It turned out that I did have some essential skills. Vicars’ wives, we get asked how we put up with it all. Having people traipsing in and out of our living room. Never knowing who we’ll find drinking tea in the kitchen. What about our private life? It still tickles me. In Alexandria the concept of a private life was unknown. My whole existence was bound up into a morass of relations and friends and acquaintances who knew my business down to the last pimple on my teenage nose—not only did they know, they were also ready with skin preparations and dietary advice. I’d been getting lessons in tolerating people, looking after them, making them feel welcome, since I was four years old.

I also knew how to face them down. Once I was in the vestry hanging up James’s clean surplice when I overheard a woman in the church say, “I bet she’s Jewish really. She looks Jewish.”

I came out of the vestry and smiled at the woman, smiled into her pale stare and the blushes of her friend. “If I was Jewish I’d say so.”

My sleeves rolled up from housework, my forearms chilly.

“She didn’t mean anything by it,” said the blusher.

I picked up a duster and a tin of polish. “Shall I help you?” Because they were cleaning the pews, and it was a lot of work. They couldn’t say no to the curate’s wife. We went at it for half an hour, which I considered punishment enough, because by dint of nonstop cheerful questions and remarks I forced them to talk to me all the way through. And then they had to thank me as I left, even though I know I did a terrible job since it was my first try. Then, as I was going out of the door, the pale-eyed one said, “So what are you, dear?”

I knew how to reply. My family was Catholic, I told them, but I’d become an Anglican because it was easier all round. I said this with a slight roll of the eyes: These men and their churchy complications. The two women permitted themselves a cautious nod of approval. Their lives had been exhausting even before the war, and now the war was over the bloody bread was on the ration. They had a proper appreciation of things that were easier all round.

Because Alver Shore was a hard place. Men died of drink, children of pneumonia, women of demobbed husbands who came home cruel. James came alongside the wreckage, grabbed the outstretched hands, and I did too. Trying to keep the bereaved families warm and fed in the aftermath. James thrived. It seemed that all he needed was to be home again, to be busy, to take up where he left off. Working in the service of God.