‘Over there; we have a very nice corner reserved. I’ll show you, shan’t I? There’s a little girl of just my age – musn’t the people in her hotel have been upset about it? I often think ——’ she brooded.

‘Yes, I dare say you do. I often used to. But it wouldn’t be much fun, really, dying to impress other people, or to be picturesque or pitied.’

‘I suppose not, really. But I couldn’t help just imagining, that day they were so stuffy with us ’cause we broke the lift. I put my tongue out after Mrs Hillier when she stopped and been sarcastic at me in the passage, and I thought “Yah! if I like you’d be sobbing and sniffing tomorrow and putting flowers – carnations – on my coffin and saying what a darling little girl I’d been!”’

They went on to look at the English end of the cemetery, where more discreet memorials had been hewn into shapes better suited to granite than to Carrara marble. All round the cypresses waited. How complete the Riviera was, thought Sydney, one could even die here. Birds were rare, she started as one dipped from a tree and flew zigzag with a shrill cry, skimming the gravestones. Like an echo of the bird’s cry they heard the creak of a hinge, as the gate hidden by trees was pushed open decorously. Sydney could feel her heart thump as they listened and waited.

Presently Miss Pinkerton appeared between the cypresses, conscious even of the dead, her face composed into an expression of nobility. She looked to left and right of her through the graves, and though she saw Cordelia and Sydney she did not seem at first to recognize them. They might have been figures in a crowd. Did they intrude? … She was carrying narcissi. She approached: the path allowed her no alternative, but she approached serenely; the encounter did not seem distasteful. ‘Good morning,’ she returned in a low voice when Sydney bowed. They turned to leave her.

‘Such a lovely spot,’ remarked Miss Pinkerton, not unwilling to detain them.

‘Lovely,’ Sydney agreed, ‘so peaceful!’

‘A friend of mine,’ said Miss Pinkerton, looking at them with her mild august eyes, ‘has a cousin here.’ She indicated the destination of the narcissi. Sydney stooped to read the inscription.

‘He was an Admiral,’ said Miss Pinkerton, and sighed again.

‘Isn’t he an Admiral still?’ exclaimed Cordelia, whom Sydney, pulling by the hand abruptly, began to lead away.

‘You shouldn’t have asked that, Cordelia.’

‘But why shouldn’t I?—— Oh, Miss Warren, don’t hurry so! One would think you were running away from the Admiral – why shouldn’t I have asked that?’

‘I suppose,’ said Sydney after some reflection, ‘because Miss Pinkerton doesn’t know.’

14

Music