He watches her at the table: not merely a new mother, but seasoned. A book of poetry, a novel under contract, books to review, her opinions sought. Protected by the lares and penates of her stake in the world: child, pregnancy, words, garden, house. He does not know how to say more of what he feels about this poem, how he sees her within its mindscape, living, regardless of her children, her writing, her layered veils of happiness, in its minatory glare. He does not know what more, how much, to say. He stalls. Frieda is tasting infinitesimal, harmless fragments of lint in the cobbled hall.

“But tell me,” he asks, cautiously pulling a thread, “what does it mean to you?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, outwardly concentrating on her baking, but her attention, as always, divided and acute, a mental calculus of all that requires her conscious engagement: Frieda—housekeeping—balancing these incoming checks against the remaining expenses of their move, and the expenses ahead—Ted’s always desired, sagacious opinion.

He holds his breath, unassisted by the indifferent incense of fall, the season’s patched midday light. His teeth hurt. She knows him too well—she is too shrewd—to permit his sloppy deflection. “I only wonder,” he begins again, “how close this might be to a statement of fact…”

Sylvia draws her spatula along the curved interior of the bowl, scraping together the last of the frosting. “I don’t know,” she says, equally cautious, trenchantly sensitive to any hesitation on Ted’s part, suspicious of any hint of equivocation, any wavering enthusiasm, especially now, invested as she is, as they both are, in the advantageousness of their muse residing in Court Green. They are already, she has decided for them jointly, true believers. There is no better reason to have come here, removed from everything. Court Green’s access of space, its expansiveness, is even more spiritual, psychological in intent than it is practical. Their life is a garden, nothing but light. She retreats under the expedient cover of kitchen routine. “It’s what you suggested,” she says, returning his volley. “It was an exercise.” Her body is still but for her slender, delicate wrist dipping at the rim of the icing bowl. Her eyes are hooded, purposefully focused elsewhere, not meeting his discomfited gaze.

He listens to the room, their house, its sepulchral murmurings revealing nothing.

She places the last iced cake on its waiting plate. Resting her hands in her disappeared lap, dedicated, full of purpose, she surveys the stack of mail; the pattern pieces of a new flannel dress for Frieda; the mounded basket of yesterday’s crisp, freshly dried laundry—her Magnificat. She decides on the sewing: a few straight seams, no lining, a task she can complete in toto before the Keys come to collect her at six for evensong, her first.