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to Inchcape: ‘So you think we shall stay here?’
    ‘Why should we not?’
    Guy said: ‘Woolley stopped us earlier this evening and tried to order Harriet home.’
    Inchcape, eyes and nostrils distended, looked from Guy to Harriet and back again: ‘Woolley took it upon himself to give you orders?’
    Enjoying Inchcape’s indignation, Harriet said: ‘He said that he is the leader of the English colony.’
    ‘He did, did he? The old fool’s in his second childhood. He spends his days in the bar at the Golf Club getting sustenance out of a bottle, like a baby. In his dotage; his anecdotage, I’d say. Ha!’ Inchcape gave a laugh, cheered by his own wit, then he fell to brooding and, after a pause, said: ‘Leader of the English colony forsooth! I’ll show him who’s leader if he tries to order my men about.’
    Guy and Clarence exchanged smiles.
    Harriet asked Inchcape: ‘If there were an invasion, if we had to leave here in a hurry, where would we go?’
    Inchcape, still annoyed, answered shortly: ‘Turkey, I suppose.’
    ‘And from there?’
    ‘Oh!’ His tone became milder. ‘Make our way through Syria to the Middle East.’ He assumed his old joking manner. ‘Or we might try a little trek across Persia and Afghanistan to India.’ But he still spoke grudgingly. He interrupted himself to say: ‘But there’ll be no invasion. The Germans have better things to do with their troops than spread them out over Eastern Europe. They’ll need all they’ve got to hold the Western front.’
    Clarence stuck out his lower lip. He ‘hmmd’ a bit before remarking in a casual tone: ‘Nevertheless, the situation is serious. I bumped into Foxy Leverett today and he advised me to keep my bags packed.’
    ‘Then you’ll keep them packed a long time.’ Inchcape now shrugged the matter off. He might have been dealing with a junior-school fracas of which he had had enough.
    The piccolo arrived, a scrap of a boy, laden with bottles, glasses and plates. Breathing loudly, he set the table.
    Glancing up, Harriet found Clarence’s gaze fixed on her. Helooked away at once but he had caught her attention. She noted his long, lean face with its long nose, and felt it unsatisfactory. Unsatisfactory and unsatisfied. As she assessed him, his eyes came, rather furtively, back to her and now he found her gazing at him. He flushed slightly and jerked his face away again.
    She smiled to herself.
    Guy said: ‘I asked Sophie to join us here.’
    ‘Why, I wonder?’ Inchcape murmured.
    ‘She’s very depressed about the war.’
    ‘Imagining, no doubt, that it was declared with the sole object of depressing her.’
    Suddenly all the perturbation of the garden was gathered into an eruption of applause. The name of the singer Florica was passed from table to table.
    Florica, in her long black and white skirts, was posed like a bird, a magpie, in the orchestra cage. When the applause died out, she jerked forward in a bow, then, opening her mouth, gave a high, violent gypsy howl. The audience stirred. Harriet felt the sound pass like a shock down her spine.
    The first howl was followed by a second, sustained at a pitch that must within a few years (so Inchcape later assured the table) destroy her vocal chords. People sitting near Ionescu glanced at him and at his women. Sprawled sideways in his seat, he stared at the singer and went on picking his teeth. The women remained impassive as the dead.
    Florica, working herself into a fury in the cage, seemed to be made of copper wire. She had the usual gypsy thinness and was as dark as an Indian. When she threw back her head, the sinews moved in her throat: the muscles moved as her lean arms swept the air. The light flashed over her hair, that was strained back, glossy, from her round, glossy brow. Singing there among the plump women of the audience, she was like a starved wild kitten spitting at cream-fed cats. The music sank and her voice dropped to a snarl. It rose and, twisting her body as in