This decision was greeted by Cuckoo with undisguised delight. Her shrewd idea that her ‘pretties’, as she now privately called them, might possibly find the pleasures of the coast questionable on their limited means had proved correct. They were not, as she had hoped, easily satisfied with third best, nor did they appear to crave the company of people of their own age, had no desperate desire for the sound of Rock and Roll, or Disco music or moving about in a herd. They were obviously very much in love, wanted to be alone together, which was reasonable, and seemed perfectly content with what they found around them at the villa. Which, she thought wryly, they jolly well ought to be: a five-star hotel entirely at their disposal with a willing staff to attend to their every need. For as soon as they had made their decision, quietly and without fuss, she had instructed Bruna to get her sister Maria back into harness immediately and to bring her elder daughter, Fanny, to help with the washing-up. For her own part she had picked up the scattered loose change of her life and reopened her account: spending it lavishly in time, effort and thought to give her young guests pleasure and herself the sense of security and optimism which she so desperately needed. Life was ‘life’, now, and no longer an apprehensive drift through the days, but one of force, determination and occupation which set the flurry of furies snapping at her heels to flight, giving her no time to consider anything beyond the immediate present.

Archie’s reaction to the decision was ambivalent. His reactions often were. On the one hand he was always uneasy when there were strangers running about his house, which with Cuckoo’s capricious nature there often were in the long summer months, but on the other hand their presence so obviously gave her pleasure that it would have been extremely churlish to have made any objections, and also because of that pleasure she was less on his mind; she was kept occupied doing the things she liked best, amusing, and being amused by people, while he could quietly go back ‘into his head’, as he called it, and escape into his own world of privacy and self-thought. He had his own quarters, his study, his books, his work. People, he had to admit, hardly bothered him at all with those defences. He could slip away whenever he wanted; and did.