He sighed. The cheque had remained on the wash-stand; he’d even gone to the trouble of explaining to her that in any case a cheque was totally unacceptable because it would have to pass through the bank, her name and his on the same piece of paper. And how had she known the amount to make it out for if she hadn’t made enquiries of the garage man? Of course she’d spoken to him; ridiculous to say it was Villana, ridiculous to say she’d sell the boarding-house tomorrow so as to be with him. She’d said that this afternoon. ‘Oh my lovely soldier!’ she’d said, her lips caressing his ear. She’d said something else, which he couldn’t hear properly. More blandishments had followed, and then he thought she was suggesting she should become the cook at Carriglas before it dawned on him that she was again proposing to come to Carriglas as his wife. ‘Mixed marriages are acceptable on my side,’ she’d said, and unable to help himself he replied that it would be as suitable for him to marry one of the maids.

On the other lawn, across the gravel sweep, Villana picked up her brown-papered novel from the table beneath the strawberry trees. He watched her moving towards him and when she was close enough he offered her a cigarette, knowing she would not take one since she only smoked Craven A because of their cork tips. She walked beside him, among rosebushes that scented the evening air. Lionel would have to spare Haverty to tidy up the garden, she said. She did what she could and Sarah did what she could, but the garden could not be like this on the twenty-sixth.

‘It’s difficult with my leg,’ he hastily interposed, i’d help if I could.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’ i know you didn’t.’

There was a silence, it’s a burden,’ his father had warned him once in Davison’s Hotel. ‘Any old place is a burden.’ Finnamore Balt had a peculiar idea that various smallholdings should be obliged to yield their long-forgotten rents, that land should be repossessed. Finnamore Balt was keen to engage in litigation, even the litigation of eviction, offering his legal services free of charge. But that was something Lionel had shaken his head over also, and of course he was quite right: all it would mean was that the family would drown in a morass of quibbles and acrimony, every last ha’penny sucked out of what residue there was.

‘Are you surprised that I am marrying?’

‘Well yes, I have to say I am.’