Over at Westbourne, Harold Christie had picked up a copy of Life magazine and headed to his guest room, adjacent to the bedroom of Sir Harry Oakes. Oakes retired soon after. He drew the mosquito netting around his bed, took a revolver from the drawer of his bedside table and laid it under the lamp, as was his usual habit, and settled himself to sleep.

It was some time before Thorpe and I went to sleep. I don’t know exactly how long we made love, just that it went on without end, that we were afraid to stop. Maybe we felt some kind of premonition, I don’t know. Maybe we were simply wise enough to take what we could from each other, to stockpile what we needed, like squirrels who understand there’s a long winter ahead. I couldn’t get enough of his skin, or the little hairs that grew in a trail below his navel, or the tips of his fingers. His hip bones, his eyelashes, the smell of his hair. I was delirious, I was woozy with him.

At one point, we wandered into the kitchen for the pitcher of water in the icebox. When we had finished drinking, he drew me back against him, one palm on my breast, one palm on my womb, his teeth at my shoulder, and we stood there, perfectly balanced, listening to the fury outside.

I said, “When did your parents die?”

My head swam from pleasure and fatigue and dread. I was leaning against him, I knew, suffering him to bear my weight, because my legs had already given him all they could. I listened to his silence, and at last I put my hand on top of his.

“My father was killed at the Somme,” he said at last, “about two months before I was born.”

“Oh. Oh, no. No.”

“Margaret was nine years old, nearly ten. He was a career officer, a major in the army. Went down gloriously, of course, for king and country.”

“But your mother.”

“Well, they were deeply in love, from what I was told.”

There was a long pause, in which the shutter over the kitchen window came loose from its mooring and started to bang. Bam, bam, bam, like someone pitching rocks at the wall. Neither of us moved. His mouth was in my hair; I felt his breath near my ear, shuddering a little. We smelled of each other, of perspiration and human love, of salt and ozone. I turned in his arms and looked in his bleak eyes, his pale, freckled face that glittered with stubble.

“They were deeply in love,” I said.

“Yes, they were. So deeply, in fact, that she drowned herself in the river shortly after giving birth to me.”