In the end, we argued about curtains. We had gone to stay in the country with Claire and Michael, and we had been given the upstairs bedroom at the end of the long hall, with the view out over the garden. We came up from dinner: Claire had made lamb, and pavlova for pudding. Some friends from down the road had come for the evening, people who were trying to bring art exhibitions to the county. We had had a fire, and talked about how the days were getting shorter. We’d dipped into claret that Michael had discovered the previous year, and of which he’d put up several cases. Michael’s mother was also staying, and she had been in top form, telling her stories from the Roaring ’20s, including one about a performing bear in a striptease bar in Berlin; Michael had kept rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, but the rest of us had loved it.

And so it was quite late when Bernard and I finally went up to the bedroom at the end of the long hall to settle down for the night. We both climbed into bed, and Bernard read. “I do think this is a pretty room,” I said.

“Mm,” said Bernard. “Lovely mirror, isn’t it. Regency.”

I looked at the mirror vaguely. “Yes,” I said. “And such beautiful curtains. I wonder who Claire got to do them?”

Bernard shifted in bed. “Actually,” he said, “I don’t like the curtains.”

“No?” I said.

“It’s those undercurtains,” he said. “I think it’s so much better just to have curtains, and pelmets, and not to have those fussy little gauzy undercurtains blowing around.”

I should explain that I was at the time in the midst of getting new curtains for my own house, and had just commissioned my curtain-maker to do linen undercurtains in every room. Bernard had told me that he thought they were not in good taste, but I thought they were convenient. Bernard’s remark therefore seemed deliberately barbed. “Any more veiled criticisms this evening?” I asked peevishly, fishing for an argument. “If there are, I think it would be just as well to get them over with now.”

Bernard looked at me with an aggrieved expression. “I don’t think we were talking about your curtains, which we discussed, in any event, before you chose the design, and about which I made my views perfectly clear at the time. I think we were talking about Claire’s curtains, which I do not care for, and which you apparently like.”