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me,” Aunt Augusta said, “are you still at the bank?”

      “No, I retired two years ago.”

      “Retired? A young man like you! For heaven’s sake, what do you do with your time?”

      “I cultivate dahlias, Aunt Augusta.” She gave a regal right-about swing of a phantom bustle.

      “Dahlias! Whatever would your father have said!”

      “He took no interest in flowers, I know that. He always thought a garden was a waste of good building space. He would calculate how many bedrooms one above the other he could have fitted in. He was a very sleepy man.”

      “He needed bedrooms for more than sleep,” my aunt said with a coarseness which surprised me.

      “He slept in the oddest places. I remember once in the bathroom…”

      “In a bedroom he did other things than sleep,” she said. “You are the proof.”

      I began to understand why my parents had seen so little of Aunt Augusta. She had a temperament my mother would not have liked. My mother was far from being a puritan, but she wanted everything to be done or said at a suitable time. At meals we would talk about meals. Perhaps the price of food. If we went to the theatre we talked in the interval about the play – or other plays. At breakfast we spoke of the news. She was adept at guiding conversation back into the right channel if it strayed. She had a phrase, “My dear, this isn’t the moment…” Perhaps in the bedroom, I found myself thinking, with something of Aunt Augusta’s directness, she talked about love. That was why she couldn’t bear my father sleeping in odd places, and, when I developed an interest in dahlias, she often warned me to forget about them during banking hours[5].

      By the time we had finished our walk the ashes were ready for me. I had chosen a very classical urn in black steel, and I would have liked to assure myself that there had been no error, but they presented me with a package very neatly done up in brown paper with red paper seals which reminded me of a Christmas gift.

      “What are you going to do with it?” Aunt Augusta said.

      “1 thought of making a little throne for it among my dahlias.”

      “It will look a little bleak in winter.”

      “I hadn’t considered that. I could always bring it indoors at that season.”

      “Backwards and forwards. My sister seems hardly likely to rest in peace.”

      “I’ll think over it again.”

      “You are not married, are you?”

      “No.”

      “Any children?”

      “Of course not.”

      “There is always the question to whom you will bequeath my sister. I am likely to predecease you.”

      “One cannot think of everything at once.”

      “You could have left it here,” Aunt Augusta said.

      “I thought it would look well among the dahlias,” I replied obstinately, for I had spent all the previous evening designing a simple plinth in good taste.

      “À chacun son goût[6]”, my aunt said with a surprisingly good French accent. I had never considered our family very cosmopolitan.

      “Well, Aunt Augusta,” I said at the gates of the crematorium (I was preparing to leave, for my garden called), “it’s been many years since we saw each other… I hope…” I had left the lawn-mower outside, uncovered, and there was a hint of rain in the quick grey clouds overhead. “I would like it very much if one day you would take a cup of tea with me in South wood.”

      “At the moment I would prefer something stronger and more tranquillizing. It is not every day one sees a sister consigned to the flames. Like La Pucelle[7].”

      “I don’t quite…”

      “Joan of Arc[8].”

      “I have some sherry at home, but it’s rather a long ride and perhaps…”

      “My apartment is at any rate north of the river,” Aunt Augusta said firmly, “and I have everything we require.” Without asking my assent she hailed a taxi. It was the first and perhaps, when I think back on it now, the most memorable of the journeys we were to take together.

      Chapter 2

      I was quite right in my weather forecast. The grey clouds began to rain and I found myself preoccupied with my private worries. All along the shiny streets people were putting up umbrellas and taking shelter in the doorways of Burton’s, the United Dairies, Mac Fisheries or the ABC. For some reason rain in the suburbs reminds me of a Sunday.

      “What’s on your mind?” Aunt Augusta said.

      “It was so stupid of me. I left my lawn-mower out, on the lawn, uncovered.”

      My aunt showed me no sympathy. She said, “Forget your lawn-mower. It’s odd how we seem to meet only at religious ceremonies. The last time I saw you was at your baptism. I was not asked but I came.” She gave a croak of a laugh. “Like the wicked fairy.”

      “Why didn’t they ask you?”

      “I knew too much. About both of them. I remember you were far too quiet. You didn’t yell the devil out. I wonder if he is still there?” She called to the driver, “Don’t confuse the Place with the Square, the Crescent or the Gardens. I am the Place.”

      “I didn’t know there was any breach. Your photograph was there in the family album.”

      “For appearances only.[9]” She gave a little sigh which drove out a puff of scented powder. “Your mother was a very saintly woman. She should by rights have had a white funeral. La Pucelle,” she added again.

      “I don’t quite see… La Pucelle means – well, to put it bluntly, I am here, Aunt Augusta.”

      “Yes. But you were your father’s child. Not your mother’s.”

      That morning I had been very excited, even exhilarated, by the thought of the funeral. Indeed, if it had not been my mother’s, I would have found it a wholly desirable break in the daily routine of retirement, and I was pleasurably reminded of the old banking days, when I had paid the final adieu to so many admirable clients. But I had never contemplated such a break as this one which my aunt announced so casually. Hiccups are said to be cured by a sudden shock and they can equally be caused by one. I hiccupped an incoherent question.

      “I have said that your official mother was a saint. The girl, you see, refused to marry your father, who was anxious – if you can use such an energetic term in his case – to do the right thing. So my sister covered up for her by marrying him. (He was not very strong-willed.) Afterwards, she padded herself for months with progressive cushions. No one ever suspected. She even wore the cushions in bed, and she was so deeply shocked when your father tried once to make love to her – after the marriage but before your birth – that, even when you had been safely delivered, she refused him what the Church calls his rights. He was never a man in any case to stand on them.”

      I leant back hiccupping in the taxi. I couldn’t have spoken if I had tried. I remembered all those pursuits up the scaffolding. Had they been caused then by my mother’s jealousy or was it the apprehension that she might be required to pass again so many more months padded with cushions of assorted sizes?

      “No,” my aunt said to the taxi-driver, “these are the Gardens. I told you – I am the Place.”

      “Then I turn left, ma’am?”

      “No. Right. On the left is the Crescent.”

      “This shouldn’t come as a shock to you, Henry,”

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