Other People's Marriages [antikvár]

Chapter One IT WAS THE END of Octobcr. As London receded and the motorway bisected open country they saw the flamboyant colours of the trees. Autumn in the city was a decorous affair of fading plane trees and horse chestnuts, just one more seasonal window display, but here the leaves made fires against the brown fields and silvery sky. 'Look at it,' Nina said. 'There's no elegant restraint out here, is there.? That's real countryside. Where I belong now. How does the poem go.?' She knew it perfectly well, but she shifted cautiously through the layers of her memory that contained it. Memory could still play tricks on her, bringing her up against some scene or a view or simply some remembered words that would make her cry. She had cried more than enough for now. "'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,"' Patrick supplied for her. 'Yes, that's it.' The poem brought to mind completion, or rather the conclusion of some important cycle, and the slow but inevitable stilling of the blood and consequent decay that must come after it. Nina turned her head and stared out of the rear window as if she hoped to catch a last glimpse of London. There was nothing to be seen except the road, and the traffic, and the unreticent scenery. She had left London, and had not yet arrived anywhere else. It was as if the expansive world she had unthinkingly