‘It’s a bit late, isn’t it? To be having such qualms? Pity it didn’t occur to you when I was trying to wriggle out . . . But let me put your mind at rest, Lyd. There’ll be no problems of a social nature. So long as the child remembers to wear her gloves and speak when she’s spoken to, say “yes, uncle” and “no, uncle” at every verse end, I see no problem. People will approve. I’ll be held up as an example from Calais to Cannes of self-sacrificing uncle-hood.’

‘All the same, I do feel myself responsible.’

Joe grinned. ‘You always did, Lydia. It can be infuriating. Look, love, stop fretting. Dorcas always comes out well, you’ve discovered that. She’ll be just fine.’

‘Of course she will! It’s not Dorcas I’m fretting about, you chump! Oh, Marcus! You’ll have to speak to him!’

Left alone, the two men rolled their eyes in affectionate complicity and sank thankfully into a companionable silence, giving their full attention to plates of kidneys and bacon with copies of The Times and the Daily Herald on the side.

‘Stockings?’ Joe looked up, struck by a sudden thought. ‘Hasn’t the child got supplies of socks?’

Marcus seemed to be having difficulty with a piece of toast and coughed behind his napkin. ‘You haven’t noticed, have you, old boy? She’s growing up fast.’

‘Well, of course I’d noticed! She’s put on about two inches in every direction since you had the keeping of her. Good food, regularly offered. Makes a difference.’

‘Exactly A difference. Glad you’re aware. Lydia couldn’t be quite certain that you were. Well, there you are then. I’ll tell her. “Joe’s aware,” I shall say!’

Joe pondered on this for a moment. ‘I say, do I consider myself spoken to?’

‘Can’t imagine you’d want me to elaborate. I will venture to add a word of advice of my own though . . . a thought or two from a man of the world, family man, father of girls and all that: if our perusal of the file is correct, I assume you’ll be taking young Dorcas with you to stay with this family? Yes? Well, you could hardly park her in some hotel in war-torn Reims while you go off by yourself. There’ll be a warm reception and – Lydia noticed – the company of the young son of the house. Dorcas will want to make a good impression. Wouldn’t expect her to come down to dinner in the shorts and sandals she’d packed for the south of France, would you? The whole thing may be a bore and a distraction for you, Joe, but I can tell you, for the girls it’s a romantic interlude. Let them enjoy it and don’t be so stuffy!’

‘And that’s your advice? You hand me the fruits of your years of fathering and it amounts to – “Don’t be stuffy”? Wouldn’t fill a book, would it?’

Marcus gave Joe a long look over the table and spoke in a voice of rough affection. ‘It’s a long way down to Antibes. It will seem twice as long if you antagonize Dorcas.’ And, seeing Joe was about to explode with indignation, ‘Take it easy, old chap. You’re wound up tight as a spring. Can’t help noticing. I’m saying she’s rather like a partly trained little wild creature – think of a ferret . . . Remember Carver Doone?’ he added lugubriously. ‘Lyd’s done her best – so have I – but there’s some way to go yet before we can present her at Court. Or for tea in a Joe Lyons Corner House, come to that.

‘Well, that’s it. I’ve said my piece.’ Marcus sat back, relieved to hear no riposte from Joe. ‘Listen, old man – those buggers at the Yard work you too hard. Lydia and I are always concerned for you, considering the life you lead . . . always mixed up in murder and mayhem of one sort or another. It will be a relief to us to know that for the next three weeks at least you’re not dicing with death.’

Chapter Five

‘Did you lay this on specially, Joe?’

Dorcas, sitting in the passenger seat of the Morris Oxford cabriolet, looked up from her guidebook and stared with disbelief at the scene in the street before them.

‘Certainly didn’t,’ said Joe impatiently. ‘The street’ll be blocked for hours!’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We’ll be late. You’d have thought my opposite number . . . what’s his name? Inspector Bonnefoye, that’s it . . . would have warned me this was happening. He must have known.’

‘I expect he did know,’ said Dorcas easily. ‘You’ll find it’s a dastardly Gallic wheeze to put you in your place and, for the French, your place would always be one step behind and on the wrong foot. It’s manipulation . . . Joe, what are those beasts we’re looking at? What are they doing in the middle of the city and how fast do they go?’

‘Rather splendid, aren’t they? Oxen. White oxen. Eight of them pulling each dray at about a hundred yards per hour and there would appear to be drays as far as I can see until they disappear round the corner of the Avenue. Look, this one’s dedicated to the wool trade and the next is the biscuit-makers’ float. Champagne houses after that . . .’

‘There’s a banner! Reims Magniflque, that’s what we’re seeing.’ She squinted into the distance and read: ‘It’s la grande cavalcade and it’s celebrating the resurgence of the city after the exigencies of the Great War. Well, it’s quite a nuisance but you have to say – well done them!’ She looked around her at the cheering crowds, the marching band, the buildings under reconstruction or already rebuilt and still shining clean. ‘Eight years, Joe, that’s all the time they’ve had to build the city up again from the rubble the German army reduced it to. Look, there’s a picture in my book of the cathedral in flames. September 1914. The Germans were over there,’ she waved an arm vaguely to the north, ‘and they just took pot shots at it with fire bombs. Some scaffolding around the north tower caught alight and the whole building went up in smoke. Many of their own German wounded who’d been sheltering in the nave were burned to death along with the nuns who were nursing them.’

She looked up from her book, face puckering with distress. ‘They’d been here in the city only days before. They’d seen the beauty of the cathedral right there in front of them. How could they retire a few miles off and deliberately destroy it? I can’t understand.’

Joe had no answer. He’d felt her increasing sadness as they’d driven south through remembered battlefields and, in the end, had set aside most of the places he’d intended to see as unsuitable for a sensitive young person. He had not anticipated the force of her reaction to the memorials and had watched, disturbed, as the child had stood in floods of tears in front of the very first one they had visited, patiently going through all the names, insisting on pronouncing each one in her own private ritual, unable to move on until each man had been faithfully acknowledged.

‘Have you never been this way before, Dorcas?’ he’d asked. She reminded him that her father was a pacifist and a conscientious objector who’d spent the war years in Switzerland. They had always travelled through Dieppe and Paris and the war was never referred to. Orlando saw no reason to remind his children of this sorry episode.

In the end Joe had reduced their visits to two places of remembrance. Mons where it had all started and Buzancy, not very distant, where for him it had all finished in that bloody July four months before the end. He’d chosen Buzancy because it represented the combination, at times uneasy, of the allied forces. French, British and American had all fought here. But, above all, he’d chosen it because the small stone monument, a cairn in his eyes, had been hastily built up from material to hand after the battle; it was simple and affecting and bore no heartbreaking lists of the dead. Erected by the 17th French Division in honour of the 15th Scottish, it marked the place on the highest point of the plateau where had fallen the Scottish soldier who had advanced the farthest. A simple two-line inscription said it all, Joe thought: