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‘Perfectly all right, darling. You go. Thea will keep me company.’

They were silent until they heard the front door close. Austin raised his teacup to his lips with a hand that shook slightly.

‘What will happen to her when I’ve gone, Thea? Who will protect her then? She’ll be looked after, of course; I’ve seen to all that …’

‘Austin, are you telling me you’re not well?’

He sighed. ‘I’m as well as I’ll ever be. I should never have retired, of course. I did that to please Kitty. We’re both too old
for more heartbreak, Thea. I just want this wedding to be over, and nothing to go wrong. It would kill Kitty, if anything went wrong. And I’m not as robust as I once was.’

‘I remember you swimming at Freshwater.’

He smiled. ‘I was better-looking in those days.’

‘You look just the same to me.’

‘You’re a good woman, Thea. I nearly said “girl”. But we’re not young any more.’

‘Not any more, no.’ She placed her cup tidily in its saucer and stood up. ‘I won’t wait for Kitty. Tell her to ring me if she wants a chat. And that will give you time to have a rest before they get back.’

‘I love her so much, Thea.’

‘I know, dear.’

All the way down the hill she wondered at this perfect love, then raised her head and saw that the sun was quite strong. The extreme tiredness that she now felt had to do less with the afternoon’s exchanges than with the knowledge that time had passed, taking them all—Kitty, Austin, herself—with it, and that nothing she had said to Ann, or could say to her, would change that fact. At the same time she felt a new compassion for the poor bewildered girl, schooled against her will for an inappropriate wedding—and it was a wedding rather than a marriage, she reflected. What was still disconcerting was Ann’s absolute lack of curiosity. Not once had she asked a single concerned question, of the sort that Kitty, preoccupied though she was, never failed to ask. How had Thea got to Hampstead? Had she had trouble finding a taxi? And Austin would go out with her when it was time to leave. But today Austin had not had the heart to do what he always did, and truth to tell, she was glad to be alone. These small cherished attentions had little to do with the activities of the
young, could be seen as archaic, out of place. Fussy, as Ann would have said, a word conveying maximum condemnation. Her language was opaque, as was Steve’s: David’s partook of the higher opacity. And even Ann, in her moment of truth, gave evidence of all manner of unclear thinking. She might do well to marry that young man, Mrs May reflected. He had been open enough to ask her, although their testing time was still to come. Eventually David would encounter arguments subtler than his own and be forced to think a little harder. And perhaps that might make a man of him, and thus enable him to make a woman of his wife. In that way they might make some sort of a life for their child, or children. For whom Kitty would yearn. But of course Kitty would be dead, and Austin too, and she no doubt with them. That was the awful truth that Ann had not approached. Perhaps no young person could.

She also realised that she felt a new affection for her putative family, perhaps more than she had previously felt throughout her married life. She had always made an automatic distinction between her real family and the families of others, had thought of her silent, stoical, and almost wordless parents whenever the subject of Henry’s family was raised, as it so often was. During those afternoons with Rose she liked to think that she had played her part willingly, had felt nothing so patronising as pity, had even loved Rose, and loved Henry for his devotion, but at the same time had felt herself to be cut from radically different cloth. It was no accident that the image of her mother at Rottingdean had come to mind: there were no accidents. Her mother, puzzled by her tiredness, had gone up to the room they shared for her rest, leaving her to contemplate the yellow leaves on a lawn sparkling from a recent shower. And now she was as old as her mother
had been, and had been a widow for longer. ‘Be a brave soldier,’ her mother had whispered through her pain, and she had run in terror for the nurse. But that was all over, the lingering illness, the final days, her own helplessness. The wisdom of age decreed that she forget, that she cleave to those who would be her companions in this shipwreck. It was true that Kitty and Austin had each other, but this would not guarantee them a merciful outcome. In fact their hold on life was as frail as her own, more so, for if one went the other would follow.

She caught a bus, eager for faces. The confinement of a taxi would not answer her present mood. A woman with two shopping bags made room for her and smiled cheerfully as she did so. ‘Awful the evenings getting dark again,’ the woman remarked, though it was still brilliantly light. ‘Autumn in the air,’ she obliged, and remembered that she had not done any shopping. ‘What time does Selfridges close?’ she asked her new friend. ‘Oh, you’ll just make it,’ said the woman. ‘Mind how you go.’ For she must look as old to others as she felt herself to be. The facts were ineluctable.

She bought her marmalade and her apricots, a rye loaf, some French butter, and half a dozen eggs, then, tired, took a taxi home. The flat seemed strange to her; she was rarely away from it for so long. She looked at herself in the bedroom mirror, appraised her drawn mouth, tired eyes. She presumed that Steve would make his own arrangements for dinner, or that Molly would make them for him. David too would eat his boiled rice at Molly’s table. Ann would be fed, by force, if necessary, if only to satisfy Kitty’s hunger. How vulnerable Kitty was if one did not love her extravagantly, unconditionally! With her moderate pleasantries maybe she herself had done too little in that regard, had ignored the human frailty below the surface. Austin could be relied upon to supply that
love, to protect and to cherish. But Austin might not always be there …

Since for the moment she had an hour or two at her disposal she wandered out onto the terrace, which was now in shadow, the sun, in a late burst of activity, shedding a hectic radiance on the windows of the houses opposite. There was nothing more to be gained from the garden this evening. In the drawing room she picked up the book she had abandoned when Steve had first taken up residence, but it was not so much the book she had abandoned as the drawing room, reluctant to open more of the flat to Steve than the rooms he had already colonised. She had hardly read more than a few pages recently, alert to the opening and closing of the door, which preoccupied her throughout her increasingly disturbed nights, and now in the daytime as well. She settled down in her chair, with Inspector Maigret for company, but the former fascination was gone; she no longer found the images on the page persuasive. No book would hold her interest on this particular evening, when she had images of her own to distract her. She felt keenly for Ann, not because of her confusion, but because those flaring cheeks and bleak set lips seemed emblematic of the fate of those constrained by powerful elders. As a far from young bride she had felt equally beleaguered in the Levinsons’ company. The awkward moments had passed, but the feeling of oppression had taken longer to disperse.

Ann could not be divided from her family; no act of will, however determined, could quite manage that. But she could be offered an alternative view of family life. It need not necessarily be subversive; it could be merely detached. And in offering it, as she had this afternoon, her own role—her presence, even—might come to be appreciated. She smiled tentatively at the thought. To be identified with, yet apart
from, the family seemed to her a long overdue rationalisation of a position which until now had been improperly interpreted. She began to look forward to receiving the girl for tea in this very flat, to hearing her grievances, to patiently pointing the way to more mature pleasures. This would be a legitimate role, one she could inhabit without prejudice. Not exactly collusion—never that—but certainly dialogue. And it had been so long since she had had any proper conversation!

She was boiling herself an egg when the telephone rang.

‘Kitty here. Thea, you’ve worked a miracle. That suggestion of yours about the hairdresser was a stroke of genius. No trace of sulks now: she was just having a silly fit. And you should see how pretty she looks! Well, you will see, of course. So clever of you. I’m sorry you couldn’t wait, but it won’t be long now, will it? Goodbye, and thank you so much for coming over. I expect we shall all be busy tomorrow, but I look forward to seeing you at the wedding. Twelve o’clock here, the day after tomorrow.’ She laughed. ‘I can’t tell you how excited I am.’

‘Let’s face it, Dorothea,’ said Steve. ‘The middle classes are ridiculously mollycoddled.’

‘If you say so, Steve.’

‘I mean, look at this flat. Two families could live here.’

‘I know what brought this on,’ she said, stacking the dishes. ‘It’s because it’s time for you to go.’

‘I don’t have to.’

‘But I’m afraid you do. I have other commitments.’

She could hardly blame him for his look of undisguised scepticism. They both knew that she had no commitments, as he had been able to observe. Nor did she feel sufficiently defensive about her life in order to mount a case. She was idle, it was true, but she had earned her idleness. All her life she had worked, or so it had seemed, not only at her job, but for her mother, for Henry. There stole into her mind at this forbidden crossroads the temptation she had entertained earlier, of relaxing in her bed long past her waking hour, of wasting time in a way she had never done before, of that long and easeful preparation for the final sleep. It was her secret, one of the many she had learned to keep to herself. To one of his ceaseless,
even pointless activity, reclusion was an unknown quantity. If it were to be made known to him he would have been puzzled, even derisive. More, he would have perceived it as an excuse, which in part it was.

There was another, more phantasmal reason, unconnected with the first, which made her anxious for his departure. This was both frightening and unjustifiable, issuing from some shadowy depth normally dispersed by the light of day. It was an image, a presence, rather than a threat, the potency of which she was able to gauge by the fact that it had been with her for as long as she could remember. She thought of it as a not quite mythical embodiment, which she had privately christened the Intruder. The aim of the Intruder was to dispossess her. Even as a child she had been unable to take her home for granted. Returning from school it daily occurred to her that her parents might have been turned out in her absence. Their mild smiles of welcome had just as regularly reassured her, and yet the following day would see a return of the same fear. Paradoxically adolescence and adulthood had put an end to this particular ordeal, which made a return of the fear, when she was of an age to conquer her demons, all the more alarming.

For the Intruder was tenacious. The Intruder was a smiling creature, invariably a friend, or a stranger with a friendly face. Despite her longing for company—also phantasmal—she would be aware that the Intruder had an eye on her belongings, and was only waiting for a moment of inattention on her part to take possession. This image had been particularly strong just after she had bought the flat, when she had contact with solicitors, surveyors, workmen. As they cast a knowing eye over her property she could imagine them earmarking it
for future use. The builder whom she had employed to make some minor internal adjustments showed a tendency to linger, indicating that it was time for her to make him more tea, appropriating a chair, and rolling another cigarette. In a sly way he had flirted with her, emphasising the obnoxious character of this flirtation by the way he appraised her slight, tense figure, in which his practised eye could discern anxiety. The anxiety, however, was not sexual but territorial. Willing him to drink his tea and leave (but he was in no hurry) she bore as best she could the accusation of spinsterhood in his increasingly jocular remarks, knowing that no woman was safe from this particular menace. Even after the front door had shut behind him there was no relief, for he would be back again the next day, a bulky jovial figure, like a child’s idea of Santa Claus, and in his shrewd eyes an ability to search out weakness and to take advantage.

And lately she had had a more urgent worry. At her age it was natural to think in terms of strange doctors, Social Services. Indeed she had no doctor, since Monty Goldmark had retired. What if some newly appointed person came to examine her circumstances, liked the look of the flat, which was in fact desirable, and after having explained to her that she would be better off somewhere smaller, moved in and changed the locks? This was not entirely inconceivable. Only recently she had read of old people forced to sell their homes in order to pay for residential care. It was within the realms of possibility, or at least it was to her, that those designated to assess old people’s circumstances might have an eye for a bargain, and in the most opportunistic way possible might avail themselves of a pleasant property without the bother of going through the usual wearisome procedures. And they would smile, would
prove to her that she had no future need, or indeed entitlement, would become severe if she put up even a token resistance …