Presently they got up. They began to walk slowly together, like sick people released from a hospital, along the path beneath the chestnuts.

Ruth followed.

The house was in a walled park, one of several, all alike. Fudge walls and a bright red roof. Through the leaded windows showed lacy curtains, a vase of flowers like the graveyard. The garden was tiny, just room enough for a barbecue and chairs.

After they had gone in, instinct made Ruth wait.

Above, the curtains in the bedroom were drawn.

Half an hour after this, a light came on in one of the downstairs rooms. It was very dark, the storm was near.

Ruth went to the door. There was an ornate knocker, no bell. Ruth knocked.

The woman, Linda, came to the door in a housecoat. She had put on her glasses again.

"Mrs. Watt?"

"Our name's Reeves. There used to be a Watt— number six, I think."

"No. This is the house."

"It can't be, I'm afraid. They all look the same, these houses."

"I've come into London. I've come a long way."

"You poor thing." Linda Reeves was flustered and contrite. "I'd ask you in, but I'm in a rush. I have an evening job, you see. And Richard. He's very busy."

Silence.

The storm gathered like a silent churning cloud.

"Can I use your phone, please?" asked Ruth.

"Oh, God, the phone. No—I'm sorry. It's broken. Richard—that is, we had an accident."

A wind passed over the garden, the wings of angels, Semitic, hot and stifling, and the little trees in the little gardens bent before it.

"Can I come in?" said Ruth.

Linda Reeves put her hand to her mouth.

"I can't—I daren't. My husband's—he's not very well."

Ruth stood below the door, the passing of the wind lifting a halo of her hair, like fragile wings.

"I've come a long way."

"I'm sorry. I'm really—I'm sorry."

Linda Reeves shut the door of the fudge house abruptly.

Ruth stood outside.

Upstairs she heard him shout.

"What are you doing?"

And the woman shouted back, "Oh hell, for Christ's sake—"

"Don't use that language!" he shouted. "I've told you—"

And through the walls of the house, one breeze-block thick, Ruth heard Richard Reeves descend. She heard him come into the living room and through the lace, in the lamplight, she saw him smash Linda Reeves across the face so she fell to the wall-to-wall carpet.

"Don't ever do that."

"I'm—sorry, Richard."

Far off, the thunder murmured.

Ruth knocked again.

But no one came and the door stayed shut.

CHAPTER 16

UP THROUGH THE EARTH WALKED THE white-haired man. It was early in the afternoon, and the intestines of the tube had their usual smell of the inside of a Hoover.

A sparse crowd came and went. And through the warm plastic air, unsuitably heavenly, ribboned the cadences of a violin.