“Not even in Shepperton. You’ve been in England for eighteen years and you still look as if you’ve stepped off the wrong train.”

“Perhaps I need to go back to Shanghai. I should have taken up David’s offer.”

“No, not Shanghai. You’ve finished with all that, thank God. Spain might give you just the jolt you’re waiting for.”

“Am I waiting for a jolt?”

“Yes—like a rabbit in a Skinner box. You’re getting bored with that one damned lever. Look how you come alive at those third-rate bullfights in Figueras.”

“That’s tourist Spain. What about schools?”

“They have schools here. The Spanish may be mad, but they’re literate. Think about your parents—they went out to China.”

“But they took a piece of Surrey with them. Spain would be a much bigger challenge. For you, anyway.”

“Balls. We’ve got to get you out of England … you’ve found a small strangeness where you’re comfortable, and that’s dangerous. Anyway, Dalí’s here at Port Lligat. We might meet him.”

“And the mysterious Gala, his weird.”

Miriam bent down as if to kiss me and bit my ear. She held a speck of blood on the tip of her tongue and left it between my lips. “Jim, you need to meet more weird women. A tussle with Señor Robles’s secretary would do you a world of good. I might even arrange it.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“Dear, you would do nothing—she’d quietly take your brain apart like a neurosurgeon. Poor love, I’ll protect you…”

She pulled my head onto her lap, with its scents of sea salt, baby lotion, and perfume borrowed from Mrs. Nordlund. We watched Henry wading in the water beside the seawall. He lifted a stone and carried it across the patio, where the first flight of a simple staircase had been laid. He smoothed out a new shelf and carefully laid the stone, then surveyed his work with a child’s pride.

“I’m coming, Henry!” Miriam pushed me aside and leapt up. She waded into the water and began to help Henry with the stones. I lay back under the awning, watching her assemble this modest stairway that in her mind already led to a new life. Eight years of marriage and three children had failed to dent her enthusiasms. From our earliest days she had always pushed me along, giving up holidays so that I could finish a book, taking the children to London Zoo to allow me a few hours of peace. Her confidence in me had never wavered, even during the time of endless rejection slips. She hid bank statements, quietly borrowed money from her mother and Dick Sutherland. In many ways she had remade me. I owed her everything, my children, my first published books, my refound confidence in the world.