‘Bloody awful place. Been there. You got stuck all over with sea urchin things.’

‘Yes,’ she said vaguely, and remembering. ‘I’m not very good at the sea, it seems to me.’

He was immediately contrite. ‘Oh my dear! I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault. Anyone can tread on a sea urchin, hundreds do.’

‘They don’t sit on them.’

‘No. No, they don’t. That was a bit silly.’

They laughed together, she raised her glass and drank.

‘Anyway, I’m sorry that I rattled you at breakfast. I did say no picnic this summer … we’d just do a Darby and Joan thing. And I meant to: but what can one do? Anyway the picnic has already started, I’m afraid.’

He flicked a bit of imaginary ash into the ashtray, brushed imaginary scatters from his sleeve. ‘Ah yes. Of course. That why you’ve spiffed yourself up? You look very pretty.’

‘Thought I’d better. Have I overdone it?’

‘No … no … charming. Quite lovely, really. The girl has arrived, I take it?’

‘She’s arrived. Marcus is delighted.’

‘What’s she like? All right?’

‘Enchanting. Odd perhaps, I don’t mean “fey”, not that, she’s no Gretchen by any standards, or a Brünnhilde, thank God. She’s tiny; hair like a bottle brush, voice like dried leaves, sweet and rustly, the dress sense of a ragpicker.’

‘Oh Lor’.’

‘No, no, you’ll like her, really. Dreadfully shy, of course; all this was a bit overwhelming, I imagine. She’s apparently got a grandmother in Hamburg or somewhere … so you can imagine. An orphan, of course; they so often are, these footloose children, but she was immensely sweet at tea. Very poised. You’d have thought it was an everyday thing, lace cloth, silver, cucumber sandwiches.’

‘Good heavens! You haven’t done that for years.’

‘No. I thought I would, Bruna was livid.’

‘Speak English? Or do we have to wallow along in gutturals?’

‘No, English. Very pleasantly, when she speaks at all. She’s busy taking stock at the moment.’

‘As long as she doesn’t take the silver.’

‘You really are odious. She’s not that sort, I can tell. Eyes you could drown in, they are so wide and so deep, ravishing skin, hands like a skivvy and feet like a Botticelli angel. She arrived in a pair of simply frightful silver shoes, took them off, thank heaven. Much wiser.’

‘Silver shoes?’

‘Well, you know the young today … anything goes. They are a bit like we were. Perfectly free, uninhibited, accepting, unsurprised to an extent, unquestioning, gay, life for the living. I find it wonderfully refreshing: no fuss about Class, position, so completely unlike Harriet’s lot who were brought up with all the old standards and are as stuffy and dull as cotton stockings.

Archie finished his drink, placed the glass carefully on the tray.

‘And no sense of tradition either.’