If Elyot was a kind of peace offering to his grandmother, he played much the same part in relationship to his father. Fatherhood to Willy Standish was a state of pleasure and surprise. He walked in and out of the room where his wife lay, very languid, yet commanding in her bed, and looked often at the smaller object, mostly fist and topknot, that they told him was his son. And Kitty’s son. She watched his change in attitude. Gauging it, she put out a sentimental feeler. Moments alone, she gave him her most encouraging smile, for which the present Willy fell. He bought her a handsome bead-embroidered bag, which was too much in fact for the recipient. She sounded hoarse thanking for the bag. Months later, going ironically to the same bag to write out a cheque to pay for it, the sentiment became reduced. But not now. It was dear Willy, his kindness, his thoughtfulness, which she had almost killed by indifference. Mrs Standish built up her own disgrace. She took quite a masochistic pleasure in ticking off the list of her more unfortunate qualities. Because she loved him. She was confident of this, recovering something of her physical passion. Those little rushes of desire that rose without regard for place or time. She shuddered now for what may have been her dispossession during pregnancy.

Since Willy’s mistake the mere business of living was full of opportunities for sentimental rapprochement. They had withdrawn a story into their house. On the ground floor and in the basement a milliner, a Mme Adorée, was now installed. Mrs Standish persuaded herself it was Bohemian, living above a shop. At the same time she could regret what had been comparative magnificence. Now that we are living on top of each other, she would say, when Mme Adorée’s shop bell became intrusive, we must simply learn to give and take. In this frame of mind she dismissed the two maids. She was all enthusiasm for simplicity, which she tried to impart to a dubious cook. She had to make it fun, fun to remember the way to do things for yourself, fun to open the door on the girl’s day out. Because she had engaged a girl, a young girl, to see to the child, and the practical details of housework, which if allowed to emerge from the abstract might very well cease to be fun.

She is just over sixteen, she said to Willy. Her name is Julia. Julia Fallon. She comes from Northumberland.

At first hearing, the name did not fit its owner. Then on consideration it did. She had all the integrity, the dignity, the directness of a Flemish primitive. Watching her grave, slow movements with the child, there was an absorption in them that reassured. Julia Fallon and the objects that she touched were united by this strain of absorption. The basin she held in her red hands rounded into shape with those same hands. She breathed rather hard in her absorption, whether down on her knees scrubbing the floor, or sitting with the baby in her lap. Ungainly perhaps. But you overlooked ungainliness, as in the Flemish primitive, for the sake of economy and logic, and the effort that lends integrity. Julia took possession of the child. He became hers, in the way a child does. A child is always the possession, not of the mother, but of the nurse. Receiving him from Julia’s arms, Mrs Standish sometimes almost realized this.