‘What happened?’ She heard the infernal ticking again.

‘The nice nurse, the little one with the blue eyes, came in to say that our Tom is not in a very good condition at the moment. She thinks we should go now and have a nice cup of tea, and she will telephone me at my hotel and you at George’s house when he’s stable enough for us to come back. How does that sound?’

Jelly nodded an assent, sick at heart.

*

She spent all evening at the Yeatses’ with one ear attuned for the telephone, which stayed mute. Willy Yeats was away in London. George, who was overjoyed to see her, though horrified by the circumstances, cooked a comforting stew; her son Michael chattered away about school, and her daughter Anne, perhaps hoping to distract Jelly, brought out a book of sketches she had made on an academy trip to County Cork. Anne, though only 15, was at art college. Jelly examined page after page, praising the deft curve of a hillside, the balance of perspective and structure in the whole. This young girl had the eye and hand of a woman. Jelly remembered, as if it had all happened to somebody else, that at Anne’s age she herself was on the point of leaving Hungary and stopping her official studies altogether.

‘What does “Sai” mean?’ asked Anne.

‘It’s a little nickname that my family and some close friends use. It’s “shy”, spelled phonetically in Hungarian.’

‘Sai is also a Sanskrit word,’ George told her. ‘It’s hard to explain, but it means something like the divine mother and father rolled into one. So it’s a divine presence. Someone who seems to have – well, something extra.’

‘You’ve gone purple, Auntie Jelly,’ Michael declared, with satisfaction.

‘Well, I’m hardly a divine presence, am I! Anne, Michael, darlings, have you noticed we never choose our own nicknames?’

‘But perhaps that’s how your sisters saw you? How fascinating,’ said George.

‘Nicknames stick,’ Jelly said. ‘It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t mean anything at all.’

*

The telephone screamed, waking Jelly in the spare room, catching George stirring porridge for the children’s breakfast. Jelly heard her answer and utter a few monosyllables. She knew what it meant. Part of her spirit wanted to split off from her body and fly out after Tom’s departing soul to embrace him one last time.

The rest of Jelly pulled a jersey over her nightgown and hurried downstairs. George was leaning on the banister, waiting to tell her that Tom had passed away at the break of dawn.

*

George went with Jelly and Tovey this time. Together they walked under the trees into the house where yesterday Tom was alive, yet today he was not.

‘I’d like to be alone with him for a moment, please.’ Jelly asked for the favour she should have sought when he was actually there.