“Because I’ve so little to offer you.”

“I don’t need anything. I just know that when I’m with you I’m happy, and when I’m not I’m miserable. That’s all.”

“Will you come back again tomorrow?”

“As soon as I’ve been to the hospital. They might send Mother home soon and then I’ll be confined to barracks again.”

“Then we must make the most of the time we have.”

The thought of her mother, alone and bewildered, made Jean’s crowded heart quail within her. The freedom to spend her nights with Howard was entirely provisional upon her mother’s continued absence. Jean now found herself in the invidious position of wishing her ongoing ill health and a slow recovery. When she tried to visualize the future any more than a few days ahead there was no certainty, only fog.

29

The crooked tines of the rake made a tinny rattle as they combed the wet grass, drawing the leaves into a copper mound. Jean, defended against the autumn weather by boots and windbreaker over her oldest outdoor clothes, was spending her Saturday out in the front garden catching up with neglected chores.

In the last week the horse chestnuts and Canadian oaks in Knoll Park had given up the last of their leaves. Great drifts of them had blown into the Swinneys’ driveway and were plastered over the front lawn and banked up against the garage doors. Jean had filled the metal garbage can five times and five times carried it down to the compost heap. She had already taken down the withered runner beans, dismantled their bamboo skeleton, stored the canes in the shed for the winter and dug over the earth. The rhubarb had been mulched and the onions weeded and treated to a dressing of soot.

In the kitchen a cherry cake was cooling on the rack. She would glaze it later and take it with her to Howard’s for tea when he came back from work. She had hardly spent any time at home for over a week now, returning only briefly to collect the mail and clean clothes for work.

Mrs. Bowland had waylaid her on the first of these flying visits, ostensibly for news of Mrs. Swinney; also to query the pints of milk left out on the doorstep overnight.

“Oh, I’ve been staying with a friend,” Jean said, cursing herself for overlooking this detail.

“We wondered if everything was all right,” said Mrs. Bowland, “when you didn’t come home.”

“Yes, quite all right, thank you,” said Jean, refusing to be probed. “Although Mother is still not quite her old self.”

There had been a few days of what appeared to Jean complete and irreversible derangement, during which her mother entirely failed to recognize her, mistaking her variously for the ward nurse, Queen Mary and a pickpocket bent on stealing her wedding ring. She had lost all sense of time and place, with no inkling of where she was or how long she had been there. The mystery of her circumstances didn’t appear to cause her any anxiety and her hallucinations—badgers romping up and down the ward—amused rather than alarmed her.