Aaron was not asleep)—he moved sideways along the table towards her, his shoulders hunched, one black eye glittering at her. ‘Nevermore,’ Emily Jesse said to the bird, with a certain grim wit, and reached into her leather pouch for another morsel for him. He sidled round, peering, and opened his beak. The bit of flesh, roasted but red-raw at the edges, with a slippery fringe of fat, went in, came out, was rearranged, and swallowed in a gulp. Emily watched the throat muscles push. The bird shook himself and looked at her, hoping for more. ‘You have terrible fierce crooked claws,’ Emily told him, touching his head with a finger. ‘You have left your mark on every good chair in this house. There is no virtue in you. We are old and tough and shabby, you and I.’ They had been bred to be generous in spirit. Resentment was ignoble, and Emily hoped she didn’t feel it. But she could never be wholly easy about the way in which Alfred’s mourning had overtaken her own. Had not only overtaken it, she told herself in moments of bleak truthfulness, had undone and denied it.
