Nor would you be interested in my reasons for having married Johanna, suffice it to say that it was not for her money. She loves me fiercely, for reasons which are a mystery to me, and I have come to like her very much. We don’t understand each other in the least, which is probably a good thing, but we agree fervently that Mozart is marvellous and Wagner vulgar. She doesn’t care to talk very much, which is the prime ingredient for a happy marriage: in Runyon’s deathless words – ‘Naturally, a doll who is willing to listen instead of wishing to gab herself is bound to be popular because if there is anything most citizens hate and despise it is a gabby doll.’ In any case, we are, in an important sense, worlds apart for she is devoted to the game of Contract Bridge – a kind of lunatic whist – whilst I dearly love Gin Rummy which Johanna loathes because it is too utterly simple-minded and perhaps because I always win. She really is quite astonishingly beautiful* but too well-bred to flutter her eyelashes at other men. We never quarrel; the nearest we ever got to it was once, when I was being intolerable: she quietly said, ‘Charlie dear, which of us shall leave the room?’

All three of our houses stand in the parish of S. Magloire, the smallest parish in Jersey. It is wedged between S. Jean and Trinity and has a short coastline of its own at Belle Etoile Bay – just East – or is it West? – of Bonne Nuit Bay. Such pretty names, I always think.

* See Don’t Point That Thing at Me.

2

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,

Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,

Follows with dancing and fills with delight

The Maenad and the Bassarid;

And soft as lips that laugh and hide

The laughing leaves of the trees divide,

And screen from seeing and leave in sight

The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

Atalanta in Calydon

It all started – or at any rate the narrative I have to offer all started – at Easter last year: that season when we remind each other of the judicial murder of a Jewish revolutionary two thousand years ago by distributing chocolate eggs to the children of people we dislike.

I had been in a vile temper all day and had cursed Jock roundly. He knew very well that it was only because there had been no newspapers and hence no Times crossword, but for reasons of his own he had chosen to sulk. When I asked what was for dinner he pointed out smugly that gentlemen’s menservants always have the day off on Easter Monday and, indeed, those with thoughtful masters were often given the whole week-end.