Sugar and Other Stories by A. S. Byatt

through. I’m no use to you, am I?”
    The boy remained immobile, his head on one side, considering. The man stood up and walked towards him.
    “Please. Let me go. What are we, in this house? A man and a woman and a child, and none of us can get through. You can’t want that?”
    He went as close as he dared. He had, he thought, the intentionof putting his hand on or through the child. But could not bring himself to feel there was no boy. So he stood, and repeated,
    “I can’t get through. Do you want me to stay?”
    Upon which, as he stood helplessly there, the boy turned on him again the brilliant, open, confiding, beautiful desired smile.

THE NEXT ROOM
    The two young men in the front of the hearse had rolled up their shirtsleeves, very neatly, and opened the windows. They were basking a little, parked on the tarmac. You couldn’t blame them. It was so hot out there, incandescent you might say, if that were not an unfortunate choice of word. Joanna Hope, stepping out of the dark chapel into the bright sun, blinked tearlessly and looked at them with approval. They were sleekly and pleasantly alive. They had brought her mother to that place safely and would not be wanted to take her anywhere else. Behind her Mrs Stillingfleet plucked at her sleeve and said they must wait for the smoke. Mrs Stillingfleet’s eyes were wet and screwed-up, though not flowing. Behind Mrs Stillingfleet Nurse Dawes and the minister were both solemn and dry-eyed. They constituted the whole party.
    “The smoke,” echoed Joanna, not at first understanding, and then, catching up, affirmatively, “of course, the smoke.” The garden of remembrance stretched away enticingly in the bright light, still under arching boughs, bright with roses, crimson, gold and white. She had chosen Pink Perpetue to commemorate her mother, who had been very fond of pink, who had lain only ten minutes ago inside her satin casing clothed in a soft pink silk nightdress Joanna had once bought for her in Hong Kong, which she had always declared too good to wear. Joanna looked up at the sky above the chimney; a 1920s brick chimney, slightly cottagey. The sky was a hot dark blue and the air danced a little, reminding Joanna, inappositely, of the simmering heat on the North African desert where she had sat, by the hour, in a jeep, counting the intermittent traffic, six camels, two mules, three lorries, two land-rovers, sixteen tramping, burdened women. She remembered Mike’s wrist next to hers, holding the clipboard,gold hairs and sweat round the canvas strap of his watch. The smoke, creamy and dense, began to stain the still dancing blue. Joanna fancied she saw fine filaments of papery black in it. Her body shook with an emotion to which, firmly and with shame, she put a name. It was elation. It had been sweeping across her, intermittently and more and more strongly, ever since Nurse Dawes had woken her in the small hours to break the sad news. Her mother was free carbon molecules and potash. It was the end. She had dutifully given her mother a large part of her life, for which she had been castigated and thanked. Now it was over. It was the end. “She’s in a better place now, I know it,” said Mrs Stillingfleet, looking round at the silent rosy alleys. “She’s at peace.” Joanna nodded, not wanting to contradict. For herself, she was absolutely sure that there was no
better
place, that the end was the end. She thought Mrs Stillingfleet, who had borne her mother’s mocks and scorn and disparagement with almost saintly patience, might have been glad to think so too. She had told Mrs Stillingfleet that Molly Hope had left her λ500, which was not true; Joanna had suggested it and Molly had replied tartly that she hardly did enough to earn the very generous wages she received, let alone any posthumous bonus. Without Mrs Stillingfleet, and latterly Nurse Dawes, Joanna herself could not have gone on. She was also beholden to the Economic Development Survey, who had