Payne started relighting his pipe. Antonia was visited by the unworthy suspicion that he was doing it to gain time. Eventually he spoke. Corinne hadn’t been conventionally beautiful, but rather sweet in a jolie laide kind of way. (‘Sorry, Aunt Nellie, I know we said no frog, but there’s no English expression that means quite the same, is there?’ – ‘Can’t you say, her looks were no great shakes, strictly speaking, but such charm and sweetness, and that’s always half the battle?’) Although she had been twenty-one, Corinne had had the air of a little girl about her… Not his type.

‘As for the date,’ he went on slowly, between puffs, ‘I remember it because it was my sister’s birthday. Amanda was passing through a Francophile as well as Francophone phase. She adored all things French. Amanda enjoyed the show so much that she asked me to take her to the second concert, but I had to go back to Sandhurst. I believe she went with someone else.’

‘Corinne sang a couple of winsomely wistful waltzes,’ his aunt said. ‘Extraordinary, how things come back to one.’

‘Amanda’s favourite was a song called “Adieu, Joli Matelot”, for which Corinne donned a sailor’s uniform and cap and played the harmonica with great elan – or do I mean esprit?’ Payne frowned. ‘Sorry, we said no frog… All the songs were terribly French. Either tear-jerkingly melancholy, or saccharinely sentimental – or crazily cancannish.’

‘There was a fourth kind, the military march-like song.’ Lady Grylls waved an imaginary banner.

‘Gosh yes. She sang “La Marseillaise”, didn’t she? Lest it be forgotten that the French are a nation of barricade-building Gavroches and Cosettes… She wound up with “The Trolley Song”. I think it was at that point that Maurice Chevalier joined her on stage?’

‘He did! The old fraud! He had his arm around Corinne’s shoulders and he kept pinching her cheek. He looked avuncular and brimmed over with bonhomie, yet I couldn’t help thinking there was something of the dirty old man about him.’ Lady Grylls sniffed. ‘It didn’t help that he sang “Thank Heaven for Little Girls”. I believe he had the idea of staging Gigi with Corinne in the title role, but then he died or something.’