‘When we were training for war,’ he went on, ‘we were told, “You may find yourselves in a tight spot with no orders telling you what to do: in that case do something – whether you do right or wrong it’s better than not acting”.’ Sandra put her chin on Stephen’s thigh and he fondled her ears while he talked. ‘There’s plenty of people who think we did the wrong thing, but we did something and stuck to it, and now we’ve been recognised.’

Sir Stephen and Lady Courtauld, Ginie thought. I am going to be Lady Courtauld. She felt that she was finally entering the world she had always dreamed of.

Weeks passed quietly. There were no more anonymous letters. The Courtaulds let themselves hope once more that the writer of the threatening letters had forgotten them, that he was all bark and no bite. There was no news of Mary and Ginie missed her terribly. She had written several times to the prison, requesting another visit, but there had been no reply. Mark insisted he had exhausted his favours. She was getting more and more frantic, not knowing if Mary was dead or alive. It was a silent war, she realised, where men and women could disappear without trace.

The unrest in Sakubva and other townships subsided. Sithole, Chitepo and Mugabe came to La Rochelle again, and they began to draft the basis of a constitution for the new party. There were rumours that the government intended to ban all African political parties.

‘The Government is frightened,’ Sithole said. ‘When they are frightened, they resort to this tactic, locking up the leaders, criminalising the movement.’

Ginie kept an eye on the home crafts club and the school, and they continued to visit Kukwanisa. Stephen’s work on his history of the Courtaulds progressed slowly, but his main focus was the Rhodes National Gallery. The inaugural exhibition was an enormous undertaking. He and Frank had succeeded in borrowing around two hundred works of art to display, largely paintings and a selection of tapestries, from institutions like the Louvre, the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk and London’s National and Tate Galleries. It was decided that Stephen would receive his knighthood from the Queen Mother when she came to open the Gallery.