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remedies. I proposed extra domestic help, but Grace found it tiring enough to cope with the charwoman who came every morning of the working week. I offered to engage a live-in nursemaid instead of the girl who appeared in the afternoons to take the children for a walk, but Grace, who was the most devoted mother, could not bear to think of another woman usurping her in the nursery. I told her not to get upset if the house became a little dusty or untidy, but Grace, who was a perfectionist, could not endure living in a home which was other than immaculate. Thus the melancholy exhaustion had persisted, aggravated when she was unable to live up to her impossibly high standards, and on the evening of the Bishop’s dinner-party she had been too depressed to attend.
    “I’ve nothing to wear,” she said. “Nothing.” I refrained from pointing out that this was inevitable so long as she persisted in spending all her clothing coupons on the children, but when I assured her that she would always look charming in her well-worn black evening frock, all she said was: “I can’t face Lady Starmouth.” This was an old problem. Lady Starmouth, effortlessly aristocratic, faultlessly dressed and matchlessly sophisticated, had long been a source of terror to Grace. I saw then that any further attempt at argument would be futile; I could only plan a suitable apology to offer the Ottershaws.
    When I arrived home from the palace that night I was alone. Alex was staying with us, but he had lingered at the party, as befitted the guest of honour, and we had agreed earlier that we would return to the vicarage separately. As my wife was supposed to be suffering from a migraine it would have looked odd if I had failed to leave the palace early.
    My key turned in the lock, and as soon as the front door opened I heard the baby howling. Seconds later Grace appeared at the top of the staircase. She was white with weariness and looked as if she had been crying. “I thought you were never coming home! I’m so worried, I can’t think properly—Sandy can’t keep his food down, won’t go to sleep, won’t stop crying, and I can’t bear it, can’t cope, can’t—”
    “My dearest love …” As she staggered down the stairs into my outstretched arms and collapsed sobbing against my chest, I thought of all the letters which I had written to her during our long courtship. After we had become secretly engaged I had always addressed her in my romantic correspondence by those same words. “My dearest love, today I finally put my schooldays behind me …” “My dearest love, today I arrived in Oxford for the start of my great adventure …” “My dearest love, today I finally gave up all thought of a career in the law, so I’m afraid I shall never make my fortune as a barrister …” “My dearest love, I know young men aren’t supposed to marry on a curate’s salary, but if one takes into account the little income you inherited from your grandmother, I see no reason why we shouldn’t be together at last …” How I had chased my prize of the perfect wife and what a delectable chase it had been! In fact the chase had been so delectable that I had even feared marriage might be an anticlimax, but fortunately I had soon realised there would be new prizes to chase on the far side of the altar: the perfect home, the perfect marital happiness, the perfect family life …
    The baby, bawling above us in the nursery, terminated this irrelevant exercise in nostalgia. “My dearest love,” I said firmly, “you really mustn’t let the little monster upset you like this! Go to bed at once and leave him to me.”
    “But he vomited his food—I think he might be ill—”
    I finally succeeded in packing her off to bed. As she stumbled away I noticed that the hem of her nightdress had unravelled and for a second I knew I was on the brink of recalling Dido Tallent, smart as paint in her Naval uniform, but I blocked that memory from my mind by