Come here, darling, she said.

Why?

Come and sit on Mother’s lap, she said.

He did so unwillingly, sat there stiffly, allowed her to stroke his hair. It was too close, too close to the scent of darkness, and the slamming of a door.

But the moments of unexplained, awkward intimacy were rare. Sometimes there were other people, the men who smelt of cigars, and whose faces talked above your head as you looked at their watch chains. Mostly for the men you weren’t there. But the ladies held out their hands, and asked you your name, the ladies smelt fresher than flowers, a mingling of many flowers at once. There was the lady also that Eden bit, because she did not want to be kissed. Julia said Eden made her ashamed. He did not much like being kissed, not any more than Eden did, but without protesting, he let himself be drawn in, up against a strange sensation of flowers.

Most of these people wore new clothes. But there were some who wore funny clothes and came on quieter afternoons. They sat in their old, careful clothes and called Mother Kitty, and thanked her a lot. They were sometimes rather stupid, he felt, to thank for what was only tea and cake. Not like the others, whose kisses smelt of wine and flowers, for whom Mother talked and laughed a lot. For the funny ones, she was sometimes silent. She let them tell about the places they came from, and often in the middle, would go out to the telephone.

Grandpa and Grandmother Goose came once. Grandpa Goose had cracks in his hands, and talked in a funny way. Julia said you must be nice to Grandpa, because, she said, of his cataract, because Grandpa Goose would soon be blind. He sat quietly in the drawing-room, without saying very much, his hands on the knees of his tight black suit. Grandpa was very tight in his suit. When he spoke, the words exploded into the room. It made you surprised to hear anything so loud bursting into the drawing-room. But you liked Grandpa Goose, in spite of the first strangeness of a voice. Leaning on his knees you soon felt very close, explaining the book that he couldn’t see, that you had just begun to read, the Castles and Palaces of England, that Julia gave.

I want to live in a castle, you said.

That’s lots of people’s complaint, laughed Grandpa Goose, just as if it was measles.

Mother, dear, said Mother, it was funny to think she was her mother. Mother, she said, and she sounded annoyed, wouldn’t you like to take off your hat?

No, dear, Grandmother said. We must go in a minute. To catch our train.

And soon they had gone, and the strange sensation of your hand in Grandpa Goose’s hand was a rough tingling in the memory.

Good-bye, Elyot Standish, Grandpa said.

It sounded almost as if you were nothing to do with him. There was a difference in Grandpa Goose, in his hands. He was going back to this difference, which Mother said was Norwich.