“Thank you, Clive, for everything you’ve done.”

We’re on the road to Upton from Southampton—the road Tom and I took together two months ago. We go through small village after small village: the brick-and-flint walls spin by, the dripping thatch. Prosperity scraped up over centuries out of lamb upon lamb, thin harvest on thin harvest. Above a certain height, the soil’s nothing but chalk crumb. My wife walked up those heights and kissed her lover.

Philip Moore. Lying in my hospital bed I revisited our encounter many times and each time he became shiftier, his lying more barefaced, more ominous. Oh, Yvie. She can’t have. And yet, supposing she did? A fortnight ago I risked my life trying to get to the truth, but now I’m not sure I’ve got the courage to find out. What it is to be both suspicious and cowardly. Thinking the worst of my wife, and yet too afraid to do anything about it.

Did I ever catch a glimpse, a spark in the daylight, there and then gone? Did she ever mention the village by name, then, or afterward, so that when I saw it, Upton, so many years later in my widowhood, in the candle flame in my study at Fulbrook, it caught alight all over again? I don’t know. I had no call, until now, to consider the way she used to be, Yvette, when she came back from her trips in the car. Coming back with her eyes lively from a drive in the country.

—

We reach Barrow End. The hamlet has a single road leading up and out. The farmhouse has the hill at its back. Clive knows the way: he’s already brought all my things here. As we enter the farmyard I see my car parked in a tractor shed.

“I’m sorry I’ve let you down, Clive.”

Clive shakes his head, he doesn’t want that. “We haven’t had that drink,” he says. “And we should. Good beer. No talking shop. Whenever you like.”

—

Downstairs my kitchen things are on the table, along with a supermarket bag of groceries. I try out the water pump, gingerly: the handle requires a downward push. Take a torch to the privy.

Tomato soup and toast. Reminded again of Tom. Unpack the groceries. Find a bottle of Glenlivet and, at the bottom of the bag, a tin of potatoes.

The rest of my things are stacked in the parlor, still boxed and bundled. The totality of my possessions. Even if he were in the mood to do so, Tom needn’t worry anymore about the state of the furniture. It is all smashed and gone. The rhino chair is no more.