‘No we shall not stop, Archie. You started it and we continue. You come into this room with the most appalling, idiotic, remarks and hurt me quite dreadfully. And now, when I am a ruin – look at me! you want to stop. Typical Archie! Typical. Well, I won’t stop. I loved you madly: I thought you were the most god-like thing I had ever seen and I longed to be your wife. And I was. But I didn’t know then, how could I?, that the only way you could really make love to me was dressed in full regalia as if you had just arrived from the Richmond’s ball before Waterloo!’

‘Cuckoo! Stop! Stop this instant!’

‘I will not. It is true. Epaulettes, buttons and those damned tassled boots! This obsession with Napoleon and dressing up. How was I to know?’

‘As far as I am aware you appeared to enjoy it all very much as well.’

‘Of course I did! It was a game. You looked wildly glamorous and dashing. I didn’t mind playing your idiotic game if it pleased you, and it was fun at first.’ She twisted her rings slowly, looking at her hands intently. ‘But in time I realised that there was precious little love about it all. There was no tenderness really, you liked it that way because it hid you; made you feel strong and brave and masculine. It gave you a sense of power, you felt that you were irresistible. To yourself. You were really making love to yourself, Archie, not to me. I sometimes felt that perhaps you were really punishing me: for being barren.’

Archie gave a low cry, muffling it with his fist. She looked up wanly.

‘That was a little below the belt. I know. But you are a vain man, you have just admitted that, a vain and selfish man. But the strange thing is that I loved you in my way, and I still do. In spite of all these cruel and idiotic things we are saying to each other after so many years. It was never the kind of marriage either of us hoped for, I know. But we managed. No one knew, I think. A perfectly acceptable marriage until the war. Until then we played your little game when, as you crudely put it, the urge came upon you. And when it did not, then I skipped off with the gypsies in the woods. I admit that. I had a simply marvellous time. But no one was really hurt, Archie? Were they?’ She reached out a hand towards his bowed back. ‘And I came back. I never threw my bonnet over any windmill to that extent. We tried after … and we failed. But we stayed together, didn’t we?’

He raised his head and stared out across the gardens below. She folded her hands together on her knee.