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cake and flapjacks, while she picked delicately
    at a Marie biscuit. Men didn't like seeing a girl guzzle, Mrs. Chawcer
    said--had almost stopped saying now her daughter was over thirty.
    Before tea, between mouthfuls and afterward, Dr. Reeves talked. About
    his profession and his ambitions, about the place in which they lived, the
    Korean War, the Iron Curtain, and the changing times. Gwendolen talked
    about these things too, as she had never talked to anyone before, and
    sometimes about hoping to see more of life, making friends, traveling,
    seeing the world. And always they talked about her mother dying, how it
    wouldn't be long, and what would happen afterward.
    Doctors' handwriting is notoriously unreadable. Gwendolen scrutinized
    the prescriptions he wrote for Mrs. Chawcer, trying to decipher his first
    name. At first she thought it was Jonathan, then Barnabas. The nearest
    she got was Swithun. Cunningly, she turned the conversation on to
    names and how important or unimportant they were to their possessors.
    She liked hers, so long as no one called her Gwen. No one? Who were
    these people who might inadvertently create for her a diminutive? Her
    parents were the only ones who didn't call her Miss Chawcer. She said
    none of this to Dr. Reeves but listenedavidly for his contribution.
    Out it came. "Stephen's the sort of name that's always allright to have.
    Fashionable at the moment. For the first time, actually. So, one day,
    maybe, folks will guess I'm thirty years younger than I am."
    He always called people "folks." And he said "guess" the American way,
    meaning "think." Gwendolen loved these idiosyncrasies. She was
    delighted to find out his name. Sometimes, in the solitude of her
    bedroom, she mouthed to herself interesting combinations: Gwendolen
    Reeves, Mrs. Stephen Reeves,G. M. Reeves. If she were American she
    could call herself Gwendolen Chawcer Reeves; if from parts of Europe,
    Mrs. Doctor Stephen Reeves. To use the servants' word, he was courting
    her. She was sure of that. What would be the next step? An invitation
    out somewhere, her mother would probably say. "Wil lyou come with me
    to the theater, Miss Chawcer? Do you ever go to the pictures, Miss
    Chawcer? May I call you Gwendolen?
    Her mother no longer said anything. She was comatose with morphine.
    Stephen Reeves came regularly and every time he had tea with
    Gwendolen. One afternoon, across the cakestand, he called her
    Gwendolen and asked her to call him Stephen. The professor usually
    came home to keep an eye on his daughter as they were finishing their
    portions of Victoria sponge, and Gwendolen noticed that Dr. Reeves
    reverted to Miss Chawcer when her father was present.
    She sighed a little. That was half a century ago and now it wasn't Dr.
    Reeves but Olive and her niece who were expected for tea. Gwendolen
    hadn't invited them for this day, shewouldn't have dreamt of it. They had
    asked themselves. If she hadn't been tired at the time and even more
    tired of Olive's company she would have said no. Wishing she had, she
    went up to the bedroom that had once been her mother's, where in fact
    her mother had died, but not the one where she had tried out those
    name combinations, and put on a blue velvet dress with a lace insert at
    the neckline, once but no longer called a modesty vest. She added pearls
    and a brooch in the shape of a phoenix rising from the ashes and put her
    mother's engagement ring on her right hand. She wore it every day and
    at night put it in the jewel box of silver and chased mirror glass, which
    had also been her mother's.
    The niece didn't come. Olive brought her dog instead, a small white
    poodle with ballet dancer's feet. Gwendolen was annoyed but not much
    surprised. She had done this before.The dog had a toy with it like a child,
    only this plaything was avery life like white plastic bone. Olive ate two
    slices of the swiss roll and a great many biscuits and talked about her
    niece's daughter while Gwendolen thought