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people to know, we only have Mrs Harcourt-Williams and Lady Griffin and they’re too busy nowadays with all their winning-the-war committees to hold garden-parties for the natives as they used to.
    I search my brains for some social titbits.
    ‘Mrs Wynne-Jones, the doctor’s wife, told my mother-in-law a few weeks ago that she and her friends meet for coffee in the Dolphin every Friday morning. Do you know Mrs Wynne-Jones?’
    ‘The Dolphin Hotel,’ she says, as though with a sour taste in her mouth.
    ‘I hope you’re not going to be unkind about the Dolphin. It’s a lovely place, I used to work there when I was a student.’
    ‘What work did you do?’
    ‘I was a chambermaid. The bedrooms are gorgeous, all huge mirrors and crystal chandeliers. Of course, it may be different now. I’ve never been there since.’
    ‘I suppose you prefer to go to the Ship in the evenings?’
    ‘I don’t go anywhere in the evenings. Well, I go to chapel on Sunday, home to see my mother on Wednesday and sometimes to a school drama meeting on a Friday. That’s about all. Other nights I stay in and save money. I don’t like going to the pictures on my own.’
    ‘You miss your ’usband? You’re a very faithful wife, yes?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Where is he now?’
    ‘Abroad somewhere. He’s been abroad for almost three years.’
    She sighs and closes her eyes. ‘My fiancé was killed in the last war. Jean-Pierre Lamarque. He was a violinist before he became a soldier.’
    Her voice has become very sad and gentle. When she opens her eyes I see that they’re not grey as I’d thought, but the washed-out green of old bottles.
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘I wanted to become a nun, but I was only seventeen and my parents wouldn’t agree to it.’
    ‘How long was it before you met... Mr Morgan?’
    She makes an effort to remember. ‘I don’t know. Oh, it was several years later. When I was twenty I came to England as a governess. I worked in Whiteways House in Surrey, a family related to the Devonshires. They were very good to me.’
    The people at the Dolphin Hotel were good to me, too, but I don’t bother to mention it. They weren’t related to anyone, as far as I know.
    ‘I was treated as one of the family,’ she says.
    In my experience, that isn’t altogether a good thing. Treated as family in this part of the world means you work harder than hired help on no pay.
    ‘They took me to balls at the big ’ouses and to Ascot and Henley.’
    ‘And where did you meet Mr Morgan?’
    She sighs deeply, not seeming eager to leave the delights of her past life. ‘That was when I was back in France on my annual holiday. It was in Rouen – he was lost and I took pity on him. I think I was twenty-three or -four then. We got married almost at once, though he was only a student and very poor.’
    How soft and white she is. I can imagine her at twenty-three or -four, very elegantly dressed, pale and plump as a white dove. How besotted the poor, simple art student must have been with her. Jealousy claws at my stomach, almost making me groan. How beautiful Gwynn must have been at twenty, his body slim and boyish, his curly hair black, his gaze straight and clear. Reader, she married him.
    ‘Where is he this evening?’ I ask, as soon as I can talk fairly normally.
    ‘Oh, somewhere. Perhaps with his friend Mr Browne at the little dress shop. I never know where he is.’
    He’d waited for me outside school to make sure I’d remembered my promise. ‘ She’s expecting you. Don’t be shy. I’ll see you before you leave. ’
    ‘I’m slow making a start,’ his wife says. ‘I suppose I should make a few sketches. Next time you come, I’ll have the easel set up ready to begin. I think I’d like you with your back to the window, the hills as a background.’
    ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,’ I say, for no reason except that I often quote from the psalms. Our Sunday school teacher used to give us threepence for learning a