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matter-offactly. ‘After all, Benjy-boy, you know Mr Georgie. How could it be otherwise?’
    ‘Quite,’ agreed the Major. ‘Probably just discussing a knitting pattern or something.’
    He squinted towards the tantalus. He had been unable to play his customary round of golf that morning as it had been raining, which meant that he had also missed out on his customary chota peg in the clubhouse afterwards. However, as he had assured Mapp very firmly indeed only a few days previously that not a drop of alcohol ever passed his lips before sundown, he now felt himself to be in something of an invidious position. If only she would leave the room for some reason, he would probably have time to step across to the sideboard, pour himself a tot, knock it back and replace the glass … Yes. He found himself measuring out the distance in his mind and rehearsing each step that would be required to cross the rug, flirt dangerously with being discovered in the act, and then make it back to the safety of his armchair.
    ‘Not that I will adopt that line in public, of course,’ his wife was saying, smiling to herself while wondering how soon she might decently call upon Lucia to enquire solicitously after Georgie and express the hope that he would not be away from home too long.
    ‘No,’ she went on, ‘but it’s this other photograph that really takes the biscuit.’ She waved the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘Why, it gives Lucia every opportunity to carry on claiming that she knows Noël Coward and John Gielgud, when it should be obvious to everyone that she no more knows Noël Coward and John Gielgud than I do! Everybody knows they both snubbed her when she wrote – several times, mind – to invite them down to Tilling.’
    ‘Ah,’ said the Major. It was a particularly vacant ‘ah’ even by his standards, and Mapp looked up at him sharply from her copy of the
Daily Telegraph
. There was nothing worse than being unpleasant about someone only to discover that nobody was listening to you.
    ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake have a drink, you stupid man,’ she snapped, ‘then perhaps you’ll be able to concentrate on what I’m saying.’
    Major Flint, who was unaccustomed to being called a stupid man in his own living room, even by his wife, looked hurt, as well he might. He then contrived to inject a note of dignified resignation into his hurt expression, as he rose slowly from his chair and walked with a hurt yet dignified tread towards the sideboard.
    Mapp realised that she had perhaps been a little abrupt and considered brushing a few tears from her eyes to show that it was simply understandable upset that had caused her to speak sharply to her husband, but then remembered that she had also been understandably upset on two of the three previous days. She had no wish to diminish the effect of her furtive eye-brushing by over-use, though she privately resolved to practise it anew in front of the mirror that evening. She decided instead to employ girlish contrition, usually a reliable stand-by.
    As the Major resumed his seat with a stern expression and a damp moustache, his wife subsided gently to her knees beside his chair in what she fondly imagined to be a handmaidenly fashion, and took his free hand (the one without the glass) in both of hers. This too was a long rehearsed routine and one that she used but rarely, which was perhaps as well since she had become somewhat stout over the last few years and in fact sank towards the ground with unexpected speed and firmness, accompanied by a loud cracking of joints and creaking of corsets. Indeed she only just managed to stop herself from exclaiming as her knees connected sharply with the floor, and at the same time a particularly vicious piece of whalebone drove into a large and soft part of her generously endowed frame.
    ‘Oh, Benjy boy,’ she cooed, fluttering her eyelashes bravely through the pain, ‘I’m sorry, you know I don’t mean it, but Lucia has made me so cross over this