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an admiral setting a course for his fleet, Sofka looks to the family fortunes and plans her performance accordingly. She surveys her children, is proud of them, trembles for them. The tremor conveys itself to her hand, and a tiny drop of Madeira gleams on the polished wood of the little table. ‘Mama,’ says little Alfred. ‘The car has come round.’
    At the wedding they will dance, husbands with wives, fathers with daughters. Under watchful gazes the young people will flirt, amazed that no one is stopping them. The music will become slower, sweeter, as the evening wears on. The children will be flushed, glassy-eyed with tiredness, their beauty extraordinary, as if it were painted. On the gilt chairs the elders will sit and talk. Reflecting, on the following day, Sofka will judge theevent a success. Her girls have been congratulated on their charming appearance and manners, her boys on their filial devotion. This is how it should be. Sofka’s cheeks have now lost their ivory pallor and her mouth wears a proud smile. In a few days she will receive telephone calls, no doubt with more compliments; she will give one or two tea-parties, for there is much to discuss. The verdicts of those sharp-eyed women, those sisters in the spirit, must be sought, their advice heeded. Strange how much calculation there is even in the most virtuous! Upstairs, in the old nursery, the girls are playing the piano. Little Alfred stands behind his mother’s chair until told to go and play. When he receives this permission he hardly knows what to do, for he is rather bad at playing. Frederick, who is very good at it, is nowhere to be seen. Sofka pours coffee, offers cakes. Looking out into her garden, she sees that a wheelbarrow has not been put away. She frowns slightly. How tiresome that so innocent a detail should spoil the perfect picture of her day.

2

    F REDERICK IS so charming and so attractive that women forgive him his little treacheries. Where others would meet censoriousness Frederick tends to invite collusion. His reputation precedes him, for that is reputation’s only useful function. In this, perhaps, he finds the justification for his behaviour. He can never understand what is wrong when people upbraid him. When the occasional woman screams at him, accusing him of forgetting his promise to take her somewhere, or saying that he was reported to have been at that same somewhere with somebody else, Frederick shakes his head, bemused. Frederick does not, in his own estimation, break promises; he merely forgets them. ‘You know what a hopeless memory I’ve got,’ he smiles, tapping his marble forehead with his poetic hand. ‘You know what I’m like,’ he smiles, deep into the woman’s eyes. At such relentless and hypnotic persuasion the reproachful woman falters. She tries to retrieve the situation by exacting from him another engagement, half aware that she is on a doom-laden course. It is important to her to be seen in public with Frederick, but as time passes this is not so easy to arrange as it used to be. Whole edifices of status are built on this sort of public appearance, reputations salvaged or lost. Somewhere she is conscious of the fact that the women in Frederick’s life are either all equally important or all equally unimportant. Perhapshis reputation has taken over his behaviour. Misgivings increase. Is it better never to make a fuss? What must one do to encourage Frederick’s affection once one has lost that turn of the head that proclaims his interest? Does one laugh, give in to him, go along with his little dishonesties? Or does one, once and for all, fling down the gauntlet? How much attention should one pay to the knowledge that if one does engage in this sort of flinging one is likely to live in permanent exile from Frederick and his kind? ‘Neurotic,’ shrugs Frederick, and his cronies agree. Some of them women.
    The exiled woman has been heard to remark that if Frederick behaves in this manner it is