“What has happened to Mrs. Harter?” I asked, not caring to pursue the other issue just then.
“I don’t know. She’s quite clever enough to have found a job, and kept it, if she wanted to.”
“If—yes. But what about all the years since her marriage—Egypt, and the dances, and the cocktails, and the men who fell in love with her—you remember the stories that fellow Leeds told us?”
“She won’t go back to that. Bill spoiled all that for her, you know. And, anyway, she has no money now, has she?”
“Harter?”
“She isn’t going to see him again.”
“She’s deserted him?”
“If you care to put it like that, yes. I suppose one can say he’s been sent to prison and when he comes out he’ll not find his wife. She’s deserted him. But, on the other hand, she would also have ‘deserted’ him if he hadn’t been sent to prison at all. It isn’t because he’s gone to prison that she’s left him. I don’t know why I tell you these things in so many words, Miles. You know them as well as I do, really.”
I did, of course. Perhaps, like Claire, I understood more about Mrs. Harter than I actually wanted to understand.
She remains, to me, entirely unforgettable. I think of her when I go down Queen Street past the hideous bow window, set in yellow bricks, at which she sat and watched for Bill Patch. I think of both of them when I go up Loman Hill and turn round at the crossroads to look over the gate under the big beech tree. Again and again I find myself wondering where she is now and whether she will ever come back to Cross Loman.