“You’re back then,” she said. “Do you fancy a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you very much, Mrs. Ferrant. I had an awfully late luncheon.”

“Up above at L’Espérance?”

“That’s right.”

“That would be a great spread, and grandly served?”

There was no defining her style of speech. The choice of words had the positive character almost of the West Country, but her accent carried the swallowed r’s of France. “They live well, up there,” she said.

“It was all very nice,” Ricky murmured. She passed her working-woman’s hand across her mouth. “And they would all be there. All the family?”

“Well, I think so, but I’m not really sure what the whole family consists of.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Jasper and the children. Young Bruno, when he’s not at his schooling.”

“That’s right,” he agreed. “He was there.”

“Would that be all the company?”

“No,” Ricky said, feeling cornered, “there were Mr. and Mrs. Louis Pharamond, too.”

“Ah,” she said after a pause. “Them.”

Ricky started to move away but she said: “That would be all, then?”

He found her insistence unpleasant.

“Oh no,” he said, over his shoulder, “there was another visitor,” and he began to walk down the passage.

“Who might that have been, then?” she persisted.

“A Miss Harkness,” he said shortly.

“What was she doing there?” demanded Mrs. Ferrant.

“She was lunching,” Ricky said very coldly and ran upstairs two steps at a time. He heard her slam the kitchen door.

He tried to settle down to work but was unable to do so. The afternoon was a bad time in any case, and he’d had two glasses of beer. Julia Pharamond’s magnolia face stooped out of his thoughts and came close to him, talking about a pregnant young woman who might as well have been a horse. Louis Pharamond was making a pass at her and the little half-naked Selina pulled faces at all of them. And there, suddenly, like some bucolic fury, was Mrs. Ferrant: “You’re back, then” she mouthed. She’s going to scream, he thought, and before she could do it, woke up.