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I’ve told you. I’m never going back, Joe. Ever.”

TWO
    M rs. Colquhoun took a deep breath, smoothed the front of her skirt, and nodded at the pianist. Her reedy soprano rose like a young starling, taking its first tentative flight across the crowded front room. Then crashed like a fat, shot pheasant, prompting Sylvia and Freddie, who were seeking sanctuary behind the kitchen door, to slide downward clutching their mouths and each other, to stop their screams of laughter from escaping.
    Lottie tried to stem the smile pulling at her own lips. “I wouldn’t laugh too hard,” she whispered, not without some relish. “You’re down to duet with her at the Widows and Orphans.”
    In the six short months since their inception, Mrs. Holden’s “salon” mornings had achieved some degree of fame (or notoriety—no one was quite sure which) in the politer reaches of Merham’s society. Nearly all those who considered themselves anyone attended the fortnightly Saturday-afternoon gatherings, which Mrs. Holden had initiated with the hope of introducing, as she put it, “a little cultural perfume” into the seaside town. Ladies were invited to read a passage from a favored book (The Collected Works of George Herbert was this month’s choice) or play piano or, if brave enough, attempt a little song. There was no reason, after all, that their friends in the city should be able to suggest they were living in a vacuum, was there?
    If there was just a hint of plaintiveness in Mrs. Holden’s voice when she asked this question—which she did, frequently—then it should be blamed on her cousin Angela, who lived in Kensington and had once suggested laughingly that Merham’s cultural life might benefit greatly from the building of a pier. Mrs. Holden’s everpresent smile had gone distinctly wobbly at the corners upon hearing this, and it had been some months before she could bring herself to ask Angela to come again.
    Attendance, however, was no guarantee of quality, as Mrs. Colquhoun’s vocal efforts were proving. Around the room several of the women blinked hard, swallowed, and took slightly more sips from their teacups than strictly necessary. As Mrs. Colquhoun drew to a painful close, a few of them cast surreptitious glances at one another. It was so difficult to know quite how honest one should be.
    “Well, I can’t say I’ve met her myself, but she says she’s an actress,” said Mrs. Ansty when the tentative applause had died down. “She spoke to my Arthur yesterday when she came in for some hand cream. Very . . . talkative, she was.” She managed to imbue the word with some disapproval.
    This was what the ladies had really come for. The chatter evaporated, and several leaned forward over their cups.
    “Is she Hungarian?”
    “Didn’t say,” said Mrs. Ansty, relishing her role as appointed sage. “In fact, my Arthur said that for a woman who talked so much, she said hardly a thing about herself.”
    The ladies looked at one another, raising their eyebrows as if this were, in itself, a thing of suspicion.
    “There’s meant to be a husband. But I’ve not seen hide nor hair of him,” said Mrs. Chilton.
    “There is a man there often,” said Mrs. Colquhoun, still flushed from her vocal exertions. But then she was often quite flushed; she hadn’t been the same since her husband came back from Korea. “My Judy asked the maid who he was, and she just said, ‘Oh, that’s Mr. George,’ as if that explained it all.”
    “He wears linen. All the time.” In Mrs. Chilton’s eyes this was extravagance indeed. Mrs. Chilton, a widow, was the landlady of Uplands, one of the largest guesthouses on the Parade. This would normally have excluded her from such a gathering, but as Mrs. Holden had explained to Lottie, everyone knew that Sarah Chilton had married below herself, and since her husband’s death she had taken great pains to turn herself into a woman of some standing. And she ran a very respectable