He stood a yard or two in from the doorway and stared at her. ‘What are you doing, sweetie?’

‘Knitting,’ said Alice, smiling at him.

Rupert came and sat opposite her. He was fascinated. He knew there was such a thing as hand-knitting, or that there used to be, for he seemed to remember his mother mentioning it about forty years before, but he had never actually seen it being done. Alice’s fingers flicked up and down, making precisely the same movement about a hundred times a minute. And they seemed to move independently of the rest of Alice, of her body which was gracefully relaxed, of her eyes which occasionally met his, and of her mind too, he suspected, which might be wandering off anywhere.

‘I didn’t know you knitted,’ he said after a while.

‘Darling! Where do you think your red sweater came from? I told you I made it.’

Rupert had not given much thought to the provenance of the red sweater. ‘I suppose I thought you must have done it on a machine,’ he said.

Alice laughed heartily at this. She continued to knit. Rupert read the evening paper which had just been delivered. After a time he said, ‘Can I talk to you while you’re doing that?’

He sounded so like a little boy whose mother cannot be bothered with him that Alice’s heart was touched. ‘Darling, of course you can. Talk away! I’m a very practised knitter, you know. I can not only talk while I’m knitting, I can read, watch television – my goodness, I could knit in the dark!’ And she fixed her eyes on him, smiling tenderly, while her fingers jerked up and down like pistons.

But Rupert didn’t talk. He hardly said a word until they were out for their evening walk, and next day when she again took up the blue pullover she was once more conscious of his stare. After a while he lit a cigarette, his first for several weeks. Without a word he left the room and when she went into the kitchen to prepare their evening meal she found him sitting at the table, reading one of his favourite war memoirs.

It was not until Alice had had four sessions of work on the pullover and had completed six inches of the back, having changed by now to the slightly coarser needle, number twelve and made of red plastic, that Rupert made any further reference to her occupation.

‘You know, sweetie,’ he said, ‘there’s absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t buy our clothes ready-made. We’re not poor. I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I’m a tight-fisted sort of chap. Any time you want the money to buy yourself a blouse or a dress or whatever that is, you’ve only to say the word.’

‘This isn’t for me, Rupert, it’s for you. You said you wanted a pullover like the one we saw on that man on the sea front.’

‘Did I? I suppose I must have if you say so but I don’t recall it. Anyway, I can pop down to the men’s outfitters and buy one if I feel inclined, can’t I, eh? There’s no need for you to wear yourself out making something I can buy in ten minutes.’