‘Before you can remember,’ she said.

‘Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. But there’s plenty 18that do. There’s old Mr Caunter—he can tell you any amount about the artist. He’s got quite a name for it among our visitors, He’s in the bar at this moment.’

She made a movement of dissent, but it was too late.

‘He’s a dear old soul, too,’ continued the waiter. ‘A real character. I’ll tell you what, I’ll ask him to step into the lounge. There’s nothing he likes better than telling our visitors about Ludovick Dodge. Another sherry, Madam?’

‘Please.’

‘Yes, Madam. And I’ll bring along Mr Caunter. He—well, he usually takes rum.’

‘Then bring a rum with my sherry. Make it a double.’

Caunter, she said to herself. Caunter. Who was called Caunter? But a taproom bore by any other name would recognize her as easily. She had been a fool.

The huge old man, coming into the room like a ship, and piloted by the waiter, did not appear to recognize her, nor did she recognize him. He bowed portentously and sat down, and raised his glass.

‘Good health to ‘ee, my dear,’ he said. ‘And welcome to St Prew. I understand from Marky, here, that you come from London.’ She nodded. ‘Yes. And, what’s more, that you’ve seen this picture, here—only it was the real one, and not a printed-off affair—in London. So’ve I seen it. Not in London, though. No, here in St Prew. Spit-new it was then—oh, and a wonder! ‘Twasn’t everyone liked it from the first. But I did.’

Were you the man who came to mend the roof? she thought.19

‘Because I liked the painter, d’you see? Mr Dodge. Young man, he was then. In his twenties, I reckon. Remarkable. Re-markable. There wasn’t anything that young man couldn’t do. Why, I’ve seen him go down over Shark Head as easy as a rabbit. Ah!—but he’s dead, you know.’

‘He died a few years ago, didn’t he?’

‘Eighteen of March, nineteen forty-nine. In a motoring accident. Near Amalfi. In Italy. Fishing-port, like St Prew, so I understand. I got it all, cut out of the newspaper. A pity, my dear! A wonderful pity! I’ve never seen a young man so full of life, nor so enjoying. I’ve seen him down in Bat Cove, when a swarm of jellyfish was coming in. “Look at them,” he said to me. “Look at them, you old Caunter, you! I could go and bathe in them.” “Don’t ‘ee go for to do that, sir,” said I. And he burst out laughing, and walked up and down the beach with his arm round my neck, carrying on about those jellyfish and saying they made him as happy as a king. Happy and glorious, that’s what he was. So was she—his young lady. You never saw such a pair of creatures as those two.’

Stop, stop, she said to herself. What does it matter? It’s all over long ago. We’re all dead. What the hell does it matter who Ludovick took up with?