After half an hour I began to long for the children to come back: they would have created a diversion, and have drowned what conversation there was. But it was a fine afternoon, and they took their time. I grew increasingly confused as my ear gradually attuned itself to the differences of phrasing, vocabulary, sentiment and subject matter that separated my two guests. I began to notice things that I would never otherwise have noticed: that Sophy’s every other word was Christ, and that Mary’s strongest adjective was awfully; that Sophy talked solely to impress, and Mary solely and self-effacingly to communicate; that Sophy’s only idea of a joke was to make some absurd sexual innuendo about anything she happened to mention, and that such jokes seemed to her to be necessary, whereas Mary did not seem to think that conversation need be in any way amusing. I think the end had been more or less reached when Sophy started to recount some episode with Michael Fenwick and Julian in rehearsal the day before.

“Christ, it was funny,” she was saying. “There was Julian dozing around as usual, all weak and floppy, you know what he’s like, when Selwyn says, ‘Come on, Julian, try to get a bit more life into it, try to get a move on,’ so on comes Julian with his chin in the air and his hands on his hips, trying to look manly, and, anyway, the first thing Michael had to say in that scene was ‘Look, here comes the sole object of my desire,’ meaning me of course, but of course when he said it Julian turned round, and ‘Do you mind?’ he said. ‘We all know . . . ’” and at that moment Flora, whose progress up the stairs I had been following with bated breath, rushed in and won the race, so that Julian’s wonderful piece of repartee was lost forever.

I was delighted to see Flora: she sat on my knee and told them about the ducks and the swings and the river, and they remarked on her beauty and intelligence, as they had to. I would have been very annoyed had they omitted their duty in this respect. And when Pascal arrived, Mary asked her many intelligent questions about where she came from, how she found England and how she was getting on with the English language. Pascal was very pleased, as not many of our friends had the social composure to pay her the right kind of attention, and Mary’s middle-class courtesy was exactly what she did not get enough of.

Finally they left. Mary went first, leaving her address. Sophy sat it out a few minutes longer, but in the end she, too, went as I began to mention Flora’s bath and Joseph’s supper. They left me thinking.