‘I am hungry,’ he might say. ‘I shall ask Aglaia to give me something to eat.’

‘Yes, our Aglaia will prepare you something. If you are in need of it.’ And here she would play upon her voice, making it the instrument of a viciously raucous vulgarity: ‘If you haven’t stuffed at bridge, on a hundred little nastinesses.’

In the split darkness he could hear her shifting the groups of flower-pots into other grating groups.

‘At least Aglaia will make you something real. And here am I, never learned to cook!’

‘You could have,’ on one occasion he reminded her gently, ‘if you had wanted to.’

As he went away.

‘And bore myself to death stirring and stirring? No, thank you!’

She was so furious she laughed.

‘Boring! Boring! Do I ever bore you, Yanko?’ she called.

Because he did not answer she presumed he had not heard, but in any case he could never have satisfied her with answers, and because of that, she took the crumpled handkerchief out of her bosom, and blew her nose.

She used to listen to them – she detested overhearing a dialogue which remained just the other side of distinctness – she would listen to their voices in the kitchen, the light metallic fall of inconsequential communication. Not even conversation. The voice of that solid girl would grow lighter with other people, other people. Not even a girl any more, but thickened out, and grizzled over.

‘Yanko mou,’ Constantia would call, ‘ask Aglaia to bring it out on the terrace. Then we can chat a little while you eat.’

She would be standing in the darkness, listening to her own voice. Or listening.

She liked to shake out the napkin for him, and with her own hands, bring him his glass of tea.

The evening Aglaia went to the country with the policeman from Menidi – whom it was healthy for her to know, although oh no, kyria, she insisted, this man can’t be taken seriously he is just another – Constantia had brought the two glasses, which were all that remained to them of the set.

‘There!’ she said, putting them down. ‘Although I cannot cook, I am domesticated to this extent.’

He watched the excited motion of her ankles as she sat sipping her glass of tea.

‘But you will be hungry,’ she regretted, ‘after the bridge, and I am not Aglaia.’

‘I am not hungry.’

‘Not hungry? So late! But it isn’t natural!’

The small man, her husband, sat sipping slowly. Was he looking at her? Was he thinking of her? In her over-eagerness she must have burnt her throat. A long, incautious finger of light dared to touch her frown.

Then, on recovering her voice, she asked: ‘Tell me, at least, who was at the Sarandidis’ bridge?’

‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘I forget.’

It was too exhausting.

The heat of August was so intense the darkness smouldered garnet-red. As for any artificial light, it could turn malicious on August nights. It pointed out the blemishes. Day, she saw bitterly, had edged her gardenia flowers with brown.