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A child ran towards her, cheeks aflame. To be able to run like that again! ‘Bobby, Bobby,’ called his mother. ‘Wait for me. Don’t cross the road.’ He looked back, laughing, and then ran on again. The mother smiled her excuses and hastened her step. But Mrs May silently willed the child forward, as if his unbroken stride, his flaring colour, were a portent, and when the dull sky briefly brightened she thought how fitting it was that speed and light should be celebrated, and the long evening kept at bay.

‘Kitty? It’s Thea. How are you?’

‘Thea.’ The tone was distant.

‘I’m not disturbing you, I hope?’

‘No, no. There’s nothing much to disturb us now that everything’s over.’

‘I hope you’ve managed to rest a bit. Will you go away now?’

‘To tell you the truth, Thea, I don’t feel much like going away.’

‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

‘I’m not easy in my mind. I’m worried about Austin.’

‘Is he unwell?’

‘He thinks I don’t notice, but I know him. I heard him get up in the night. In the morning he said he was fine, but I’m not so sure. He’s pining. And so am I, to be honest. I miss the children. The flat seems so quiet. She looked lovely, didn’t she?’

‘She looked very good, yes. It was a great success.’

‘Yes, I think it was. It’s just that it’s all left us rather down, you know?’

Here the voice broke, as it was bound to do. Kitty’s tears, never far from the surface, did not despise the use of the telephone to relay their message.

‘Is it Austin you’re worried about?’

‘Well, of course. But I don’t want him to see I’m upset. Let’s talk about something else. How are you? I expect you’re quite pleased to have the flat to yourself again?’

‘I’ve hardly had time to notice. I should have thought I’d be relieved, but now I find it rather empty.’

To her surprise, as she said these words she knew them to be true. Steve, whom she had hardly liked, and whom she liked even less in retrospect, had obliged her to live in the present and to combat her tendency to introspection. It was true that he had agitated her, that every day she had to convince herself that there was no harm in him, that she had lain awake for the sound of his key in the door, but in fact the agitation had had a tonic effect. Even her dreams had benefited, revealing to her past anomalies, delivering true verdicts, restoring to her lost names and faces. Even the warnings of ill health had been without foundation, or so she cared to think; the knowledge that there was a doctor at the end of the street gave her new confidence. Not that she would ever call him, she told herself; she would manage on her own. Or hoped she would.

And then there were the plans to turn herself into a quite different person, a cranky old woman with bare legs and a formidable tongue, living in a stone house somewhere in the south. Surely Steve was in some part responsible for this upheaval in her thinking? At the same time she knew that she could not bear for him to come back, that there was a danger in leaving the flat empty for any length of time. Resourceful as he was, he would soon find a way of getting in. And once in he would be excessively difficult to dislodge.
All this passed rapidly through her mind as she listened to Kitty composing herself. At least she imagined the deployment of the snowy handkerchief, having witnessed this scene many times. The heartache, she reflected, was genuine. Or maybe it was a form of homesickness. This was not entirely paradoxical. Although exile was distant by two generations, the family had always seemed in need of a security that was not quite within its grasp. Even Henry had felt this. She saw suddenly that her value to Henry was as a safe haven, not simply from the bruising effects of his divorce, but from uneasiness, from a lack of weight, from the menace of underlying tears. Kitty’s tears had merely served to emphasise this occasional piercing bewilderment, as if to ask, ‘Where am I?’ And all relationships, which were intended to serve as ballast, revealed their essential fragility at unexpected moments, so that Kitty, and Henry, and even Austin, chose to stay close to home, cocooned in stifling physical comfort, ingesting frequent meals, loving anxiously, easily disappointed, fearing abandonment or dispossession.

She felt an overwhelming pity for these people who, in the light of their own essential needs, had almost inevitably shut her out. It was not that she was inimical to them: it was simply that they were preternaturally alert to the threat of otherness. And with her thin frame and her meek but decided presence she had represented a majority to which they could never belong. She saw suddenly that she had made them feel uncomfortable, that Henry had in a sense betrayed them by marrying her, that the first wife, however hysterical and difficult, had been more easily understood, and that she herself had always paid the penalty for being so contained and unemotional. They had sensed a criticism, where no criticism was intended: reticence was not a faculty they possessed, yet
they possessed many others. They were passionate people, but at the same time they were inept. The children of such people were bound to suffer, as indeed they had done. Yet even Gerald, even Ann, would carry within themselves some atavistic memory of raw emotion, and although they would do their best to ignore it, would, she knew, fly to Kitty’s deathbed when the time came, and in one long heartfelt outburst confess their love.

It would be too late, for them, not for Kitty, who had always solicited such an outpouring. And no doubt she herself would be there, assisting, and aware as never before of the differences they had managed to contain throughout their long association. For now she saw that they were menaced, and that she was still intact, that it was up to her to make provision for the future, that they knew this and regretted it. Her task was not an easy one. She must be present and absent at the same time, available, but not for that reason cherished. She would not be able to allay their fears, but perhaps those fears were irreducible, and the task of allaying them not in anyone’s gift. Not in this world, certainly, and as Austin had comfortably announced, they were in no need of the next. This was true: they wanted their needs met in this world, not quite understanding that the world was indifferent.

‘Are you there, Kitty?’

There were a few final sniffs. ‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘I thought I’d better tell you: I’m going away.’

‘Oh, yes? Where are you going? Portugal?’

Portugal was another of the Levinsons’ fiefdoms, together with the house in Freshwater and the Royal Monceau Hotel.

‘No, not Portugal. I haven’t quite decided.’

‘But Thea, that’s not like you.’

‘I feel like a change,’ she said weakly.

‘But supposing we wanted to get in touch with you? We shouldn’t know where you were. After all, we’re not young any more. It’s important that we stick together.’ Here the voice was lowered. ‘To tell the truth, I’m concerned about Austin.’

‘Has he seen a doctor?’

‘Monty was here last night. Monty said he’s been doing too much, that we all had, Molly too. It’s just that they’ve left such a gap, the children, I mean. If I feel better tomorrow I’ll go out and buy Ann a few things. A couple of blouses, perhaps a skirt or two …’

‘They wear jeans, Kitty.’

Again the heartfelt sigh. ‘You think I’m silly, no doubt.’

‘No, no, I don’t. I think I know how you feel. Young people are precious, even if they’re not quite as one would want them to be.’

‘Exactly. How did you think Gerald looked?’

‘He looked fine to me.’

‘He looked like my father did at his age. You’ve seen the photographs.’

‘He did rather. Don’t fret, Kitty. They will all come home in the end.’

The starkness of what she was saying appalled her, yet false comfort was not within her gift, and maybe never had been. That was another factor that marked her out as alien. But in fact she was anxious to move forward from this position into that mythical future in the sun. For a moment she saw herself quite clearly, transformed. She was wearing an old black dress, unbelted, and she was hurling the contents of a bucket of dirty water onto the cobblestones in front of her house. Dogs barked at her; children made fun of her. She saw the mocking faces of the children, and all at once the fantasy evaporated. There would be no transformation, no apotheosis. At her age,
with her constitution and temperament, she was unlikely to become a wizened hag, however wistfully she desired such a protective carapace. She was too polite, too accommodating to disenfranchise herself; she was too dependent on home comforts, though at present she found more desolation than comfort at home.

‘Just a few days,’ she told Kitty. ‘Perhaps a week.’

‘You’ll let us know?’

‘Yes, of course. Don’t worry. I shan’t be far away.’

She could sense a certain relief at the other end of the line. To her surprise she felt a measure of relief herself, together with a sharp sense of anticlimax. It was like waking after a particularly enthralling dream, to find that her course of action was not to be dictated by magical thinking but was circumscribed by mundane reality, and that instead of encountering and overcoming mythical obstacles she had merely to take her shopping basket and mingle with the other suburban ladies at the supermarket. And that instead of that doorway in the sun there would be the spectacle of old Mario, with his carafe of wine and his mimed greeting, at the Italian café, where once again she would resume her custom. And all would go on as before, or almost. Perhaps the fantasy had wrought some infinitesimal change, revealing the nature of her ordinary life to her. But she looked down at her neat figure, at her narrow feet in their sensible shoes, and knew that reality was not easily traduced, that, like fate or heredity, it would impose itself even on the most cherished imaginings. Indeed it was the peculiar gift of imagination to provide a respite from reality, the reality that even now was breathing audibly down her ear. Surely Kitty was not her usual self, had, however briefly, lost her power to dominate?

‘We’ll talk on Sunday, as usual,’ she said.

‘Very well, dear. And maybe we’ll see something of you.’

After replacing the receiver she was thoughtful. Kitty’s remark had signified a return to normality, or rather to the
status quo ante
. She was to be an adjunct, but not necessarily an intimate, admitted to certain colloquies but not to others, her status as family member once more to be negotiated. She felt a certain sadness on understanding this, even a certain loneliness. Then she braced herself to meet the day, took her shopping basket, and went out, greeting one or two neighbours as she walked carefully down her familiar street. Now that the world had shrunk again she forced herself to appreciate the modest nature of her surroundings, all pleasant, all subdued, all seasonal: the honeysuckle at the corner, now drooping, a few early yellow leaves on the pavement, the first of the season’s apples on display at the greengrocer’s. The Indian newsagent raised a dignified hand in greeting as she passed. Yes, it was all quite bearable.

Some days later—but where had the time gone?—a letter and a postcard arrived. The letter was from Austin. ‘Dear Thea,’ it read. ‘Quite in order to take a holiday, but don’t abandon us! We are rather sad at the moment, as you can imagine. The sight of Gerald quite upset me, although I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Between ourselves I have not been feeling too good; of course I haven’t said a word to Kitty. She has had enough to put up with, one way and another, and you know how careful one has to be with high blood pressure. I am very anxious that she take it easy, so I doubt if we shall go away this year. I just wanted to say how much I had enjoyed talking to you, and how much I look forward to turning things over with you again. I know that Kitty feels the same. They say the Alfonso XIII at Seville is a good hotel, but of course you won’t want to go that far. You know that the house
at Freshwater is always at your disposal, even when we’re not there. Forgive this long letter. Kitty says I think too much. Perhaps she’s right. Yours, as ever, Austin.’

The letter was typed on an ancient machine whose irregular ‘e’s and ‘t’s seemed to give an all too graphic impression of Austin’s erratic heartbeat. Or maybe it was his nervous system that was affected. The thought of the two of them, hiding the extent of their ailments from each other, was a sad reminder of their collective age, a fact that could not be dismissed. Imagination was of no help in this particular circumstance.

The postcard, which was of the Eiffel Tower, read ‘Having a great time. Going south tomorrow’ and was signed ‘Ann, David, Steve’. So they do not miss us, she thought. Yet they had each signed their name. This fact cheered her immeasurably.

She searched through her address book for the number of Henry’s solicitor, Zerber, now, she supposed, her solicitor as well. She had had no contact with him since Henry’s death, when he had sorted out Henry’s affairs and told her that ample provision had been made for her. He had urged her at the time to make a will and had shown her a disheartening list of various charities—for the blind, the disabled, the mentally handicapped—that would in due course benefit from the quite substantial monies she left behind. A female voice informed her that Mr Zerber had passed away five years previously, and that he had been succeeded by his nephew, young Mr Zerber. She made an appointment to see him, for she supposed it hardly mattered that they were strangers to each other, and found herself regretting the original Zerber, tiny, shrewd, even then shrunken, his head barely rising from his shoulders. He too was one of what Henry designated as ‘the old crowd’, which meant that Zerber’s father, or possibly his
grandfather, had been known to some ancestor of the May family, and thus indirectly to Kitty and Molly, their mother having been born a May, or rather a Meyer. This gave Zerber the stamp of authenticity, something akin to a royal appointment, and she could imagine the dismay his death would have occasioned. It would have been one more intimation of the indifferent world beyond their deliberate confines: having to deal with strangers was avoided as much as possible. Yet for what she had to do a stranger was entirely appropriate. She was given an appointment for that afternoon, for which she was grateful; she was anxious not to give herself time to change her mind.