Accompanying us to the concert was Peter’s best man, Alastair Pearce. I was very fond of Alastair. My parents had decreed from the beginning that Célia and Peter needed to be chaperoned at all times, and Alastair and I had made up the foursome. Célia, an ex-pupil of the English Girls’ College, was a competent anglophone (although you wouldn’t think it, the amount of time she and Peter spent in the dumbstruck golden silence of infatuation). But Maman, to keep us from killing each other, had sent me to the Lycée Français, where English was taught through the lens of the absolute supremacy of French culture: grammar perfect, devoid of idioms, uninterested in the sounds h and th, and accompanied by a strong, guttural French r. (Try, as a French speaker, the phrase thoroughly horrid at speed.) Anyway, Alastair soon put paid to that: he didn’t have a word of French so I had to make all the running in English, and soon I was familiar, or rather at home, with marvelous words like scrounge and wizard as well as phrases such as use your loaf and piece of cake, which I found quite irresistible. Alastair, furthermore, was married, which made life easy since he was a sandy beanpole of a man, sweet tempered and genial and not remotely my type, and when the boys were on leave we had—within the strict parameters of the Haddad family moral code—what I learned to call a whale of a time.

So there we were, waiting in the drawing room for Alastair to call and escort us to a relaxing evening of music. Célia in a charming two-piece, glancing regularly at her new tiny watch (which came in a box with six different-colored straps including a white one for tomorrow). Me, smartly attired in a navy shift, repeating, “Darling, it’s not seven yet and I’m sure he won’t be late,” every time she did so.

Sure enough the bell rang on the dot and I ran to the door. Saying, “See? I knew he wouldn’t let you down!”

Standing on the step was a medium-height black-haired somber-looking stranger, pressed and starched in an RAF uniform, holding his hat in his hand.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said without preamble. “Alastair’s been held up at Growler. So it’s my honor to come here on his behalf and take you to the concert.”

Such was my surprise, I caught half of this information at best, and ushered him wordlessly inside where he repeated his announcement, sounding remarkably as if he were issuing a bulletin to the assembled 274 Squadron instead of two women in a drawing room. “Oh—my name is James Acton,” he concluded this time, and we all shook hands.