“Do you think that we might go for a walk? I’ve been glowering at the same ceiling for a fortnight. They’ll trust me not to topple over if you’re here to mind me.”

“Lord, do you topple? Are you well enough to walk?”

“I’m actually A1,” he said in a stage whisper. “I just secretly like hospital food and nurses’ uniforms.”

HARRY PASSED COMMENTARY on the walls as they walked along the picture-lined corridor. They walked through earnest Victoriana, grand tours, and seascapes. His identifying finger pointed out Dutch landscapes, mild-faced Madonnas, and the Battle of Balaclava. The door of the red room was open at the far end. He was conscious of not wanting to lean on her too heavily. The effort of it left him slightly breathless.

“You’re doing very well,” she said.

He stared down at his arm through hers. It struck him that this was the most physically intimate moment that they had ever shared, or were possibly ever likely to. He wished the corridor longer.

“Had I known that you were invalided in an art gallery, I wouldn’t have felt sorry for you.”

“What luck, eh? It’s all downhill from now, isn’t it? This might just be the best day of my life.”

She squeezed his arm and looked away.

Three years earlier he had talked about the future with Edie. He had told her that he had applied to the college, about the bright and bold marks that he meant to make on canvas. He told her things that he had never dared to say to anyone else before and she had encouraged his ambitions. She had let him talk and it had all seemed possible.

“I might lean against the door for a minute. Would you mind?”

He watched her walk ahead of him into the red room. They were all new paintings in here, a collection of canvases that the family had bought in the south of France just before the war, all hot southern intensity. There were yellow mountains and blue trees, houses that thrust crystalline, precipitating from the sea, and bacchic dancers curling arabesques. He watched Edie’s fingertips extend, testing texture, looking back at him to check that she wasn’t doing the wrong thing. He took in all the details so that he might draw her later. There was a vase of white roses on the fireplace. The smell of the white roses filled the red room.

“Is this what France is like?”

“Not the parts that I’ve seen yet.”

“Very bright, isn’t it? Violently bright. It makes my eyes hurt. I think that I might have a permanent headache if I had to live with these pictures, or in this place.”

“They make my eyes hungry,” he said.

“You must think that you’ve bounced out of the down-below place and ricocheted up into Paradise.” She looked back at him over her shoulder.