Arriving at the garden-house the maid raised her voice to its loudest.

‘Here,’ she shouted, ‘is this Greek gentleman you were expecting, Monsieur Philippides.’

Sitting in the little garden-house, of frail white lattice which had become untacked in places, was a shrivelled, yet very bright old man.

‘Yes,’ he said, addressing the visitor in English, in one of the quiet, but convinced voices of the deaf, ‘we have received your note. Also, several years ago, a letter from Tillotson warning us of your possible arrival. Ellison – he will have told you – was my friend in the Smyrna days, even before that, at Konya. I spent several years at Konya. I was sent for by a cousin who had made a mess of a carpet-weaving concern. In three years I had increased the number of looms from thirty-three to three-hundred-and-twenty.’

So very pleased at remembering, old Mr Philippides laughed, and the guest wondered what to do.

‘You will take tea?’ Philippides asked.

Although Malliakas did not care for the stuff, he accepted the offer of an occupation.

‘Geneviève, a pot of tea. Tillotson would drink a pot of tea. A whole pot. In the old days.’

The girl had already gone down the steps.

‘But you are not English,’ Philippides remembered, and slipped thoughtfully into Greek.

He now looked most extraordinarily bright, seated at a little garden-table, in a poacher’s cap, a plaid across his shoulders, his purple, bird’s claws emerging from brown hand-knitted mittens. On the table in front of him, on a pewter salver, stood a glass half-filled with tea.

‘My wife will be sorry to have missed you.’ Philippides stirred his tea, and the spoon sounded against the glass. ‘She was called away, to some lady – I forget whom – who is sinking,’ he said, ‘sinking.’

Without apparently disturbing his host’s train of thought, Malliakas sat down. The iron chair pinched his thighs. There was a smell of mould in the summer-house.

‘They are always sending for her,’ Philippides explained, but suddenly altered course. ‘Now you,’ he accused, ‘must have the gift of languages. Like any Alexandrian. My wife was taught languages. All the governesses of the Levant were brought to bear on her education. And that of her sisters. Almost everyone in Smyrna had heard of their accomplishments. Constantia – would you believe it? – learnt to shoot out a candle flame while standing at the opposite end of the court. With the ivory pistol her uncle gave her.’

If Malliakas did not express in words appreciation of such a talent, it was because he had begun to recognize in his host a portraitist he might respect.

‘In embroidered dresses, amongst the pomegranate bushes, on summer evenings – all those girls, waiting to be picked.’

Mr Philippides took a mouthful of tea, extracting the utmost from it, from under his almost dandified moustache. A slight breeze starting up stirred the damp green thickets of the garden. Malliakas had to look over his shoulder, momentarily nervous of approaching skirts and introductions. But it was only the maid, who put down his pot of tea, and left.