I sat on a divan with Jinny; Hilda and Isaak were in armchairs; Siegfried sat in an upright chair, near the window. The trumpets were raw and lovely. ‘When beauty’s the prize, when beauty’s the...

Isaak said: ‘For you, Hilda, it matters. It matters that David should not think bad of you because what you say is silly and bad.’ I expected her to flare in her own defence. She...

‘You mustn’t be silly.’ I tried to kiss her, and she evaded me. ‘No; don’t start like that again. David, I want to get things straight. I like you a lot, but I don’t quite...

Almost at once I found myself lifted; thin arms and hands held me and raised me on to bony shoulders. I was above them, and all their faces seemed to be turned to me with...

It was impossible to tell whether he was really mad, driven to it by the things that had been done to him, or whether he was feigning madness in the pitiful delusion that he could...

While she had breakfast, I had coffee; Jinny’s coffee was wonderful. Jinny herself had by this time reached the stage where she was settling into fatness without any regrets; she had always created an atmosphere...

I was surprised to find, though, that he disapproved of the idea of working on Sundays. He regarded it as offensive towards the country whose guests we were. ‘I can only do it because people...

I was not angry any longer, and I really was astonished. I had never expected this kind of thing from Siegfried; his very apparent religious devotion had always seemed the ingrowing kind, rather than the...

Poley left us all standing, his commissions frequently equalling, and even excelling, the combined total of the rest. He could win the confidence of a surprising variety of people. I was in the inner office...

I went up to Liverpool occasionally. I had to, since Dadda would not travel down to see me. His meanness, far from relaxing in the post-war years, grew steadily more pronounced. He would not spend...