‘It’s all right, isn’t it – the cedar wasn’t blitzed?’

She was almost too startled to answer, but she managed to keep her voice level.

‘No, it’s all right. You’ll see it tomorrow.’

The puzzled look was intensified.

‘See what?’

‘The cedar. You asked if it was all right.’

‘Did I? Why shouldn’t it be?’ He went over to one of the china-cabinets and stood there. ‘Remember how Gran taught us to feel the glaze? You know, it’s an awfully odd thing – I can remember with the tips of my fingers just the difference between those plates and these cups. She wouldn’t ever let us touch them unless she was there. Funny to think how many people have touched them since they were made, and now they’re ours.’

When Mrs. Perkins summoned them to the dining-room it all seemed stranger still. Gran watched them from her picture on the chimney-breast. Amory’s masterpiece – Gran at ninety, with a lace scarf over the white curls she had been so proud of, a lace shawl over her blue dress, her face still vividly alive, her eyes still blue. She sat in her big chair and watched the room. To Katharine her look said, ‘You needn’t think you’ll ever get rid of me. I love you all too much.’ She watched them now.

All through the meal William talked eagerly, cheerfully, about what they would do in the garden.

‘I saw a place where they have rows of white lilies growing in front of a dark hedge – it looked pretty good. I thought we might try it down at the bottom against the arbor vitae. What do you think? I’m rather keen on lilies. There’s a good apricot-coloured sort too – they grow it a lot in the north – I’d like to have some of those. It’s a pity it’s too far for me to go up and down every day, but we could do weekends in the summer. I’d like to play about with the garden. I’ve got an idea for a pool – water-lilies and things. Wait till we’ve finished, and I’ll do a sketch for you.’ He looked at her suddenly and laughed. ‘It’s going to be fun, isn’t it?’

When he talked like that he might have been William Smith, or he might have been William Eversley, or a third William walking the debatable ground between the other two. She encouraged him to go on talking about the garden.

Afterwards, in the drawing-room, she played to him. When they went upstairs together he said the strangest thing of all. They had reached the last step, when he halted and stood there looking round him. The arm about her shoulders dropped to his side, the fair brows drew together. He said,

‘I had an awfully funny dream about this place. I can’t remember what it was.’

‘I shouldn’t try.’

He nodded, came up on to the landing, and turned again. His eye went from the eagle on the right-hand newel-post to the man on the left.

‘It was something about the Evangelists,’ he said slowly. ‘Something – about – ’ he gave a sudden laugh – ‘I know – I dreamt the man was Mr. Tattlecombe! Barmy – wasn’t it?’

Katharine said, ‘Quite.’

Still laughing, he put his arm round her and they kissed, and went on together into the room which was theirs, a long room over the drawing-room with windows looking down the garden to the cedar tree. It didn’t matter any longer which of the Williams he was, or which way the pendulum of his memory swung. He was the William who loved her and whom she loved. He was the William who had always loved her and would love her always.

William woke up to the sound of the grandfather clock on the landing striking eight. It had a very deep, solemn note, and he must have waked just before the first stroke, because he found himself counting up to eight. He knew he hadn’t missed any of the strokes, because it always did a sort of whirring grunt before it started to strike, and that was the first thing he had heard. He was lying on his right side, with the curtains drawn back from the row of windows which looked towards the garden. Two of them were open. The sky was a slaty grey. He could see the upper branches of the cedar stretched out over the garden like black wings. It isn’t dark at eight o’clock in January, but it isn’t really light.

He turned and saw Katharine lying beside him with her hands together under her chin and her hair loose on the pillow. Perhaps it happened at that moment, or perhaps it had really happened when he was asleep – he didn’t know, and it didn’t matter – but, turning like that and seeing Katharine, he was aware that what he had called the blank wall no longer existed. William Smith remembered William Eversley, and William Eversley knew all about William Smith. The two halves of his memory had come together and merged into one. The only thing that wasn’t clear was being in the German hospital. He remembered everything right up to the time they were bombed, and he knew he had been in a German hospital, because he remembered coming out of it labelled William Smith, but the bit between was as vague as a last year’s dream. It had probably been very unpleasant, and he decided that he could do very well without it. Meanwhile there were a lot of things to be sorted out. He began on them methodically.

There was Katharine – but that had come all right. It mightn’t have, because of course she might have married someone else. But she hadn’t. They had married each other all over again. Then there was Eversleys. That wasn’t so easy. He wondered what Cyril and Brett had made of the war years and the difficult changeover. He had no very exalted opinion of either of them when it came to business. Cyril simply hadn’t got it in him, and Brett didn’t bother. He might have had to of course, but William didn’t feel very sanguine about it. He wondered what they were going to say when they knew that he had come back. The family side of them would be pleased of course, but he thought the business side was going to take a bit of a knock. It didn’t make it any easier his being the youngest of the three, and by a good many years. And then he thought about Miss Jones. She came sliding into his mind as he had seen her at six o’clock on the evening of December the sixth. There wasn’t the faintest shadow of a doubt that she had recognized him. Or was there? He thought about that. He could remember what he used to look like, and he could remember what he looked like yesterday when he was shaving. He really hadn’t changed enough to give Miss Jones the benefit of the doubt. She had known him for at least seven years before he went missing. Frank Abbott had recognized him after only seeing him once. Davies – that was old Davies he had blundered into in the street – he had known him again, just like that, all in a flash under a street-lamp. Miss Jones must certainly have known him.

He had got to the point where it occurred to him that being dead for seven years and then coming to life again is bound to complicate other people’s affairs as well as your own, when Katharine stirred, threw out a hand, and woke.

Just for a moment she didn’t know where she was. Then William was hugging her and saying, ‘Darling, wake up – wake up quickly! I’ve remembered!’

She couldn’t think of anything to say. She felt dazed, and happy, and safe, because it didn’t really matter about anything as long as William was there. She said,

‘I am awake.’

‘You’re not! But you’ve got to be! Kath, I’ve remembered!’

She woke right up then.

‘Oh, darling!’

‘Yes. And it’s a pretty kettle of fish, isn’t it – what with our being bigamists – ’

‘We’re not!’

‘My child, we are. A bigamist is someone who goes through a form of marriage whilst a previous husband or wife is alive. I’m a previous husband, and you’re a previous wife, and we’re both alive, so we’re bigamists.’

‘We’re not! It doesn’t matter how often you marry the same person. I found out in a roundabout sort of way.’

His voice changed.