Clare laughs. “You’re doing it again!”

　“What?”

　“Telling me what I like.” Clare burrows into my lap with her feet. Without thinking I put her feet on my shoulders, but then that seems too sexual, somehow, and I quickly take Clare’s feet in my hands again and hold them together with one hand in the air as she lies on her back, innocent and angelic with her hair spread nimbus-like around her on the blanket. I tickle her feet. Clare giggles and twists out of my hands like a fish, jumps up and does a cartwheel across the clearing, grinning at me as if to dare me to come and get her. I just grin back, and she returns to the blanket and sits down next to me.

　“Henry?”

　“Yeah?”

　“You are making me different.”

　“I know”

　I turn to look at Clare and just for a moment I forget that she is young, and that this is long ago; I see Clare, my wife, superimposed on the face of this young girl, and I don’t know what to say to this Clare who is old and young and different from other girls, who knows that different might be hard. But Clare doesn’t seem to expect an answer. She leans against my arm, and I put my arm around her shoulders.

 

　“ Clare!” Across the quiet of the Meadow Clare’s dad is bellowing her name. Clare jumps up and grabs her shoes and socks.

　“It’s time for church ” she says, suddenly nervous.

　“Okay,” I say. “Um, bye.” I wave at her, and she smiles and mumbles goodbye and is running up the path, and is gone. I lie in the sun for a while, wondering about God, reading Dorothy Sayers. After an hour or so has passed I too am gone and there is only a blanket and a book, coffee cups, and clothing, to show that we were there at all.

　

AFTER THE END

　Saturday, October 27, 1984 (Clare is 13, Henry is 43)

　

CLARE: I wake up suddenly. There was a noise: someone called my name. It sounded like Henry. I sit up in bed, listening. I hear the wind, and crows calling.