"Why do you always do that?" I asked her.

She sat back in the creaking chair and smiled mischievously, "Because it annoys you," she replied. A typically Mariettaesque response, I may say. She can be the very soul of perversity, though to look at her you'd never think it. I won't dote on her here (she gets far too much of that from her girlfriends), but she is a beautiful woman, by any measure. When she smiles, it's my father's smile; the sheer appetite in it, that's an echo of him. In repose, she's Cesaria's daughter; lazy-lidded and full of quiet certitude, her gaze, if it rests on you for more than a moment, like a physical thing. She's not a tall creature, my Marietta-a little over five feet without her boots-and now the immensity of chair she was sitting in, and the silly-sweet smile on her face, diminished her almost to a child. It wasn't hard to imagine my father behind her, his huge arms wrapped around her, rocking her. Perhaps she imagined it too, sitting there. Perhaps it was that memory that made her say:

"Do you feel sad these days? I mean, especially sad?"

"What do you mean: especially sad?"

"Well I know how you brood in here-"

"I don't brood."

"You shut yourself away."

"It's by choice. I'm not unhappy."

"Honestly?"

"I've got all I need here. My books. My music. Even if I'm desperate, I've got a television. I even know how to switch it on."

"So you don't feel sad? Ever?"

As she was pressing me so hard on the subject, I gave it a few more moments of thought. "Actually, I suppose I have had one or two bouts of melancholy recently," I conceded. "Nothing I couldn't shake off, but-"

"I hate this gin."

"It's English."

"It's bitter. Why do you have to have English gin? The sun went down on the Empire a long time ago."

"I like the bitterness."

She pulled a face. "Next time I'm in Charleston I'm going to bring you some really nice brandy," she said.