The house, as it presents itself from the road, is like a house one might see on a jigsaw puzzle box, seasonally infested with tall hollyhocks. The kind one put together on a tea tray while recovering from the measles. We are in the Sussex countryside, not far from Glyndebourne. We are in Virginia Woolf country. Mrs Goldman is in her vegetable garden, but leaves it and comes over when she sees us. She puts down a gardener’s sieve containing potatoes and a lettuce and takes John’s hands warmly in her own.
‘Darling John,’ she says. ‘How truly lovely to see you. You’re as handsome as ever, but I have to tell you you are going grey.’ Her voice is a stylish combination of upper-class vowels and tongue-tied sibilants.
‘You’re pregnant,’ John says reproachfully, still holding her hands. ‘You were pregnant when I left.’ She smiles at him.
‘But not quite as pregnant as this, was I?’ she says. Jane Goldman has that indiscreet full-term bulge women get when the foetal head engages. She stands hugely in strong farmer’s wellington’s into which she has tucked some very old corduroy trousers. She has these tied together under a man’s shirt with pyjama cords because the zip won’t come together over the bulge. Bits of hair are falling out of her dark brown plait. She has a face like a madonna. She wears a contained, ironic smile which makes dimples in her cheeks and is blessed with the bluest of eyes. A neglected Burne-Jones, she is, in wellingtons.
‘New babies have such lovely legs,’ she says in her own defence. ‘That’s an awfully nice pullover thing you’re wearing, John. What elegance you always bring to our establishment.’ John Millet has clad his torso in an impeccable sky-blue velour article with sleeves that blouse into ribbed wristbands.
‘This is Katherine,’ he says. Jane Goldman peers at me with her myopic blue eyes in the bright sunlight.
‘Hello there,’ she says, taking my hand and bestowing her smile upon me.
‘Why have you grown your hair?’ John says possessively. ‘This heavy Teutonic hairstyle. I don’t like it.’ Jane laughs.
‘It’s not a hairstyle. It’s neglect,’ she says. ‘Go and admire my daughter. Rosie is over there. Isn’t she nice?’ She gestures to where her leggy, dark nine-year-old and friend are making a tent with a garden bench and a collection of dusty Persian rugs.
‘Your children are dragging your heirlooms in the mud,’ John says. Jane surveys her worldly goods with marvellous indifference.
‘Any such heirlooms you see are what my mother sneaks out of the shed,’ she says. ‘How are you, John? Did you have a lovely time?’ John doesn’t talk about himself. He prefers forms and artefacts.
‘You never came to see me in Rome,’ he says. She smiles at him tolerantly.
‘Have you stopped to think of the cost of getting the Goldmans to Rome?’ she says. ‘Anyway, Jake likes day trips to Worthing. He doesn’t like holidays abroad.’
‘Worthing smells of seaweed,’ John says. ‘Your husband is mad. You could have left him at home.’
‘You should be so lucky,’ she says. ‘And aren’t all the best people mad?’
‘Your garden is better than ever,’ he says, taking in the lovely wildness of self-seeding flowers.
‘I give it no attention,’ she says. ‘I spend all my time among the cabbages these days. I’ve been having words with Jake about it this morning as a matter of fact. He says I give it too much of my time.’ She laughs briefly. ‘What he means is that he needs a proper wife who will type his manuscripts and listen to him carping over the Sunday papers.’ John smiles.
‘How is Jake?’ he says.
‘He couldn’t be better,’ she says, making the admission sound like a conspiracy. ‘I would say things were going rather well for him. He won’t admit it to you of course. He’s such a posturing old bastard. He likes to suffer in public. He is spending the weekend grumbling over his proofs. He’s taking his new book to London tomorrow.’ John clearly finds reassurance in the fact that his friends are unchanged. He needs them to be unchanged.
‘Let’s go in,’ she says. ‘He’ll be very glad to see you.’
‘And your children?’ John says as we walk slowly towards the house.
‘The children are lovely,’ she says. ‘Roger and Jont are giants with deep voices and big feet. Roger is about somewhere. Jonathan is fishing as always but he’ll appear at lunchtime. They’re much the same really. Roger is gorgeous and Jonathan is trouble. Equally gorgeous, but trouble. Rosie is a dear little creature, but idle and spoilt. I believe she has the art of making herself pleasing to men,’ she says. ‘Jacob at any rate is charmed by her. She does nothing but swim and turn cartwheels. The babies are delightful. They’re no more bother than a pair of kittens. Neither of them can count to ten. Do you remember Roger at four, John? How he discovered Infinity while standing at the window counting MGs? It struck him suddenly that numbers could go on for ever. Do you remember how Jacob made us go out and spend the milk money on sticky buns to celebrate? Weren’t we daft?’
‘I’ve always felt indebted to Roger,’ John says, gallant and gently humorous. ‘He told me when he was three that the sperm whale enjoyed occasional snacks of small shark and I have never forgotten.’
‘He read all those remarkable dinosaur books,’ Jane says. Roger Goldman has recently won an Observer competition, it appears, with a bogus essay in natural history arguing that the earth is flat. John makes a reference to this which pleases his mother. He has seen it in the Observer, which was of course available to him in Rome. John Millet pronounces his name like the grain, not like the painter. It typifies his air of well-bred understatement. He has clearly been expressing his love for Jane Goldman in courtly tributes these twenty years.