“Good. And Georgia was happier at the end of it?”

“So much happier. He was very gentle with her.”

“Good. Well, he sounds like a fine chap.”

“He is a fine chap.”

“Well done anyway. Oh, my Sparrow. You don’t have any regrets, do you?”

“Regrets?” she said, surprised at the question. “Of course not. Unless it is that we weren’t together sooner. But then, we couldn’t have been, could we?”

“Not playing it your way, no. If it had been down to me, we’d have had sixty years together now, instead of six months.”

“I know, I know. But… we did the right thing.”

She sat smiling into the fire, remembering. She had been seventeen at the beginning of the war, Donald nineteen; she had loved him so much, and if anyone had told her she would fall in love with someone else, she would not have believed them; she would have said her heart was far too occupied, her future too settled. But Russell had been irresistible. She told him so now.

“I wasn’t, though, Sparrow, was I? You resisted me very well.”

“I know. But it was more… as you know, keeping faith with Donald. I suppose I might have changed my mind at one stage. But then, you know…”

“I know. The letters.”

The many letters from Donald, in a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy, all telling her that it was only knowing she was there, waiting for him, that was keeping him going at all.

“Yes. I couldn’t have failed him, Russell, could I?”

“I don’t believe you could. Being you.”

“And I was happy, and so indeed were you. And we have each other now. It’s been so perfectly lovely, these past months. At long, long last. Worth waiting for.”

“Worth it indeed… Now, Mary, do you think Rome and then Florence or the other way round? Remember we’ll have just spent a month in New York; I’ll have been working, so we’ll need a proper break. Maybe we should take a villa in the Tuscan hills and base ourselves there and then we can travel at our leisure; we could hire a driver… or we could take the train between the two; that sounds a lovely journey.”

“I think either would be very nice. You do have to do this month in New York, do you, working so hard? I’m sure Morton could manage with your being there for a shorter time…”

“Mary, we have a very big shareholders’ meeting at the beginning of April; it’s essential I’m there, and we have to prepare for that.”

“Yes, but Russell, dear, perhaps you don’t. You’ve been tired lately, even living down here and-”

“That’s purely because I had a touch of flu. I’m never tired normally, as you very well know.”

“Of course not, dear. Well… I think the villa sounds a wonderful idea. Although…”

“Yes?” Russell smiled at her. “I’m getting to know your ‘althoughs.’”

“Well, you know, we could just stay here. Spring in England is so very lovely, and I can’t imagine anything nicer than sitting in the garden and going for walks and just… well… just sharing all of it with you, hearing the birds-they sing so beautifully in the spring-oh, and I’ve been meaning to tell you, I think there’s a thrush nesting in the apple tree; I’ve been watching it, either Mr. or Mrs. Thrush, I’m never sure which, flying in and out, in and out with twigs… We’ll have to watch our wicked kittens; we don’t want any tragedies… And then we can see the bulbs come up-we don’t know what will grow where; it will be so exciting-and then there’ll be the blossoms on the trees in the orchard, and… But of course, if you’ve set your heart on Italy…”

“I think I have, dearest Sparrow. We have plenty of years to enjoy the English spring, and I do so want to see Italy with you. I…”

Mary was bending over her silks now, sorting out the blues and the greens; she was not looking at Russell, so she did not see his face suddenly change, did not see him momentarily thump at his chest, nor the fright in his eyes; nor did she notice that he was slowly slumping down in his chair; all she was aware of was an odd sound, halfway between a whimper and a gasp, and by the time she did look up, he was losing consciousness fast and she was never to know whether he heard her as she cradled his head in her arms and whispered again and again how much she loved him.

CHAPTER 53

It had been a stroke, they said: a massive haemorrhage in his brain. If he had recovered, he would have been paralysed, probably unable to speak. Or to smile, Mary thought-there would have been no more of that wonderful, quick, loving smile; or indeed of anything else that made him Russell: not just the brilliant blue eyes, the thick white hair, the beautifully kept hands, the proudly erect back; but the fast, almost urgent walk, the swift turn of his head, the way he sat lost to the world, visibly devouring books, the absurdly careful way he folded things-his table napkin, his scarf, the Wall Street Journal… how often had she teased him about that-the way he laughed, slowly at first, almost reluctantly, then throwing his head back and giving himself up to jokes, to amusement, to fun.

And his voice, not deep, quite light really, but very clear, calling her as he did a hundred times a day, for he liked to know where she was in the house, not so much to be constantly with her as to be able to find her if he needed to. “Where are you, Sparrow?” he would shout from the hall, the kitchen, his study, and she would answer him, quite impatiently sometimes, for she liked to do as she pleased, be where she wished… And what would she have given now, she thought, arriving home that first day from the hospital, arriving home to that quiet, dead house, to be summoned, called to account. Now she could wander where she would, from room to room, to the garden and beyond, and no one would care or need to know.

He had died peacefully and apparently happily, twenty-four hours after the stroke, with Mary holding his hand; she hoped above all things that he knew she was there. The nurses assured her he would.

She had sat by him almost all that time. “They don’t make them like that anymore,” one of the nurses said, looking at her small, upright figure, her eyes fixed on Russell’s face, and indeed they did not, the doctor had agreed; they were a special breed, her generation, with the courage to face down for six long years the worst that a savage enemy could do to them and still remain strong, generous, merry hearted.

When she finally became exhausted, they urged her to sleep, but she refused to leave the room, and they brought her a bed so that she could stay with him. She slept fitfully, woke every hour or so to make sure that he had not gone, and was afraid even to go to the bathroom they had made available to her.

“He won’t go without you, Mary,” the ward sister had said. “He’ll wait until you are back with him again; they do, I promise you.” But she didn’t believe her and each time came scuttling back into the room, fearful of not having properly been with him at this, their darkest hour together.

She had been told that hearing was the last sense to go, and she talked to him from time to time, told him how much she loved him, how happy she had been with him, how wonderful their few months together had been.

“I shall go to Italy, dearest Russell,” she said, “even without you. I will see it for you, all those wonders, as I know you would have wished. And I shall watch the spring garden grow and the apple trees blossom in the orchard, and when the baby thrushes fly I will know you are part of it all.”

Every so often his hold on her hand tightened and she would tense, thinking he was coming back to her; once he seemed to try to speak; once he half smiled. But in the end he left her, slipped away with a sigh and a long, long breath, and she knew it was over without having to be told, knew that she was alone now, alone in the room, alone in the world.