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‘I’d say it’s more that she’s barely aware of other people. A bit un-nerving, really. But lack of imagination comes into it, certainly. Tony’s problem was with the landscape, though – does it have qualities of its own, or is it entirely what we think it is?’
    Tony said, a little peevishly, ‘You’re getting too philosophical for me. All this arose, if you remember, from how we get the best out of this place as a location. Was this where that drinking-cup was found, and a shield, or something?’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Kate. ‘It was a burial with particularly fine grave goods – one of the best Wessex finds. It hadn’t been robbed earlier, like so many, and everything was pretty well intact. There were grooved daggers, and the gold cup, and a lot of other stuff, rather spectacular really. They did two seasons on it, and it fitted in with anti-invasionist theory, which Dad was always very much in favour of, even before radio-carbon, really, as a display of wealth by prosperous local chieftains.’
    ‘The original Wiltshire squirearchy?’ said Tony. ‘And it was after that your father got the Directorship of the Council for Prehistoric Studies?’
    ‘Yes.’
    They came down from the hill in near-darkness, stumbling along a track become unreliable, full of stones and invisible holes. Kate clung to Tom’s arm; Tony, a yard or two behind, slithered on the mud once or twice and swore.
    ‘One thing,’ he said. ‘One can’t complain of being deskbound in this job. I’ll push off as soon as I’ve dropped you back and said my farewells – maybe we could meet up for a drink in London sometime?’

Chapter Four
    There were things that were within one’s powers and things that were not. There were small, private triumphs when something else became possible, or nearly possible. When one discovered that, using the invaluable little tong-device that Kate had found, one could pull up one’s stockings unassisted. That, by careful manipulation of the wheelchair and a judicious prior arrangement of cushions and chairs, one could get in and out of bed on one’s own. But there mocked and challenged, daily, those unattainable goals – the bathroom shelf, the switch on the standard lamp in the drawing room, Hugh’s study.
    Clarity of speech.
    If one could devise some way of getting the chair down those two steps, the study would be within bounds. A ramp? A couple of boards, securely placed; that old door that used to be in the garden shed…
    And Laura, staring, says ‘Why, for goodness’ sake, Nellie? If there’s something you want out of the study I can get it for you, you’ve only got to say. Do some work? But darling that’s the last thing you should be doing, you have to take things very very quietly, there is no need to force yourself to do anything. What work, anyway?’
    Sort out Hugh’s papers. Always wanted to see if that unfinished work on pottery sequences could be made publishable. Catalogue his dig notes.
    And Laura says, ‘Well, darling, I do think it’s quite unnecessary, and actually I’ve been thinking anyway of sending all the papers to the Council, the study needs a good clear-out. Do you,’ she goes on, ‘want anything from Marlborough this morning, I am going in to shop.’
    Laura has been in better spirits lately, better-tempered. She has these new friends, the Hamiltons, who have come to live in West Overton, a near-retirement Treasury official and his sleek ageless wife, very busy about the place, full of creditable enthusiasms and energies. Laura and Barbara Hamilton are wondering about opening up a little place to sell really nice lithographs and prints, Barbara knows a lot of people in the art world, she has an eye for that kind of thing. A percentage of the profits would go to the Nature Conservancy; the prints, though, will not be Peter Scott ducks, that was not thought amusing when one suggested it.

    Playing at shops.
    A long time ago, when we were children, we were