And then I was able to tell her the nightmares had stopped.

My own nightmares, though, had my mother straying down into the garden, down to the garden room. I pictured it: her low heels, her pale patterned dress, her stockings, on a wavering path down the grass, past the pool where the children were splashing, down, down to the glade under the trees . . . to see the garden, she would say. What has Josias planted down there, you have so much space to plant some lovely things. That’s what I imagined her saying. And I imagined her looking at the two rooms, the two stone rooms, not far from each other. Which was Jacqueline’s studio, she would wonder. And another wavering walk to the stone step, the stone step of Joseph’s door. A turn of the door knob, a push of the door.

My mind was getting the better of me. My mother would never have done that.

And then I thought of my studio. I’d hardly been there.

HELENA, I said last weekend, d’you remember the Maltesers? We were having breakfast at my white-sashed window, the window looking down onto the trees. Helena had made scrambled eggs, toast. Mom, you’re not eating, she said. I sipped my coffee.

The Maltesers, she said. Swan Lake? Those afternoons were nice, she said. Perhaps next time I come to New York we’ll get tickets for the ballet, what d’you think?

I felt she was humouring me, trying to cheer me up. I don’t need cheering up. I don’t really want to go to the ballet. Big expeditions, especially at night, tire me: the cabs, the lights, bundling up for the cold, standing for a long time, the intermissions. I don’t want any of that. Also, I’ve seen Swan Lake enough times, that’s what I’ve decided. Perhaps there is a limit to how often you can see Swan Lake. I never used to think that, but now I do.

Helena, I said, do you remember the nightmares? In Johannesburg.

Why are you thinking about all that, Mom, she said. I don’t remember, no.

As I said, I will never know, I will never know what Helena’s nightmare was.

MY PAINTING LIVES IN ITS permanent home, it lives across the park. In the years after it was acquired I would visit it from time to time, they were visits of pride and joy. With Howard I would walk, I’ve said how much I walked, how I learned to enjoy walking, here. It might have been on a spring day, the buds coming out, Howard and I still bundled in jackets for the chill, but loosening and opening our jackets as we walked. We’d walk around the reservoir, spread under the sky, the familiar, winding walk, the iron rails. The runners, the dog-walkers, the children in prams. I’d have Howard’s arm in mine.

We’d reach the traffic light at Fifth Avenue, then cross, and walk up to 92nd, and turn in then, to the stone building. Such an ornate building. Such a distance from my stone room, my studio at the end of my garden. I never failed to think of it, of the distance we had travelled from there.