‘Such as who brought the flowers. What it was like at the hospital. She said she wanted to go back to the old house. To Granny Wilcox’s.’

‘Wow. I don’t even remember how to get there. Do you?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘You think she’s well enough to go anywhere?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We practically had to carry her up the stairs.’

‘It’s what she wants.’

‘Does she know what she wants?’

‘You think you know better?’

‘Of course not. Jesus. No need to bite my head off.’ He almost said: She’s my mother too. Being back at home he suddenly felt about fourteen. ‘Maybe we should talk to Una about it. Brando says she knows her stuff.’

‘She does.’

Pause.

‘I’ll be in the summerhouse,’ said Alec.

‘Fine.’

‘She’s got a bell.’

‘I know.’

‘She said she was glad you’re back.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’

Passing the orchard, Alec heard the reverend counting.

‘Sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three...’

Ever since coming down from London he had longed for others to share the burden with him. Shield him. But now that they were here he found he missed the solitude of the week before when the garden’s great resource of quiet had begun to tease out something equivalent in himself, which now all these voices drove away. It made it hard to be civil. It certainly made it harder to think.

The air in the summerhouse was flat with heat and heavily scented with the honeysuckle. He left the door open and set the manuscript on the table by the window. On the shelf, where clay flowerpots had once been stored, he had put his dictionaries and other useful books, including copies of Sisyphus Rex and Flicker in the Eliard translations. His own effort had ground to a halt a third of the way through the second act. After Alice’s fit, which had taken on in his mind the dimensions of mythology, he had found it almost physically impossible to concentrate. It was like lying with his head below a finely suspended anvil, trying not to think of what would happen when it fell. He couldn’t do it. Not even a letter from Marcie Stoltz, forwarded by Mr Bequa, in which she confessed herself ‘intrigued’ to know how the work was progressing, had made any difference. Anything beyond the white front gate of Brooklands had a remoteness that beggared the imagination, though he thought Stoltz might start to phone (she had his number at the house), and he would have to start lying to her, saying how well it was going and how excited he was.

He polished his glasses with the tuck of his shirt, then took a pencil, sharpened it, and opened the manuscript:

Mineur un: J’ai revé de ce moment cent fois. Même quand j’étais éveillé.

Mineur deux: Et comment termine le rêve?