‘Yes. That skating time.’
‘Lord, yes. Another world.’
Abruptly he stopped his soft playing; and Charlie came pressing upon them, making himself remembered above all else on that day.
‘Why stuff indoors?’ said Mariella. ‘Come out, Judith.’
She followed Mariella almost light-heartedly. After all, she was the sort of girl who could talk to people, even amuse them. She had proved it with Julian; and success with the others might reasonably be expected to follow.
A child was playing on a rug under the cedar tree, and his nurse sat sewing beside him. Judith recognized her as a figure out of the old days, a dragon called Pinkie, Mariella’s nurse who had become her maid. Wrinkled, stern, with the fresh cheeks and clear innocent expression of an old nurse, she sat guarding Mariella’s son.
‘May I please take him, Pinkie?’ said Mariella. ‘Pinkie won’t let me touch him as a rule.’
‘You’re so careless,’ she said severely; then recognised Judith and beamed.
Mariella lifted the child easily and carried him under one arm to where the group of young men had formed by the river’s edge.
Judith watched him with a painful interest and wonder. Here in front of her was Charlie’s child: she must believe it.