“Look, Liz—”

“You talk about happiness, years away from your own death—”

“I don’t mean that! I was trying to tell you that it’s all right!”

The laughter and coughing were mixed up.

“You get some kind of fancy religion—”

I was shouting.

“I found I was part of the universe, that’s all!”

Her laughter went eldritch.

“You’re not part of it, you sod! You’re the whole bloody lot! Here am I—”

She burst into tears.

That was when our local doctor called. Perhaps she was expecting him, I don’t know. Henry was a master of elaborate tact. Me, he greeted—perhaps the word had gone round—as if I had come back from a weekend in London rather than years away. He greeted Liz as though he hadn’t heard her rage and didn’t notice the wetness in her hollow cheeks. Indeed he—exuded—a kind of cheerfulness as though he knew that in spite of all the evidence that might be brought by the prosecution, in spite of suffering, darkness and death it was just a game and at some point we should all give up pretending in the tragicomedy we had put on and return to permanent, common-sense awareness.

I took my things up to the spare room and examined it. Once upon a time, Rick had slept there by himself, then later with Mary Lou, and now again by himself. Many others had slept there at odd times. It was a cottagey room, the fireplace still in order and a smallish window that looked up the river to Foxy’s Island. When the leaves were off the trees or newly budded as now, you could see to the turn where the milldam was. Even if she hadn’t told me I’d have known that Capstone Bowers had slept there—either when Liz’s sickness became acute or when they started the final series of quarrels. His books stood on the mantelpiece, Maneaters of the Deccan, The Elephant Gun, Rifles, Ammunition and Rifle Shooting, Bisley, History and Records. Above them a horizontal shape of unfaded wallpaper showed where he had hung his “Bisley” gun. I leafed through his books, waiting till the doctor had gone. There were some splendid diagrams, one of where to shoot a tiger—behind the shoulder or up the arse, never in the head if you want to mount. Adages. How to follow up a wounded animal. Shooting for the pot. Good God, poor Liz, living for all those years with this monster!

I left my bags and went downstairs. From the fact that I could hear Mrs Wilson clattering in the kitchen I deduced that Henry had gone otherwise she would be on tiptoe and the dishes muffled. I went looking for Liz but couldn’t find her. Emmy was in the long room.

“So you’ve come back to be with mummy. What a fool.”

“You’re here.”

“That’s different.”

She wandered away towards the kitchen. I stood in the middle of the room as if waiting for my hostess. Well. I was. Anything farther from a reconciliation or even accommodation—where was the big, warm-hearted and final Barclay Book that had floated before me every now and then since the dream? We were about as warmhearted as scorpions.