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breakfast. Mr Flawse dismissed Lockhart and Jessica to go and play deck quoits, and presently he and Mrs Sandicott were lapping the promenade deck at a pace that took her breath away. By the time they had covered the old man’s statutory two miles, Mrs Sandicott’s breath had been taken away for other reasons. Mr Flawse was not a man to mince his words.
    ‘Let me make myself plain,’ he said unnecessarily as they took their seats in deckchairs, ‘I am not overgiven to delaying my thoughts. You have a daughter of marriageable age and I have a grandson who ought to be married. Am I right?’
    Mrs Sandicott adjusted the blanket round her kneesand said with some show of delicacy that she supposed so.
    ‘I am so, ma’am,’ said Mr Flawse, ‘I know it and you know it. In truth we both know it. Now, I am an old man and at my age I cannot expect a sufficient future to see my grandson settled according to his station. In short, ma’am, as the great Milton expressed it, “in me there’s no delay”. You take my meaning?’
    Mrs Sandicott took it and denied it simultaneously. ‘You’re quite remarkably fit for your time of life, Mr Flawse,’ she said encouragingly.
    ‘That’s as may be, but the Great Certainty looms,’ said Mr Flawse, ‘and ’tis equally certain that my grandson is a nincompoop who will in a short time, being my only heir, be a rich nincompoop.’
    He allowed Mrs Sandicott to savour the prospect for a moment or two. ‘And being a nincompoop he needs a wife who has her head screwed on the right way.’
    He paused again and it was on the tip of Mrs Sandicott’s tongue to remark that Jessica’s head, if screwed on at all, had been screwed on against the thread, but she restrained her words.
    ‘I suppose you could say that,’ she said.
    ‘I can and I do,’ continued Mr Flawse. ‘It has ever been a Flawse trait, ma’am, in choosing our womenfolk, to take cognizance of their mothers, and I have no hesitation in saying that you have a shrewd head for business, Mrs Sandicott, ma’am.’
    ‘It’s very kind of you to say so, Mr Flawse,’ MrsSandicott simpered, ‘and since my poor husband died I have had to be the breadwinner. Sandicott & Partner are chartered accountants and I have run the business.’
    ‘Exactly,’ said Mr Flawse. ‘I have a nose for these things and it would be a comfort to know that my grandson was in good hands.’ He stopped. Mrs Sandicott waited expectantly.
    ‘And what hands did you have in mind, Mr Flawse?’ she asked finally, but Mr Flawse had decided the time had come to feign sleep. With his nose above the blanket and his eyes closed he snored softly. He had baited the trap. There was no point in watching over it and presently Mrs Sandicott stole quietly away with mixed feelings. On the one hand she had not come on the cruise to find a husband for her daughter; she had come to avoid one. On the other, if Mr Flawse’s words meant anything he was looking for a wife for his grandson. For one wild moment Mrs Sandicott considered Lockhart for herself and instantly rejected him. It was Jessica or no one, and the loss of Jessica would mean the loss of the rent of the twelve houses in Sandicott Crescent. If only the old fool had proposed to her she would have seen things in a different light.
    ‘Two birds with one stone,’ she murmured to herself at the thought of a double killing. It was worth calculating about. And so, as the two young lovers gambolled on the sun-deck, Mrs Sandicott ensconced herself in a corner of the First Class Lounge and calculated. Through the window she could keep an eye on the blanketed figure ofMr Flawse recumbent in the deckchair. Every now and again his knees twitched. Mr Flawse had given way to those sexual excesses of the imagination which were the bane of his nonconformist conscience, and for the first time Mrs Sandicott figured in them largely.

3
    Imagination played a large part in the love that blossomed between Lockhart and Jessica.