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she publish them? If she tells about her childhood, about the lovers Myra had then, can she publish that? Granted that the aim is to expose and humiliate her mother—and I can’t see any other possible reason for the book—then presumably she will want to drag out all the dirt. The question is, what she can legally say and what she’ll be stopped from saying.”
    â€œYou can be sure the publishers will be down on anything potentially libelous like a ton of bricks. There’s nothing more cowardly than publishers. The fuss over The Vixen showed that, and that will be as nothing compared to the fuss over this. But that’s not really our concern. As I say, I can’t see that we have any particular obligation to Myra Mason. I confess, on our one meeting I didn’t like her at all. But that doesn’t mean I want material we own used to throw mud all over her. . . . I’m very unhappy about all this. We seem, quite innocently, to have got ourselves into a situation which it’s impossible to escape from and where it’s difficult to see where the honorable course lies.”
    And so they thrashed around, turning the matter over and over, until bedtime and beyond. It was a moral decision as important as any since Roderick had left the public school where he had taught and taken the headmastership of the little Sussex school for handicapped children. Then his commitment had been clear; now everything was shifting, ambiguous, blurred around the edges. It was inevitablethat by the time they drifted into sleep no clear-cut decision had been made. All Roderick did was have a word with Cordelia when she arrived next morning.
    â€œCaroline did make it clear, didn’t she, that we’d want the final decision on what you can and cannot publish from Father’s material here?”
    He smiled as he said it, trying not to sound too headmasterly. Cordelia smiled back, her brilliant, disarming smile.
    â€œOf course. That goes without saying. Don’t worry .”
    Roderick felt a little like a nervous airline passenger being reassured by a hostess. But (like most plane passengers) he did not feel reassured.
    And so the days went by, and Cordelia continued to come up to work, sifting materials, comparing texts, in the dismal study. Little by little Roderick and Caroline began to relax. The heavens had not fallen. They worked in the garden, lay in the sun, and now and again they took Becky out for drives. In the mornings Mrs. Spriggs, to and from the sickroom, made it her business to screw gradually out of Caroline the facts of Cordelia’s parentage and the circumstances of her birth, so that anything the village had not learned from the commodore and his lady, they heard from Mrs. Spriggs. Caroline was fatalistic about this. She had no sense that Cordelia would feel hurt or embarrassed by the gossip, and Roderick’s father was beyond embarrassment. If there was one thing that was certain, it was that the village would talk.
    As it happened, it was with Pat that the matter was mulled over next, and Pat, in his half-fledged way, was franker than Cordelia had been. Roderick met up with him early one evening, about five days after Cordelia had made her revelation. He had walked into the village to fetch a few groceries, and on the way back he saw, turning on to the road from the cliff path, the unmistakable figureof Cordelia’s boyfriend: tall, thin, wiry body, with matchstick legs protruding from flapping shorts. He quickened his pace in the sinking sun and caught up with him as they neared the brow of a hill.
    â€œHad a good day?” he asked.
    Pat turned and smiled his slow, shy smile.
    â€œNot bad. Very lazy. I walked my feet off yesterday, so today I just swam a little and lay on the sand.”
    â€œPity Cordelia can’t be with you more.”
    â€œOh, she will be when she finishes going through that stuff. At the moment she’s quite