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'I tore my body that its wine could cover Whatever could recall the lip of lover… ' well, what else?

Yet Henry was in love with her. And Andrew. Bill had been, in his way. What were they in love with? And here she could not suppress the thought: In a group of chimps, the senior female is sexually very popular. Better look at it like that.

In the — fortunately — dimmish light into which she moved this or that part of her anatomy, her body looked tender, comfortable, her arms of the kind that go easily round those in need of arms. Joyce, for instance. That poor little grub, before she had grown into a young woman, was ready at the hint of an invitation to curl up inside arms that were nearly always Sarah's. Where she at once put her thumb in her mouth. Even now, anyone with eyes had to see that invisible thumb forever in her mouth. The world is full of people, invisible to anyone but their own kind (it takes one to know one), who live with their thumbs in their mouths. Sarah knew what had knocked the thumb out of her own mouth: the need to bring up two young children with little money and no father for them.

Henry? A father if there ever was one. Perhaps to Henry she was the good mother. Everything about him proclaimed that what he had had to fight his way out of was something as focused as a demented female cat (driven mad, of course, by circumstances and therefore in no way to blame), who is capable of biting her kittens to death, or walking finally away from them, or killing them with kindness. Something obdurately hostile had set him in a trajectory away, until he had turned to face it at last, taking into his arms the child — himself — like a shield… thoughts of Henry shuttled in her head, mixing and matching likenesses, coincidences, memories, creating the invisible web that is love, visible — sometimes for years — only in glances like caresses or silences like hands touching.

Sarah looked in the mirror.

It was time for:

I think I heard the belle We call the Armouress Lamenting her lost youth, This was her whore's language…

There are two phases in this illness. The first is when a woman looks, looks closer: yes, that shoulder; yes, that wrist; yes, that arm. The second is when she makes herself stand in front of a truthful glass, to stare hard and cold at an ageing woman, makes herself return to the glass, again, again, because the person who is doing the looking feels herself to be exactly the same (when away from the glass) as she was at twenty, thirty, forty. She is exactly the same as the girl and the young woman who looked into the glass and counted her attractions. She has to insist that this is so, this is the truth: not what I remember — this is what I am seeing, this is what I am. This. This.

But the second stage was still some weeks away.

Sarah looked in the mirror, flattering what she saw, censoring out what could not be flattered, and she thought of Henry and allowed herself to melt with tenderness. But the tenderness was a tightrope, with gulfs under it. She might allow herself to dream of Henry's embraces, but at once her mind put her situation into words, and it was the stuff of farce and merited only a raucous laugh. A woman in her mid-sixties, in love with a man half her age… imagine how she would have described that aged twenty. Or even thirty. (She could see her own young face, derisive, cruel, arrogant.) No use to say, But he is in love with me. He wanted to be in bed with her, certainly, and if he did come into her bed it would be passion, most certainly, but — she faced this steadily, though it hurt quite horribly — with him there would be, too, curiosity. What is it like having sex with a woman twice my age? And was she going to say to this lover, 'I haven't slept with a man for not far off twenty years? A space of time which seems nothing at all to me (you will have heard, of course, how time accelerates with the years, and might even have experienced the beginnings of this process), but to you it will seem very long, almost two- thirds of your life.' Not even she — whose careless frankness in matters of love had more than once done her harm — would say that to a man. Yet she would be thinking it: It is twenty years since I held a man in my arms. For the first time in her life she would ask to have the light off, while knowing there would be that moment — this went with his character, which was impulsive, impetuous, and sensual — when he would switch on the light to see this body he wanted. And — who knew? — perhaps the ageing body would turn him on. (What turned people on was, obviously, not easily predicted.) But did she want that? Really? She, who had been (she now saw, with astonishment at what she had taken for granted) so confident that she had never felt a second's anxiety about what a man might see as he caressed, kissed, held… where was her pride? But the thought of his arms banished pride; she had only to think of the look in his eyes, the immediate sweetness of their intimacy… she wanted him, all right, everything she could imagine, even if the experience was bound to include the moment when the light went oh and that quick — because tactful — and curious stare encompassed her body. And even now she could not prevent herself muttering: It's a damn sight better than most bodies you see around… these violent exchanges with herself were wearing her out. She kept almost dropping off to sleep from the excessive dragging fatigue of conflict, and yet she was as afraid of going to sleep as she had been in Belles Rivieres, because of what she would find in her sleep.

The company assembled in the theatre area to see the new amenities. Five hundred chairs crammed the space where people had stood or strolled or sat on grass. The great trees, the shrubs under them, the flowers massed around the stage, the grass, seemed surfeited with that summer's sun, and Julie's face and Molly's and Susan's, as Julie, appeared everywhere. The new building, just finished, could only dismay on a first viewing. Well-used buildings seemed inhabited: you enter welcoming or neutral rooms and spaces. While the exterior of this place seemed concerned to make as little of a statement as possible, was surrounded by screening shrubs, some newly planted, the interior was bleak, grey, echoing, and each room was a vacuum.

In two hours' time would be the dress rehearsal, and the company would have to act with confidence, though they had not performed in this setting before, but they assured each other the experience in Belles Rivieres would see them through and the new players would find themselves supported. And it was only a rehearsal, with an invited audience. At seven everyone went to the big house, where Elizabeth and Norah had a buffet supper for them. The two women stood behind tables in a room that could have given hospitality to players and musicians any time during the last four centuries. They were enjoying this role of theirs, serving the Muse, or Muses. They wore smart dresses under aprons, explaining the amenities of the house, playing both hostess and servant, while welcoming so many people and serving food adapted to this hot evening. They did not say why Stephen was absent. The host was not there.