He was resplendent in a light blue Italian silk suit and a pink hand-painted tie. Larry, rather surprisingly, was a woolman; he’d come to live in Warley some ten years ago and now had be­come part of the place. He was a gossip and a scandalmonger and the sort of man who was never described in conversation simply as being a bachelor but always as being a bachelor of course, with heavy emphasis on the amplification. But everyone liked him; without having any special party accomplishments he was always the life and soul of the party. Even Mrs. Brown liked him; I expect that she felt that having so exotic a creature in her house was proof she was a woman of the world, a role which occasionally she enjoyed as a relief from the star part of Lady of the manor.

Larry took Norah’s arm. “Admiring the roses, dear? I can tell you all about them. Albertine and Crimson Conquest on the arch and those yellow ones are Sutter’s Gold. And those light red ones are my favourite. Mrs. Henry Bowles. I wonder what she was like.”

“They’re pink,” I said. “The red ones are probably Monte­zuma.”

“It’s a mere detail,” he said. He looked at me intently. He had a flat smooth face with heavy-lidded green eyes that gave the impression of being set at a slant.

It was not a face that had ever looked young; nor was it one that would ever grow old. He transferred his gaze to Norah; I wondered exactly what sort of a relationship his imagination was creating for us. He shook his head. “Details are Joe’s busi­ness, Norah,” he said. “He’s absolutely of the earth earthy.”

“Don’t be too sure of it,” Norah said. She smiled at me. Her dress was the colour of her eyes, a grey with a blue tinge, and a good two inches shorter than the other women were wearing. Some would have been embarrassed at being different from the rest, some exultant; but she wouldn’t care. She was grown-up. I hadn’t met a grown-up woman in ten years, and for ten years hadn’t felt the need to be with one. And Alice, even Alice, had been broken somewhere, she had lost the habit of happiness. She’d have eaten you up alive; and what else could she have done, having been hungry all those years? But she’d given me some­thing, too; more than I’d given her. I smiled back at Norah; it would be the same with her, it would be the same with any grown-up woman. Even now I was somehow in her debt.

Susan was talking animatedly to Mark and Sybil; I hadn’t noticed her looking in my direction yet but very soon I’d be giving her the excuse for another fit of tantrums.

“You haven’t met my wife yet,” I said.