It was so natural to hire a car I did it almost without thinking. Then I rang the house and got Emmy who sounded the way she used to when I had forgotten her birthday. No, I couldn’t speak to Liz. Liz was lying down and oughtn’t to be disturbed.

Well, I thought, you don’t wait around for an ex-​husband to come home without feeling a bit of strain over it. Look at the way I’ve been shilly-shallying over meeting her again! Be a man, my son!

So down I drove on the new motor road which rendered the landscape or what I could see of it quite unrecognizable. Where I could see beyond the concrete, England seemed to be producing nothing but daffodils, they were everywhere. How happy and apprehensive a dog I was, yap yap, driving through England with my hands touching the wheel as lightly as possible. My feet weren’t hurting any more and I thought, well, that’s reasonable—I’m going home!

Emmy met me at the door. She looked even stumpier and glummer than I remembered. I kissed her on one impassive cheek and saw she’d been crying.

“Where is she?”

“The long room.”

She left me to go in with the air of someone who has no more to do with the affair which she thinks is ill-advised and will not prosper.

The long room is really two rooms knocked into one. Liz was standing at the farther end and in the darkest corner where she must have run when she heard the car. She had her hands up to her face. I moved forward and she spoke sharply.

“No!”

I expostulated.

“I was only going to show you my suit. St John John nearly swooned.”

“You’re just the way you used to be. Indestructible. It isn’t fair.”

“Well, damn it. What did you want back? A basket case?”

“Want back. Well. You’d better look.”

She dropped her hands and moved forward. She had gone. I mean without the voice and the sharpness I wouldn’t have recognized her. There stood before me a skinny old hag. The life had gone out of her famous hair and it hung in nondescript wisps. She had learned to frown so much that even now when she had no need to her forehead was corrugated. Her cheeks were so hollow it looked as if she had brought some of the shadows of the dark corner with her in them. But what was most directly appalling was the orbits of her eyes, dark brown and sunken so that her head was a visible skull with a macabre slash of violent lipstick across it. She lifted a hand again to touch the hollow of her right cheek as if to assure herself of the worst and I saw that even now she painted her nails to match the vivid, scarlet slash.

“For Christ’s sake, Wilf, what did you expect? Mary Lou or something?”

“He’s kept up with you then.”

“I think he’s almost the hardest part of it. Taking you so seriously. I had to laugh.”