Genia Ortiz had thought no such thing. She had made an enemy of the General since the evening at the Club de Pensiones when she had informed him in French – not yet having mastered Spanish herself – “I’m the only person you will have met socially who has known the Princess Yekaterina and seen her beauty plain.” Thereafter whenever he saw her in the street the General would draw himself to his full height, walk up to her until the peak of his cap touched her nose and say, “Madame, je vous dis bonjour!”

Oh no, she had no time for him at all. She did not find it amusing as her husband did that for three years in succession he should win the Miss Dainty Ankles competition held each Christmas in the Café Ulises. His perversions were stupendous! He didn’t mind who knew, not even Genia Ortiz. Indeed, when he told her, “I’ve been through the whole of North Africa,” the impression was conveyed by a slight movement of the left eye that it was not the geography to which he referred.

“Then something extraordinary happened!” In his late sixties, the General underwent a hormonal hurricane. He became engaged to the daughter of a Belgian nose and throat specialist. They were married in a lavish ceremony in Santa Maria de Africa. After the service he carried his wife along the Marina Española. The door into the house was open. He carried her over the threshold. She was about to slip from his arms to the floor when suddenly! she hesitated. She clutched his arm. “Mon cher, il y a des vibrations dans cette maison,” she said and she ordered him to walk back immediately through the door. “Her feet never touched the ground!”

The couple rented an apartment on the Plaza de los Reyes, but the General retained the house. Twice a week while his wife attended Mass, he climbed to the third floor and sat on the terrace surveying the rooftops. He balanced a shotgun on his knee and kept a bottle of whisky beside him. If he saw a cat he shot it.

“Cats reminded him of the Moros!”

Wavery paused at his front door. He looked up, to see if Plaisir des Yeux had installed the telephone cables, but the four wires remained strung across the yellow wall beneath the roof.

Two men had been working on the residence for six months. After the General’s appointment as Cultural Attaché to Sierra Leone, the house had been sold to an Indian confectioner who stored his sweets on the second floor. The top floor he closed off without noticing an open skylight, so there was damp rot everwhere and also problems with the drains which erupted periodically for no reason anyone could detect, and flooded the ground floor. In view of the Royal Visit, the Overseas Estates Department had authorised a comprehensive redecoration, since when the architect responsible had been given leave to return to Cadiz where he was constructing a casino. He had done his professional duty. Wiring and painting were matters that might be left to local workmen, in the event two Arab builders from El Hadu.