She got out the new Mozart which she had been practising.

‘This looks a lovely duet,’ she said, ‘and we haven’t tried it yet. I shall be terribly rusty, for all the time I had influenza, I hardly dared to play the piano at all.’

Georgie looked at the new Mozart.

‘It does look nice,’ he said. ‘Tum-ti-tum. Why, that’s the one I heard you practising so busily yesterday morning.’

Lucia took not the slightest notice of this.

‘We begin together,’ she said, ‘on the third beat. Now… Uno, due, TRE!’

Chapter 8

The painting and decorating of Grebe began at once. Irene offered to do all the painting with her own hands, and recommended as a scheme for the music-room, a black ceiling and four walls of different colours, vermilion, emerald green, ultramarine and yellow. It would take a couple of months or so to execute, and the cost would be considerable as lapis lazuli must certainly be used for the ultramarine wall, but she assured Lucia that the result would be unique and marvellously stimulating to the eye, especially if she would add a magenta carpet and a nickel-plated mantelpiece.

‘It sounds too lovely, dear,’ said Lucia, contemplating the sample of colours which Irene submitted to her, ‘but I feel sure I shan’t be able to afford it. Such a pity! Those beautiful hues!’

Then Irene besought her to introduce a little variety into the shape of the windows. It would be amusing to have one window egg-shaped, and another triangular, and another with five or six or seven irregular sides, so that it looked as if it was a hole in the wall made by a shell. Or how about a front door that, instead of opening sideways, let down like a portcullis?

Irene rose to more daring conceptions yet. One night she had dined on a pot of strawberry jam and half a pint of very potent cocktails, because she wanted her eye for colour to be at its keenest round about eleven o’clock when the moon would rise over the marsh, and she hoped to put the lid for ever on Whistler’s naïve old-fashioned attempts to paint moonlight. After this salubrious meal she had come round to Mallards, waiting for the moon to rise and sat for half an hour at Lucia’s piano, striking random chords, and asking Lucia what colour they were. These musical rainbows suggested a wonderful idea, and she shut down the piano with a splendid purple bang.

‘Darling, I’ve got a new scheme for Grebe,’ she said. ‘I want you to furnish a room sideways, if you understand what I mean.’

‘I don’t think I do,’ said Lucia.