“Yes,” Ralph said. He stopped rocking. The front legs of his chair came down with a clunk. “But that’s going right back—that’s going back to the fifties, before she was qualified, when she was in London and she’d come up for the odd weekend. That was before we went abroad. And then he married Ginny. Oh God,” he said. “You mean it’s been going on for years.”
“I do. Years and years and years.”
“Would it be … for instance … when we came back from Africa?”
Anna nodded. “Oh, yes. It’s so many years, you see, that people no longer bother to talk about it.”
“And you knew. Why didn’t I know?”
“It’s hard to imagine. Perhaps because you don’t notice people.”
“But people are all my life,” Ralph said. “God help me. Everything I do concerns people. What else do I ever think about?”
“Perhaps you don’t think about them in quite the right way. Perhaps there’s a—gap—in the way that you think about them.”
“Something missing,” Ralph said. “Well, there must be, mustn’t there? If that’s the case I’ll have to sit down and talk to myself and try to examine it, whatever it is, this lack, won’t I? Otherwise it’s obvious I’m not fit to be at large.” He shook his head. “I’ll tell you what puzzles me, though. There’s Emma living in her cottage right on the main street in Foulsham, and there’s Felix over at Blakeney, and since we know innumerable people in between —”
“Yes, we know people. But it’s as I say, they don’t talk about it anymore.”
“But why didn’t somebody tell me?”
“Why should they? How would they have broached the topic?”
“Why didn’t
“What would you have done with the information?”
Ralph was still shaking his head. He couldn’t take this in—that his discovery, so exciting to him, was stale and soporific to everyone else. “What I can’t understand is how in a place like this they could conduct what must be so blatantly obvious—I mean, the comings and goings, she can’t go to Blakeney I suppose so he must come to Foulsham, his car must be parked there, all hours of the night—”
Anna smiled.
“No,” Ralph said. “I don’t suppose it’s like that, is it? I suppose they go to teashops quite a lot. I suppose it’s a—mental companionship, is it?”
“I think it might be, largely. But people like Felix and Emma can get away with a lot, you know. They have everything well under control.”
“It’s never damaged their standing,” Ralph said. “I mean, their standing in the community. Do the children know?”
“Kit knows. The boys know, I suppose, but they never mention it. It wouldn’t interest them, would it?”
“What does Kit think?”
“You know she always admires her aunt.”
“I hope her life won’t be like that,” Ralph said. “My God, I hope it won’t. I don’t want Kit to turn into some plain woman driving about the countryside in a tweed coat to share a pot of tea with some old bore. I hope somebody flashy and rich comes and carries her off and gives her diamonds. I don’t mind if she isn’t steady. I want Kit to have a good time.”
“How old-fashioned you are!” Anna laughed. “You talk about her as if she were a chorus girl. Kit will buy her own diamonds, if it crosses her mind to want any.” Anna looked down at the minute solitaire that had winked for twenty-five years above her wedding ring. “And Ralph, there is no need to insult Felix. You like him, you always have, we all like him.”
“Yes. I know. But things look different now.”
He put his empty glass down on the table. This is more than a failure of knowledge, he thought, it is a failure of self-knowledge. Anna poured him another whiskey. He ignored it, so she drank it herself.
Sitting at the kitchen table, Julian said, “I thought Kit would have come home for the funeral.”
“It was mainly our generation,” Anna said. “There were a lot of people there. I think three Eldreds were enough.”
“An elegant sufficiency,” Julian said.
His mother laughed. “Where did you get that expression?”
“I heard Kit say it. But didn’t you think she’d have wanted to be there? As she’s so friendly with Daniel Palmer these days.”
Felix’s son, the architect, had a flat above his office in Holt. He was interested in Kit; he had taken her to the theater, and out to dinner, and invited her to go out in the boat he kept at Blakeney. Anna said, “I think Kit regards Daniel as a provider of treats. A funeral is not a treat.”
“When will she be coming home, then?
“Not till Easter. She’s got her exams in a matter of weeks, you know.”
“Yes, I do know. You don’t have to keep mentioning things like that. Terms. Exams.”
“We have to talk about you, Julian. But perhaps not this afternoon.” She looked over the rim of her cup. “What have you done today?”
