The cause of my own immediate happiness took the beer can from my hand and drank what was left of it. “Now go and get the groceries,” she ordered me.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jenny still has some scars, but, except for those on her hands, you have to know her very well to find them, and I don’t have any intention of anyone but me knowing my wife that well. Sir Leon would like her to go back to Switzerland for more cosmetic surgery on her hands, but I’ve said no, not till our year’s cruise is over, and Sir Leon is learning that an earl outranks a mere knight. Not that he minds, because he has his picture. The Stowey Sunflowers hang in his gallery and one day I’ll go and see them again, but not yet. I have a wife, and a boat, and a great happiness, though sometimes, when I look up to find a star among the million points of light, I remember a friend and his laughter, and I wonder just how it all went so wrong.
But things go right, too. It’s called love, and even if it does mean eating salad sometimes, it works. And Sunflower’s a proper boat, and Jennifer’s happy again, and the oceans are huge, and love seems to touch even the mundane with gladness; in short, it’s a proper job.