‘It was very dear and thoughtful of you. You saw that my house was ready to welcome my return, and you must send me in all the bills and everything tomorrow and I’ll pay them at once, and I thank you enormously for your care of it. And send me in the bill for the cenotaph too. I want to pay for it, I do indeed. It was a loving impulse of yours, Georgie, though, thank goodness, a hasty one. But I can’t bear to think that you’re out of pocket because I’m alive. Don’t answer: I shan’t listen. And now let’s go straight to the piano and have one of our duets, the one we played last, that heavenly Mozartino.’

They went into the next room. There was the duet ready on the piano, which much looked as if Lucia had been at it already, and she slid on to the top music stool.

‘We both come in on the third beat,’ said she. ‘Are you ready? Now! Uno, due, TRE!’

Chapter 13

The wretched Major Benjy, who had not been out all day except for interviews with agents and miserable traverses between his house and the doorsteps of Mallards, dined alone that night (if you could call it dinner) on a pork pie and a bottle of Burgundy. A day’s hard work had restored the lots of his abandoned sale to their proper places, and a little glue had restored its eye to the bald tiger. He felt worse than bald himself, he felt flayed, and God above alone knew what fresh skinnings were in store for him. All Tilling must have had its telephone-bells (as well as the church bells) ringing from morning till night with messages of congratulation and suitable acknowledgments between the returned ladies and their friends, and he had never felt so much like a pariah before. Diva had just passed his windows (clearly visible in the lamplight, for he had not put up the curtains of his snuggery yet) and he had heard her knock on the door of Mallards. She must have gone to dine with the fatal Elizabeth, and what were they talking about now? Too well he knew, for he knew Elizabeth.

If in spirit he could have been present in the dining room, where only last night he had so sumptuously entertained Diva and Georgie and Mrs Bartlett, and had bidden them punish the port, he would not have felt much more cheerful.

‘In my best spare room, Diva, would you believe it?’ said Elizabeth, ‘with all the drawers full of socks and shirts and false teeth, wasn’t it so, Withers? and the cellar full of wine. What he has consumed of my things, goodness only knows. There was that pâté which Lucia gave me only the day before we were whisked out to sea –’

‘But that was three months ago,’ said Diva.