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gather you into the bosom of ours.’
    Victoria tapped her foot and sang, loud and clear, an old ditty.
    Now my mother-in-law is dead,
    She got shut in a folding bed.
    ‘What’s that?’ Laurence was disconcerted.
    ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I was dreaming. What do you think of Mungo?’
    She didn’t give a fig either way at that moment.
    ‘He’s shy. Awkward. But, do you know? I rather like him.’
    She felt a pang of rivalry – was she no longer indispensable?
    ‘Do you know?’ he said to her later. ‘He read me some of his stories. One or two of them had something. He admires my work. All that was a long time ago.’
    He was half asleep and she tiptoed back to her packing. Elena was there hoping to help and in tears. Things were certain to go downhill now with the
signorina
gone and that clown ‘
buffo
’ all bewhiskered around the house.
    Before she went to sleep she reminded herself of how once, when she had finally and timidly, told Laurence that she had been interested in something he had written in his youth, he had said, half smiling, ‘Oh my dear. In the old days all we writers wanted were copious draughts of unqualified praise.’
    The
buffo
, with his copious draughts, had revived memories.
    She spoke to herself. ‘If you’re old and isolated, you like what you get. Perhaps Laurence knows he’s stuck and he’s going to make the best of it. That’s what he did with me. Still,’she decided, ‘he liked me best. I know it. Even if I wasn’t much good at delivering unqualified praise.’
    On her return to London Victoria married Edgar.

Chapter 1
    W hile Edgar’s father, Roland Holliday, stood, field glasses in one hand, paintbrush in the other, his wife Lettice painted her own imagined picture of the opening of the London exhibition of his recent work that was soon to take place.
    Sketches of birds and twigs stood propped in the hall.
    The list of guests was too confusing a task to tackle during the day and best left for night hours. She snatched a flat flower basket from the garden room and walked down the gravel path to the spot where her husband stood. Her hand touched his arm. Wincing, protective of his brushstroke, he turned towards her.
    ‘How many have you finished?’ Her bony face was tip-tilted.
    ‘Not enough. I think I’ll have to put the exhibition off until next year. You can always bully a few friends into buying something from me between now and then.’
    It must be that he was trying to torment her.
    ‘Don’t be absurd. The gallery could sue you. Of course youcan do it. I have always said it and I say it again, every creative artist needs to work to a deadline. You must stick to yours.’
    Later, in the kitchen garden, she hacked viciously at the stem of a red cabbage.
    That evening they ate a bleak meal. The purifying influence of homeliness for which The Old Keep was celebrated, deserted it when there were no witnesses. Casserole dishes and open fires kept for appropriate occasions lay in abeyance, sheltered by dust and ash as Roland submitted to the regular and dramatic changes that were made in their standard of living.
    Five children had been raised there but now the couple was often alone. Their youngest daughter, Joanna, was still at boarding school but usually mucked about at The Old Keep during the holidays. Roland painted and studied birds as Lettice shuffled through her short list of weekend visitors. The one ahead was significant. Edgar and Victoria were to come for the first time since their quiet wedding.
    Lettice was put out by Victoria’s not seeming to be intellectual . Strange, having had that interesting job with the man of letters. She was already wearing the anxious look of a woman yearning for a child, smoked a great deal and it was rumoured, although opportunities at The Old Keep were too few to provide proof, was inclined to get tipsy. Scary bits of tittle-tattle concerning her late mother had filtered in.
    It was lucky that she was pretty, for she