Helen and I would meet sometimes at midnight: she would see me through from tension to exhaustion. I did not think much about how Helen felt about my mother, though later on that would prove to be an important matter. I suppose I could see that Helen, though fond of my mother, had her reservations, and that is why I didn’t tell her about the accusations or about my hair; I said, simply, that my mother was depressed and being difficult. Helen talked with insight born of no experience at all about how people respond to illness, and she spent a lot of time telling me how strong I was being. She reminded me that the constant vigil was something my family had elected, and not an obvious necessity. That was good: it made me feel noble instead of dutiful. There was something about the way she would look at me when I saw her, and ask, “How was it today?” that would suddenly make the facts of the day melt away. When I could not love my mother, I could love Helen. She would sip a glass of white wine while I described every flower and every medical report and every detail, over and over. I would try to explain the quality of the fear that washed over me. Helen would hold her head to one side, and look into her wine, and stay so much herself that I was filled with the wonder of it.

Every day I spoke with Bernard. But the time difference was such that I could not call him late at night, when I was sufficiently awake to have full access to words, and so I would call in the groggy morning, or write letters, or phone from the hospital, or as soon as I got home. But unlike my relationship to Helen, my relationship to Bernard was changed. It was as though all these overwhelming emotions were a gate through which Bernard could not possibly pass. Since my love for him had been called into play as part of the reason for the whole terrible situation in which I found myself, that love of course became suspect and inaccessible. But beyond that, beyond all this explanation, we had nothing to say to each other. I think, I am pretty sure, that that was a change. Bernard told me about the plants in the window boxes and about the cat’s new dish and about dinner with friends of his and about how the car had broken down (again) and about a new shirt he had bought. He described how the painter had redone the front hall and had got paint on the carpet, just around the edges. He told me that the local flower stall had wonderful delphiniums in, and that the gourmet shop had a new kind of very delicious yogurt. I, in turn, narrated to him the events of my days, and asked whether the plumber had been able to fix the washing machine, and about whether Jane was getting on better with her husband. His stories were as charming and as irrelevant as the books of my childhood, and I felt as though I were in my turn performing by rote; it was like playing piano exercises I had memorized for a long-vanished teacher. It wasn’t even that I didn’t want to tell him anything; it was that I had nothing to tell him.