‘I think it’s the first sign of madness,’ I said in as cold a tone as I could muster. I was very angry: angry with Margaret and her passivity and her sudden display of negativeness; angry with Syl and his unease and his fingers greasy from the vegetable dish; angry with dog; angry with the interior designers who had ruined a perfectly good pub; angry with my aching back and my age and myself. The trifle too, when it arrived, was disgusting. I was so angry that my sight dimmed as though with weeping. When it cleared I looked up and saw Margaret glance at Syl.

There is more to be learned from a quick glance than from a long gaze. People settling down for a good look can compose their features into a suitable mould, while with a spilt-second glance they can utterly give themselves away. Margaret did not only not love my son. She loathed him.

‘My,’ I said brightly, ‘just look at those cows.’

I was no longer angry. Shock douses rage. I sat up as straight as I could, stared out of the window and gabbled, for now silence would be insupportable. I felt a coldness of pity for Margaret and of fear for Syl. I talked about the time I was chased by heifers, out with my love and his cousin, thousands of years ago it had seemed. I had forgotten, forgotten it because it had once given me such pain to remember. The cousin had come to stay with my love on his father’s farm. She was a little older than him, a little older than me. She had red hair and thick ankles, but she was undeniably attractive despite her feet. The heifers of the father of my love had run naughtily away out of their field up on to the moors and the three of us went to chase them back; but my love and his cousin hid from me, and I was chased by the cows. I had been brought up with cows and held them in contempt, but I was frightened then, astonished at my love’s betrayal and dreadfully wounded. We were very young. The cousin went away again and my love turned back to me—it was to be many years before he finally betrayed me—but I never reconciled myself to the cows.

I chatted away about heifers and their tendency to violence, but as my story was really about passion and infidelity and I left all that out it was pointless and tedious.

The marriage could not go ahead. Perhaps I should argue that since Syl and Margaret were related, no matter how distantly, it would be an error; plead the Table of Affinities. As much as I didn’t want to see my son married to a woman who disliked him, it was Margaret I was worried about. I had never been back to my daughter’s grave. My thoughts were inchoate and disjointed. I felt powerless and aged and useless and sad. I felt the way dog looked, and no wiser.