The cool edge to my question reminded him of his manners. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn't mean to . . . That is to say, yes, I'm sure Belinda's a man, 'cause I saw his, er, fittings one evening. I was walking by his dressing-room when someone threw open the door at a . . . revealing moment.”

“I see.”

“As did I. Gave me quite a trauma, I tell you, seeing the, er, lengths the boy would go to to conceal—” A slapping noise came out of the darkness as Flo chastised him, and I made haste to move the subject on a step.

“I'm impressed. Their throat usually gives them away, the Adam's apple, you know, and a degree of exaggeration in their manners. He's very natural.”

“They all are.”

“What, you mean the others on the stage were all men, as well?”

“Not the chorus line, but the three other singers, yes.”

I'd never even suspected it. Alcohol, of course, was partly to blame for my lack of perception, and the room's thick, smokey air, but on reflection, I decided that the reason I had failed to notice was that, in England, such acts as I had seen were generally in small and seedy cabarets, not in a glittering palace the size of a warehouse with a big, slick jazz band to accompany its internationally known singer.

“Well, fancy that,” I said in the end, vowing to myself never to tell Holmes of my failure. We sat beneath the stars and the sliver of new moon, speaking of other things, and after a while Donny brought out a ukulele and sang in a surprisingly sweet tenor a bouncy melody assuring us that “It Ain't Gonna Rain No Mo',” some of the words of which escaped him, and another tune (this one sung in a startling imitation of a Negro woman) about Mamma going where Papa goes. He played songs I did not know and others of my childhood, and although the ukulele has never been one of my favourite instruments, under the stars and beside the lake that night, it seemed the only appropriate music in the world.

Eventually, when the moon had slid beneath the hills and the Milky Way was a bright smear across the firmament, we took ourselves to bed.

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Tuesday was a day of leisure, an unlooked-for holiday from care, during which we at last eased into the attitudes appropriate to a summer house. The weather cooperated in the venture, with a slight high fog to keep the sun from waking us too early, then burning off to present us a day worthy of the Riviera. Flo and Donny appeared, yawning and tousled, to exclaim in appreciation of the sparkle off the lake. Flo turned on her heel and went back to don her bathing costume, and while Donny was studying the potential contained in the cupboards, she trotted down the lawn and to the end of the dock where she stood, pulling on her red bathing cap, before launching herself off the end into the water.