‘Very like. Probably flourishing a black umbrella and emitting sparks. She’s flying into a pretty solid wall of opposition. Of course,’ Patrick said abruptly, ‘the whole thing has been fantastic. For some reason the initial story caught on. It was the silly season and the papers, as you may remember, played it up. Wally’s warts became big news. That led to the first lot of casual visitors. Mrs Winterbottom’s men of business began to make interested noises and the gold-rush, to coin a phrase, set in. Since then it’s never looked back.’

They had passed through the suburbs of Dunlowman and were driving along a road that ran out towards the coast.

‘It was nice getting your occasional letters,’ Patrick said, presently. ‘Operative word “occasional”.’

‘And yours.’

‘I’m glad you haven’t succumbed to the urge for black satin and menacing jewellery that seems to overtake so many girls who get jobs in France. But there’s a change, all the same.’

‘You’re not going to suggest I’ve got a phoney foreign accent?’

‘No, indeed. You’ve got no accent at all.’

‘And that, no doubt, makes the change. I expect having to speak French has cured it.’

‘You must converse with Miss Pride. She is, or was, before she succeeded to the Winterbottom riches, a terrifically high-powered coach for chaps entering the Foreign Service. She’s got a network of little spokes all round her mouth from making those exacting noises that are required by the language.’

‘You’ve seen her, then?’

‘Once. She visited with her sister about a year ago and left in a rage.’

‘I suppose,’ Jenny said after a pause, ‘this is really very serious, this crisis?’

‘It’s hell,’ he rejoined with surprising violence.

Jenny asked about Wally Trehern and was told that he had become a menace. ‘He doesn’t know where he is but he knows he’s the star-turn,’ Patrick said. ‘People make little pilgrimages to the cottage which has been tarted up in a sort of Peggotty-style Kitsch. Seaweed round the door almost, and a boat in a bottle. Mrs Trehern keeps herself to herself and the gin bottle but Trehern is a new man. He exudes a kind of honest-tar sanctity and sells Wally to the pilgrims.’

‘You appal me.’

‘I thought you’d better know the worst. What’s more, there’s an Anniversary Festival next Saturday, organized by Miss Cost. A choral procession to the Spring and Wally, dressed up like a wee fisher lad, reciting doggerel if he can remember it, poor little devil.’

‘Don’t!’ Jenny exclaimed. ‘Not true!’

‘True, I’m afraid.’

‘But Patrick – about the cures? The people that come? What happens?’