‘Yes, but she’d have been wonderful in a war job,’ said Ursula impatiently. ‘I always took rather a gloomy view of his insisting like that. I mean, it was a thought selfish. Doing without her would really have been his drop of war work.’

‘He’d had three months in a nursing-home,’ said Miss Lynne without emphasis.

‘I know, Terry, but all the same…Well, anyway, soon after Dunkirk he cabled again and out we came. I had rather thought of joining something but she was so depressed about leaving. She said I was too young to be alone and she’d be lost without me, so I came. I loved coming, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Fabian murmured.

‘And there was you to be looked after on the voyage.’

‘Yes, I’d staged my collapse by that time. Ursula acted,’ Fabian said, turning his head towards Alleyn, ‘as a kind of buffer between my defencelessness and Flossie’s zeal. Flossie had been a VAD in the last war and the mysteries had lain fallow in her for twenty years. I owe my reason if not my life to Ursula.’

‘You’re not fair,’ she said but with a certain softening of her voice. ‘You’re ungrateful, Fab.’

‘Ungrateful to Flossie for plumping herself down in your affections like an amiable, no, not even an amiable cuttlefish? But go on, Ursy.’

‘I don’t know how much time Mr Alleyn has to spare for our reminiscences,’ began Douglas Grace, ‘but I must say I feel deeply sorry for him.’

‘I’ve any amount of time,’ said Alleyn, ‘and I’m extremely interested. So you all three arrived in New Zealand in 1940? Is that it, Miss Harme?’

‘Yes. We came straight here. After London,’ said Ursula gaily, ‘it did seem rather hearty and primitive but quite soon after we got here the member for the district died and they asked her to stand and everything got exciting. That’s when you came in, Terry, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Lynne, clicking her needles. ‘That’s where I came in.’

‘Auntie Floss was marvellous to me,’ Ursula continued. ‘You see, she had no children of her own so I suppose I was rather special. Anyway she used to say so. You should have seen her at the meetings, Mr Alleyn. She loved being heckled. She was as quick as lightning and absolutely fearless, wasn’t she, Douglas?’

‘She certainly could handle them,’ agreed Grace. ‘She was up to her neck in it when I got back. I remember at one meeting some woman shouted out: “Do you think it’s right for you to have cocktails and champagne when I can’t afford to give my kiddies eggs?” Aunt Floss came back at her in a flash: “I’ll give you a dozen eggs for every alcoholic drink I’ve consumed.” ’