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Fraternelli and four of his own waiters. They were all busy; huge and flattering inroads had been made upon the iced soup, trout in aspic, cold barons of beef, curried prawns, avocado salads, asparagus tips, and the eight different cheeses which comprised Fraternelli’s meagre selection. I wanted to speak to Fraternelli; blocking my way was a large black beflowered hat, suspiciously face-shading, which could only belong to one person.
    I touched that person on the shoulder, and Salome Strauss swung round slowly, manoeuvring with great skill a plate piled as high as any plate could be.
    ‘Darling!’ said Salome, pecking my cheek carefully. ‘I must have missed you at the door … Isn’t that awful? – nowadays, food is literally all I care about!’
    There must, I thought, have been nearly fifty years during which that was definitely not true … It was a frequent point of discussion, in many other large cities besides Johannesburg, as to how many lovers Salome Strauss had had; five marriages, argued the experts, all of them disrupted in various circumstances of rage, violence and uproarious scandal, must have involved at least fifty other men – and then there were all the other customers, from kings to commoners, who had slipped onto the stage in between.
    Salome was at least seventy years old now; but her wonderful faded beauty still shone out from behind the brittle pink make-up, the dyed yellow hair reinforced with God-knows-what assortment of switches and transformations, the gauzy veils, the tremendous strapped-up cornucopia of the bosom. To say that fantastic beauty and a generous heart had been her downfall would be quite wrong; those things had been the making of her, and if some people disdained or derided the finished product, I was not one of them.
    To listen to Salome, on a good day, in a good mood, reminiscing about the past was an entertainment and an education unlikely to occur again in our dull century; her portrait gallery of the king, the two dukes, the millionaire Greek, the Texan who slept in his boots, the titled actor, the untitled cabinet minister, the visiting Indian cricket team, the twin head waiters in Budapest, the precocious French student (destined for the priesthood) who turned out to be fifteen years old, the bullfighter who shouted ‘ Olé! ’ and twirled his cape with such agility and fire – these, for the past twenty years, had been my constant, envious inspiration, whenever I daydreamed of love.
    Salome Strauss had been one of my mother’s greatest friends; they used to talk interminably on the stoep , while I eavesdropped without shame. To this day I could remember Salome saying: ‘Darling – do you know the most revolting thing that can happen to anybody? – to wake up in the morning with a fearful hangover, in an empty bed, and there on the bedside table is a cigar butt stubbed out in a brandy-and-soda! Can you imagine that?’ To which my mother had replied, correctly: ‘I do not know, Salome. My husband does not smoke upstairs.’
    Now I eyed her piled plate, which did indeed reflect a changed if still catholic appetite, and encouraged her: ‘Salome, you can do any darned thing you like, at any time.’
    ‘Thank you, darling. So reassuring … Kate, that man behind you, the big farmer’s boy type.’
    ‘Name of Muddley.’
    Her brilliant violet eyes flickered. ‘I thought so. I knew his father very well.’
    ‘For heaven’s sake, Salome, don’t tell me he’s yours!’
    She affected to shake her head. ‘My terrible memory …’
    ‘You would surely remember that particular product.’
    Across the loaded buffet table, Fraternelli beamed at me. ‘Prego! You want, Miss Mary?’
    ‘I want, Fraternelli. I want a teaspoonful of everything, except the beef, which is fattening, and the gnocchi , which still looks horrid.’
    ‘ Pronto! ’
    A gentle yet commanding voice at my elbow said: ‘Muddley’s the name.’
    I turned, amused, and startled in a rather odd