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sought no substitutes, was chary of affectionate gestures, a fact which estranged her even further from the cousins, as did her apparently unsupported status. She had no family, which to Kitty and Molly made her pitiable, even shameful. Yet she was still too loyal to her origins to describeher relief at her escape from home, from the tall narrow house at the far end of the New Kings Road, in which she and her mother and father had passed their harmonious but largely silent days. Conversation was somehow a luxury, confined to Sundays. Thus she had learned nothing except to visit the Public Library: fiction taught her all she knew of life, taught her to interpret the lives of others. And she had not been found wanting: that was also Henry’s gift to her. Even the cousins, once introduced, could not fault her, little knowing that their immaculate carpets and voluptuous sofas provided such a contrast with the serviceable upright furniture and plain curtains of home. She had bought her present flat with the proceeds of the family house after the deaths of her father and her mother. They too had died within weeks of each other, as if their largely coded conversation could only be pursued beyond the grave.
    Her first efforts at furnishing had been awkward; it had taken some time for her to settle on the blue-grey carpet and curtains that had so soothed Henry. And of course there was the outlook onto the garden, to which she paid so much attention these days. She had never really known whether Henry had loved the flat as much as she did. On those visits to the cousins, which could not be avoided, he seemed to reveal an affinity with the amiable husbands who put aside their newspapers to wave a cheerful greeting, leaving the formalities to their wives. Something wistful and pleasure-loving then emanated from him. The coffee, the cake, which appeared as though by magic, were just as magically consumed, as though they were a birthright, as natural as mother’s milk.
    Their life alone together was courteous, deeply considerate. This enabled Mrs May to endure her sparse attractions, which the cousins, so abundant, so fecund, openly deplored. Had shebeen guilty of weaning Henry away from his family? Perhaps she had; perhaps he had it in him to be just such an amiable husband, comfortably ensconced in just such a soft armchair, served coffee and cake by the sort of mother figure that Mrs May could never be. Yet alone with her he became more of a man; not merely the provider, through a family trust, of an extended network of cousins and nephews, but thoughtful, dignified, mature. He had been the director of a small charity for refugees, from which he took no salary, being satisfactorily financed through investments. There had been factories in Germany when the name was Meyer: as Henry May a native charm, together with his own resources, made him a respected figure in his own world and in hers. She had thought herself his debtor; only now, in old age, and in solitude, did she ever think of herself without reference to Henry.
    This puzzled her. Although lonely she was not unhappy. A day like today, spent watching her neighbours’ children playing in the garden, hardly moving for the duration of the long Sunday afternoon, had not been unduly burdensome. If she saw herself, even in her memory, she did not see the brightness that had been hers as a wife; she saw the lined and ageing woman she had become, as if these lineaments had been waiting to emerge since her features had first been formed. For Henry’s sake she kept up appearances, had her hair done, applied discreet colours to her face, yet when she looked in the mirror, lipstick in hand, she saw a drained countenance, its expression wary, as if at any minute it might undergo disintegration, as if there were no longer any cells to separate the skin from the bone. This was a bad moment every morning. Once she was packaged for the day, in one of her navy-and-white print dresses, she