Jean scrambled up as high as possible, made bold by brandy, until the boughs were too slender to take her weight. From her perch she dropped apples down to Aunt Edie, who was much nimbler than her previous prostration on the lounger had seemed to promise, and adept at catching them in a shawl tied around her waist. Chester, the spaniel, quivered and panted at her side.

Howard, with a basket contraption on his back, tackled the clusters of fruit on the outermost branches using a stepladder and fishing net. The cobnuts, being altogether less fragile, were thrown, shaken or knocked into the long grass, and then gathered into piles with a leaf rake and shoveled into burlap sacks.

For Jean, anesthetized by fierce sun and strong drink, the whole experience took on a misty, trancelike quality. When she finally climbed back down to earth she was surprised to notice her shirt torn and her bare arms striped with scratches. She had felt nothing.

Howard was astonished to learn that she had never eaten a cobnut, a deficiency he was determined to put right. While she unpacked the picnic, stepping uneasily into Gretchen’s role, Howard disappeared indoors and returned with a dish of salt and some nutcrackers.

“A cobnut has many layers,” he said with great solemnity, “and you have to unwrap them all to reach the prize. Observe.”

He stripped off the leafy outer case, cracked and discarded the shell, scratched off the woody skin and then finally rubbed away the inner membrane to reveal the kernel, naked and marble white. This he dipped in salt and presented to Jean on his open palm like a pearl on a cushion.

“So much effort for such a tiny morsel,” said Jean. “Even worse than peeling a grape.”

“There are no shortcuts,” Howard insisted. “You have to remove every layer or it tastes bitter.”

Jean crushed the polished, ribbed nut gently between her teeth, allowing the flavor—a combination of buttery sap and new wood—to fill her mouth.

“It is lovely,” she sighed. “But you would tire of peeling them long before you tired of eating them.”

“It’s self-limiting,” Howard agreed. “You could hardly gorge on them. But that’s part of the appeal.”

He continued dutifully preparing a little mound of these delicacies for Jean and Aunt Edie to share, taking none for himself.

“Gretchen has gone quite mad,” Aunt Edie protested as Jean plied her with veal and ham pie, chicken, zopf bread, sandwiches and tomatoes from the hamper. “Does she think she is feeding the whole village?”

“This is only half of it,” Jean said. “You need to leave room for the cake and biscuits.”

“I have a horror of waste,” said Aunt Edie with some asperity. “I can’t help it.”

“Well, Gretchen has a horror of want,” said Howard. “Years of doing without take people in different ways, I suppose.”

Jean felt a fresh surge of love for Howard for having defended Gretchen so tactfully against a mean-spirited remark, even when she was not there to appreciate it. It was the essence of the man, she thought, and absolutely typical of her twisted bloody luck that the very quality she admired most in him—loyalty to his wife—was the one that put him forever out of her reach.