Jessica came running down the wide staircase to meet them as the Italian butler took Michael’s hat and gloves. She grasped Rosemary’s hands eagerly. ‘The honeymooners!’ she said. ‘How sweet you both look. A radiance...

Half-way up, the wide stairway turned back on itself, dividing to left and right. They heard feet clattering down the left-hand stair and he appeared suddenly, running down towards them. Michael noticed a clear, rosy...

Harding smiled, a grim and somehow impressive smile. Speaking almost for the first time, he said: ‘All Catholics are deceitful and treacherous and avaricious, but Catholic priests are the baneful, malignant fruit of that tortuous,...

The Paolinis and the van Beins went in the first gondola. Jessica, Bill, Rosemary and Michael were in the second, with the stooping, tattered figure of Harding at the oar. The two boats pushed away...

With some annoyance Michael said: ‘He could have given them another five minutes. It was a damned good fox.’ ‘Too good,’ Rosemary said casually. ‘If they found him now they would lose him again on...

He set Bucephalus to a gate, and felt the response of the horse with a delight that no response of woman had ever given him. Michael came up on his right, and with the excitement...

‘How the afternoon drags. Find me something to do, Janey.’ ‘What are the others doing?’ she asked. Alfred stretched his arms behind his head. He recited: ‘John is in the attic painting, setting on canvas...

Robert said: ‘And I shall have every dance after this with you too.’ She looked at him curiously. The slack mouth was tightened into a quite unreal thinness, flesh wrinkled above the deep, close eyes....

He went at last. Another waltz began and Rosemary smiled remotely at her, dancing past with a Robert vivacious again, the little flame leaping to a new conflagration. Behind her a voice said: ‘Ah, there...

Lionel said: ‘I had hopes … you know … that the uniform, the glamour, might lift me a little towards her height. But it’s not a height, is it – in the sense we know....