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She had been thirty-nine when she married Henry, still shaken by the death of her mother and hardly prepared for change. Yet she had acceded calmly to Henry’s surprising fervour, though it rather embarrassed her now to think of it. She was a born spinster, as the cousins shrewdly perceived; at roughly the same age as herself, or a little older, they were looking forward to further festivities, were in the throes of planning them, so that no time would be lost. She had sat with her cup of tea and listened to their news; it was as if they were showing her what she could never be. She intuited that they were severely put out by this union. Henry, having returned to the bosom of his family after his unhappy first marriage, was once again to leave them, and to leave them for this thin plain woman who compared so unfavourably with the petulant Joy. She had endured their baffled annoyance, until their better natures reasserted themselves. They made amends by giving her the names of their dressmakers, suggesting lunch in town. Yet they were kind women, if easily put out, and because they judged her to have passed some test of conformity, or obedience, because Henry appeared contented, because Rose was not neglected, they admitted her to their company,
while privately expressing astonishment at the fact that she lived in Fulham. They saw immense difficulties in the way of visiting—Hampstead and Highgate were so distant!—and had to be brought over by car by complaisant husbands whom they contradicted, uneasy away from their familiar surroundings.

She had made them welcome. The fact that Henry had married her gave her confidence, and her fledgling dinner parties were surprisingly convivial. In addition to the cousins and their husbands they had invited Monty Goldmark and his wife, Hélène, so that the conversation was animated and she could slip out of the room into the kitchen without being noticed. Reabsorbed once more into his family, Henry expanded: old anecdotes were repeated, ancient relatives recalled. She could hear them laughing as she prepared the coffee. The dinners having proved a success—almost an initiation—efforts at hospitality were somewhat relaxed. They kept in touch, even after Henry’s death, and if their plaintive voices arrived at her from a distance both geographical and metaphorical, she was still moderately pleased to hear from them. She did not know that they thought her eccentric, that they had to overcome a mild uneasiness before they spoke to her. They thought that she could never understand them, in which they were mistaken; they thought that she could never, now even less than formerly, become one of them, in which they were correct. At the funeral, after Henry’s death, Molly had tearfully clasped Mrs May’s light frame to her capacious bosom. She was as shocked by Mrs May’s unyielding thinness as Mrs May had been by Molly’s abundant flesh. Now that it was accepted that they should remain apart, contact was easier. They were no longer critical of each other, having jettisoned many of their prejudices along with their combative
middle age. In their seventies—Mrs May the youngest of the three—they understood each other much better. If the cousins telephoned one another to marvel at Mrs May’s oddness, it was in order to revive an old pleasurable subject, as others might read, or indeed write, a novel. Mrs May was calmly pleased to provide them with such a diversion.

But those timid walks round Hyde Park, those bus rides, how they came back to her! It was as if no time had passed between the ages of sixteen and seventy, except that she no longer had the energy or the stamina for such walks. The newsagent in the early morning, the Italian café at lunchtime were as much as she could encompass these days, though she regretted her passivity. In her mind she strode out, even on these hot days, remembering the healthy tiredness of times gone by. That was all over now, yet the memory of her training in solitude had stood her in good stead. It may even have been a rehearsal for the ultimate solitude, which would be revealed to her in due course. For the moment she was unencumbered, almost ready to depart. Only the memory of her first meeting with Henry was allowed to intrude into her present becalmed state.

‘These paving stones are a disgrace,’ he had said, helping her to her feet. ‘I shall write to the Council.’

He had insisted on walking her back to the office and delivering her into the kind hands of Susie Fuller, her fellow secretary.

‘May,’ he had said, holding her by the elbow. ‘Henry May.’

‘Jackson,’ she had said. ‘Dorothea Jackson.’

‘Really, Thea,’ Susie Fuller had remarked, after he had left. ‘I sometimes wonder whether you should be out alone.’

That was the day when everyone was good to her. He had come back at five-thirty to see whether she had recovered
from her fall, and had invited Susie and herself out for coffee. He was so beautifully considerate that they had had no thought of refusing.

‘Lovely manners,’ Susie had whispered, as they had gone to collect their coats. And he had demonstrated those lovely manners by making no distinction between them, although interested only in Dorothea—but this she had learned later. And the rest had followed quite naturally, as if they had both willed the same outcome. Fifteen years of harmony had followed, and if she was puzzled that they had not changed her, had in fact left her as they found her, so that Henry was a memory only, she bore the absence uncomplainingly, and was more at home with those phantom Sundays before the advent of Henry, seeing quite clearly the leaves falling in the park, and turning her steps quite contentedly towards home.

It was still very hot. The light had almost faded, signalling the last hours of liberty before the working week began again. She would make coffee, she decided, take a cool bath. Then the night could begin, and if she were lucky unexpected images would surface. She could be young again, the only reasonable wish at her age. Once she had distinctly recaptured the appearance of a dress she had worn when she was fourteen. She might see her parents, no longer ailing, as they had been so often in their lives, but smiling their placid smiles as they offered her tea and cake. She was not disconcerted by this process, did not confound it with the onset of senility. Rather it was her pastime since Henry had left her. His memory was evanescent now, as evanescent as she was herself, yet somehow she must pursue her course to the end, whatever that would be.

When the telephone rang, a little later than usual, she noticed that it was almost dark.

‘Good evening, Kitty,’ she said. ‘And how are you this week? And Austin? Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. Perhaps the hot weather doesn’t agree with him. Yes, very hot today.’

There followed the ritual medical bulletins, the news of married friends and familiars, and a reminder, yet again, that they would be going away for three weeks in ten days’ time. This took just over seven minutes. At the end, like an orchestral conductor embarking confidently on the final bars, she said, ‘Yes, I’m perfectly fine, dear. My love to you both. Until next week. Goodbye.’

Absence makes the heart grow fonder; prolonged absence makes the heart grow cold. In these latter days Mrs May was at ease only with strangers, to whom she appeared affable, released from the anxiety that something—anything—might be required of her. When she ate her lunch at the Italian café she was always gratified to see the owner’s old father sitting by himself at a far table, with a carafe of wine in front of him. They understood each other perfectly. To the owner, Giorgio, certain questions had to be put: his health, the health of his wife, Paola, the health of his two daughters, and of course of the little grandson. She was then allowed to eat her pasta salad in silence. To the owner’s father she waved a hand on entering; he briefly semaphored back. She knew that it had broken his heart to give up the restaurant when he was no longer as quick on his feet as he once had been. He was the first to notice that he had reached the age when retirement was not simply a matter of discretion but of necessity.

Yet he could not keep away. Every day he sat at his table, with his carafe of wine, simply in order to watch the customers, to note if a regular were absent. No-one paid much
attention to him; in his careful suit he might have been a normal diner. But Mrs May felt for him. She knew, because he had once told her, that when he went home, at about half-past three, he would see no-one until the following lunchtime. After he had taken note of the fact that she had finished her meal he would come over to her and shake her hand. ‘Everything all right?’ he would enquire. The larger question remained unanswered. She would invite him to sit down but he preferred to stand, his body curved in a waiter’s deferential stoop. ‘And you?’ she would ask. He would shrug, as if the evidence were there to see, in his sparse grey hair, his carefully trimmed grey moustache. He had grown stout, stiff, yet he still had the suave manners of the professional restaurateur. ‘Changes,’ he would sigh, indicating a young man talking on a mobile phone. ‘Changes all round.’ It was at this point that she laid her money on top of her bill, as if to forestall a confession that would have pained them both. ‘Until tomorrow, Mario,’ she would say, and, shaking his hand once again, would get up to leave.

This exchange satisfied them both, each aware without need of explanation of the other’s frailty. Mrs May was not a robust woman but she thought of herself as durable and on a good day still was. She was simply and on the whole uncomplainingly conscious that at her age something unpleasant was to be expected. That was how she thought of her inevitable decline: as something unpleasant that could no longer be avoided. With her odd attacks of breathlessness she was almost at home. They had been with her for some little while, and she had even gone so far as to consult Monty Goldmark, Henry’s doctor, and, she supposed, her doctor now, although she never visited him. To visit him would be to acknowledge that something was wrong, that something stood in the way
of that easy friendship that had served him so well in Henry’s case. There had been a single consultation. As if conscious of his status as a sometime friend, he had made light of her studiedly careless explanation, had merely taken her pulse and felt her throat, and had then filled out a prescription for some kind of sedative, which she took only rarely. ‘You are a sensitive plant, Dorothea,’ he had said. ‘Anxiety is all that is wrong with you. No wonder, after losing Henry. Such a dear boy. Appetite all right?’

She was grateful to him for dismissing her complaint (although it was hardly a complaint at all), grateful to him for maintaining an approach more social than medical, although it did occur to her that it might be sensible to consult a cardiologist. This matter occasionally preoccupied her, more so when she felt out of sorts, but the prospect of a visit to Harley Street was enough to frighten her into precisely the attack of breathlessness she so feared. In time she no longer dreaded the attacks; rather she congratulated herself on having nothing further to do with doctors. The attacks were infrequent, and if she were at home when they occurred could be controlled, if she sat quietly in her bedroom, without recourse to the pills. The pills were on her bedside table; they kept vigil there. That was their function. She preferred to rely on her own inner resources, which must be considerable, although she had never noticed them. Henry had told her that he had married her precisely because he admired her inner resources. At the time she had not thought this much of a compliment. She was enough of a woman to wish to be thought attractive, but enough of a realist to know that her modest looks would pass unnoticed in even the most indulgent company. It was a curious fact that she was no worse-looking now than she had been in middle age. It was only when she raised a liver-spotted
hand to quell her fluttering heart that she noticed that she had grown old, and was then obliged to summon up what inner strengths she possessed. Yet, knowing how much these strengths would have to exert themselves, she still sometimes wished that she could do without them, could throw herself on the bounty of others, could simply charge a doctor with the task of making her better, could sit back irresponsibly and wait for the miraculous cure, the miraculous gratification. She was obliged to exert her will in most of the circumstances that others took for granted. Only the most placid routines stood between herself and exhaustion.

Part of her sympathy with Mario was for his sorrowful anticipation of his empty afternoon. She knew how hard this must be for a man in retirement. In some ways it was fortunate that Henry had not had to endure this, had been in touch with his fellow directors even when confined to his room. Of those last weeks she preferred not to think. Sitting dry-eyed by his bed, she was at least grateful that she was up to the task. She had kept him company throughout the afternoons as he dozed; her wordless presence comforted him as no words could have done. In the course of those afternoons, the summer then as hot as this one was proving to be, her mind would wander, almost free of associations, as if with Henry she was embarking on the same uncharted territory. Even after his death this habit had proved impossible to lose. So that when she thought of Mario in his silent house in Parsons Green she would also be preparing to spend an afternoon not dissimilar to his. Not for Mario, as she imagined him, the torpor of an afternoon nap; not for her either. She would sit in her drawing room, the doors open onto the terrace, the sun flooding in, and reflect that she was in many ways a fortunate woman. This, however, was somehow only possible in the summer. In
the winter, darkness seemed to gather almost as soon as she was home after lunch, and then indeed she did have to summon her strengths, exert her will to endure the dead time ahead of her. It puzzled her that she had so few duties, that all duties seemed to have come to an end with Henry’s death, leaving her idle, unoccupied, so unoccupied that others had no inkling of how she spent her days, imagining that she shopped and cooked as enthusiastically as they themselves did, or met friends in town, or went to galleries and concerts, spent evenings at dinner or cocktail parties where such matters were discussed. She no longer did these things, although with Henry she had travelled, had visited the museums of which he was so fond. It was in Munich, in the Haus der Kunst, that he had received the first warning of his malady. Prescient, although he had made light of it, she had got them back to London, and there, only six months later, he died. Goldmark had attended then, treating the matter as gracefully as Henry had; somehow they had carried it off. But she had been left unoccupied, with this habit of sitting idle in the afternoons, for all the world as if it were disloyal to spend the afternoons in any other way.