“I’ve got to do a review.”
“What’s the book?”
“When you are in France, does a French river look different to you; French?”
“No, Miriam. It—doesn’t look different.”
He glanced for a moment shaggily from point to point of the sunlit scene and sat companionably down, turned towards her with a smile at her discomfiture. “What’s the book, Miriam? It’s jolly down here. We’ll have some chairs. Yes? You can’t write on a bench.”
He was gone. Meaning to come back. In the midst of the morning; in the midst of his preoccupations sociably at leisure. She felt herself sink into indifference. The unique opportunity was offering itself in vain. He came back just as she had begun to imagine him caught, up at the house, by a change of impulse. Or perhaps an unexpected guest.
“What’s the review?”
“The House of Lords.”
“Read it?”
“I can’t. It’s all post hoc.”