He tried to raise a chuckle, but it was a poor affair. There was a tinge of grey in the pink cheeks, and fine beads of sweat had appeared on the already moist-looking skin. Something was deeply wrong in Uncle George's world.

Aunt Deb looked very concerned about it, and as sheltering her from unpleasant realities was for him so old and ingrained a habit, he made a great effort to rally his resources. He took a sip of water and blotted his mouth on his napkin, and I saw the tremor in his chubby hands. But there was steel in the man under all that fat, and he cleared his throat and spoke normally enough.

He said, 'It quite slipped my mind, Kate my dear, but while you were out Gregory rang up to talk to you about Heavens Above. I asked him how the horse was doing and he said it had something wrong with its leg and won't be able to run on Thursday at Bristol as you planned.'

Kate looked disappointed. 'Is he lame?' she asked.

Uncle George said, 'I could swear Gregory said the horse had thrown out a splint. He hadn't broken any bones though, has he? Most peculiar.' He was mystified, and so, I saw, was Kate.

'Horses' leg-bones sometimes grow knobs all of a sudden, and that is what a splint is,' I said. 'The leg is hot and tender while the splint is forming, but it usually lasts only two or three weeks. Heavens Above will be sound again after that.'

'What a pest,' said Kate. 'I was so looking forward to Thursday. Will you be going to Bristol, Alan, now that my horse isn't running?'

'Yes,' I said. 'I'm riding Palindrome there. Do try and come Kate, it would be lovely to see you.' I spoke enthusiastically, which made Aunt Deb straighten her back and bend on me a look of renewed disapproval.

'It is not good for a young gel's reputation for her to be seen too often in the company of jockeys,' she said.

At eleven o'clock, when Uncle George had locked the study door on his collection of trophies, and when Aunt Deb had swallowed her nightly quota of sleeping pills, Kate and I went out of the house to put her car away in the garage. We had left it in the drive in our haste before dinner.

The lights of the house, muted by curtains, took the blackness out of the night, so that I could still see Kate's face as she walked beside me.

I opened the car door for her, but she paused before stepping in.

'They're getting old,' she said, in a sad voice, 'and I don't know what I'd do without them.'

'They'll live for years yet,' I said.

'I hope so- Aunt Deb looks very tired sometimes, and Uncle George used to have so much more bounce. I think he's worried about something now- and I'm afraid it's Aunt Deb's heart, though they haven't said- They'd never tell me if there was anything wrong with them.' She shivered.

I put my arms round her and kissed her. She smiled.

'You're a kind person, Alan.'

I didn't feel kind. I wanted to throw her in the car and drive off with her at once to some wild and lonely hollow on the Downs for a purpose of which the cave men would thoroughly have approved. It was an effort for me to hold her lightly, and yet essential.

'I love you, Kate,' I said, and I controlled even my breathing.

'No,' she said, 'Don't say it. Please don't say it.' She traced my eyebrows with her finger. The dim light was reflected in her eyes as she looked at me, her body leaning gently against mine, her head held back.

'Why not?'

'Because I don't know- I'm not sure- I've liked you kissing me and I like being with you. But love is so big a word. It's too important. I'm- I'm not- ready-'

And there it was. Kate the beautiful, the brave, the friendly, was also Kate the unawakened. She was not aware yet of the fire that I perceived in her at every turn. It had been battened down from childhood by her Edwardian aunt, and how to release it without shocking her was a puzzle.

'Love's easy to learn,' I said. 'It's like taking a risk. You set your mind on it and refuse to be afraid, and in no time you feel terrifically exhilarated and all your inhibitions fly out of the window.'

'And you're left holding the baby,' said Kate, keeping her feet on the ground.

'We could get married first,' I said, smiling at her.

'No. Dear Alan. No. Not yet.' Then she said, almost in a whisper, 'I'm so sorry.'

She got into the car and drove slowly round to the barn garage. I followed behind the car and helped her shut the big garage doors, and walked back with her to the house. On the doorstep she paused and squeezed my hand, and gave me a soft, brief, sisterly kiss.

I didn't want it.

I didn't feel at all like a brother.

On Tuesday it began to rain, cold slanting rain which lashed at the opening daffodils and covered the flowers with splashed-up mud. The children went to school in shining black capes with sou'-westers pulled down to their eyes and gum boots up to their knees. All that could be seen of William was his cherubic mouth with milk stains at the corners.

Scilla and I spent the day sorting out Bill's clothes and personal belongings. She was far more composed than I would have expected, and seemed to have won through to an acceptance that he was gone and that life must be lived without him. Neither of us had mentioned, since it happened, the night she had spent in my bed, and I had become convinced that when she woke the next morning she had had no memory of it. Grief and drugs had played tricks with her mind.

We sorted Bill's things into piles. The biggest section was to be saved for Henry and William, and into this pile Scilla put not only cuff links and studs and two gold watches, but dinner jackets and a morning suit and grey top hat. I teased her about it.

'It isn't silly,' she said. 'Henry will be needing them in ten years, if not before. He'll be very glad to have them.' And she added a hacking jacket and two new white silk shirts.

'We might just as well put everything back into the cupboards and wait for Henry and William to grow,' I said.

'That's not a bad idea,' said Scilla, bequeathing to the little boys their father's best riding breeches and his warmly lined white mackintosh.

We finished the clothes, went downstairs to the cosy study, and turned our attention to Bill's papers. His desk was full of them. He clearly hated to throw away old bills and letters, and in the bottom drawer we found a bundle of letters that Scilla had written to him before their marriage. She sat on the window seat reading them nostalgically while I sorted out the rest.

Bill had been methodical. The bills were clipped together in chronological order, and the letters were in boxes and files. There were some miscellaneous collections in the pigeon-holes, and a pile of old, empty, used envelopes with day-to-day notes on the backs. They were reminders to himself, mostly, with messages like 'Tell Simpson to mend fence in five-acre field,' and Polly's birthday Tuesday.' I looked through them quickly, hovering them over the heap bound for the wastepaper basket.

I stopped suddenly. On one of them, in Bill's loopy sprawling handwriting, was the name Clifford Tudor, and underneath, a telephone number and an address in Brighton.

'Do you know anyone called Clifford Tudor?' I asked Scilla.

'Never heard of him,' she said without looking up.

If Tudor had asked Bill to ride for him, as he had told me when I drove him from Plumpton to Brighton, it was perfectly natural for Bill to have his name and address. I turned the envelope over. It had come from a local tradesman, whose name was printed on the top left-hand corner, and the postmark was date-stamped January, which meant that Bill had only recently acquired Tudor's address.

I put the envelope in my pocket and went on sorting. After the old envelopes I started on the pigeon-holes. There were old photographs and some pages the children had drawn and written on with straggly letters in their babyhood, address books, luggage labels, a birthday card, school reports, and various notebooks of different shapes and sizes.