‘And I,’ Trixie Giraldi, having, for once, heard perfectly, said, ‘would rather be a little hard of hearing than be a cripple like you, dear Alice.’
Parallel to the intellectual conversation he had anticipated, John had conjured up an image of Miss Varrow, the professional biographer, as a thin, lithe, demure, scholarly-looking lady, with tightly coiled white hair and sensible shoes. Instead, he was confronted by a large, fleshy, heavily painted woman, with a mass of dyed curls, wrapped in pastel-coloured frills and flounces and bloated feet, rising – like his own beautifully puffed soufflé – high above the rims of her patent leather court shoes. Alice Varrow’s sister – her much older sister, as she stressed repeatedly – conformed more closely to stereotypical refinement, yet there was a
