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so by those who do not know it well?’
    ‘I can’t answer that.’
    ‘They may be familiar with the paintings of Whistler, or perhaps with Whistler’s statement that when evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is before us – then the wayfarer hastens home, and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her master – her son, in that he loves her, her master in that he knows her?’… shall I read you that deposition again, Mrs James?’
    Nenna was silent.
    ‘Whistler, however, lived in a reasonably comfortable house?’
    Nenna refused to give way. ‘You soon get used to the little difficulties. Most people like it very much.’
    ‘Mrs James. Did your husband, on his return to this country, where he expected to be reunited with his wife and family, like the houseboat Grace very much?’
    ‘A number of these houseboats, or disused barges, including Grace , are exceedingly damp?’
    ‘Mrs James. Do you like your husband?’
    ‘Mrs James. Did your husband, or did he not, complain that the houseboat Grace , apart from being damp, needed extensive repairs, and that it was difficult if not impossible for you to resume any meaningful sexual relationship when your cabin acted as a kind of passageway with your daughters constantly going to and fro to gain access to the hatch, and a succession of persons, including the milkman, trampling overhead? You will tell me that the milkman has refused to continue deliveries, but this only adds weight to my earlier submission that the boat is not only unfit to live in but actually unsafe.’
    ‘I love him, I want him. While he was away was the longest fifteen months and eight days I ever spent. I can’t believe even now that it’s over. Why don’t I go to him? Well, why doesn’t he come to us? He hasn’t found anywhere at all that we could all of us live together. He’s in some kind of rooms in the north-east of London somewhere.’
    ‘42b Milvain Street, Stoke Newington.’
    ‘In Christ’s name, who’s ever heard of such a place?’
    ‘Have you made any effort to go and see the plaintiff there, Mrs James? I must remind you that we cannot admit any second-hand evidence.’
    So now it was out. She was the defendant, or rather the accused, and should have known it all along.
    ‘I repeat. Have you ever been to Milvain Street, which, for all any of us know, may be a perfectly suitable home for yourself and the issue of the marriage?’
    ‘I know it isn’t. How can it be?’
    ‘Is he living there by himself?’
    ‘I’m pretty sure so.’
    ‘Not with another woman?’
    ‘He’s never mentioned one.’
    ‘In his letters?’
    ‘He’s never liked writing letters very much.’
    ‘But you write to him every day. That is perhaps too often?’
    ‘It seems I can’t do right. Everyone knows that women write a lot of letters.’
    To the disapproval and distaste of the court she was shouting.
    ‘I only want him to give way a little. I only want him to say that I’ve done well in finding somewhere for us to be!’
    ‘You are very dependent on praise, Mrs James.’
    ‘That depends, my lord, on who it’s from.’
    ‘You could be described as an obstinate bitch?’ That was an intervention from her conscience but she had never been known for obstinacy in the past, and it was puzzling to account, really, for her awkward persistence about Grace . In calmer moments, too, she understood how it was that Edward, though generous at heart, found it difficult to give way. He was not much used to giving at all. His family, it seemed, had not been in the habit of exchanging presents, almost inconceivably to Nenna, whose childhood had been gift-ridden, with much atonement, love and reconciliation conveyed in the