What should she do? As a beginning, get him into the shade. She said, 'Stephen, get up, you must get out of the sun.' He seemed surprised, but her hand at his elbow prompted him up and then, slowly, to the cool under the ash tree. His clothes were soaked with sweat.
What he needed was someone to sit by him all day and all night, bring him cups of this and that, cool drinks, tea, a sandwich of which he might perhaps eat one mouthful, while she — or someone — talked, saying anything to remind him he was in a world with other people in it, and these people did not all live in a world of suffering. No one performed this service for her, but then she was not and never had been anything like as ill as he was now. Her mind approached carefully, and in controlled terror, the thought that if the pain she felt was a minor thing compared to what he felt, then what he felt must be unendurable. For she had often thought she could not bear what she felt.
She went on sitting there beside him. She wiped the sweat off his face. She felt his hands to make sure he was not now chilled by the coolness under the tree. Sometimes she said, 'Stephen, it's Sarah.' She made casual and even random remarks, trying to keep his exterior landscape in place: 'Look, the horses are racing each other in that field.' 'That's going to be a pretty good crop of apples.' He did not look at her or respond. Not a hundred yards away was where she had seen him walking and talking with the neighbour Joshua. Now, that was Stephen, surely? That was what he was? A competent and serious man in command of his life? Again her emotions reversed, and she felt ridiculous being here at all.
After a couple of hours she said, 'Stephen, I'm going to get you a drink.' She went to the kitchen, directed there by women's voices. Shirley and Alison were making pastry tartlets for that evening's Ariadne on Naxos. They wore scarlet plastic aprons too small for their ample bodies. These two amiable, infinitely wholesome and reassuring women worked on either side of a table where heaps of flour, dishes full of eggs, and bowls of butter cubed into ice water made a scene of plenty, and they were giggling because Shirley had flour on her cheek, and Alison, trying to wipe it off, had brushed it onto Shirley's plump golden plait.
'Oh, sorry, Mrs Durham,' said Shirley. 'We're just being silly today.'
'I'd like to take Mr Ellington-Smith a drink,' said Sarah.
'All right. What? Orange juice? Apple juice? Pineapple juice? James likes that. Mango juice -1 like that.' And Shirley broke again into giggles.
'Oh, Shirl,' said Alison, 'I'm going to lock you up if no one else does. Help yourself, Mrs Durham. It's all in the big fridge.'
Sarah chose orange juice, thinking vitamin C was good for depression.
'Do you know where Mrs Ellington-Smith is?'
'She and Norah were around not long ago. I think they went upstairs.'
As Sarah left she heard the two young women start up again: giggles and teasing. It occurred to Sarah she was thinking of them as if they were two new-laid free-range eggs; and that she didn't want to know if one was a single parent and the other looked after an invalid mother.
Stephen had not moved a muscle. She said to him, 'Stephen, please drink this. You've got to drink in this weather.' She set the glass down on the bench, but he did not take it; she held it to his lips, but he did not drink.
She said, 'I'm going off for a little, but I'll be back.' She had to find Elizabeth. If not her, then Norah. It was mid- afternoon. She went up the steps at the front of the house, where Henry had stood looking after her on that last morning, and into the hall, and then into the room where the company had had their buffet meals, and through the room where the family ate informal meals, and then into the back part of the house, not to the main staircase, but the one where she had seen Stephen's James stand to gaze out at the tree as if it were a friend. She went on up past that landing to a room that Elizabeth used as an office. She had to force herself to knock, because she was afraid of Elizabeth: not her anger, but her incomprehension. And what was she, Sarah, going to say? 'I'm worried about Stephen — you know, your husband.' And what would Elizabeth say? 'Thank you so much, Sarah. It is kind of you.'
No reply. She heard voices. Yes, they were Elizabeth's and Norah's voices. It occurred to her that not only Elizabeth's office but her sitting room and her and Norah's bedroom were up here. She had never been into these rooms. There was a wide corridor with rooms off it, a pleasant corridor with old-fashioned floral wallpaper. It was dimly lit from a skylight and from the tall window halfway up, or down, the stairs. The scene was domestic, intimate.
She stopped halfway along the corridor. The strength was going from her legs. She leaned against the wall. Elizabeth and Norah were laughing. There was a silence, which Sarah was hearing as Stephen might, then more laughter, loud and conspiratorial, and the two voices were talking, and they went on in an intimate murmur, not from the office, or the sitting room, but from the bedroom. It was no use saying that Elizabeth and Norah often laughed, that women like laughing and make occasions and excuses to laugh, that often these two seemed like schoolgirls, enjoying babyish jokes. They laughed again. A small cold horror was invading Sarah, because she was hearing it through Stephen's ears. It sounded suggestive and ignorant and even cruel. But of course they were not laughing at Stephen. They were probably laughing at some small silly thing. They lay in each other's arms on the top of the covers, because of this hot afternoon, or side by side, and they laughed as the two women downstairs giggled at the flour on Shirley's hair. But the laughter hurt, squeezed her heart, as if it were her they mocked… if so, fair enough; she was a traditional figure of fun. Why did she take it for granted they did not ridicule Stephen? Perhaps they did. Stephen had said he avoided this part of the house when he knew Elizabeth and Norah were up here.
They must not, absolutely must not, find her here. She crept down the stairs. She stood on the back steps, making and discarding plans, such as that she would put Stephen into a taxi and take him back to London. She walked slowly through the heat towards the ash tree. When she turned a corner, a brick pillar tapestried with variegated ivy, she saw the empty bench and the untouched orange juice, where she had put it.
She called once — 'Stephen' — in a low voice. Then she went fast, half running, along paths, past fields, looking for him, thinking, I'll see him now… I'll see him when I get to that tree. But the benches they had sat on were all empty, and the glade where the shooting lesson had gone on did not now have a post sticking up in the middle. It was only a sunny hollow patched with shade from old trees. It was much later than she had thought, getting on for five. Soon the evening's audience would start arriving. She thought she might write notes for Elizabeth and Norah and leave them with the girls in the kitchen. Like this?: Dear Elizabeth, I came down because I was worried about Stephen. Perhaps you should… Or: Dear Norah, please don't be surprised I am approaching you and not Elizabeth, but I cannot help feeling that she…
In the end she walked out through the big gates, then along the road, caught a bus and then a train home.
That night she rang Stephen. Never had she felt more ridiculous and she had to force herself to do it. It was because on the one hand there were all those acres, the house, his life, his wife; there were his brothers and friends everywhere, his children, their schools, where he had himself been… against this mesh, this web, this spread and proliferation of responsibilities and privileges, she had to offer only: let me bring you here and look after you. But this sensible offer did not get made, because when he answered his voice sounded normal. It was slow, certainly, but he did not mumble, or lapse into interminable silences. He understood what she was saying and assured her that he would look after himself. 'I know you were here today. Did you come to visit me? If I was rude, I am sorry.' She told herself, Perhaps I am exaggerating it all.