Sometimes the sun came out and gave a sharper curve to the hills rolling blandly off to the horizon, but mostly the light was wilted and pale. The children called the back yard the fairy garden for its resemblance to scenes in their storybooks, with the scattered snowdrops and crooked apple trees. The house, too, was like the illustrations: a thatched roof like a brimless hat, the dark beams imbedded in white stucco. Inside was a jumble of rooms, small hallways connected by steps, banisters flush to the wall. The windows had square lead panes and the ceilings were slanted. In the living room was lumpy furniture, and Lilian removed knickknacks from around the house in case they would be there for long. They stayed nineteen months.

By the time winter came, the rosebush around the gate was a tangle of thorns, and the ground could be muddy one day, hard as rock the next. Lilian walked every day through the little town with three pubs and not much else, along the high-banked roads, and over the fields. It was a mile and a half to the clinic and she would arrive with a glow in her cheeks, distinguishing her from the inhabitants of the building, who were pasty and overfed. She visited in the morning before lunch and often in the afternoons while the children rested, and looked forward to these walks as time alone.

Gilbert had a light by his bed and steam heat, both rare things in England as far as they had seen, so he counted himself lucky. The doctors came and pressed the glands at his jaw, looking off. Another sort of doctor came also, Dr. Howze, who stood at the foot of the bed with a great expanse of forehead and asked Gilbert questions. At the end of his inquiry, Dr. Howze asked him: Would you like to talk with me? and Gilbert replied that that’s what he thought he had been doing for ten minutes. Dr. Howze nodded and squinted his eyes.

Separated from his wife and children, fed soft food, and made to nap, Gilbert retained a baffled air. If he took any comfort in being treated like a baby, he did not convey the notion to his wife. His face grew creamier and softer, with jowls appearing. Lilian was struck by the whiteness of him, even his eyes seemed more pale. Propped up with pillows, blending in with the bedclothes, if it weren’t for the small bracelet on his wrist, Lilian thought, he would be the picture of contentment.

To his brother Winn he wrote:

I’ve discovered that the James Winthrops are descended from the Langtrys of Kent, not the William Langtrys but the Harold Langtrys. They have Bell Island in the Hebrides. I hope you are looking in on the lawn on Joy Street. It must be awfully dug up. Let me know if we should order some turf.

He wrote his father:

Dear Father,