Katie herself says she doesn’t care particularly, but is not close. She worries because she thinks that sometimes she is deliberately cruel to Stephen and his wife, and cannot stop herself until it is too late. She told them, for instance, that she wanted to find me, wanted to talk to me. She did not say it accusingly, as if they were somehow failing her and she needed someone better, but she knew that that must be how they would understand it. They are, I gather, quiet people; it seems that Stephen has not changed and his wife is much like him. Katie says they were silent for a few moments after she told them she wanted to find me; and then Stephen said, quite calmly, “I don’t think she wants to be found, but I expect it’s your right to look.” She could see that they were both hurt and trying not to show it, and she was ashamed of herself. She wants to be very good.

Later Stephen went to her alone and explained why he could not help her look for me. He talked about his visit here, said with great fairness that he had to respect what I wanted as well as what she wanted. She would have to figure it out for herself, he said. It took a long time, several false starts; she is ashamed because in the end she went through her father’s desk at home and found my address on some legal documents related to the divorce. It was a terrible thing to do, she says, but she was desperate. She cannot work out the conflict between his rights and her desperation. She also cannot work out the conflict between her wild resentment of me and what she says might be a feeling of love.

It has taken us a long time to reach this stage. She has been coming here long enough so that now I watch for her arrival, accept that she is coming. She has entered my life. I don’t use the same words she does, and so I cannot say that I love her; but I do look for her.

I think it is this place that frightens her and brings out her resentment and her fury. She does not understand it — how could she? — but she knows that it is my life. Because she can’t bring herself to blame me completely for what happened, she blames the land, knowing that if I love anything, if I have any use for the word at all, it is in relation to this place. I am in the garden and I see her, watching me and frowning, and it is like having myself of the early days back, the subject watching the object, assessing, analyzing, and it disorients me; it makes me aware of myself, clumsy and out-of-touch in the most literal way.