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Mullet. “You shall ’ave it in two shakes of a dead lamb’s tail.”
    Mrs. M always said “in two shakes of a dead lamb’s tail” when she was peeved but didn’t want to show it.
    “ ‘A dead lamb’s tail’ is a way of saucin’ ’em off without gettin’ yourself into ’ot water. It means ‘kiss my chump’ without actually sayin’ so,” she had once confided, but had now, obviously, forgotten she’d told me.
    Feely was by this time back into the Beethoven sonata. I put the teacup silently on the table and sat down in a bolt upright, attentive position with my knees together, my hands folded daintily in my lap, modeling my posture on Cynthia Richardson, the vicar’s wife.
    I even pursed my lips a little prunishly.
    When Feely had finished, I let a respectful silence hang in the air while I counted to eleven, partly because it was my age (although not for much longer) and partly because eleven seconds seemed to me a perfect balance between awe and insolence.
    “Feely, I was thinking …” I said.
    “How novel,” she interrupted. “I hope nothing was damaged.”
    I ignored her.
    “Have you ever thought of playing for the cinema? Like
Brief Encounter
, or the Warsaw Concerto in
Dangerous Moonlight
?”
    “Perhaps,” she said rather dreamily, forgetting her recent sarcasm. “Perhaps one day I shall be asked.”
    Feely’s only professional film performance had been as a pair of disembodied hands in a never-to-be-completed Phyllis Wyvern film, of which only a few scenes had been shot at Buckshaw before its star came to what I believe is called rather a sticky end.
    I knew how disappointed Feely had been.
    “I remember how beautiful your hands were in the film. It was remarkable, considering that you’d never before so much as seen a ciné camera.”
    I waited for her to contradict me but she didn’t.
    “Some people are fortunate enough to have had ciné films taken of them when they were children. They say that it builds much greater confidence for later on. Eileen Joyce said so on the BBC.”
    This was a brazen lie. Eileen Joyce had said no such thing, but I knew that since she was Feely’s musical idol, the mere mention of the famous pianist’s name would add credibility to my twisting of the truth.
    “Too bad there were no ciné films taken of you when you were a child,” I said. “It might have given you a leg up.”
    Feely, lost in thought, gazed out the drawing room window and across the ornamental lake.
    Was she thinking of that long ago day when she was seven? I couldn’t leave it to chance.
    “Odd, isn’t it,” I prompted, “that Harriet didn’t own a ciné camera? I should have thought that someone like her would have—”
    “Oh, but she did!” Feely exclaimed. “Before you were born. But when you came along she put it away—for obvious reasons.”
    Ordinarily I’d have made some rude comeback, but necessity, as someone once remarked—or should have remarked—is the mother of keeping your lip zipped.
    “Obvious reasons?” I asked. I was willing to suffer any indignity to keep this conversation alive.
    “She didn’t want to risk breaking it.”
    I laughed too loudly, hating myself. “I’ll bet she wasted lots of film on you, though,” I said.
    “Miles of it,” Feely said. “Simply miles, and miles, and miles.”
    “Where is it, then? I’ve never seen it.”
    Feely shrugged. “Who knows? Why are you so suddenly interested?”
    “Curiosity,” I said. “I believe you, though. It sounds so like Harriet to have wasted all that film on others. I wonder if anyone ever thought to take any films of her?”
    I could hardly put it any more plainly than that.
    “Not that I remember,” Feely said, and gave herself back to Beethoven.
    I stood behind her, peering over her shoulder at the music, an invasion of her personal boundaries which I know perfectly well gives her the creeps.
    Nevertheless, she ignored me and kept on playing.
    “What does
Tempo rubato
mean?”