Jacques van Alphen, the editor of Statement Art and a painter of renown from Amsterdam, whose emerging friendship I owe to my postcards, spent nearly a week with my mother and me in Reading. This weekend he met Lauren and the children, too. Earlier today he flew back home. Swarthy like his almost forgotten Spanish ancestors, a tad shy, Jacques can appear hard and stern at times, especially when art is in question, but his face softens and lights up whenever he smiles, which he does often enough, albeit at unpredictable intervals. On occasion, he would crack a disarming smile at a teasing question of mine, wave his hands in front of him as if to defend himself from imminent attack, and revert in protest to Dutch, which sometimes sounds like English of old: “Nay, nay!” Whenever my thoughts stray to his visit, to our long talks about art, I smile to myself and repeat after him, as I used to do while he was here: “Nay, nay!”