‘No, not a Yankee. Wrong. I have a young German, not a Film Star. A real young man, very fine looking. But I am not so happy with him: he lacks fire, passion, the regality. I think that I will have to think again perhaps. A problem. Where to look, I ask? One does not find a true l’Aiglon just lying about on the beach, like a pebble, you know.’

Archie reached for his cigatette case. ‘Oh really?’ He chose a cigarette, closed the case with a little snap. ‘Odd; my wife did. On our beach, just the other day.’

Chapter Seven

In the shade of the trees she stopped and looked back down the length of the lawns towards the house smouldering in the late sun.

Almost deserted; a couple of waiters wandering from table to table stacking plates and bowls into big wicker baskets, Bruna and the maids hurrying to the kitchens with boxes filled with cutlery. No one spoke. A stillness lay over the weary trodden grass, chairs tilted, a crumpled napkin in the scattered gravel of the path, Tonnino in a striped apron carefully collecting pots of white hydrangeas in his barrow; at her feet in the crushed grass an empty Marlboro packet. It was all over.

She took a deep breath, leant her full weight against a tree, hands loose at her sides. I’ll be perfectly all right in a minute. Give me ten. Just a little time. The heat and all the rushing about; and age, dear. Let us not forget your age. Age creeping on, boring old age. But I still feel cold. It’s the weakness really. And that’s boring too. Borr-ing, borr-ing. And sudden.

She leant away from the tree, straightened her straw hat, rubbed her hands together briskly as if to warm them at a fire. Overdoing things, I suppose. That’s what Archie said, but then Archie would. After things were done, that is to say. Then he’d notice. ‘You’ve been overdoing things, old dear.’ Old dear. God! Such a fusspot. How can one NOT overdo things giving a whacking great picnic, I’d like to know? A picnic, a jolly jolly picnic. ‘Boys and girls come out to play, the sun is bright…’ I do so hate being called ‘Old dear’. Perfectly frightful how sometimes Archie falls back into that peculiar middle-class vernacular. What a tedious phrase to use. Where did he pick it up? Cairo? Aldershot? Army stuff, anyway. When did he use that phrase to me before? Darby and Joan all right.