She consulted her watch in a marked manner.

‘If she tells me to “run along now” I shall put her on the first train to Nice with a label round her neck,’ Joe vowed silently.

He strode along the pavement of the rue de la Magdeleine checking the blue enamelled numbers of the refurbished town houses, a run of elegant façades. Had he got the right street? And there it was at the end, set a little way back and looking very proper with its newly painted front door and fresh draperies at the windows. He avoided turning in through the wrought-iron gate and strolled on around the corner. A second entrance at the side of the house and giving on to a street leading towards the river showed signs of use. The iron handrail which led up to the door was worn to a ribbon slenderness, the steps slightly dipped towards the centre. He was quite certain that, in their discreet French way of going on, there would be an even more reticent back door if he were to pursue his exploration. As he lifted the knocker and rapped he thought he could well be visiting his doctor or his dentist. Only the brass plate was lacking.

The door was opened at once by a maid in dark dress and white cap. She took his hat and whisked ahead of him down the tiled hall, calling to him to take care – the floor was just washed and not yet dry. She showed him into a parlour overlooking the street. Joe looked around him. The furnishings were sumptuous and very new and all were imported from the East. A small jungle of large-leafed plants appeared to have broken out.

‘Do sit down, monsieur. Madame will be with you directly,’ the girl said sweetly and left him deciding what to do with himself.

The air was stale with the scent of last night’s Havana cigars, last night’s Soir d’Été perfume too, both beginning to lose the battle with the not unpleasant smell of freshly laid Wilton carpet and beeswax polish. A silk-covered divan which appeared to be the principal seating was piled high with cushions in raging shades of red and purple and was disconcertingly low. He did not wish to be discovered lolling. Nor did he wish to stand about in a menacing way. His eye lit on two Louis XV chairs, one on either side of the door, and he firmly carried them over to the window and set them facing each other. He’d carry out this interview knee to knee, eye to eye. A moment’s study of the window-locking arrangements, never simple in France, was productive; in six moves he had managed to raise the window a foot and stood by it breathing in the fresh morning air.

‘Monsieur makes himself at home?’

He hadn’t heard her enter and turned to see a handsome woman of middle age watching him. There was calculation in her eyes though the tone of her question had been light, almost teasing.

‘I’ve never felt at home in a kala jugga, madame,’ he said, waving an explanatory hand at the greenery.

‘Ah? Monsieur has lived in India?’

‘For a short time.’

‘You are English?’

‘Say rather – Scottish.’

She appeared to be encouraged by this confidence and moved forward to take the chair opposite him. Lydia would have approved of the single row of good pearls and the dark linen pleated day dress which could have come from the hands of Mademoiselle Chanel. The head-hugging haircut with its emphatic fringe framed a face which needed no additional emphasis. The strong, over-large nose and black eyebrows would have been overpowering without the sweetly curving red cupid’s bow of a mouth. She crossed her legs neatly at the ankles and leaned towards him. ‘Always delighted to welcome a Scottish gentleman,’ she murmured. A flash of interest in her expression made him think that perhaps her sentiment owed more to experience than flattery. She looked at him with increasing warmth.

A not unusual reaction. He’d learned to use this French affection for all things Scottish to his advantage. For them, the English would always, though fighting and falling shoulder to shoulder with them, represent le perfide Albion but the Scots were a different matter. He’d first become aware of this perception of his fellow countrymen at a very low moment. Shot though the shoulder fighting a rearguard action at Mariette Bridge near Mons, he’d insisted on getting back into the thick of things as soon as he could struggle out of the hospital cart and, separated from his unit, had been sent along with the front ranks of the fast-retreating British Expeditionary Force south to . . . who knew where? He’d been instructed to act in the capacity of Staff Officer with knowledge of the language – never enough of these to be found – in order to facilitate the liaison of the French and British commanders – when they could be herded together. As these gentlemen appeared only too happy to avoid each other, Joe felt he’d been handed an uncomfortable duty. On the one occasion he’d met the Anglophobic General Lanrezac he’d been bursting to give the supercilious commander in whose unreliable hands lay the fate of an exhausted British Expeditionary Force a piece of his mind. His fingers had itched to turn the map upside down and tell him to get on with it. Lanrezac could, with his eternal back-pedalling, have given Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator a lesson in time-wasting. But Joe’s duty was to stand unremarked in the background, listening and quietly seething as he murmured into the ear of his own commanding officer translations of Lanrezac’s dismissive remarks and disconnected policy.

For the rest of the time in those desperate days when the British had force marched their way, fighting every inch down the undulating white road towards the Marne, he’d made himself useful in the confusion, organizing supply dumps at crossroads, clearing the roadways, directing lost soldiers to their companies. He’d even caught a runaway horse and joined a cavalry patrol riding out to ambush and exterminate a German cavalry force threatening their right flank.

After eleven days with little sleep and food the men had slogged their way all night through the deep Forest of Crécy. They had emerged into the centre of a fairy-tale village with its small château, all untouched by the war and, in this idyllic place, someone had finally called a halt. The men had collapsed where they stood. Some who’d fallen on the road were dragged out of the path of wheels and hooves by their mates. They made it in their hundreds into the shelter of the apple and pear trees of an orchard and lay down more dead than alive.

This was it. This far and no farther. Here they would regroup, turn their faces to the north again and fight their way back. The retreat from Mons was over.

Joe had been in the village square conferring with the local mayor, supervising the available food supplies and sleeping arrangements, when his attention was demanded by a Valkyrie voice. A female voice. The mayor, at the sound, stopped speaking in mid-sentence, muttered his apologies and took flight. An elderly Frenchwoman, of some standing apparently, had arrived on a bicycle with her old groom in attendance, similarly mounted.

‘You there!’

Joe automatically saluted the imposing figure clad, improbably, in riding coat and brimmed veiled hat.

‘I wish to see your billeting officer.’

He had accompanied her to the schoolroom being used as billeting HQ. The officer in charge Joe remembered with affection. His name was Bates. A man with an amazing memory for names and a facility for making possible the seemingly impossible. Bates had leapt to his feet and saluted, as had Joe. The lady announced herself to be the owner of the nearby château and she suspected (correctly) that her property was on their billeting list.

‘You will send me Scotsmen,’ she announced. ‘I will accept nothing but Scotsmen. I’m quite certain you have some.’

Sensing their surprise, she thought to add an explanation: ‘My family, including six small grandchildren, have fled their home in the Ardennes and taken refuge with me. I am told that the Scottish soldiers are excellent child-minders and may be trusted not to break one’s possessions.’