‘What’s tweed, Daddy?’ It is often dangerous to talk to Daddy when he is in one of these moods, but a new word is always interesting to Tommy. Mummy and Daddy lock eyes and Tommy’s stomach clenches but, fortunately, Major Rowland chooses that moment to enter the dining room. He smiles at Tommy and raises a hand in greeting, and Tommy, wilting with relief at a quarrel averted, waves back. Mummy gives Daddy a tight little grin and stands up.

‘Come along, Tommy,’ she says pointedly. ‘We’re going to have such fun.’ Daddy dismisses them with a wave of his fork. ‘Honestly,’ Mummy says under her breath.

The Narkunda is anchored a little way from the quayside. The first thing Tommy notices when he steps out onto the deck, following his mother and the major to where a smartly dressed ship’s officer is waiting by a gate in the rail, is the noise. A shout, an endless shout made up of countless individual shouts: that is what it sounds like, noise so harsh and dense that Tommy almost lets go of his mother’s hand, tries to let go and get away, but she is holding on to him tightly, wincing at the noise and at the stench, an equally dense miasma of smoke, cooking, unwashed human beings and their waste. Tommy, though he is used to the smells of India, coughs and pulls on Mummy’s arm, but she just shakes her head.

‘Oh, those poor people,’ she mutters, and bends down to ruffle his hair. ‘Don’t worry, Tomtom. We shan’t be going near them. We’re off to see the Acropolis.’ Tommy notices that the holiday jollity of her words is not quite sincere, but he steels himself and follows her over to the rail. It is a short ride to the quayside. The boatmen, genially savage-looking men with thick dark hair and bristling moustaches, make for a clear section of the waterfront near a gaudy domed church, but as they begin to guide the launch in, a small tug boat, belching black smoke, nips in ahead of them. There is much guttural cursing as they try to put in further along, only to be waved away by an angry harbour official. When they finally tie the launch up, it is to a bollard only a few yards from the rough planking barricades that are containing the throng of refugees.