“What do you mean?” I said coldly, anticipating his usual tasteless insults, but all he said was:

“You look wonderful, that’s all.”

“Aren’t you going to change?” I said.

“Why the hell should I? For a lot of old ladies?”

“Who says they’re going to be old ladies?”

“Well, won’t they be?”

I knew he would not change, and I did not want him to: I like him best when he looks a mess. I like the effect we create together, he so aggressive, I so formal. Oddly enough, he was wearing a tie. He does, sometimes. On the way out I went to say good night to Flora, who was in her bath.

“Bye-bye, Mummy,” she said, joining the two words together with careful effort. When I am puzzling about the location of my heart, I have only to look at Flora to discover what seems at times to be the whole of it. Though at other times it seems to be elsewhere. As we left, Pascal said:

“Bonne soirée”

She looked stunned by the hat. The rest got by, but she could not take her eyes off my hat, though in the standards of absolute beauty the check-cloth caps that she had recently taken to wearing, obeying the dictates of the day, could not compete. The hat that I had on had weathered sixty years with grace, and that in itself was something. I should not complain if I myself could batter my way through to such a survival, my shape and my roses withstanding, though threadbare, the shifts of fashion.