She smiled at Henry.

‘You are a very patient person,’ she said.

‘And you?’ he asked. ‘How will I describe you?’

‘I am someone,’ she said, ‘who has learned a great deal, having known very little.’

‘I wish I possessed some of your wisdom and your calm,’ he said.

‘You have much more. Your niece adores you, she thinks you are the finest gentleman. And so do I.’

‘It is the season for such compliments,’ he said.

‘William suffers sometimes. His dark dreams overwhelm him, and when I first learned that about him I wanted him away from me. I wished to be elsewhere when he seemed ready to give into the darkness. There was nothing I could do for him, but I have learned, just as the boys and Peggy have learned, that it does not take much to comfort him.’

Henry attempted to convey by his silence that he would listen to her with sympathy for as long as she wished to speak.

‘Peggy was a very difficult child,’ Alice went on, ‘and night after night she would scream when she was in bed as the light was turned off. And because we thought that she would have to learn to sleep in the dark we left her screaming. We thought that there was no earthly reason for it, but there was. A nun had assured her that her not being a Catholic would mean eternal damnation and she believed her. That was why she screamed. We realized that if we had asked her at the beginning why she was afraid, she might have told us.’

Henry moved to put more logs on the fire and they sat in a silence broken only by the mild sea wind and the crackling of the burning wood. Alice sighed. When Henry offered her a glass of port, she accepted. He poured one for her and one for himself, and, smiling gently, he handed her the drink.

‘When I went to my first medium,’ Alice said, ‘when I first met Mrs Piper, neither of us could make sense of the messages that came. And then one day, perhaps the third time, we were alone with her and concentrating very hard, she asked me if my father had committed suicide and I said that he had, and then she asked if my mother and I and my sisters were far away from him then and I said that we were. And she said that someone was desperately urging me not to be afraid, that it would not happen again and I was to disregard my fear, which made me want William miles away from me when I felt his desolation. I would not let him near me when the night closed in on him. I wanted him in London when his father died and I did not want him to return. Mrs Piper could never say who it was, but they were telling me that I was to bring him close and be calm with him and that nothing would part us then, nothing terrible would happen to us then.’

She looked at Henry across the room and smiled.

‘William will be fine now, he will be fine,’ she said. ‘In ways, it is easier for both of us when he is low, it is much more difficult when we are both in good sorts. We argue too much.’

They both looked into the fire. Henry guessed that it was after one o’clock in the morning.

‘Harry,’ Alice spoke very quietly, ‘there was something we did not say to you about Mrs Fredericks.’

‘You said that my mother is at rest.’

‘Yes, she is, Harry, but there was something which concerned her.’

‘About me?’

‘Something, yes. She asked me to come to you if you should need me. She did not wish you to be alone if you should fall ill.’

‘She watches over us, then?’

Alice swallowed as though she were holding back tears.

‘You will be the last, Harry.’

‘You mean that William will die before me.’

‘Her message was clear.’

‘And Bob?’

‘You will be the last, Harry, and I will come to you when you call for me. You will not be alone when you are dying. And I must ask you for nothing in return except your trust.’

‘You have that,’ he said.

‘Then I have given you her message. She wanted you to know that you would not be alone.’

When Alice returned to her bedroom to watch over William, Henry sat by the embers and pictured his mother as he had last seen her, the day after her death, her face in repose and lit by flickering candlelight, the idea of her love for him as an exquisite stillness as he sat in vigil; she was all noble and tender as his great protector and guardian. It did not surprise him in this dark house as the year came to a close that she would think of the end, as she had put such abundant energy into the beginning. The idea that she would not rest until he was at rest did not seem strange to him. He was humbled, and he felt afraid, but he was also grateful and ready for whatever might come now.

FOR NEW YEAR’S DAY, they invited Edmund Gosse to lunch. William had spent the previous few days in his study; his humour had returned and there was, Henry noted, a glitter in his remarks at the table. He discovered a short walk in Rye which he and Maximilian enjoyed and for several days in succession arrived back at Lamb House much refreshed, having spoken to several of the locals and having begun, he said, further to appreciate the topography of the place, the colour of the brick and the cobbles, and the manners of those he met. No mention was made of what Henry had witnessed in the bedroom.

Henry had not encouraged any visitors to Lamb House and had turned down all invitations, but when he said that he had received a letter from Edmund Gosse announcing that he would be in Hastings and could easily travel to Rye, William insisted that Gosse be invited and added several times how glad he would be to see him, not having done so for a very long time and being an admirer of his father’s work.

Once more, Alice and Peggy moved into action, involving Henry in much discussion about Gosse’s tastes and how they might pander to them. Alice had developed a set of jokes with Burgess Noakes which ranged from the quality of his footwear, of which she pretended to disapprove, to his haircuts, which she thought too severe. Burgess felt free now to inform her that Gosse had stayed at Lamb House many times and had had no reason to complain, but he enjoyed the fuss being made and entered into the spirit of the occasion, which Alice and Peggy tried to make as elaborate as possible while keeping everything simple, a formula of words which seemed to amuse them and which they rehearsed many times as they prepared the drawing room and the dining room and Burgess Noakes for the arrival of Gosse.

Henry explained to Peggy in the presence of her parents, much to their hilarity, that while Gosse himself was not great, he knew greatness when he saw it, and not only that but he knew the prime minister and the one before him as he would know the one after and the one after that. Peggy wrinkled up her nose and asked if he were old.

‘He is not as old as I am, my dear,’ Henry said, ‘and I am old indeed. In fact, the word ancient comes to mind. So let me say that he is less than ancient. But the main fact about Gosse is that he loves London more than he loves life. So when your father mentions the quiet intellectual life in Boston, he will not understand. The man who is tired of London is tired of life, that is his motto. So you, my dear girl, had better find a subject on which your father and our guest can agree.’

In the days after William’s recovery, Lamb House was turned into a club with many rules established by Peggy and Henry sometimes in consultation with Peggy’s parents, sometimes in opposition to them. Rule number one concerned Peggy’s bedtime which, Henry and she agreed, was extended to the same hour as the adults in the house, not only because of her semi-adult state, but because Peggy had discovered Charles Dickens, had devoured Hard Times in a matter of days and was now reading Bleak House. Rule number two governed Peggy’s right to leave the table once she had eaten the main course and take her dessert with her to whatever room in which she wished to continue her reading. Rule number three gave William the right to snore unmolested in any part of the house. Other rules allowed Burgess Noakes to wear whatever he liked on his feet, and gave Alice the right to dip her morning biscuit into her cup of coffee as long as nothing dripped onto the Duchess’s rugs, as Peggy called them. William insisted on a rule that would permit Henry to read a large two-volume biography of Napoleon without feeling guilty about wasting his time. All these rules were relayed to Alice’s mother in Cambridge and read by Peggy’s three brothers who were being looked after by her. Since they were all to sign the letter, Alice and Peggy had to adjudicate between William’s desire for many exclamation marks and drawings and Henry’s insistence that these be kept to a minimum.