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hairless, but who grew a mane of dark hair like her father’s and had a glass-blower’s, flute-player’s mouth. And if Fiammarosa was sometimes lonely in her glass palace, and sometimes wished both that Sasan would come more often, and that she could roam amongst fjords and ice-fells, this was not unusual, for no one has everything she can desire. But she was resourceful and hopeful, and made a study of the vegetation of the Sasanian snow-line, and a further study of which plants could thrive in mountain air under glass windows, and corresponded – at long intervals – with authorities all over the world on these matters. Her greatest discovery was a sweet blueberry, that grew in the snow, but in the glass garden became twice the size, and almost as delicate in flavour.

Baglady

Composition, Darren Haggar, 1998

Baglady

‘And then,’ says Lady Scroop brightly, ‘the Company will send cars to take us all to the Good Fortune Shopping Mall. I understand that it is a real Aladdin’s Cave of Treasures, where we can all find prezzies for everyone and all sorts of little indulgences for ourselves, and in perfect safety: the entrances to the Mall are under constant surveillance, sad, but necessary in these difficult days.’

Daphne Gulver-Robinson looks round the breakfast table. It is beautifully laid with peach-coloured damask, bronze cutlery, and little floating gardens in lacquered dishes of waxy flowers that emit gusts of perfume. The directors of Doolittle Wind Quietus are in a meeting. Their wives are breakfasting together under the eye of Lady Scroop, the chairman’s wife. It is Lord Scroop’s policy to encourage his directors to travel with their wives. Especially in the Far East, and especially since the figures about AIDS began to be drawn to his attention.

Most of the wives are elegant, with silk suits and silky legs and exquisitely cut hair. They chat mutedly, swapping recipes for chutney and horror stories about nannies, staring out of the amber glass wall of the Precious Jade Hotel at the dimpling sea. Daphne Gulver-Robinson is older than most of them, and dowdier, although her husband, Rollo, has less power than most of the other directors. She has tried to make herself attractive for this jaunt and has lost ten pounds and had her hands manicured; but now she sees the other ladies, she knows it is not enough. Her style is seated tweed, and stout shoes, and bird’s-nest hair.

‘You don’t want me on this trip,’ she said to Rollo when told about it. ‘I’d better stay and mind the donkeys and the geese and the fantails as usual, and you can have a good time, as usual, in those exotic places.’

‘Of course I don’t want you,’ said Rollo. ‘That is, of course I want you, but I do know you’re happier with the geese and the donkeys and pigs and things. But Scroop will think it’s very odd, I’m very odd, if you don’t come. He gets bees in his bonnet. You’ll like the shopping; the ladies do a lot of shopping, I believe. You might like the other wives,’ he finished, not hopefully.

‘I didn’t like boarding-school,’ Daphne said.

‘I don’t see what that has to do with it,’ Rollo said. There is a lot Rollo doesn’t see. Doesn’t want to see and doesn’t see.

Lady Scroop tells them they may scatter in the Mall as much as they like as long as they are all back at the front entrance at noon precisely. ‘We have all packed our bags, I hope,’ she says, ‘though I have left time on the schedule for adjustments to make space for any goodies we may find. And then there will be a delicious lunch at the Pink Pearl Café and then we leave at two-forty-five sharp for the airport and on to Sydney.’

The ladies pack into the cars. Daphne Gulver-Robinson is next to the driver of her Daimler, a place of both comfort and isolation. They swoop silently through crowded streets, isolated by bullet-proof glass from the smells and sounds of the Orient. The Mall is enormous and not beautiful. Some of the ladies have been in post-modern pink and peppermint Malls in San Diego, some have been in snug, glittering underground tunnels in Canadian winters, some have shopped