But in fact it goes on a little longer, by five or ten minutes, and this is the part she cannot tell Blanche. It goes on long enough for her, the woman, to drop a hand casually on to the bedcover and begin to stroke, ever so gently, the place where the penis, if the penis were alive and awake, ought to be; and then, when there is no response, to put the covers aside and loosen the cord of Mr Phillips's pyjamas, old-man's flannel pyjamas such as she has not seen in years – she would not have guessed one could still find them in shops – and open up the front and plant a kiss on the entirely flaccid little thing, and take it in her mouth and mumble it until it stirs faintly with life. It is the first time she has seen pubic hair that has turned grey. Stupid of her not to have realized that happens. It will happen to her too, in due course. Nor is the smell pleasant either, the smell of an old man's nether parts, cursorily washed.

Less than ideal, she thinks, withdrawing and covering old Mr Phillips up and giving him a smile and patting his hand. The ideal would be to send in a young beauty to do it for him, a fille de joie with the plump new breasts old men dream about. About paying for the visit she would have no qualms. A birthday present, she could call it, if the girl wanted an explanation, if going-away present were too chilling a name. But then, once you are past a certain age everything is less than ideal; Mr Phillips might as well get used to that. Only the gods are for ever young, the inhuman gods. The gods and the Greeks.

As for her, Elizabeth, crouched over the old bag of bones with her breasts dangling, working away on his nearly extinct organ of generation, what name would the Greeks give to such a spectacle? Not eros, certainly – too grotesque for that. Agape? Again, perhaps not. Does that mean the Greeks would have no word for it? Would one have to wait for the Christians to come along with the right word: Caritas?

For that, in the end, is what she is convinced it is. From the swelling of her heart she knows it, from the utter, illimitable difference between what is in her heart and what Nurse Naidoo would see, if by some mischance Nurse Naidoo, using her pass key, were to fling open the door and stride in.

That is not what is uppermost in her mind, however – what Nurse Naidoo would make of it, what the Greeks would make of it, what her mother on the next floor up would make of it. What is uppermost is what she herself will make it of, in the car on the way home, or when she wakes up tomorrow morning, or in a year's time. What can one make of episodes like this, unforeseen, unplanned, out of character? Are they just holes, holes in the heart, into which one steps and falls and then goes on falling?

Blanche, dear Blanche, she thinks, why is there this bar between us? Why can we not speak to each other straight and bare, as people ought who are on the brink of passing? Mother gone; old Mr Phillips burned to a powder and scattered to the winds; of the world we grew up in, just you and I left. Sister of my youth, do not die in a foreign field and leave me without an answer!