He reaches out to flick off the lamp and rise from the bed. I feel him move about in those un-Foxlike maroon silk pajamas that make me smile, just thinking about them. He gathers a pillow and blanket. As soundless as a cat, he walks back across the rug to the chaise longue next to the wall, where he arranges himself without a single creak.

Iris

AUGUST 1948

Dorset, England

Over drinks in the library of Honeysuckle Cottage, Iris worked up the nerve to ask Philip Beauchamp about his children.

“I have three. Two girls, Dorothy and Hannah. A boy, Philip. He’s the youngest. A bit of a surprise. We hadn’t been trying for another. They are magnificent, of course. Above average by every possible measure.”

“Children always are. Do you see them often?”

“Not any longer, I’m afraid. My wife took them to Canada with her. They’re supposed to spend summers with me, but I’m afraid it didn’t work out this year.”

“Why not?”

He swirled the sherry in his glass. “She had some excuse, I forget what. I don’t mean to speak against her. It was a disappointment. I’m taking leave in September. Sail over and see if she’ll let me—if I can visit with them for a bit.”

“It’s outrageous. The government should do something. To keep a father from his children, it’s terrible!”

“The government takes the view that young children are almost always better off with the mother, which I imagine is quite true in most cases.”

“But you’re a wonderful father. I can just tell—the way you play with the boys and with Aunt Vivian’s girls. I think it’s wonderful the way you pay attention to them. God knows they—” Iris bit off the end of the sentence. From the kitchen came the faint, happy noise of the children helping Mrs. Betts with the dinner—certain kids more helpful than others. Aunt Vivian stretched out on the chaise longue, deep in conversation with a neighbor of Philip’s, some army major who saw action in North Africa and the Italian campaign and loved to talk all about it with pretty women. Iris sat with Philip on the sofa next to the bookcases. They were filled with old, musty Victorian novels that Iris read after the children were in bed, and the house was quiet, and there was nothing to do but commiserate with Aunt Vivian and wait for the telephone to ring with some drunken, incoherent confession from Sasha, or else the policeman who’d found him on a London park bench at six in the morning.

“We do write frequently,” said Philip. “She’s been good about that.”

“But naturally she reads your letters first, before handing them over.”

“One must assume so.”

Iris laid her hand on his knee. Philip turned his face away.