‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’

‘You’re welcome.’

As I was shaving, my wife from the bath said: ‘Just like old times. I’m not worrying any more, Charles.’

‘Good.’

‘I was so terribly afraid that two years might have made a difference. Now I know we can start again exactly where we left off.’

‘When?’ I asked. ‘What? When we left off what?’

‘When you went away, of course.’

‘You are not thinking of something else, a little time before?’

‘Oh, Charles, that’s old history. That was nothing. It was never anything. It’s all over and forgotten.’

‘I just wanted to know,’ I said. ‘We’re back as we were the day I went abroad, is that it?’

So we started that day exactly where we left off two years before, with my wife in tears.

—

My wife’s softness and English reticence, her very white, small regular teeth, her neat rosy finger-nails, her schoolgirl air of innocent mischief and her schoolgirl dress, her modern jewellery, which was made at great expense to give the impression, at a distance, of having been mass produced, her ready, rewarding smile, her deference to me and her zeal in my interests, her motherly heart which made her cable daily to the nanny at home – in short, her peculiar charm – made her popular among the Americans, and our cabin on the day of departure was full of cellophane packages – flowers, fruit, sweets, books, toys for the children – from friends she had known for a week. Stewards, like sisters in a nursing home, used to judge their passengers’ importance by the number and value of these trophies; we therefore started the voyage in high esteem.

My wife’s first thought on coming aboard was of the passenger list.

‘Such a lot of friends,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a lovely trip. Let’s have a cocktail party this evening.’

The companion-ways were no sooner cast off than she was busy with the telephone.

‘Julia. This is Celia – Celia Ryder. It’s lovely to find you on board. What have you been up to? Come and have a cocktail this evening and tell me all about it.’

‘Julia who?’

‘Mottram. I haven’t seen her for years.’