Clorinda Morrissey now measured Ross’s blue eyes with her own, which were grey and narrow and could sometimes close in weary refutation of the very many things in the world which inclined her to anger. In a quiet but firm voice, she said, ‘You must not use the word “starve”, Doctor Ross. Not to me. Remember that I come from Ireland. And when I was a young woman in Dublin, what did we endure but the terrible sight of people driven off their land by hunger, and dying in our streets? Did you never hear of the Irish potato famine?’

‘I’m sure I did, but I was a child and I had no understanding of it.’

‘Blight coming to our staple crop and spreading and spreading until all the counties of the west of Ireland were laid waste. And the British Government, you see, doing nothing, or almost nothing, only sending a few paltry ship-loads of American corn, at prices very few could afford. And then putting in a foolish Programme of Public Works to give employment to the poor. And what did these “works” do? They made the destitute people lift turf and sod to fill in empty hollows – to no purpose. They made them work on new roads that led to no destination. It’s a wonder, it is, that Ireland has ever forgiven you.’

Ross looked down at his hands. If what he habitually saw in these hands was their strength and their skill, what he now felt was that no part of himself – mind or body – was truly equipped to undertake the complicated demands of a human life. There was just too much about the world that he didn’t understand.

‘I am sorry,’ he said.

He knew that this apology was embarrassingly inadequate to the subject which had suddenly been broached, but these were the only words he was able to find.

Luckily for him, Clorinda Morrissey now found herself so contented with her life in Bath that she – no less than that Dr Ross – was disinclined to dwell for long on Ireland’s passage through her four years of famine, her four circles of hell. She put a gentle hand on his arm and said, ‘I apologise for being so harsh. I will come and talk to Sir William. The beef pies I make have been praised back home, for I do not skimp on the meat.’

ACROBAT

No more than half an hour after Mrs Morrissey returned from agreeing terms with Sir William at Henrietta Street, to chivvy her young helper, Mary into completing the tidying and cleaning of her tea room, and to begin on tomorrow’s baking, a second caller rang her doorbell. The name of this person was Monsieur Florian Bellenger and he was a Belgian acrobat.

He had met Clorinda Morrissey at one of those autumn galas which had so beguiled her mind when choosing Bath as the destination for her new life. There had been rather fewer of these than she’d hoped, but this one, held in Sydney Gardens, had been splendid. There had been a five-piece orchestra and a wooden dance floor laid on the grass. Suckling pigs had been roasted on two enormous iron spits. On trestles, laid out in magnificent numbers, veal pies, pigeon patties, boiled ox-tongue and oysters had been offered, together with jellies, flans and blancmanges, sluiced down with punch, beer and lemonade – all for the price of the three-shilling entry ticket. There had been a maypole for the children, a muzzled dancing bear, led round by a Sikh in a jewelled turban, a coconut shy, a gypsy troupe dancing to violins and castanets and, most popular of all, a team of acrobats, who began by walking round on stilts and ended by flying through the air on a trapeze contraption fastened into the grass with iron hawsers.