‘Here are your letters, Charles,’ she offered.

He took them.

‘Are you not going to open them, and see?’

He had put down the pamphlet. He had put his hand to his mouth for a moment. Unlike his father, his bones were fragile.

‘There might be something exciting,’ she coaxed.

‘Yes.’

But he got up, and shut them in the lacquered box which dominated the mantelpiece.

Mrs Polkinghorn was helpless. If only Maud, now.

‘I have just written,’ she announced, ‘to Auntie Maud. About her trouble. Who knows when my letter will get posted, though. Norman will refuse to leave the mowing.’

When Charles Polkinghorn made a most remarkable offer.

‘Give me the letter,’ he said. ‘I shall take it to Sarsaparilla.’

His mother hardly knew whether to feel gratified or pained. She always experienced a little pang to discover afresh that the wells of human nature were deeper than she was able to plumb.

She gave up the letter, however, and Charles went out with the light, nervous steps of brittle bones, so unlike his father, whose movements had always been attended by a squelch.

Along with the photograph of Dickie, she remembered those other men whose company she had enjoyed. English tweed went to her head, and the gloss on the toe-cap of a well-shod foot She would glance at a man’s wrist while fanning his vanity with what he supposed to be her attention. She was very expert. The lips of many congested, jolly, tweedy men would still droop open at the recollection of Ursula Polkinghorn’s smile.

Now she walked through her house – it was unmistakably her walk – trailing the garments which clothed her spirit, while in fact wearing some she did not particularly care for. Ursula Polkinghorn (one of the Annesley Russells of Toorak) had always favoured the trailing dresses, weeping sleeves, stoles tipped with feather, to throw casually round her throat. That throat! Whenever she had made her entrance, at weddings, for instance, smoothing the long kid gloves, or hand barely passing through the faint effulgence of her pale hair, everybody forgot the bride. Yet her eyes hardly encouraged them, for of course she had never trifled with anybody’s affections. She had adored her Dickie. Though her mouth would smile for someone she might never confess.

Involved in a kind of composite of all the weddings at which she had assisted, Mrs Polkinghorn made for the pantry, where she still did the flowers, every morning, after the ritual of her desk. Harriet had found the scissors, so easily lost, and stood a wrong selection of vases.

For Mrs Polkinghorn to preside.

‘Lovely, lovely roses!’

But this morning something was eating the roses.

Her rings clashed. She never took off her rings by day, unless to demonstrate to Harriet the number of folds for rough puff. Which Harriet secretly knew.

But today the rings were brutal.

Nor could she resist one quick look out of the window – she always took the greatest precautions – before treading smoothly back, into the dining-room. It was empty. Breathless. Presences still lingered there. She almost expected Dickie’s leather armchair to creak.