The great south window, which went to the floor, led into a conservatory, which had initially no plants, only a tessellated floor (soft emerald and charcoal), and strips of stained glass without pictures around its top. This in turn opened on a wide balcony with a high brick surround. Ivy grew over it, picturesque, and below, the house descended quietly, its two other floors, into an overgrown garden, with overgrown plum trees and a choked pool visited by frogs.

Beyond the garden walls the ground tumbled to mud flats, and then into the river, the oily gleaming Thames, where ducks waddled and swam, and now and then a speedboat would pass with a wake of Persil spray.

Along the riverbanks, on both sides, were attractive buildings, new considered blocks of flats with Roman tiles and ovals of glass, two churches, some complexes of perhaps an industrial nature, but with an art deco Egyptian look. From one, the farthest off, a plume of smoke occasionally lifted, and turned to rose at sunset. Doubtless unhealthy but undeniably aesthetic.

The middle floor of Rachaela's block seemed unoccupied. At the bottom dwelled a pair of couples in adjoining apartments. She had seen them in the hall, polite and smiling but not pushy. She heard no noises from them but the intermittent soft waft of cello music, or glimpses of a concerto by Liszt or a symphony of Mahler's.

They had made all perfect for her. As perfect as was possible.

Jacob and Juliet too were charmed. They climbed down the strong lattice of ivy and jumped to the garden wall, thence the garden. They sat in the plum trees like racoons or lemurs, tails hanging, and eyed the ducks on the mud flats.

By the middle of March, Rachaela had bought plants for the conservatory—she had never been able to grow things, but maybe now… ?—and added a music center and two portable radios to the flat. She had introduced green plants, too, and green soaps and towels to the bathroom, filled the freezer with exotic food and the fridge with cheeses and salad. She found an orange glass dish and put oranges in it.

The floor was scattered by cat toys, catnip sticks of "dynamite" with chewed tassels, catnip mice which had had their ears eaten off, and balls which were rattled and tinkled around the rooms at three in the morning.

One wall of the living room was book shelves, and Rachaela was filling it. Rebecca West, Jean Rhys, Lawrence Durrell, Proust, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Dickens, Hardy, Jane Gaskell, Louise Cooper.

Her taste in books had broadened, but, conversely, her desire for music had retracted like a bruised antenna.

Then, she found a solution. She began to paint, playing music as she did so.