Unable to refute Mr. Marchant, and badly situated for conversation with Spot, Lilian kept silent. Perhaps it’s a system, something one gets used to again, she told herself—like doing the Times crossword puzzle.

Mrs. Marchant was inclined to be tolerant. “The Americans who come over here seem pleasant enough, don’t you think?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Ben agreed. He put out his cigarette, and added: “A trifle assiduous, perhaps,” before lighting another.

Mrs. Marchant persisted. “But I’ve always got on well with them. We had four in our house—remember, Hugh?—during the war. Well-behaved boys. They read aloud in the evenings.” She nodded to reinforce this surprising memory.

“Did they really?” Julie, who had risen, paused at the door of the dining room. “What?”

Mrs. Marchant’s approval diminished. “Well, I was hoping for Wordsworth, which Daddy would have so loved—my father was living with us then. But instead they read an interminable thing about a whale—a whale, I assure you. I thought we’d never see the back of that whale. But mercifully, when the good weather came, they opened the Second Front.”

Lilian, glancing up in dismay, was astonished to find Julie’s face disarrayed with amusement.

They sat down to lunch, and Ben carved the meat. Spot, having found his way under the table, squeezed back and forth among their legs, his firm, bristly sides heaving with cheerful interest, his tail slapping wildly. Julie looked pained, and once laid down her knife and fork as though she were about to speak—but didn’t. At last Mr. Marchant got up from the table, apologizing, and called the dog to the door.

“Out, damned Spot,” he said, pointing. Everyone laughed except Mrs. Marchant, who had heard the joke a hundred times. The dog pattered out as if he had intended this all along.

Julie washed the dishes, and Lilian dried them. The Marchants, waving, had disappeared with Spot in their car, shortly after lunch. Ben had gone out to work in the garden (“Before the rain comes,” Julie said, although there was no sign of rain). In the sun outside the kitchen window, Simon slept in his pram.

“Is he warm enough there?” Lilian asked.

Julie looked up, her hands in the sink. “Oh, don’t you think so?” she asked anxiously, alarming Lilian, who had expected a confident reassurance.

“It’s beginning to get chilly,” she said. Together, they looked uncertainly at the strip of sunshine on the grass. Their shoulders touched.

“Oh, God!” shouted Ben from the garden. He crossed rapidly in front of the kitchen window and came in at the back door, a bundle of drooping plants in his hands. “Julia,” he said, using her full name to emphasize his displeasure. (How infantile men are, Lilian thought.) “Julia, the lupines are all dug up. Will you please tell those people for Christ’s sake not to bring their filthy dog here again?”

“Yes, dear,” Julie replied seriously, apparently memorizing the message in order to convey it with complete accuracy. “Can’t they be replanted?”