To please her, early on, it was Grandfather who bestowed upon his wife the business of choosing birth objects for each of the family members. And how she had relished this occupation. She complained about it often enough, of how it exhausted her, of how it was wearing her down, of how it should be the very death of her, but, under all that, she loved it, she loved it, for then she chose the life – she whose life had been so confined – of all the members so great and so small of Iremonger Park. Thus had my grandmother handed out hairbrushes and bath plugs, whistles (and matchboxes, Lucy so dear to me), eggcups and doorstops. It was a certain thing that, since Grandmother had come into her portion, she had delivered very ordinary things here and there, everyday bits and pieces, commenting on the very average nature of her family, never impressed, dismissing, condemning for example, poor Uncle Pottrick with a noose for a birth object, thus she ruined the man’s life. She felt no remorse, why should she, she was stuck for ever in a single chamber; how could any pain ever be greater than hers? At times, so I have been told, when she was younger, she would be so furious at her confinement that she would throw great valuables out of her window, that she would smash crystal glass and grandmother clocks and alabaster busts. The only constant in that constant room with her was the great marble mantelpiece. All else was in a state of flux. Once, after a long and loyal service, Grandmother, her mood – like a tempest – up, and, having scratched at the floorboards in her misery until her fingernails were cracked and bleeding, had opened a double set of windows and propelled her own beloved body servant from her room down, down onto the cobbles below. All was for ever changing, only Grandmother and the mantelpiece remained the same.