I thought of my glimpse of Le Figaro, the news from Vietnam. To give him his due, he looked haunted by the outbreak of new wars, as well he might. But I knew all the same that his answer was a flat lie.

“It is almost inconceivable,” I said.

He went to fetch his stole from the high hook where it hung to avoid getting creased, to spare me, because ironing stoles was my least favorite job. I didn’t mind a surplice; it was a huge long pleated garment. You could have fun with a surplice. But stoles, though they were comparatively undemanding, being a single four-inch-wide length of patterned silk, went on and on. There was something depressing about a stole. Most vicars’ wives, I had discovered, took the opposite view. I knew I was unusual in liking ironing. It reminded me of our years of happiness when we first came to England.

“This woman I’ve been seeing,” I said. “She’s helped me a great deal. She’s older than me, you see, and her other children are grown up. So we’ve had time to talk.”

“Excellent!” He turned to me. “I’m terribly pleased, darling, it all sounds so positive. She must be a thoroughly good sort of person, to have survived her own tragedy. No, more than that, surmounted it to the extent that she can reach out to younger bereaved mothers.”

New James was dictating this, as if for a pamphlet.

Now was the moment to bring it all out in the open. Mark out my private land with names and places, neutralize the sunlit silences. The tenderness which I had felt in the gentle things Philip had said to me. His forwardness, his mischief, his frankness. Above all, his frankness. The sheer joy at being with someone who said what he thought.

“Would you come with me?” I asked James.

“What?” He was busy adjusting the stole.

“I wondered if you’d come with me one day. We needn’t talk about the baby at all. It would simply be nice for you to meet—”

“I don’t think so, darling.” He tugged the stole a meticulous half inch down on one side. “When would I get the time? And I do think it’s your activity, don’t you? I can’t be poking my nose in everywhere!”

He gave me such a white, handsome smile that I went straightaway and embraced him. Then I put my palms one on each side of his face. “Oh, my darling, I love you so much. How can I help you?”

I searched his eyes. I was so close to him that I could look from one to the other. There was an instant of anguish and then, as if he’d flicked a switch, his eyes filled with a warm, faultlessly attentive concern.

“I don’t need help, darling.”