In this sense, Alice Varrow was the easiest subject to conquer. Old, lame, impecunious and terrified of being alone, her greatest pleasure was to cram her pocket-sized house at Bellosguardo full with people whom she could neither manage to accommodate nor afford to feed, so that she viewed the recent arrival of John – a young man who could be pressed into service, whilst masked as a guest – as something of a godsend.
The first time he had been invited to dine at her house, at the end of August, he had had the temerity to ask if he could bring anything, to which question Alice unhesitatingly replied, ‘You do that tarragon chicken en gelée so nicely. Why don’t you bring that along? We’ll be fourteen.’ And though he quickly learnt to circumvent her far from subtle stratagems, he could not re
