‘You’ve obviously never been in Western Australia over Easter,’ he said, exchanging a soundless sneer with a party of disreputably overdressed Mediterraneans – three men in mohair suits and crêpe-soled shoes and two women in Dallas-style padded dresses – who were, against the usual practice of Australian motels, sitting at a round table in the reception area, taking tea. Something about their demeanour suggested that they were acquaintances of the management rather than guests. I was reminded of inexpensive hotels that I’d stayed at in the past in the Sussex Gardens area of West London, and queasy misgivings about having blundered into a front for the Palestine Liberation Organization.

‘So you are not going to serve us with a drink even though we are residents?’ Ros asked.

He shook his head. That peculiar satisfaction the English take in denying service or pleasure cast a kind of dying light, as it were from within, over his colourless features. ‘And neither would any other hotel in Perth,’ he added.

‘I don’t believe that,’ Ros said.

It could have been a nasty moment. The inexplicable Good Friday tea drinkers at the table didn’t look to me like the sort of people who took kindly to aspersions on their friends’ reputations for honesty. I believe I even saw the calf muscles twitching inside the carefully creased trousers of the most senior of them. But Rosalin wasn’t in a mood to be trifled with either. ‘I don’t intend to spend my first night back in Perth for twenty-eight years without the wherewithal to toast my return,’ she announced.

She was exaggerating only a little bit. She had been back to Perth a couple of times since 1958, but this was meant to be a re-entry on a grand scale. It was unthinkable without champagne. As in truth it was unthinkable in this miserable suburban motel. Run by one in such an advanced state of decomposition that you could actually hear the decalcifying crumble of his bones.

So I put up no resistance at all as she de-residented us on the spot, called a taxi, and ordered the driver to deliver us and our bags to the Parmelia Hilton. ‘We’re thirsty,’ she told him, just in case he was thinking of taking his time.

The Parmelia Hilton had once been the most elegant hotel in Perth. Now, though, it was under pressure from the ultra-modern sky-scrapers which were going up all over town in accordance with the city’s new young millionaire image, and as part of the preparations for the Americas Cup. The name itself had a bit of a provincial ring about it, and provincialism was the very thing Perth was busy endeavouring to shrug off. Parmelia? Whatever the name’s origins in naval history didn’t it now sound rather too spinsterish and conventical? ‘Sister Parmelia wishes to thank all ex-pupils for their good wishes on her retirement after forty years of devoted . . . .’