'Has Theo been up to see Willy?' asked Paula. 'No. I suggested it, but he just laughed and said he wasn't Willy's keeper.' Willy Kost, a refugee scholar, lived in a bungalow on Octavian's estate which was known as Trescombe Cottage, a little further up the hill from Trescombe House, Willy suffered from a melancholia which was a cause of anxiety to the household. 'I suppose they've quarrelled again. They're like a couple of children. Have you been up?' 'No,' said Mary. 'I haven't had a moment. I sent Pierce up and Willy seemed O. Have you been?' 'No,' said Paula. 'I've had a pretty full day too.' Mary was rather relieved. She felt that Willy Kost was her own special responsibility, practically her property, and it mattered that she was always the one who knew how Willy was. She would go up and see him tomorrow. 'It's just as well Ducane is coming,' said Paula. 'He always does Willy good.' 'Is Ducane coming?' said Mary. 'I wish somebody would tell me something sometimes!' 'I suppose you realize the room isn't ready,' said Casie. 'I think Kate assumes it's a regular thing now and that's why she didn't tell you.' John Ducane, a friend and colleague of Octavian's, was a frequent week-end visitor. 'Casie, would you mind doing the room after tea?' 'Of course I mind,' said Casie, 'in my one bit of free time; what you mean is will I, yes I will.' At that moment Kate Gray came into the kitchen, followed by Mingo, and at once as if struck by some piercing stellar ray the scene dissolved into its atoms and reassembled itself round Kate as centre. Mary saw, pinioned in some line of force, Paula's keen smiling dog face, felt her own face lift and smile, her hair tossed, blown back. Mingo was barking, Montrose had jumped on to the table, Casie was pouring more hot water into the pot, the twins, disarranging their careful line of stones, were both chattering at once, fastening brown sandy hands on to the belt of Kate's striped dress. Kate's bright round face beamed at them all out of the golden fuzz of her hair. Her warm untidy being emphasized the sleekness, the thinness, the compactness of the other two, Mary with her straight dark hair tucked behind her ears and her air of a Victorian governess, Paula with her narrow head and pointed face and the well adjusted surfaces of her cropped brown hair. Kate, herself undefined, was a definer of others, the noise, the heat, the light which flattered them into the clearer contours of themselves. Kate spoke with a slight stammer and a slight Irish accent. 'Octavian isn't coming tonight after all.' 'Oh dear,' said Mary, 'he won't be here for Barb.' 'I know, it's too bad. Something's happened at the office.' 'What's happened?' 'Some chap killed himself.' 'Good heavens,' said Paula. 'You mean killed himself, there in the office? T 'Yes. Isn't it awful?' 'Who was he?' said Paula. 'I don't know.' 'What was his name?' 'I didn't think to ask. He's not anyone we know.' 'Poor fellow,' said Paula. 'I'd like to have known his name.' 'Why?' said Edward, who was experimenting with the tendons of one of the chicken's legs. 'Because it's somehow easier to think about somebody if you know their name.' 'Why?' said Henrietta, who was dissecting the other leg with a kitchen knife. 'You may well ask,' said Paula. 'Plato says how odd it is that we can think of anything, and however far away it is our Know msname – 'You are right to think of him,' said Kate. 'You are so right. You reproach me. I feel reproached. I just thought of Octaw vian and Barbara.' 'Why did he kill himself?' said Edward. 'I'll do Ducane's room now,' said Mary to Casie. 'No, you won't,' said Casie. They got up together and left the kitchen. The lazy sun, slanting along the front of the house, cast elongated rectangles of watery gold on to the faded floral wallpaper of the big paved hall, which served as the dining-room at week-ends. The front door was wide open, framing distant cuckoo calls, while beyond the weedy gravel drive, beyond the clipped descending lawn and the erect hedge of raspberryand-creamy spiraea, rose up the sea, a silvery blue, too thin and transparent to be called metallic, a texture as of skin-deep silver paper, rising up and merging'at some indeterminate point with the pallid glittering blue of the midsummer sky. There was something of evening already in the powdery goldness of the sun and the ethereal thinness of the sea. The two women swept round the white curve of the stairs, Casie clumping, Mary darting, and disputed briefly at the top. Mary let Casie go on to the spare room and turned herself in the direction of Barbara's room. Mary Clothier and her son Pierce had lived for nearly four years now at Trescombe House. Mary's father, a sickly defeated man, had been a junior clerk in an insurance office, and he and Mary's vague gentle mother had perished together of double pneumonia, leaving their only child, then aged nine, to the care of an elderly and rather needy aunt. Mary had managed, however, by means of scholarships, to win herself a good education, in the course of which she encountered Kate. Kate admired Mary and also quite instinctively protected her. They became firm friends. Much later, at some point in Mary's wanderings as an impecunious and socially uncertain widow Kate had suggested that she should come and live with them, and Mary had come, with many misgivings, for a trial period. She had stayed. Kate and Octavian were well off and enjoyed the deep superiority of the socially secure. Mary, a deprived person who had sometimes come near, rather romantically, to thinking of herself as an outcast, appreciated both these advantages in her friends, and was prepared to be herself propped up by them. But of course she could not have accepted this act of rescue had it not been for an indubitable virtue of generosity in both her hosts, a virtue somehow expressed in their roundness, in Octavian's big spherical bald head with its silky golden tonsure, in Kate's plump face and fuzzy ball of touchable yellow hair. There was a careless magnanimity about them both, something too of the bounty of those who might have been magnificent sinners magnificently deciding for righteousness. They were happily married and spontaneous in their efforts to cause happiness in others. Mary was untroubled by the thought that she was in fact extremely useful to them. Mary ran the house, she controlled the children, she was the one who was always there. But she knew that the benefits to herself were infinitely greater. The presence, more recently, of foxy-faced Paula was something about which Mary had been, at first, not too certain. Paula was a college friend of Mary's, and not known to Kate until the time, after her divorce, when Paula came to stay. 'Everyone invites a divorced woman,' Paula had said. Mary had invited her and Kate had adored her. Kate had suggested that Paula should stay with them indefinitely, Octavian had started to make the joke about his harem, and the matter had been fixed up. Paula had been Mary's older and revered college friend. Mary thought it possible that Paula at close quarters might prove exacting; also she was afraid of becoming jealous. Paula was an uncompromising person and at times Mary had experienced her as a sort of unconscious prig. The strength and clarity of her being, her meticulous accuracy and truthfulness, operated as a reproach to the mediocrity and muddle which Mary felt to be her own natural medium. Paula had a hard cool dignity which had been quite unimpaired by her divorce, the details of which Mary never learnt, though it was generally known that Richard Biranne was an irresponsible chaser of WU1JC La1C11, it 11LLIC LOU 111UL:11, 1V1 b'1aULCU. iviaiy way V-paicu to watch, in her nervous hyperconscious way, their interest in each other, and in the first few months of Paula's sojourn Mary suffered acute pains of anticipation. However, in the end it was Paula's coolness, her detachment, her peculiar virtue which soothed Mary's nerves, and even provided Mary with the energy which she needed to see the situation exactly as it was. She soon concluded that there was nothing to fear. The mutual affection of Kate and Paula held no threat to her. There was nothing hidden and no possibility of a plot. With this acceptance came a special pleasure in their
