"You don't have a mother, then?" I asked.

Aurelius's face twisted momentarily. "Sadly-I have always wanted- Or a father, come to that. Even brothers or sisters. Anyone who actually belonged to me. As a child I used to pretend. I made up an entire family. Generations of it! You'd have laughed!" There was nothing to laugh at in his face as he spoke. "But as to an actual mother… a factual, known mother… Of course, everybody has a mother, don't they? I know that. It's a question of knowing who that mother is. And I have always hoped that one day- For it's not out of the question, is it? And so I have never given up hope."

"Ah."

"It's a very sorry thing." He gave a shrug that he wanted to be casual, but wasn't. "I should have liked to have a mother." "Mr. Love-" "Aurelius, please." "Aurelius. You know, with mothers, things aren't always as pleasant as you might suppose." "Ah?" It seemed to have the force of a great revelation to him. He peered closely at me. "Squabbles?" "Not exactly." He frowned. "Misunderstandings?" I shook my head. "Worse?" He was stupefied. He sought what the problem might be in the sky, in the woods and finally, in my eyes. "Secrets," I told him. "Secrets!" His eyes widened to perfect circles. Baffled, he shook his head, making an impossible attempt to fathom my meaning. "Forgive me," he said at last. "I don't know how to help. I know so very little about families. My ignorance is vaster than the sea. I'm sorry about the secrets. I'm sure you are right to feel as you do."

Compassion warmed his eyes and he handed me a neatly folded white handkerchief. "I'm sorry," I said. "It must be delayed shock." "I expect so." While I dried my eyes he looked away from me toward the deer park. The sky was darkening by slow degrees. Now I followed his gaze to see a shimmer of white: the pale coat of the deer as it leaped lightly into the cover of the trees.

"I thought you were a ghost," I told him. "When I felt the door handle move. Or a skeleton." "A skeleton! Me! A skeleton!" He chuckled, delighted, and his entire body seemed to shake with mirth. "But you turned out to be a giant."

"Quite so! A giant." He wiped the laughter from his eyes and said, "There is a ghost, you know-or so they say." I know, I almost said, I saw her, but of course it wasn't my ghost he was talking about. "Have you seen the ghost?" "No," he sighed. "Not even the shadow of a ghost." We sat in silence for a moment, each of us contemplating ghosts of our own. "It's getting chilly," I remarked. "Leg feeling all right?" "I think so."I slid off the cat's back and tried my weight on it. "Yes.

It's much better now." "Wonderful. Wonderful." Our voices were murmurs in the softening light. "Who exactly was Mrs. Love?" "The lady who took me in. She gave me her name. She gave me her recipe book. She gave me everything, really." I nodded. Then I picked up my camera. "I think I should be going, actually. I ought to try for some photos at the church before the light quite disappears. Thank you so much for the tea." "I must be off in a few minutes myself. It has been so nice to meet you, Margaret. Will you come again?" "You don't actually live here, do you?" I asked doubtfully. He laughed. It was a dark, rich sweetness, like the cake. "Bless me, no. I have a house over there." He gestured toward the woods. "I just come here in the afternoons. For, well, let's say for contemplation, shall we?" "They're knocking it down soon. I suppose you know?" "I know." He stroked the cat, absently, fondly. "It's a shame, isn't it? I shall miss the old place. Actually I thought you were one of their people when I heard you. A surveyor or something. But you're not."

"No, I'm not a surveyor. I'm writing a book about someone who used to live here."

"The Angelfield girls?"

"Yes."

Aurelius nodded ruminatively. "They were twins, you know. Imagine that." For a moment his eyes were far away.

"Will you come again, Margaret?" he asked as I picked up my bag.

"I'm bound to."

He reached into his pocket and drew out a card. Aurelius Love, Traditional English Catering for Weddings, Christenings and Parties. He pointed to the address and telephone number. "Do telephone me when you come again. You must come to the cottage and I'll make you a proper tea."

Before we parted, Aurelius took my hand and patted it in an easy, old-fashioned manner. Then his massive frame glided gracefully up the wide sweep of steps and he closed the heavy doors behind him.

Slowly I walked down the drive to the church, my mind full of the stranger I had just met-met and befriended. It was most unlike me. And as I passed through the lych-gate, I reflected that perhaps /was the stranger. Was it just my imagination, or since meeting Miss Winter was I not quite myself?

GRAVES

I had left it too late for the light, and photographs were out of the question. So I took my notebook out for my walk in the churchyard. Angelfield was an old community but a small one, and there were not so very many graves. I found John Digence, Gathered to the Garden of the Lord, and a woman, Martha Dunne, Loyal Servant of our Lord, whose dates corresponded closely enough with what I expected for the Missus. I copied the names, dates and inscriptions into my notebook. One of the graves had fresh flowers on it, a gay bunch of orange chrysanthemums, and I went closer to see who it was who was remembered so warmly. It was Joan Mary Love, Never Forgotten.

Though I looked, I could not see the Angelfield name anywhere. But it did not puzzle me for more than a minute. The family of the house would not have ordinary graves in the churchyard. Their tombs would be grander affairs, marked by effigies and with long histories carved into their marble slabs. And they would be inside, in the chapel.

The church was gloomy. The ancient windows, narrow pieces of greenish glass held in a thick stone framework of arches, let in a sepulchral light that weakly illuminated the pale stone arches and columns, the whitened vaults between the black roof timbers and the smooth polished wood of the pews. When my eyes had adjusted, I peered at the memorial stones and monuments in the tiny chapel. Angelfields dead for centuries all had their epitaphs here, line after loquacious line of encomium, expensively carved into costly marble. Another day I would come back to decipher the engravings of these earlier generations; for today it was only a handful of names I was looking for.

With the death of George Angelfield, the family's loquacity came to an end. Charlie and Isabelle-for presumably it was they who decided-seemed not to have gone to any great lengths in summing up their father's life and death for generations to come. Released from earthly sorrows, he is with his Savior now, was the stone's laconic message. Isabelle 's role in this world and her departure from it were summed up in the most conventional terms: Much loved mother and sister, she is gone to a betterplace. But I copied it into my notebook all the same and did a quick calculation. Younger than me! Not so tragically young as her husband, but still, not an age to die.

I almost missed Charlie's. Having eliminated every other stone in the chapel, I was about to give up, when my eye finally made out a small, dark stone. So small was it, and so black, that it seemed designed for invisibility, or at least insignificance. There was no gold leaf to give relief to the letters so, unable to make them out by eye, I raised my hand and felt the carving, Braille style, with my fingertips, one word at a time.

CHARLIE ANGELFIELD

HE IS GONE INTO THE DARK NIGHT.

WE SHALL NEVER SEE HIM MORE.

There were no dates.