Elyot held in his hand a glass box, only just opaque, its milkiness, with a worn constellation of golden stars.

Beyond his attention, his mother was saying things, the things his mother said. This had no bearing on a box, which connected very quickly with what was in his mind. The box lay in his hand. It had a white, cold, inherent sensuality. So many glances crystallized almost too quickly, and the just opaque remarks that her mouth attached. The head, the object of Muriel Raphael was obvious enough without the intrusion of a box. But Muriel had bought, lost the box, that still returned to be a warning, a pointer on the mantelpiece. He would touch it. He would know in anticipation this relationship with Muriel, self-contained like a glass box, not indispensable, but somehow inevitable. Somehow it was like this, and Elyot Standish, the days spent in his room.

13

Men is all fools, Julia often said, but she continued to lavish a disinterested concern on those she came in contact with. This she did so casually, under her brand of scepticism, that no one ever noticed it. Julia Fallon was taken for granted. But the necessity remained, she had to hold herself responsible for the material welfare of her world. The postman’s cough haunted her, the woollen scarf he didn’t wear. The postman’s cough became her own. Julia was inclined, in a crisis, to hover with cups of tea. Because these were within her reach. You heard her breathing outside the door, you heard the rattle of a cup. Tea made you sweat, and that was a comfort, Julia said. She stood and watched you drink the tea, as if hoping for a visible sweat, you could see the conflict of hope and doubt played in the theatre of her face. For Julia still had doubts. She picked up the coal that the fire spat out, she picked it up when cool enough, because coal that rattled when shaken meant a coffin, Julia said. She wanted badly to believe, even the prophecies of coal. Her scepticism was a millstone that she much regretted having to wear.

Born this way, she accepted it. And the physical Julia was no contradiction, was the image of her own life. Whether as the young girl, the Flemish primitive that held the baby in her lap, or as the older woman, a comfortable Vermeer. The woman with the red arms that shone like onion skins, that light splashed, and cold mottled, and heat warmed to a bursting red. Julia belonged in an interior. Objects that she used absorbed her. These were the instruments of that material well-being. No different plane was to be desired. Things that she could not understand disturbed her.