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candid attic somewhere, all white and empty, looking over trees. Then I finger the gold brocade curtains, with their tasselled gold tie-backs, and I think how my mother used to stand at the window, waiting for my father to come home. And then I know that I will stay.
    Once Nick and Alix brought me home, when I first knew them. They looked around in amazement and I thought appreciation, for it is very comfortable. But when they saw the birds, recently washed by Nancy, they caught each other’s eye and within seconds they were helpless with laughter, staggering, leaning in pain over the backs of the awful hide chairs. They would sober up, only to start off again, and I had to join in, although I felt … What did I feel? That I had not really looked at them before, had not noticed how absurd they were. I put them into a drawer when Nick and Alix had left, but Nancy took them out again the following morning and gave them an extra wash. I said nothing.
    Otherwise Alix seemed very keen on the flat, although she gave way to another paroxysm when she asked for an ash-tray and was given one in green malachite with a green malachite cockatoo on the rim, gazing down as if into a tropical lagoon. As I don’t smoke myself I had never really noticed it, but I did manage to relegate it to the back of a cupboard after they had gone. Nancy found it, of course, and it was soon back in its old place.
    Alix and Nick, unexpected, unhoped for visitors, bringing me home in the car after I had had dinner with them, and invited in with a mixture of eagerness and panic. They, mildly curious, always willing to be diverted, consented to sit down but not to remove coats, scarves, gloves. It was not a real visit at all. They would not let me pour them a drink or make more coffee, andyet they lingered, frankly taking an inventory. ‘I’m interested in people’s houses,’ said Alix. ‘I used to have a very beautiful one of my own.’ At which she heaved a sigh, and pulled out her cigarettes and her lighter. ‘Don’t, darling,’ Nick commiserated, but at that moment I tendered the cockatoo ash-tray and provided a timely diversion. We all joined in her laughter, grateful to her for having raised her spirits again. I saw, even then, that Nick was perpetually on the watch for a change in her mood, and I thought how fortunate she was.
    Pulling herself together with an effort which made her seem more authoritative than usual, Alix said it was ridiculous my having all this space, and that I should put Nancy into a home and take their spare room, which they were always thinking of letting in order to bring in some extra money. She said they could keep an eye on me that way, and I am thinking about it, although Nancy is a problem, and I have said nothing to her yet. Alix became quite excited when she saw the large bathroom with its pale green thirties’ tiles and the bath which is so much bigger than theirs. Indeed, the whole flat is more their size than mine, as Alix said, and became impatient when I said that I preferred theirs. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to live there,’ she said bitterly. ‘And anyway you’ve only seen it once.’ Nick always gets unhappy when she starts on about their flat, and said, ‘Darling, why don’t you ask Fanny to sell you her flat, then she could take ours. It’s more her size.’ This form of indirect speech struck me as odd; basically there was no reason why he could not have put this question himself. But of course he doesn’t really want to move; he just wants to make her happy. Her eyes narrowed, as they always do when mention is made of either buying or selling. She does mind it so dreadfully that she has come down in the world, as she says, pulling a comically tragic face, and that her family’s estate in Jamaica has been sold topay debts. When money is mentioned she draws her fur coat around her and shivers, for she remembers how she never spent a winter in England until she learned the facts of