was permitted one moss-green gown, which I adored because it seemed a dramatic adult colour. The endless fittings, which could have been a trial in the sullen heat, were pleasurable because Mama laughed and talked with the designers and cutters in a gay, charming, effortless manner she had not exhibited since Papa’s death. Only very occasionally did she fall silent in that preoccupied way that told me she was thinking of Papa. But to my relief, her mouth drooped only for a short time before she began to speak of some new bonnet she had seen, or the settee she was having designed for the large formal parlour.
There were times I felt guilty about my longing to see her smile and be happy, for I knew it could only come if she dwelt less on Papa, and to wish for that seemed a disloyalty to him. Yet with or without my wishing it, Mama was putting off her grief.
Once new furniture had been built, light and limed or painted white, Mama set about establishing a salon in our house that swiftly became the only gathering place for the few people of any elegance or wit. It was a court, and she its queen. It was not hard to establish herself in this way, for Mama’s skills in entertaining were formidable, having been instilled in her in a country where there were a thousand rigid rituals and archaic standards to be observed in even the smallest encounters. And of course there was her beauty and her charm. Naturally I did not attend the salons, but I was able to peep down the stairs, and occasionally a guest would be invited back in the daytime for tea, and I would be presented to them.
Then one day, during such a tea when a neighbour had come to call, Mama glanced out a window and the blood ebbed from her cheeks. Mama had the habit of seeing her thoughts more than the world, but her appearance was so altered that I glanced out the window too, half expecting to see nothing. But I saw passing a group of the tall, graceful, shadow-dark folk who were the natural and nomadic inhabitants of this land.
‘They have no sense of private property,’ I heard the neighbour observe tolerantly. ‘They think it odd or funny that we imagine we can own bits of the earth.’ I had heard this said before of the velvet people, and could not help but admire their philosophy. If one thought of it, the notion of owning land was no less absurd than the idea of owning a portion of the air.
These were wild velvet folk outside our window, clad only in their warm brown skin and loincloths. One never saw them like this in Dusty Town, as I had named it to myself. I watched the liquid grace of their walk and the light, strong way their feet grasped the parched earth; this close, I seemed to hear a music rising up from the land at their passing. I was so enthralled by this phenomenon that I forgot why I had looked out the window until I heard the neighbour ask Mama if she was unwell. I turned back and saw that she was still staring out at the velvet people with such a bottomless terror in her eyes that my heart began to pound.
‘What is it?’ I begged, coming to sit by her and take her hand, as the neighbour took an uncertain step away.
‘Mama!’ I shook her a little when she did not seem to hear me.
She shuddered and put a slender white hand to her throat and whispered, ‘It cannot be. Not here at the end of the earth . . .’
‘Mama?’ I cried, growing really frightened. She turned to look at me and I wished I had not spoken, for here was all the grief I had thought was gone. Then she clutched me to her, holding me so tightly that I could not breathe, and whispered fiercely that she would keep me safe. I struggled to disengage her hands and felt my cheeks flame at the thought of the neighbour observing what must seem to him a sudden fit of madness.
Somehow he was got rid of and Mama went to her bed, forbidding anyone to enter her room. I hovered about her door, frightened and confused by her relapse into grief and possessive terror. When night and a slight coolness came without any sign of her emerging,