I can’t think what more to say about God to her, so I join her in a piece of bread. I’m glad I brought her food. The act of eating seems to be banishing the terrifyingly courteous, flitting sort of creature who greeted me at the door. Replacing her with someone more familiar.

“Well,” she says next. “You’re still here, I see.”

I swallow painfully. “Yes.”

“So does that mean you’re staying?”

“Of course!”

Her eyes widen. “There’s no ‘of course’ about it, James. For a start, Alver Shore, and whatever it was that happened there, has not moved.”

“Moved?”

“You said it was too close to Upton.”

What a troubled man I was that day. So plagued by the past, so faithless. Ellen kissed me, she actually kissed me, even if it was intended for another, rather more formidable personage. And all I had for her was a bleating, I need time. The shame is intense.

She’s getting to her feet.

“Oh, Ellen,” I cry, “what can I say to you?”

“I’m not showing you the door!” She’s blushing, half laughing. “I thought we might go for a walk.”

—

The afternoon is turning blustery. March is coming in like a lion, with rough patches of bright blue sky. We set a fine pace, feeling the wind after hothousing in her sitting room, and soon we are climbing up into Pipehouse Wood. The trees are still leafless and will remain so for a month at least.

“Do you play the piano?” I ask her.

“No. My husband—Selwyn—he was very good. He could turn his hand to all sorts of things. Chopin, carols, Irish airs. What about you?”

“I used to play when I was young.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, I practiced and practiced, and I never seemed to get any better. In fact . . .”

Long ago a young woman laughed at me under a bomber’s moon. That moon is small and distant today, a crescent fragile as ash in the blue sky, and the laughter can’t be heard anymore. I look up into the beech trees, whose bareness is almost human.

“In fact you got worse?” Ellen says.

I glance at her in surprise. “How did you know?”

“Selwyn used to talk about it. It happens if you practice too much, too intensely. James, the thing is, I loved Selwyn very much.”

“Of course you did.”

“He was such a good, brave man. He gave me everything he could.”

And no one can replace him. Here it comes, the hammer blow. Everything has been leading up to this. I actually close my eyes.

“But the Great War . . . ,” I hear her say. “The Great War . . . James, I can’t speak to you with your eyes shut.”

I open my eyes, chastened. She’s looking steadily up at me.