‘Are you telling me,’ said Jane, ‘that my aunt did not suffer?’

‘No. I’m not quite saying that. She would have suffered when the attack came. But once she had arrived here, we put her very soon into a state of sleep, and there her suffering ended. It was all we were able to do for her.’

They descended lower. The foetid smell of the morgue assailed them as they neared it. The doctor lit a gas lamp and as the white light blossomed up, hissing like a sudden wind, Jane could see that all the benches on which the dead were habitually laid out were empty – except one. And it troubled Jane that her aunt, who had lived such a scintillating, gregarious life, should be quite alone in the hospital morgue. She knew that this was a childish thought, but nevertheless she couldn’t stop herself from weeping at Emmeline’s terrible loneliness.

The doctor handed her a handkerchief, whipped from his coat pocket, and together they went to the bench where Emmeline’s body was covered with a sheet. Unable to stop her crying, Jane asked the doctor to uncover Emmeline’s face. With great gentleness, he drew the sheet back and there she was, revealed in death, the artist who had never known love’s domestic consolations, but who had never ceased her courageous striving and made a life like no other that Jane knew.

Jane knelt down and put her arms round Emmeline’s shoulders, quite as if she were still alive, and kissed her cold face. For a while, she laid her head on Emmeline’s bony chest and just let her tears flow into the white sheet. The doctor withdrew a few paces, as if the tears were rain and he declined to allow himself to get wet. The hissing of the gas lamp was loud above her, the sound of life’s obstinate persistence, even in this dark place. And perhaps it was this which inspired Jane to reach down into her bag and take out the turban she’d brought for Emmeline to wear on her journey back to Tite Street. Wiping her eyes with the doctor’s handkerchief, she stood up and bent over the body, raising Emmeline’s heavy head and carefully placing the turban upon it, tucking away the escaping strands of unwashed hair.

UNCTION UPON WATER

At about the same time that Jane was leaving the hospital and climbing wearily into the waiting cab, Ashton Sims arrived home from France and entered his house in Tedworth Square.

Told by Ellen that his wife was sleeping, Ashton went up to the nursery, where he found Marco and his nanny, Miss Paley. Miss Paley was sitting quietly knitting, in an armchair, while Marco rode on his rocking-horse, talking to it all the while, urging it to gallop faster and not shy at the sound of the wind in the trees. When Marco saw his father at the nursery door, he gave a shout of delight, tried to vault off the horse and fell over on the hard wooden floor.