‘Yes,’ Baines said. Philip could tell that there was a message he was trying to convey, but he shut his mind to it. He loved Baines, but Baines had involved him in secrets, in fears he didn’t understand. The glowing morning thought ‘This is life’ had become under Baines’s tuition the repugnant memory, ‘That was life’: the musty hair across the mouth, the breathless cruel tortured inquiry ‘Where are they?’, the heap of black cotton tipped into the hall. That was what happened when you loved: you got involved; and Philip extricated himself from life, from love, from Baines with a merciless egotism.

There had been things between them, but he laid them low, as a retreating army cuts the wires, destroys the bridges. In the abandoned country you may leave much that is dear – a morning in the Park, an ice at a Corner House, sausages for supper – but more is concerned in the retreat than temporary losses. There are old people who, as the tractors wheel away, implore to be taken, but you can’t risk the rearguard for their sake: a whole prolonged retreat from life, from care, from human relationship is involved.

‘The doctor’s here,’ Baines said. He nodded at the door, moistened his mouth, kept his eyes on Philip, begging for something like a dog you can’t understand. ‘There’s nothing to be done. She slipped on those stone basement stairs. I was in here. I heard her fall.’ He wouldn’t look at the constable’s spidery writing which got a terrible lot on one page.

‘Did the boy see anything?’

‘He can’t have done. I thought he was in bed. Hadn’t we better go up? It’s a shocking thing. Oh,’ Baines said, losing control, ‘it’s a shocking thing for a child.’

‘She’s through here?’ the constable asked.

‘I haven’t moved her an inch,’ Baines said.

‘He’d better then –’

‘Go up the area and through the hall,’ Baines said and again he begged dumbly like a dog: one more secret, keep this secret, do this for old Baines, he won’t ask another.

‘Come along,’ the constable said. ‘I’ll see you up to bed. You’re a gentleman; you must come in the proper way through the front door like the master should. Or will you go along with him, Mr Baines, while I see the doctor?’