The Morning Gift

At the bottom of the staircase, as they prepared to leave by the side door, a small group of people waited to wish her luck. The cleaning lady, the porter, the old taxidermist on the floor below. They had all known she was there and kept their counsel. She must remember that when she felt despair about her countrymen.

Someone, thought the deputy, whose origins were working class, had almost certainly been at school with someone else. Professor Somerville’s father with the Ambassador’s cousin, perhaps . . . There would have been those exchanges by which upper-class Englishmen, like dogs round a lamppost, sniff out each other’s schooling – faggings at Eton, beatin

‘I should have escaped over the border; I should not have let you swear things that are lies.’