confusion about the direction of the grain. Before his sister had mentioned Mrs Mayben he had been allowing his thoughts to consider the meat as once it had been, an area of living flesh on the thigh of a pig. He imagined that something might have troubled that pig, some physical disorder that caused it to wriggle and dash about its sty, banging itself against the concrete sides and causing the stringiness to develop in its flesh.
‘In cold blood,’ said Emily again.
Edward looked up and regarded her back. He stared at the blackness of the material of which her long, old- fashioned dress was composed and at the roll of her hair, neat and formal on her neck.
‘No, no,’ said Edward. ‘Not dead, dear. Not dead.’
But his sister nodded, denying his denial, and Edward shook his head with firmness.
‘I remember when she came,’ said Emily. ‘Fourteen years ago. Her husband with her.’
Edward agreed with that. ‘Her husband,’ he said, ‘died in 1955.’
‘Death again,’ murmured Emily, and Edward sighed. His sister was standing by their dining-room window, observing through it the house of Mrs Mayben opposite. Her left hand gripped the grey curtain that had flanked the window for almost thirty years, her right hung limply by her side. Edward guessed what was in her mind and did not care to consider it, since soon, he knew, he would be obliged to consider it whether he wished to or not. Attempting to keep the workings of his sister’s brain at bay, he cut deeply into the ham. The image of the living animal appeared again before him. He said:
‘After lunch why don’t we try to repair the sitting-room carpet? It gets worse, you know. Quite a hole has worn through. It seems a pity.’
‘The carpet?’ said Emily, and Edward added:
‘Father used to talk about that carpet, d’you remember? About its quality. The years have proved him right.’
Emily, continuing to stare through the window, made no comment.
‘It’s lasted a couple of lifetimes,’ Edward said quickly. ‘It’s a shame to let it go.’ His eyes again travelled over his sister’s back, moving upwards, to the roll of her hair. Emily said:
‘There was a man here yesterday. Looking at Mrs Mayben’s windows.’
‘A robber,’ suggested Edward, again slicing the ham, and in an automatic way beginning to feel sick in his stomach. He said, in a slow, low voice, that Mrs Mayben was probably now in church, or else within her house, cooking a simple lunch for herself.
‘She hasn’t been about,’ said Emily. ‘I haven’t seen Mrs Mayben for four days.’
‘I thought I saw her yesterday. I’m sure, you know.’
‘He came,’ said Emily, ‘in a light-blue motor-car. The kind that’s called a tourer, is it? Out of that he stepped at a quarter to four and stood on the pavement gazing up at her house – returning to his scene, God knows. He was indecently dressed, Edward: canvas shoes and light-weight trousers that matched the blue paintwork of his motor-car, and nothing at all where a shirt should have been. He was like a lunatic, I’ll tell you that, walking on the edge of the pavement in the August sunshine, his eyes uplifted to the house. And I said to myself: “There’s evil there”.’
‘Mrs Mayben’s in church,’ repeated Edward, ‘or maybe home already, doing her Sunday chores.’
His sister shook her head. ‘It’s past her time for returning from church. She hasn’t returned today, for I have watched at the window, being worried about her. Mrs Mayben, as well you know, Edward, is by now in two places at once.’
Edward imagined old Mrs Mayben delayed in a traffic jam in the hired car that called for her every Sunday at half past eleven to take her to church. He imagined the chauffeur, the sallow-faced man who always came, with a green peaked cap, apologizing to her about the delay, apologizing about all the traffic, since she was the kind of woman who inspired apology, he imagined. Emily said:
‘You know what I mean, don’t you, when I say she’s in two places at once? In heaven and in some cupboard, Edward; strung to a hook.’
There was a look, Edward knew, that must be there by now in his sister’s eyes as she stared through the glass, ready to inflict her punishment. He thought, as he had thought before on similar occasions, that she was like a woman entering a fit.
‘Now, now,’ said Edward softly.
‘Read the papers,’ cried his sister, turning about to face him and speaking with emotion. ‘A man has killed eight nurses in Chicago.’
‘Oh no,’ began Edward.
‘Prize-fighters turn on their children. Mothers go out with the tide.’
Edward placed the ham knife on the polished mahogany of the dining-room table. Slowly, he raised his eyes to meet his sister’s.
‘An old woman living alone,’ said Emily.
Edward watched her tongue moving over her lips, begining at one corner and returning to it. The tip of her tongue protruded at that corner for a moment and was then withdrawn. Again he raised his eyes to hers and they looked at one another in silence for a while, a brother and a sister who had lived all their lives in this house in Dun-farnham Avenue, Number Seventeen. Edward remembered the past and he knew that his sister was remembering it too. In the past were the children they had been, two other people, a different relationship: a girl thin and tall, four years older than the brother, he a boy who had laughed and had had his way, who had grown to be a man of slight build, permitting a small moustache to accumulate on his upper lip. The house that had been the house of their parents had changed only a little over the years. Wallpaper, the colour of good oatmeal, had hung all over it for three decades, placed there one spring when Emily was fourteen. Large engravings that featured the bridges of London decorated the hall and the stairs, and in dark bookcases, dustless behind glass, were volumes by Sapper, and
