It began to occupy him more and more, his not being part of anything. When they all drew together round the fire, Eden sitting on Charles’s knee, and the stories Mother told of the hospital in France, of Mme de Bonneville, she was a countess, and at the same time a sort of saint in whalebone, Mother said, she made them laugh, she always did, but you had to force yourself to laugh, pull yourself in from a long way off. So that on the whole, because you had only just discovered this, you were sorry that Mother had come from France. Sometimes she laughed and it did not sound like laughing. Just as the crying, from which you had escaped, did not feel or sound like crying. And this made it more difficult still. Like finding you were dreaming, early, and half asleep, the water jug that Julia left you might or might not have seen in sleep or waking, it was not quite real, the sort of daylight real, and then you knew it was, it was, you were awake, you had been awake, the jug stood there as plain as an enamel jug. But it still belonged in a way to sleep. And Mother belonged in a way to sleep. Everything she did was not quite real, like sleep, only there was no waking. He stood a long way off and watched. He began to develop a perpetual frown. There was a great deal that puzzled him.

Sometimes I think you’re a bad-tempered little boy, said Mother. Sometimes I think you don’t love me any more.

She pulled the head off a dead flower. Her dress spread out round her, copper-coloured, as she stooped, it caught on the spikes of winter flowers, it shook and caught the beads of dew. She was so beautiful that he would have liked to touch her. But he did not know what to do, or say. He stood kicking at the frosted ground.

And after three days she went away again. The last evening they stayed up late. It was particularly gay and sad. Mr Macarthy talked. He talked a great deal, for him. He talked about death. But it was not death on the tombstone, it was not Father, or Mrs Delbridge’s son, it was sort of grey and colourless, it packed itself round you like cotton wool, the words that Mr Macarthy used, till Charles said weren’t we being highbrow, and Mother said, well, perhaps abstract was the word. Then for a moment everyone was quiet, except for breathing. Mother said this time tomorrow they would be in London, they would catch the boat to France, they would start being herded like cattle again, but it was better like that, you didn’t have time to think. Yes, she sighed, through her cigarette.

You found yourself looking at each other. She had little wrinkles round her eyes. There was so much that you must tell quickly, that you knew, that Mother knew, she was looking at you for the first time there in the room, she was not at a distance. But suddenly she blinked her eyes, and said: