She heard me clearly, for she looked startled, turned on the ignition, and called out, ‘Jericho? Here? You are crazy.’

‘Thought it out. Carefully. This afternoon.’

She was reversing the car slowly and badly, hit the wall lightly, swung round to face down the track. I walked beside the car, my hand on her door.

‘It’s impossible.’

‘James paid up for three years? Right?’

‘You talk to Mama, it’s nothing to do with me.’

And she began to bump slowly away, the furious cries from Thomas growing fainter.

I walked back to the terrace. Over in the orchard a pear tree had broken into white blossom. The buds on the vine were fat and bursting into leaf; it had not been pruned for a season. I snapped off a twig and the sap began to bleed. There would be a lot to do. I had better, I thought, make a start.

Before her a tray of little brass things, a bell, a fish, some small ashtrays, an inkwell. Madame Prideaux was doing what she called the monthly cleaning.

‘I don’t know why I bother. These things are never used, they are things my husband bought in North Africa. And I hate dull brass, don’t you?’ She was buffing away with an old toothbrush; her hair, normally very severely caught up in a sort of loaf on the top of her head, had begun to fall in grey wisps with the efforts of her work.

‘It is true that James has paid for three more years, equally true that the money is necessary. For Thomas, for this and that. But it would appear to me a capricious thing to do, to reopen the house. Why? A whim? You have a family, a house of your own elsewhere? Why come here? It is hopeless with no telephone, it has been empty for months.’

‘I will manage. I will take all the responsibility, if you will permit me to take on my brother’s lease.’

Madame Prideaux took up a yellow duster and started polishing, quite unnecessarily hard. ‘I have no objections. The house is mine, yes, but I think you should perhaps ask Florence.’

‘She told me to ask you.’

‘She thinks you are mad. You know that?’

‘I know that. I know too that I am starting divorce proceedings with my wife, amicably, that I shall sell up my house in London, that I am a writer and that writers can write almost anywhere. As long as there is peace. Silence.’

She looked at the inkwell critically, fiddled with its lid. ‘If you wish. It is for you to decide. But I will not be responsible for anything.’

‘Anything? What kind of anything?’

She set the inkwell down, picked up the bell.

‘Oh. The drains, damp, electricity, woodworm … I will not be your landlord. It is entirely your responsibility. Florence has the documents, she will show you everything. If she agrees, that is.’