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Sam, Dizzy), those stalwarts of ‘our crowd’, those fundamentally decent men who never pass judgment. Why should they? They know, these men, that they are aliens, whatever airs their wives give themselves. They retain, from some anterior life, caution, prudence, an awareness of possible danger. And besides, they never thought that Frederick had any harm in him. They never thought that he went too far, or indeed went far enough. Without his reputation, Frederick is indeed an amiable, some might say a harmless, figure. And he is such a good son, such a joy to his mother. And he has done so well for them all. This early effort of Frederick’s will be resurrected from time to time when circumstanceschange. ‘He has done so well for us all,’ smiles Sofka, resting a loving hand on her son’s arm. ‘And he did so well for them all,’ the men will ruefully remark, shaking their heads, in later years, when Frederick, absent, sits in the bar of an hotel on the Riviera, and, once more, lays himself out to please.

3

    I F ANYONE HAD ever bothered to tell her, Betty would know that she bears a marked resemblance to Colette, that redoubtable French writer of whom Betty has never heard. She has the same mat of red hair, uncut, closely waved, altogether excessive in its length and thickness; the same cat’s eyes, long and narrow; the same sharp puckered mouth. Her appearance, which has acquired an edge entirely missing from her sister’s more tranquil, more unfocused beauty, could have been memorable were it not for a spark of calculation in the eyes and a tendency for the mouth to remain in a studied moue while the glance ranges thoughtfully above. Her beauty, therefore, approximates more to prettiness than it would otherwise have done had it been warmed into reflection, or coloured by memory. Betty is good-natured rather than kind. At fifteen she is already the accomplished flirt that her mother has always thought she wanted her to be. Plump and petite like Sofka, with the same small hands and feet, Betty has a guttersnipe charm.
‘Elle a du chien,’
murmured the women admiringly among themselves when Betty, as a child, swept into an elaborate curtsy, with an adorable lift and fall of the shoulders. The women are more innocent than Betty, who has already outgrown her tender dreams of married bliss, and has decided to run away from home and become a dancer at the Folies-Bergères.
    Betty has long since given up the languorous and mutual ritual of hair brushing, that innocent activity in which the girls dream of their tender future; her thoughts are now sharper and are couched in the first person singular. Privately she turns her attention to the décor of her mother’s house which she finds stuffy and lacking in style. Those brown velvet sofas, those
portières
, always absorbing sunlight and smelling of pepper, those mahogany wardrobes, those high beds with their carved headboards and their feather eiderdowns, those sideboards, that long ancestral dining table – all this she would sweep away. She would replace them with something lighter and more modern, in tones of green and orange, with plenty of glass and white paint. The only thing she would retain from Sofka’s life is that little cabinet filled with fans. And those dreadful silk foulard dresses that Sofka wears, her white silk blouses and collars with the little bar brooch at the neck, these would have to go too. Betty sees her mother, or, if her mother will not consent, herself (and this is even less likely) in patterned georgette cut on the bias and a georgette handkerchief slipped through an ivory bracelet worn high on the left forearm. Until she can put these revolutionary plans into operation she involves Mimi in the serious business of trying on their clothes; she has arranged to exchange her pinks and blues with Mimi’s navy and grey, for Mimi is older and is therefore allowed these grown-up colours. On Betty they look arresting and mildly inappropriate; her