“I had never owned a vase in my life. During the way years, I had, of course, lived in nurses’ quarters, first at Pembroke Hospital, later at the field station in France. But even before that, we had lived nowhere long enough to justify the purchases of such an item.”

The vase symbolizes Claire’s transition from wartime to civilian life. She sees a vase in the window as a sign of domesticity—a kind of localized home life that she has not been accustomed to due to the transient nature of life during wartime. However, Claire also informs us that, even before the war, her life had been highly mobile, first living with her uncle who raised her and was a travelling scholar, and then with her husband Frank, who was a junior faculty member moving constantly from teaching position to teaching position. Finally, Frank has landed a stable position in Oxford, and Claire is for the first time in her life in the position to buy a vase for a more permanent home. However, as the reader soon finds out, Claire’s life is about to become anything but stable.

“‘But most divided lines are broken—yours is forked.’ She looked up with a roguish smile. ‘Sure you’re not a bigamist, on the quiet, like?’”

Reverend Wakefield’s housekeeper Mrs. Graham reads Claire’s palm and predicts the major change in life circumstances and romantic interest that is about to happen. She tells Claire that usually this means a person will have two marriages, but in Claire’s case the forked lines are still connected. Mrs. Graham interprets the unexpected change in marital status implied by Claire’s palm, which foreshadow Claire’s second marriage to Jamie.