Joyce turned up next morning. Evidently she had been sleeping rough. In the bathroom Sarah picked the grimy clothes off the floor as Joyce stepped out of them. She was as thin as an asparagus shoot, and like one she was dead white, but with bluish marks on her arms and thighs. Censoring every word of advice or criticism as it arrived on her lips, Sarah put the clothes in the washing machine, put Joyce in the bath, made tea, made toast, cut up an orange.
Joyce wore her aunt's best white silk dressing gown and sat drinking tea. She did not eat. When asked what she had been doing, she replied, 'This and that.' Then, after a silence, she seemed to remind herself that conversation was expected, and asked Sarah like a little child, 'And what are you doing, Auntie?' Heartened by this evidence of an interest in other people, Sarah described the play and told the story. Joyce sat listening, obviously with difficulty. Then, putting on a dozen years in a moment, she jeered, 'I think they were all nuts.'
'I wouldn't argue with that.'
'You said it was recent?'
Somewhere about middle age, it occurs to most people that a century is only their own lifetime twice. On that thought, all of history rushes together, and now they live inside the story of time, instead of looking at it from outside, as observers. Only ten or twelve of their lifetimes ago, Shakespeare was alive. The French Revolution was just the other day. A hundred years ago, not much more, was the American Civil War. It had seemed in another epoch, almost another dimension of time or of space. But once you have said, A hundred years is my lifetime twice, you feel as if you could have been on those battlefields, or nursing those soldiers. With Walt Whitman perhaps.
'It wasn't very long ago,' said Sarah.
Joyce was about to protest but decided to behave tactfully, as her aunt so often did with her.
'You said it was going to be in France?'
'Yes. Next week.'
'And how long will you be away?'
'About three weeks.'
At once Joyce showed all the symptoms of panic. ' Three weeks.'
'But Joyce, you disappear for months at a time.'
'But I know where you are, you see?'
'You never think that we worry about you?'
'But I'm all right, really.'