‘Would it be…for instance…when we came back from Africa?’
Anna nodded. ‘Oh, yes. It’s so many years, you see, that people no longer bother to talk about it.’
‘And you knew. Why didn’t I know?’
‘It’s hard to imagine. Perhaps because you don’t notice people.’
‘But people are all my life,’ Ralph said. ‘God help me. Everything I do concerns people. What else do I ever think about?’
‘Perhaps you don’t think about them in quite the right way. Perhaps there’s a – gap – in the way that you think about them.’
‘Something missing,’ Ralph said. ‘Well, there must be, mustn’t there? If that’s the case I’ll have to sit down and talk to myself and try to examine it, whatever it is, this lack, won’t I? Otherwise it’s obvious I’m not fit to be at large.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you what puzzles me, though. There’s Emma living in her cottage right on the main street in Foulsham, and there’s Felix over at Blakeney, and since we know innumerable people in between – ’
‘Yes, we know people. But it’s as I say, they don’t talk about it any more.’
‘But why didn’t somebody tell me?’
‘Why should they? How would they have broached the topic?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘What would you have done with the information?’
Ralph was still shaking his head. He couldn’t take this in – that his discovery, so exciting to him, was stale and soporific to everyone else. ‘What I can’t understand is how in a place like this they could conduct what must be so blatantly obvious – I mean, the comings and goings, she can’t go to Blakeney I suppose so he must come to Foulsham, his car must be parked there, all hours of the night – ’
Anna smiled.
‘No,’ Ralph said. ‘I don’t suppose it’s like that, is it? I suppose they go to teashops quite a lot. I suppose it’s a – mental companionship, is it?’
‘I think it might be, largely. But people like Felix and Emma can get away with a lot, you know. They have everything well under control.’
‘It’s never damaged their standing,’ Ralph said. ‘I mean, their standing in the community. Do the children know?’
‘Kit knows. The boys know, I suppose, but they never mention it. It wouldn’t interest them, would it?’
‘What does Kit think?’
‘You know she always admires her aunt.’
‘I hope her life won’t be like that,’ Ralph said. ‘My God, I hope it won’t. I don’t want Kit to turn into some plain woman driving about the countryside in a tweed coat to share a pot of tea with some old bore. I hope somebody flashy and rich comes and carries her off and gives her diamonds. I don’t mind if she isn’t steady. I want Kit to have a good time.’
‘How old-fashioned you are!’ Anna laughed. ‘You talk about her as if she were a chorus girl. Kit will buy her own diamonds, if it crosses her mind to want any.’ Anna looked down at the minute solitaire that had winked for twenty-five years above her wedding ring. ‘And Ralph, there is no need to insult Felix. You like him, you always have, we all like him.’
‘Yes. I know. But things look different now.’
He put his empty glass down on the table. This is more than a failure of knowledge, he thought, it is a failure of self-knowledge. Anna poured him another whisky. He ignored it, so she drank it herself.
Sitting at the kitchen table, Julian said, ‘I thought Kit would have come home for the funeral.’
‘It was mainly our generation,’ Anna said. ‘There were a lot of people there. I think three Eldreds were enough.’
‘An elegant sufficiency,’ Julian said.
His mother laughed. ‘Where did you get that expression?’
‘I heard Kit say it. But didn’t you think she’d have wanted to be there? As she’s so friendly with Daniel Palmer these days.’
Felix’s son, the architect, had a flat above his office in Holt. He was interested in Kit; he had taken her to the theatre, and out to dinner, and invited her to go out in the boat he kept at Blakeney. Anna said, ‘I think Kit regards Daniel as a provider of treats. A funeral is not a treat.’
‘When will she be coming home, then?
‘Not till Easter. She’s got her exams in a matter of weeks, you know.’
‘Yes, I do know. You don’t have to keep mentioning things like that. Terms. Exams.’
‘We have to talk about you, Julian. But perhaps not this afternoon.’ She looked over the rim of her cup. ‘What have you done today?’
‘I started putting in those poles for the back fence.’
‘And have you seen your girlfriend?’
The slight vulgarity and childishness of the expression struck Julian. It was as if his mother had spilled her tea on the table, or put her fingers in the sugar bowl.
‘I’m going over tomorrow. I just wanted to get a start on that fence, as the rain was keeping off. I wish Kit would come home soon. I want her to meet Sandra’s mother. I want to know what she’ll think of her.’
So Sandra will be with us for another summer, Anna thought. With Julian you had to glean things, here and there.
A few days after the funeral, Emma went to the shrine at Walsingham. She was not sure why; her faith, if it still existed, was not something she displayed in public. But when you cannot cope with grief, she reasoned, you can do worse than observe the forms that have helped other people cope with it. At Felix’s funeral the minister had said that, even in the depth of misery, the familiar forms of prayer can lift the heart towards Christian joy. Very well, Emma thought grimly, let’s try it. Something is needed. For Ginny, there were undertakers. There was the question of probate. There was the business of organizing Mrs Gleave and the vol-au-vents. But for me there is nothing. An empty space. A lack of occupation. It is as if I have been told of a death that has taken place in a distant country. It is as if I have no claim on sympathy, because I have heard of the death of a person my friends do not know. There is no body. There is no corpse. Just this absence, this feeling of something unfinished.
Skirting Fakenham, taking the back roads towards the shrine and the sea, she found her car alone on the road. Across the flat fields towers spiked the snow-charged sky, the clouds pregnant and bowed with cold; Norfolk is a land of churches, some open to the sky, their chancels colonized by nettles, their naves by blackthorn and brambles. In those not yet redundant, congregations dwindle; the Samaritans’ notices, flapping in the porches, attest to the quality and frequency of rural despair.
In Walsingham, the car park was empty. The streets were devoid of tourists and pilgrims, and the old buildings – half-timber and brick and stone, steep roof and Dutch gable – seemed to have moved closer together, as if the town were closing itself down for the winter. By the Anglican shrine, plaster saints looked out from shop windows: and woven saints, with tapestry eyes. Touches of gilt glinted here and there on a cardboard halo; postcards were for sale, and prayers printed in mock black-letter on mock scrolls. You could buy candles, which you might put to secular use; other windows displayed recordings of plainchant, and pots of honey in stoneware jars, and boxes of Norfolk Lavender soap. Walsingham tea-towels were on offer, jars of chutney, tins of shortbread, Earl Grey teabags in cod Victorian packaging; and there were herb pillows, Olde Englishe Peppermint Lumps, pot-pourri and fluffy toys, wall-plaques, paperweights and scented drawer-liners – all the appurtenances, in fact, that you would expect to find at an ancient pilgrim