"Leave me alone!" She stood up and screamed at him. "Leave me alone! I don't want to. I won't! I want my dad! I want my daddy! I want—"

Malach laughed. Ruth became silent.

"You break so simply. Your father's dead."

"I know," she said.

She cried.

Malach walked into the white room and shut the door, leaving the rest of the flat before her, vast, enclosed.

Presently the two dogs came, and pressed against her, and Ruth kneeled down with them for comfort.

When she had been kneeling there, weeping on their coarse fur for a few minutes, Malach returned. He sat beside her, and held her in his arms. She did not see his face, which was old. The dogs lay over their feet, waiting patiently for the enormous pain to pass, like night.

CHAPTER 33

AS THEY WALKED UP TOWARD THE house from the road, loud tuneful music ran down to meet them, the Stranglers playing from Camillo's trike. A few colored windows gleamed above like sweets on the darkness. Electricity burned out of the open door, lighting the trike, its own green-blue-poppy-purple casement. Lou was sitting on the velvet seat. She wore a short black dress over long black tights painted with red roses. Around her neck was a ruff of silver wire. Her red hair had been streaked with mauve. She seemed demure.

Camillo was standing by the horse head, and Tray was on the path below the door.

Tray wore one of her long dresses, 1920s shoes with straps. Her long black hair framed her pale-powdered face.

"No, you're not coming with me," said Camillo.

Tray inclined her head to one side, plaintively.

"Cami…"

"Not like that," said Camillo.

Lou said, "Come on, Cami. Let's go."

"I wanted," said Tray.

"I don't want you," said Camillo, "like that." He got into the saddle of the trike. "You look like my mother."

The engine gunned. The trike turned effortlessly and soared off down the hill, Lou sitting in the back.

Camillo stared at Rachaela as he passed her, and he grinned contemptuously. Speed, darkness, light, made him appear about thirty-eight.

Tray went on standing by the door, looking like a flower on a bruised stem.

As Althene and Rachaela reached the bottom of the path, Miranda came out of the house.

She appeared, also, too young, in a dim white dress. She had taken to wearing her gray hair loose, and it fell down her back in thick waves. She touched Tray's shoulder.

"Come in, dear, and watch the film with me."

Tray looked at her shyly, perhaps stupidly.

"There are some chocolates," said Miranda. "Marzipan ones, and strawberry creams."

Miranda led Tray indoors, and when Althene and Rachaela went into the house in turn, the two long-skirted women, young and young-old, had disappeared into the white living room where the TV fluttered.

"Is Miranda kind?" asked Rachaela. "Or playing?"

"Or something else," said Althene. She shut the house doors.