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failure? A malignant, psychopathic personality? The desire to harm those he believed had harmed him? Auden had reflected on this in his disowned poem, “September 1, 1939,” where he had alluded to the lesson that “all school children learn / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return…” And he was right, in that respect at least. Evil was repaid with evil—but only by those who were themselves evil; which brought one back to where one started.
    “Go on,” said Charlie.
    Babar wandered from the forest and found himself, by sleight of improbable geography, in a French city. Now the transformation comes; he meets the old lady who takes him to the department store to buy him clothes. He is introduced into European society and acquires its baggage. He returns to the Kingdom of the Elephants in a green car and with all the accoutrements of French civilisation. When the King’s position becomes vacant after he has eaten a poisonous mushroom, Babar is appointed, and Celeste becomes his Queen. They rule Celesteville with integrity and a sound instinct for orderly planning: rows of neat houses are constructed for the elephants; savagery is repelled.
    Charlie’s eyes began to close; it was time to leave Celesteville. Isabel bent forward and kissed him on the brow. He lived in a world of friendly stuffed toys, of talking elephants, and meerkats too. How long would it last? When would this childhood bubble be penetrated by images of conflict, of bionic superheroes, of pyrotechnics and explosions that made the world of older children what it was? At six, at seven, when the purveyors of these things realised there was money to be made from children?
Don’t grow up too quickly,
she whispered.
    —
    JAMIE FINISHED HIS PRACTICE and came into the kitchen.
    “Asleep?” he asked, nodding his head in the direction of Charlie’s bedroom upstairs.
    “Out for the count.”
    “I’m not surprised,” said Jamie. “He ran everywhere in the Zoo. Ran. I had to chase after him constantly.”
    “He’s a boy,” said Isabel. “Haven’t you noticed how boys seem to run everywhere? Girls don’t. They walk or skip, but boys tear about.”
    Jamie went to the fridge and extracted a half-full bottle of New Zealand white wine. He poured a glass for Isabel and then one for himself. They touched glasses; they always did that; Edinburgh crystal to Edinburgh crystal.
    “I was…” He did not finish, as the doorbell sounded. He looked at Isabel enquiringly. “Expecting anybody?”
    She shook her head. “No. The Lifeboats?” A neighbour collected for the lifeboats charity. It was a popular cause—even amongst the land-bound.
    Isabel shrugged. “Could be.”
    Jamie went to answer the door. After a minute or so Isabel heard voices in the hall and went to investigate.
    It was her friend Sam. “I was passing by. I’m not going to stay because you’ll be getting ready for dinner and I don’t want to hold you back.”
    Isabel assured her they had plenty of time. “Dinner isn’t always planned in this house. Sometimes it just happens.”
    Sam smiled. She had a husband who could not cook, whereas Isabel had Jamie, who cooked rather well—or so Sam had heard. The injustice of it, some said; to look like that
and
to be able to cook.
    “Perhaps Jamie could teach Eric one of these days. Nothing too sophisticated, but to be able to make an omelette would be useful.”
    Jamie laughed. “I’m sure that Eric would be a perfectly good cook. Or even
is
a perfectly good cook. Some husbands don’t let on, you know; they can cook quite well, but it’s not in their interests for anybody to know it.”
    Isabel offered Sam a glass of wine, and she accepted. “But just a small one,” said Sam. “I don’t want to
roll
home.”
    The three of them sat down at the kitchen table. Sam, who was in her mid-forties, had been a friend of Isabel’s for some years, having been introduced to her by a mutual friend. She was an attractive woman who liked to