‘Uncle James hates him, anyway.’

‘Barbara!’

‘Lunch, Agnes,’ said a quiet voice on the other side of the fence. ‘You’re late again.’

‘Coming, dear. Please go on ahead with Daddy, Barbara,’ said Mrs Claire.

IV

Dr Ackrington bucketed his car down the drive and pulled up at the verandah with a savage jolt just as Barbara reached it. She waited for him and took his arm.

‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘You’ll give me hell if you hurry me.’ But when she made to draw away he held her arm in a wiry grasp.

‘Is the leg bad, Uncle James?’

‘It’s always bad. Steady now.’

‘Did you have your morning soak in the Porridge Pot?’

‘I did not. And do you know why? That damned poisonous little bounder was wallowing in it.

‘He never washes,’ Dr Ackrington shouted. ‘I’ll swear he never washes. Why the devil you can’t insist on people taking a shower before they use the pools is a mystery. He soaks his sweat off in my mud.’

‘Are you sure…?’

‘Certain. Certain. Certain. I’ve watched him. He never goes near the shower. How in the name of common decency your parents can stomach him…’

‘That’s just what I’ve been asking Mummy.’

Dr Ackrington halted and stared at his niece. An observer might have been struck by their resemblance to each other. Barbara was much more like her uncle than her mother, yet while he, in a redheaded edgy sort of way, was remarkably handsome, she contrived to present as good a profile without its accompaniment of distinction. Nobody noticed Barbara’s physical assets; her defects were inescapable. Her hair, her clothes, her incoherent gestures, her strangely untutored mannerisms, all combined against her looks and discounted them. She and her uncle stared at each other in silence for some seconds.

‘Oh,’ said Dr Ackrington at last. ‘And what did your mother say?’

Barbara pulled a clown’s grimace. ‘She reproved me,’ she said in sepulchral serio-comedy voice.

‘Well, don’t make faces at me,’ snapped her uncle.

A window in the Claires’ wing was thrown open, and between the curtains there appeared a vague pink face garnished with a faded moustache, and topped by a thatch of white hair.

‘Hullo, James,’ said the face crossly. ‘Lunch. What’s your mother doing, Ba? Where’s Simon?’

‘She’s coming, Daddy. We’re all coming. Simon!’ screamed Barbara.

Mrs Claire, enveloped in a dark red flannel dressing-gown, came panting up from the pools, and hurried into the house.

‘Aren’t we going to have any lunch?’ Colonel Claire asked bitterly.

‘Of course we are,’ said Barbara. ‘Why don’t you begin, Daddy, if you’re in such a hurry? Come on, Uncle James.’

As they went indoors, a young man came round the house and slouched in behind them. He was tall, big-boned and sandy-haired, with a jutting underlip.

‘Hullo, Sim,’ said Barbara. ‘Lunch.’

‘Righto.’

‘How’s the Morse code this morning?’