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dream.”
    I spin around. It’s Gwen.
    She smiles, a little triumphant, as though I am something she has achieved. Her gaze—chestnut-brown, vivid, shining—rests on my face. Her frock has a pattern of polka dots and little scarlet flowers. It’s so good to see her I’d like to put my arms around her.
    â€œI didn’t know if you’d gone or not,” she says. “It was all so sudden, wasn’t it? Having to choose?” She dumps her heavy bag of shopping down on the pavement, rubs a sore shoulder. “So you’ve decided to stick it out?”
    I nod.
    â€œCold feet, at the last moment,” I tell her. “A bit pathetic really.”
    She puts her hand on my arm again.
    â€œI’m so glad, though, Vivienne,” she tells me. “I’m just so glad you’re still here.”
    Her warmth is so welcome.
    â€œLook—are you in a rush?” she says.
    â€œNot at all.”
    â€œWe’ll have tea then?”
    â€œI’d love to.”
    We have a favorite tea shop—Mrs. du Barry’s on the High Street. We take the table we always choose—the table right at the back that has a wide view over the harbor. There’s a crisp starched tablecloth and marigolds in a glass vase; the marigolds have a thin, peppery scent. The shop is almost empty, except for an elderly couple talking in slow, hushed voices, and a woman with eyes smudged with tiredness and a baby in her arms. As she sips her tea, the woman rests her cheek against the baby’s head. I feel a surge of nostalgia, remembering the sensation of a baby’s head against you—how fragile it feels where the bones haven’t fused, and how hot and scented and sweet.
    â€œGwen—how did you decide?” I ask.
    â€œErnie wouldn’t leave,” she tells me. Gwen and Ernie live at Elm Tree Farm, in Torteval. They have a big granite farmhouse and a lot of fertile land. “Not after all those years of work. I’m damned if I’ll let them take it all away from me, he said.”
    â€œWell, good for him.”
    Her bright face seems to cloud over. She pushes back her hair. A haze of anxiety hangs about her.
    â€œHow can you ever know what the right thing is? How can you ever know?” she says.
    â€œYou can’t. I keep wondering too. Whether I’ve made an awful mistake. . . .”
    â€œJohnnie can’t bear it, of course, being stuck here, kicking his heels. Poor kid. He simply can’t bear that he was too young to join up.”
    â€œI can imagine that. How he would feel that.”
    I think of her younger son, Johnnie—how impulsive he is, how he’d yearn for action. I’ve always been fond of Johnnie, with his exuberance, his wild brown hair, his restless, clever hands. He and Blanche would play together a lot when they were small—making mud pies and flower soup, or building dens in the Blancs Bois—until, at seven or eight, as children will, they went their separate ways. Then I taught him piano for a while, though he often forgot to bring the right music, and scarcely practiced at all. Until he discovered a talent for ragtime, which I could never play. He had the rhythm in him, and there was no stopping him.
    â€œBut I wasn’t going to let Johnnie go to England on his own,” says Gwen. “Not after . . . well . . .”
    She doesn’t finish her sentence. Her eyes glitter with unshed tears; a stricken look crosses her face. Brian, her elder son, was lost at Trondheim, in the Norwegian campaign. After it happened, I would panic sometimes when I was with her, afraid of the gaps in our conversations, as though they were cliffs you could fall from—afraid of saying his name. Once I told her, I’m so frightened of reminding you, I don’t want to make you upset. . . . And she said, Vivienne, it’s not as though you’re reminding me of something I’ve forgotten. It’s not as though