Today, embowered in wistaria, plumbago and bougainvillaea, it sat pleasantly among its trees with the comfort and security of constancy. Which was nonsense, of course. There was no real comfort or security now. No constancy. It was a mirage perhaps? A vision shimmering in the air; a reflection of some other time and place. But perhaps that is only me. Others would see it all differently of course. Supposing I said, suddenly to Tonnino, ‘Tonnino, stop mulching your hideous Super Stars which I know are the pride and joy of your dreary life, and tell me just what you see up there among the trees?’

He’d take off his straw hat and hold it against his chest and he’d say, ‘Nothing, Madame.’

‘Nothing, Tonnino? Are you certain? Not a house?’

‘Ah yes! A house. The house. Of course, the house. It has been there always.’

‘You do not think it a mirage then?’

He would look at me curiously. ‘I see the house, Madame,’ Thinking I was a bit tipsy again.

And Archie. Archie would be very grotty. He could be at times. ‘What are you talking about, Cuckoo? What can I see? The house, of course. Arches, windows, terraces, towers and so on. I know every stick and stone and door knob. Should do after fifty years. Are you all right?’

Oh yes. I’m all right. I would have irritated him, of course, because ten to one I’d have interrupted some tremendously involved chain of inner thought. I so often do. The trouble is that I am never perfectly certain if he is just sitting; or just sitting thinking.

Externally there has always seemed to me so little difference. He has a face which conceals thought. Sometimes, looking at him across the terrace in the evenings, it is quite impossible to know if he is re-grouping Poniatowski’s troops at Borodino or simply deciding to replace the blue spruce with a willow. Either way it is a matter of complete withdrawal.

She turned her face up towards the sun, closing her eyes; bars of light drifted across her retina slowly. She opened them quickly. My mind’s eye. In my mind’s eye.

Archie sitting uneasily on the corner of her bed in his Liberty silk dressing-gown, feet in red leather slippers, hair brushed neatly. A brightly wrapped package on his knees.

She replaced the mascara brush in its box and carefully closed the lid. ‘There. My eyes are “on”. Such a bore, fair eyelashes. I should have them dyed: someone said that you could.’ She reached across the cluttered dressing-table for a powder puff. ‘You haven’t opened your present!’

She saw him in the gilt-swagged oval mirror finger the package thoughtfully. ‘I found it in that shop in rue d’Antibes. I don’t think it’s one you’ve got, but if it is you can change it. He said so.’