When they got out of the bus, she was surprised to find that it was still afternoon.

The three women also alighted, and hurried towards a teashop, carrying away their warrant of spring and green fields. Trevor and Rachel waited in silence for the bus that would take them within walking distance of the housing estate. It was an infrequent bus, and they waited for a long time. When an empty taxi went by, Rachel hailed it. As she got in, she said to Trevor, who was holding open the door, ‘Why don’t you go off and see your family? You’d still be in time for their tea.’

‘Well, yes, I might. Perhaps I ought to. We haven’t been there lately. What a pity I didn’t think of picking some flowers. Mum would have liked some of those buttercups.’

‘You’ll do quite as well.’

An obligatory smile slid across his dulled face. He gave his little bow, and turned away. Watching, she saw him quicken his pace, making his way with neat alacrity through the crowd of Sunday strollers. Already in his mind he was home, running eagerly up the flight of clean doorsteps.

The taxi quitted the bus route, and now took her by an unfamiliar way through a quiet residential quarter where mid-Victorian houses, each with its own peculiarity of porch or bow-window, stood amply in rather neglected gardens. Trees of the period, mountain ash and ailanthus, waved their boughs over wide pavements, and she found herself thinking that here would be a good place to wheel a perambulator. It would also be a good place to throw out the knife. Dust to dust, vestiges to vestiges, with no hope of 154any resurrection. She opened her bag. Holding the knife in her hand, she realized that it would be ridiculous to throw it away. Though it had done its work already, severing her from her illusions as cleanly as it would trim off the fat from a cutlet, it was still a thing she wanted, a proper kitchen knife.

155

Uncle Blair

There was a distinct, if non-contractual, understanding between Miss Iris Foale and her fellow-citizens that something commemorative would go up after her death. A woman who had devoted her life to a steady puffing of the flame of education could scarcely talk about bricks and mortar, and Miss Foale often remarked that she could wish for no better memorial than the characters she had formed and the ideals she had inculcated. But the process of turning a snuffy seminary for young ladies in a decaying West of England town into a flourishing boarding-school had formed more than characters. Two school tailors had retired with fortunes. The Buffalo Inn had become the Buffalo Hotel, three garages and seven teashops of refinement had sprung up to succour visiting parents, and a derelict cloth-mill had reopened, to specialize in turning the wool of local sheep into academic flannel of the proper shade and toughness. Farmers had grown prosperous by supplying pure milk, market-gardeners had enjoyed a steady market for their cabbages and tomatoes, the town drains had been put in order, a fire engine of the latest kind had been bought, and Anchor Yard, Tittingham’s modest red-light district, had been expunged and buried under the school sanatorium and the school laundry. If all these benefits had been brought by a stranger, they might 156have been less gratefully received. But Miss Foale was a local woman, with local interests at heart. It was her boast that the girls were clothed in Tittingham wool, nourished on the fruits of Tittingham clay, and took their yearly part in the White Mopselling—a traditional Tittingham ceremony, which she had been foremost in reviving. Such a benefactress had earned a memorial. She died in 1930, and the Memorial Committee was set up, within a week of the funeral, to receive subscriptions and consider suggestions.