We shall have to hurry, sputtered Mrs Macarthy. Anyone would think that we had all day.

She was already settling under her plaid, smoothing her gloves, gathering the reins. Connie began to climb in beside her. The horse swayed uneasily.

Good-bye, Connie, Eden screamed. Send me some postcards as well as the letters.

Because parting changes everything. At parting there is sometimes a conscience, there is sometimes none. Eden even felt a sense of loss, watching the receding face of Connie lose its features down the lane. As if some known possession had been taken from her, as if she would no longer be able to keep up a familiar custom. It was like that.

Yes, it was dull when Connie left. Something had been rubbed out of the familiar pattern. A new pattern had to be made.

Going for walks there are always the flat stretches between the corners and the hills, they are pretty well endless, they are like the weeks between events, the cloudy, anonymous weeks that connect phases. Nothing is done that is not tentative, depending on the wind for its direction. In the evening you hang over the gate. You listen to the voices in the lane. The path you take knots itself fretfully, pointlessly, in the orchard grass. You get left outside the body of events, like the stone on the antipodal cherry. And not everyone is a Mr Macarthy, sometimes this exasperates, even without knowing why, there is not the substitute of nets.

Elyot, said Mrs Macarthy, Julia will have to give you a dose.

But it was not that. That was the trouble. It was not really anything.

Then Mother came suddenly. It was a surprise. After rain all the morning, the smudge of clouds, the muddy Channel, the gusts of rain blowing up through the trees, and drops hitting the windowpane, you looked out to see the gate open in the hedge. She had only come for a little, she said, then she was going back to France. But as it was, it was exciting enough, when you ran outside to be kissed, to kiss, the rain getting in between your faces, and the scent that came back; you had almost forgotten so many warm moments between sheets.

There, she said, straightening up. Oh dear, she said. I can smell the rain. In the West you can always smell the rain. But I shall be glad to warm my hands. Run along, Elyot. It’s cold.

She sounded tired. She was the same, and at the same time different, and it was not altogether the stuff that she put on her face. Mother had a habit of talking to you as if you were hardly there, it was this now, it was this and more, she looked from side to side in the garden, as if she had forgotten. As if she had forgotten also the officer she brought. This officer was called Charles. He had a clipped moustache, and could make a noise with his finger joints. In a way it was a good thing that Mother had brought the officer along, he could make the noise with his finger joints, he let Eden touch his moustache, and everyone, he said, must call him Charles. But Mother was quiet. She sat sideways in her chair, with one hand hanging over the side.