“Goodbye, Rick. Don’t let me keep you.”

He ignored this and said he’d spend the day exploring the way along to the Hochalpenblick.

“Then we can go again tomorrow, if it’s not too much for you.”

“When Mary Lou is strong enough.”

He thought about that remark for a while. I amplified.

“When the going gets too tough she can give you a hand dragging me along.”

“She’s happy to sit, Wilf.”

“Not a sports girl?”

“She just loves your Wimbledon.”

“Preserve us.”

“I’ll tell her you said to look in later.”

“Did I?”

“The view, Wilf, the view!”

“Ah yes. The view. Mary Lou and me, we’ll sit side by side and admire the view. She’d better not fall off the balcony.”

“I suppose it’s no good asking—”

“Not the slightest.”

Rick thought for a while.

“Still,” he said at last, “I’ll ask her to bring it.”

He went away, still nodding to himself. I forgot him, dressed and sat looking at the view. After all, it was what the hotel was supposed to be for. I have just examined what remains of my journal for that year—one of those journals so soon to perish in the holocaust—and find the date unusually full. There’s nothing about the view but much about the glamour of young women, Nimue and the Shakespearian mirages, Perdita, Miranda. There’s an attempt at describing Mary Lou but it is scribbled out and the Wilfred Barclay of that date writes about Helen of Troy! He comments on the way in which Homer gets his story across by describing not the woman but her effect on others. The old men on the wall watch her pass and say it is small wonder such a woman caused so much trouble, nevertheless let her go home before we have even more trouble! Or some such words. I’ve only read Homer in translations but that’s what I remember. Well. Mary Lou made the sun come out on the lake and when she went the sun went with her. Mary Lou threw up and one was instantly sorry for her transparent face instead of being—as if Wilf did it, for example—disgusted. I can’t—I couldn’t—even describe her hands, so pale and slim and small. I ended, I find, by comparing myself to the old men on the wall. Yes, let Helen go home before there’s trouble.

I had written all that I remember, despite the view, when there was a knock at the outer door. I crossed the lobby and opened it to our little Helen, who held a tray with coffee for two on it.

“Come in! Come in! Here—let me take that—do sit down!”

I was in a state of absurd confusion. Mary Lou folded herself into a chair and destroyed any attempt I might have made at direct description before I got it on paper. She rested her hands in her lap, wrapped her ankles round each other as in deportment. She turned her head to gaze out of the window and it seemed that localized movement altered every line of her body.