“In Alexandria during the war. We came to England, to Alver Shore, down on the coast, it must be . . . five years ago.”

Was that all? Sometimes, especially now, I felt I’d been here all my life. And Alexandria was a dream or a shadow of a previous existence.

She was shaking her head and smiling. “My Lord. From Alexandria to Alver Shore, and in 1945 to boot! You poor, poor girl. How did you survive the cold? And the food, or lack of?”

“Oh . . . I didn’t really mind.”

“Get away with you.”

“Well.” I managed to smile back. “That part was hellish. But I’d have gone through it ten times, if it meant that my child lived.”

“I know, I know.”

—

Finally I got up to leave. She followed me into the hall. Pictures of her children ascended the staircase in merry leaps, tumbles, and bounds, imps sawing at my innards with serrated knives. She stroked my arm, knowing. Then pointed upward to a watercolor of stillness high on the stairs but visible in the shadow. “There he is,” she said. “My firstborn son.”

He was a dim little form under a blanket. I couldn’t really make him out, and I didn’t want to climb the stairs to see him. I didn’t know what it would do to me.

“We called him Gerard, after my father,” she said.

Gerard. A nice name, but rather solemn for such a little swaddled hump. A name to be grown into.

“I am sorrowing for you,” I said. “Do you say that in English?”

Because sorrowing was how I felt for her. Something more active than simply describing myself as sorry.

“Not generally. But we ought to.”

“Please,” I said, “please can I come back and see you again?”

Because at that moment I couldn’t face my life without her.

Nice drive?”

“Yes—”

“Good.”

I found a knife and an onion and began to chop. Our meal was to be liver and onions, with yesterday’s mash and cabbage fried up. “Heavens, this onion is strong.”

He came toward me. “Yvie, you’ve still got your coat on.”

I put down the knife and let him slide the coat off my shoulders. He hung it up and came back to me and touched my face where the tears fell. I put my hand over his. Let him be quiet, I thought. Let me find him again in this gesture.

But he said, “I’m glad they’re just onion tears! Now, I’ve got some minutes of a meeting to read through. Please would you call me when you need the table laid?”

“Of course.”