fingered. They were hands that rings might adorn, and that one did adorn: a plain red-gold wedding band, an old ring, one that might have been in a family for generations. Her skin had begun to line a little round the eyes: so many years of looking into the wind. All this he saw in the vibrant light that spilled into the room, morning light: sliding over the cream walls, turning them the color of butter.
He said, “We have a problem about Julian. Well, not a problem.”
“A problem, but not a problem,” Mrs. Glasse said.
“We thought, Anna and I—Anna, that’s my wife—that perhaps he talked to you. He doesn’t talk to us.”
“Do you see a reason for that?”
“There’s no reason, I hope. It’s just his nature.”
“Well then,” Mrs. Glasse said placidly. “If it’s his nature, what is there to be done?”
Ralph leaned forward, to engage her attention. “You see, Julian’s never been communicative. And a bit of a drifter—you could call him that. Still, we believe in letting him work things through for himself, at his own pace—we always have pursued that policy.”
“Sandra is the same,” Mrs. Glasse said. “Resistant to direction. Not that I try.”
“Yes … so we wondered, Anna and I, if he had said anything to you, about his plans.”
“Plans,” Mrs. Glasse said: as if the word were new to her. “He’s not mentioned any. He’s done a lot for me, around the place. I don’t ask him, he just does it. You can’t say he’s not industrious. He fills his time.”
“But where’s it leading?” Ralph said. “I can’t help but worry.”
There was a pause. They looked into the fire; the flames now were pale as air, the sun drawing their color out. Only the flicker held their eyes. Tinny, grating, the clock struck the quarter hour. Ralph looked up at it in wonder. The sound seemed to tremble in the air. She laughed. “You can have it,” she said, “if it means so much to you.”
He shook his head. “It’s very kind. But no—on the whole I think I share my mother’s opinion.”
“Was he a Norfolk man, your father?”
“Oh, yes. From Swaffham originally—but we moved to Norwich when I was a child.”
“A city boy,” Mrs. Glasse said. “Imagine. I’ve never moved much.”
“Did it belong in your family, this house?”
“Oh, no.” She seemed puzzled. “Nothing like that.”
“It is a very nice house. Very peaceful. I’m not surprised Julian wants to spend his time here. The dairy, he said—”
“Yes—would you like to look around?” Ralph protested, politely. She got to her feet, put her mug down on the mantelpiece by the clock. She led him into the kitchen, where she and Sandra spent most of their leisure time, their chairs set one either side of the range; led him from there to the dairy, its chaste stone slabs, its chill. The tiles were cracked, and the turning world had stopped beneath their glaze; cows trod forever through squares of blue grass, through fields of blue blossom. She turned to him and smiled. “Make our own butter is one thing we don’t do,” she said, “but I did have a cow, at one time. Daisy, she was called—that was original, wasn’t it? I’d sell milk up at the top of the track there. It’s against all the rules, so I had to stop.”
“You’re very enterprising,” Ralph said.
“I have a couple of ponies in my top field now, look after them for weekenders. We didn’t know anything about horses when we took them on. But they couldn’t, we thought, be as complicated as people.”
“And it’s worked out?”
“Yes—Sandra has her talents.” She took him back through the hall, up the low-rising stairs. There were four bedrooms, each of them square and neat, each with the same cream walls; and the furniture of dark wood, chests and tallboys, massive and claw-footed. “All this furniture was my grandmother’s,” she said. “This is Sandra’s room.”
“It’s like a room in a picture book,” he said. “Do you know what I mean? The bed.”
“Yes, Sandra made that quilt for herself, it was the first she ever made, I taught her. She’s a careful worker, she’s slow but she’s neat enough. The trouble is, people don’t want them. Or they want them, but they won’t pay the price, there’s months of work in a quilt, People go for something cheap, something run up on a machine. They can’t tell the difference. But there is a difference, if you look.”
Downstairs she put the kettle on again. They sat in the kitchen waiting for it; “I’m a woman who drinks a lot of tea,” she said, as if in apology.
“It occurs to me,” Ralph said, “it must be worth a bit, this place.”
“I’d never thought about it.”
“Prices are rocketing. You’d be amazed. Would you be interested? I know a good firm of estate agents, old friend of mine but he’s dead now. If you follow me.”
“Of course,” she said. “He’d give me a price from beyond the grave?” She turned her head to him: such pale eyes.
“Actually, he has a son—Daniel, he’s an architect, a nice lad, he sees a bit of my daughter Kit. He’d probably come out here for nothing, give you a rough figure, he knows the market as well as anybody. He’d be interested to see the place.”
“But then where would we live?” Mrs. Glasse said.
“I thought … well, I don’t want to intrude, of course, but I know money’s a problem. You could buy yourselves a cottage, and you’d have a tidy sum left to invest, and it would give you an income.”
