‘It’s got the right kind of dream-sound for that,’ Troy said. She thought she would like to make a picture of the Signs and put the rhyme in the middle. Perhaps before the cruise was over—

‘To make it rhyme,’ Mrs Tretheway pointed out, ‘you have to say “pote”. “The Man that carries the Watering-pote”.’

She pushed their drinks across the bar. The back of her hand brushed Mr Bard’s fingers.

‘You’ll join us, I hope,’ he said.

‘Another time, thanks all the same. I’ve got to look after your lunch. It’s cold—what do they call it—smorgasbord, for today. If everybody would help themselves when they’re ready.’

She went over to the hatch into the cuddy. Tom, the boy, had gone below and handed up the dishes to his mother who set them out on the tables that had been pushed together and covered with a white cloth.

‘Whenever you’re ready,’ Mrs Tretheway repeated. ‘Please help yourselves,’ and returned to the bar where she jangled a handbell.

Without consulting Troy, Mr Bard ordered two more dry Martinis. This was not Troy’s favourite drink and in any case the first had been extremely strong.

‘No, really, thank you,’ she said. ‘Not for me. I’m for my lunch.’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘P’rhaps you’re right. We’ll postpone until dinner time. Let moderation be our cry.’

It now occurred to Troy that Mr Bard was making a dead set at her. Gratifying though this might or might not be, it did not fit in with her plan for a five days’ anonymous dawdle along the British Inland Waterways. Mr Bard, it was evident, had twigged Troy. He had this morning visited her one-man show for the opening of which, last evening, she had come up from London. He had been cunning enough to realize that she wanted to remain unrecognized. Evidently he was disposed to torment her about this and to set up a kind of alliance on the strength of it. Mr Bard was a tease.

There was a place beside Dr Natouche at the end of a circular seat that ran under the forward windows of the saloon. Troy helped herself to cold meat and salad and sat beside him. He half-rose and made her a little bow. ‘I hope you are pleased with the accommodation,’ he said. ‘I find it perfectly satisfactory.’

There was an extraordinary quality in Dr Natouche, Troy suddenly decided. It was a quality that made one intensely aware of him, as if with the awareness induced by some drug: aware of his thin, charcoal wrist emerging from a white silk cuff, of the movements of his body under his clothes, of his quiet breathing, of his smell which was of wood: cedarwood or even sandalwood.