She went out, thumping the carpets in her resolution, her size accentuated by foreign surroundings, the petals of entombed roses falling, as she passed in the probable direction of the kitchen. Although he knew, he did not direct, but followed, as though the shock had been too much for him.

Mrs Mortlock rooted round in the way she had seen her mother do. She tossed together an omelette, which, in her eagerness, she burned, and opened a tin of spaghetti, which, she soon realized, she had forgotten to warm. But Mr Mortlock sat and, to her surprise, accepted whatever nourishment she had to offer.

‘I’ll tell you a trick we learned,’ he said, manoeuvring his toast past his denture. ‘We buy a whole side of mutton and put it in the fridge. That way you don’t have to bother, just eat your way through the mutton, and it’s a little economy into the bargain. I don’t begrudge money. But some of these butchers charge fillet prices regardless of the cut.’

‘Some of them are incredible,’ she agreed.

Already she saw her fridge filled with the frozen-rose tints, the bluish tendons of special-offer mutton. Well, one had to protect oneself.

In between their thoughts they listened to each other’s toast. At least the butter was easy, not to say economical, to spread, because Miss Mortlock had left it on the dresser, where it had turned soft and warm.

The bride loved her house, her husband. She would have liked in some way to express her love as she unpacked her toothpaste and layed out her pale-blue nylon. She said: ‘I am going to like it here.’

Hessell Mortlock was less impressive in his underclothes, with the red line dividing his neck from his shoulders. But he was a man, she reminded herself, of station, of an age to respect.

The Mortlocks lay beside each other in the Beard Watson bed.

He said, after putting his hand over hers, as though remembering she was a young girl: ‘We ought to get a good night’s sleep. It’s late. Then we’ll wake fresher tomorrow.’

It was very reasonable.

So she shuddered deeper into the unaired sheets, into an unexpected roughness, and recalled how she had escaped, by that same grace of reason, the brutality of sand.

Mrs Mortlock cried very briefly and furtively for the happiness she was experiencing. As she fell asleep she was holding in her arms a world in abstraction. Or slack gas-balloon. And soon the gulls were lashing at the metal petals of Egyptian roses. While she was sunk in safety. The creaking of roses, their knife-edged wings, grew silenter for distance.

13

It took Mrs Mortlock some time to realize she was Mrs Mortlock. To realize and forget about it. Which is when marriage becomes marriage. It took her some time because of the furniture which had belonged to someone else.

‘It’s Brenda’s taste – mostly,’ Hessell explained. ‘But what can you do with a lot of stuff? When you’ve paid for it.’