She was not loved, that mother. Maternalism was her social role. Her whole being was consumed by the sufferings of her son. He hurt her while he was beyond hurt himself. But till the end she thought of him. Three rooms of the house will always be kept for him until he ‘passes away’. He has already passed into oblivion.

Serena cares for him. When she returns from abroad she takes him for walks. Sees that he bathes himself. Cooks for him. Brings him on visits to Lydia’s home. Life has been denied him, in every sense. This is his tragedy. He is now ageing. Pushed back, deep, into his own history. No monuments. No epistles. No remembrance in the hearts and minds of friends. Lydia remembers having seen him in church in the past. The back of his head well shaped. Slender neck. When he turned his face, the lines seemed to blur and dissolve. There was something not quite right. Years passed and Lydia saw him again. In church with his mother. At classical music concerts with his mother. At the theatre with his mother. She was at once his wardress and his mainstay. They both loved good food. She was, as a result, in the power of her servants.

Serena is suspicious. She trusts no one. ‘I am sure the servants put things in her food. One day, before she went off for the day, the woman said, giving me a covered dish, “This is only for your mother. See that she has it.”’

Serena complains about the servants. ‘I don’t want any servants. It’s they who brought all the evil into the house. The cockroaches, the dirt, the dust, all the malaise. Greedy, grasping …. And my mother was in their power. They stole everything. And even now they come, asking, asking for things, for money. They’ve forced open the linen cupboard and taken away all the sheets.’

Winding sheets. Mummy shrouds.

Lydia and Serena walk round the gallery. Portraits. Oils. ‘That’s my mother’s grandmother. That’s her grandfather. She was young. They married her off to an old man. When he died, she begged and pleaded not to be married off again to the man they had chosen for her. But they did. Another old man.’

Dark oils. Ancestors. The grandmother wears a white kaba-kurutha jacket and skirt, Portuguese style. Western influences had already begun. Later, photographs of women with bobbed hair—nineteen twenties. The deracinated people. British Universities. Oxford. Cambridge. English governesses. Education in England. English manners. Anglicanism. High Church.

Serena’s father carried his full suit on a coat hanger along the station platform. He visited Lydia and her husband, brought his own beer and beer mug. Everything packed away in the boot of the car. His own private picnic hampers.