‘You can have a cheese omelette and some fruit-salad.’
‘Divine,’ said Jennifer, and leapt for joy.
‘You better have it in the shelter. The grass is wet.’
She wandered away, smoothing her black untidy hair. She would not smile. There was something arresting and romantic in the thin sallow dark-browed young woman, preserving her ugliness, her faint unrelaxing bitterness among all the laughing renewals of her surroundings.
‘I’d like to pick her up and shake her into life. Make her smile and be young. Make her cheeks pink and her eyes bright,’ said Jennifer. ‘If I were a man I’d fall bang in love with her. What is her name do you think? Jessica? Anne? Rosa?’
‘Miriam.’
‘Yes, Miriam.’
How the remembered insignificant words brought flooding back the irrecoverable quality of that day!
Tits and robins, perching all around them, and the golden-eyed dog, had helped them to finish their meal.
Then they had lain back in their chairs, staring and saying nothing. And then it was that Jennifer had turned and broken the silence with her quiet, inevitable-seeming declaration; and after it Judith had reached out to touch her hand for a moment; and continued to sit beside her and dream.