was pleasure in the stream of time. He could not establish his funeral in his mind; he tried often but ended up always with a funeral he had known: a repetition of his parents’ passing and the accompanying convention.

‘Cow-parsley?’ said Mrs da Tanka. Why did the man say cow-parsley? Why not roses or lilies or something in a pot? There had been cow-parsley in Shropshire; cow-parsley on the verges of dusty lanes; cow-parsley in hot fields buzzing with bees; great white swards rolling down to the river. She had sat among it on a picnic with dolls. She had lain on it, laughing at the beautiful anaemic blue of the sky. She had walked through it by night, loving it.

‘Why did you say cow-parsley?’

He did not know, except that once on a rare family outing to the country he had seen it and remembered it. Yet in his garden he had grown delphiniums and wallflowers and asters and sweet-peas.

She could smell it again: a smell that was almost nothing: fields and the heat of the sun on her face, laziness and summer. There was a red door somewhere, faded and blistered, and she sat against it, crouched on a warm step, a child dressed in the fashion of the time.

‘Why did you say cow-parsley?’

He remembered, that day, asking the name of the white powdery growth. He had picked some and carried it home; and had often since thought of it, though he had not come across a field of cow-parsley for years.

She tried to speak again, but after the night there were no words she could find that would fit. The silence stuck between them, and Mr Mileson knew by instinct all that it contained. She saw an image of herself and him, strolling together from the hotel, in this same sunshine, at this very moment, lingering on the pavement to decide their direction and agreeing to walk to the promenade. She mouthed and grimaced and the sweat broke on her body, and she looked at him once and saw words die on his lips, lost in his suspicion of her.

The train stopped for the last time. Doors banged; the throng of people passed them by on the platform outside. They collected their belongings and left the train together. A porter, interested in her legs, watched them walk down the platform. They passed through the barrier and parted, moving in their particular directions. She to her new flat where milk and mail, she hoped, awaited her. He to his room; to the two unwashed plates on the draining board and the forks with egg on the prongs; and the little fee propped up on the mantelpiece, a pink cheque for five pounds, peeping out from behind a china cat.