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She would have liked to take a bus to Southampton Street, to immerse herself in a crowd. But any putative crowd was also illusory, and she merely picked up a taxi in the main road. Everything was proving both easier and more difficult than she had imagined from the silence of her flat, nor was she cheered by familiar landmarks. What she had to do was simply a formality, and yet it took precedence over all her other activities. Those activities were so habitual that they were automatic and gave her no trouble; by the same token those streets could now be taken for granted. She thought briefly of that other landscape, the one she had so recently conjured up, and was surprised that the details had slipped from her mind. She remembered a shapeless black dress, but could not now have said why this should ever have been attractive. She was, however, keenly aware of the ridicule she might have caused, in this or any other garb, and resolved to be more circumspect and to submit her imaginings to ordinary daylight whenever she was threatened by what was after all a very normal ennui. She could begin with the task in hand.

‘I want to make a new will,’ she said to the young Mr Zerber, who was about fifty, but who had none of his uncle’s
gravitas
. The old man had worn striped trousers and a black jacket, admittedly sprinkled with dandruff. Young Mr Zerber was in a canary yellow waistcoat and blue shirt sleeves, at which she found herself staring rather fixedly.

‘It’s the new informality,’ he explained, smiling. ‘For the weekend, you know. It is Friday,’ he reminded her.

‘Is it really? Yes, I suppose it is. Then I won’t delay you. I’m sure you’re anxious to get away.’

‘Your will is what? Fifteen years old?’

‘Yes, and there have been some changes. Family changes, you know. I want to leave my flat to my … To my niece,’ she said firmly. ‘Ann Newhouse. Ann Levinson Newhouse.’

This was her great decision, and it had been easily made. Ann could have the flat, and David could have it too, if he were still around. There was no need to make provision for Steve. Steve would come along as the lodger. Eventually, no doubt, if Ann and David decided to move on, Steve would become the sitting tenant. But that would no longer be her problem.

Out in the street the sun hectically shone, as if congratulating her on her modest resolve. She walked towards Gower Street and the bus stop, reluctant to reach home too early. She now regretted her letter to Susie Fuller: it would be necessary to follow it up in some way. She looked back in amazement at the image of herself that had taken shape, only to disappear as fitfully as it had arrived. Yet it had been strong, and as such welcome, although it was of course a fiction. That woman in the shapeless black dress was not herself but someone else, someone she might have encountered in a book. But books,
she had found, were too powerful, and invariably misleading. The novels she had read in her studious girlhood all ended with a marriage, for that was how the reader wanted them to end, believing that marriage was the conclusion of the story. They gave no instructions on how to spend the time once the marriage was a thing of the past. And yet she would not have it otherwise. Those who survived and grew old were in a country without maps: she knew that. All that was left to them was to find some middle way, between acceptance and defeat. When grace was gone only usefulness remained. How could she have envisaged that curious adventure and become the woman in the black dress? Yet some details of that woman’s appearance were still vivid in her mind, her bare feet, the arc of water thrown from the bucket. A plate-glass window showed her a neat, careful, and unmistakably elderly woman: herself. Perhaps she would write again to Susie suggesting a package tour at some unspecified date in the future. This might even come about, though she had no enthusiasm for the idea. ‘Kept at home unexpectedly by family matters,’ she would explain, wondering why this did not feel like a lie.

As she got off the bus she remembered: Austin and Kitty’s fiftieth wedding anniversary fell at the end of the month. And she had thought to be away! They had not mentioned it, and had no doubt been hurt that she had forgotten. Once again she had been saved from folly. And although her absence might have been insignificant (as no doubt her presence would be), it was essential that she should join in the celebrations. For this was the measure of her usefulness. She would be present for Kitty, but rather more for Austin, whom she imagined to be low in spirits, undermined as if by some Jamesian vastation. There would be tears, of course, though she would shed none. She would smile her admiration, and at
some point that admiration would become entirely genuine. Then she would retire gracefully, not forgetting to telephone the following day with further appreciation. By that time the smile would be fixed, but they would not know that. It was like a novel, one of the novels that ended with a wedding. And in Kitty’s case—though Kitty never read novels—fiction would have delivered its promise. So that in a sense, and for some if not for others, the stories were true.

She thought of the children, as they had become, on their way to the south. But the immediacy of their recent visit was lost. She knew, or thought she knew, that she would never see them again. This she did not regret. They had been so ungainly, so rebarbative! And yet she followed them in her thoughts, as they grew ever smaller in the mind’s eye. Theirs was the sun, the heat. What they would make of their experience she could not imagine. Their remaining virtue was the memory they left behind. ‘It was when the children were here,’ those who had never moved would say. And Kitty would invariably remark, ‘Didn’t she look lovely? And didn’t Gerald look well? Not that I ever thought he wouldn’t come.’ And the photographs would come out again, and be passed from hand to hand. And the truth would once more be put in its place, somewhere between desire and regret. She did not see how this could be avoided.

Between acceptance and defeat lay the middle way, which must be negotiated. But it must be negotiated without assistance: that was the rule. Her street, when she reached it, was empty, devoid of answers. She would have wished some sort of presence, even the sight of a woman like herself (and all her neighbours, she supposed, were like herself) on her way to the shops for some forgotten purchase. She knew, or thought she knew, those stratagems for filling the day, although so far
she had not made use of them. She knew, quite calmly, that her days were empty, as the flat, which she now entered, was empty, with an emptiness she had not quite anticipated. She had thought to enjoy her solitude, but in fact she found herself listening for another’s presence, however fleeting, however indifferent. She would have welcomed a stranger, for now she knew that this was possible.

She had not felt this when she was first widowed. Then the relief of clearing away the reminders of sickness had been too great. She had sat for hours, dazed, not quite believing that there would be no more calls from Henry’s room, or the nervous cough, almost constant, that had afflicted him at the end. The sight of his own sorrow had put paid to any self-pity she might have felt. In his eyes, grown huge, sat incomprehension; he was absorbed in the drama of his own passing. She had sat with him and held his hand, but he had seemed not to notice, as if she herself were a shade. When the others visited, fearfully, with defensive badinage, he had responded with a careful smile very remote from his usual caressing manner. They had left, duty done, and the silence once more descended. She had refused Monty’s offer of a nurse, knowing that if she assumed this task her conscience would be clear. Somewhere in her mind she knew that she would have earned her freedom. And in a sense she had appreciated that freedom. But now, with no-one to mourn, she felt no such release and could not rid herself of an alertness which, though irksome, served in some capacity to remind her of her obligations.

‘Dear Susie,’ she wrote. ‘Ignore my previous letter, which I sent you without first consulting my diary. Plans are, for the moment, in abeyance. I have a family function at the end of the month, which means that I must be here. Perhaps I wrote too hastily: I had nowhere specific in mind, simply some place
in the sun which I should have recognised if I had ever found it. No doubt you have plans of your own, and may in fact be away already. But perhaps we could undertake some sort of holiday in the future? I say “undertake” because that is the reality at our age. And remember if you ever want to spend some time in London I have a spare room’—these last words were uncomfortable to write—‘which is not being used at the moment. So let us look forward to seeing each other in the not too distant future. With love, as always, Dorothea.’

On re-reading the letter she found it weak and unconvincing, though every word of it was true, and she rather thought that Susie would not bother to reply. It was entirely possible, and more than likely, that Susie would not be tempted by the idea of an old ladies’ shared holiday, for Susie might have become one of those women of whom it is remarked that they have not changed. In a way it was true: Susie was loyal, as witnessed by the Christmas cards, but she had always been easily bored. She had too readily seen others as a foil for her own vivacity, and Mrs May had on more than one occasion been conscious of filling this role. In a sense they had both been conscious of it, which removed the threat of incompatibility. Her true good nature had been revealed when Henry arrived on the scene; she had been generous, although she had not been entirely able to stop herself flirting with him. No resentment had been felt on either side, and this she reckoned to be a proof of true friendship. And although, if she and Susie were to spend time together now, they might find themselves at odds, or have little to say to each other, she knew that their past friendship held good. She also knew that it would be pointless to try to revive it. Which left her without even the saving grace of illusion.

She lingered at her desk, wondering why she bothered to
make telephone calls when writing was so much easier. ‘Dear Molly,’ she wrote. ‘I haven’t forgotten the fiftieth wedding anniversary celebrations, although Kitty and Austin think that I have. Do you have any idea of a suitable gift? I know what they really want, but we can’t count on Gerald, I fear. In fact it is a great pity that the children will miss it, though of course it is hardly to their taste, and in any event they know nothing about it. And yet I find myself wishing that they could be here, and that they could rise to the occasion. Do you think they enjoyed their stay? I sometimes wonder. I even think that although they undoubtedly found us tiresome we may have made some sort of impression.’ (She would not send this letter, she decided, but she went on writing.) ‘When dealing with the young at our age we forget our own youth. Not that mine would have been much use to me in the present circumstances. I clung to my parents, and they to me, whereas Ann seemed to be without parents altogether. One could see that David had been properly cared for—one does not come by that sort of assurance in any other way—but Steve seemed like a foundling. That was part of his appeal, I suppose: he was like one of those sly characters in a fairy tale. At least that was how he struck me. Was it for that reason that I found him so’—she hesitated—‘amusing?

‘They seemed so rude, didn’t they? Yet that was the only way in which they could assert their independence. I wish they could have stayed a little longer, so that I could have got to know them. Which is more than they would have done. In many ways they rejected us, and we had no experience of having done this ourselves, though I suppose we must have done so at some stage. My own parents never reproached me, nor I them. This now strikes me as extraordinary.

‘I hope David’s departure has not left you too sad. I know
that both you and Harold were prepared to love him. Being prepared to love is in truth a very dangerous condition. One cannot always find the right object, and one is always, as it were, the subject, one’s own preferences not consulted.

‘I also hope that you have not cancelled your plans to go to Bordighera as usual. You know of course that they will not come back. Unless … Unless by some miracle they miss us, or at least think of us fondly. I am sure, dear Molly, that you can comfort yourself with this thought. And Harold too: I saw what he was feeling. Do give him my love. In all the excitement I had no chance to speak to him. And my love to you, to all of you. Until we meet again. Dorothea.’

In the night a storm broke, waking her from a dream in which she was trying to buy a pair of shoes. The odd thing was that the shoe shop was situated exactly where she remembered it from her youth, just off Putney Bridge Road. She had not been there for fifty years. She shook her head, amused, and got up to make tea. Heavy rain slashed at the windows; she enjoyed the momentary break in the weather, although she knew that in the morning she would find wet yellow leaves plastered to her table and chair on the terrace. With the rain came a release of tension, allaying her memory of recent events.

The dream had given her a desire to visit the old neighbourhood, the old house. Perhaps she harboured a wish to be back in her old bed, the bed in the dark room in which she had always slept so dreamlessly those many years ago. Then she realised that such nostalgia was futile and unrealistic: the house would be unremarkable, one of many such houses in a street from which all the remembered inhabitants were long gone. The remote past was preserved only in memory. Even so it managed to overshadow the life she now accepted as normal,
not least in those moments of reverie, of not quite waking, in which it was so easy to indulge. The journey to the old neighbourhood had in a sense already been undertaken, in the dream, and she had been as she once was, young and effortless, eager and active. In a sense she had repossessed her youth, although every increasingly frail bone in her elderly body had mislaid it.