For one thing, you don't know much about me, do you?"
"I don't even know where you live in England."
"I live at Swinly Dean."
I nodded at the mention of the well-known outer suburb of London which boasts three excellent golf courses for the city financier.
She added softly in a musing voice: "In a little crooked house..."
I must have looked slightly startled, for she seemed amused, and explained by elaborating the quotation "'And they all lived together in a little crooked house.'
That's us.
Not really such a little house either.
But definitely crooked - running to gables and half-timbering!"
"Are you one of a large family?
Brothers and sisters?"
"One brother, one sister, a mother, a father, an uncle, an aunt by marriage, a grandfather, a great aunt and a step grandmother."
"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, slightly overwhelmed.
She laughed.
"Of course we don't normally all live together.
The war and blitzes have brought that about - but I don't know -" she frowned reflectively - "perhaps spiritually the family has always lived together - under my grandfather's eye and protection.
He's rather a person, my grandfather.
He's over eighty, about four foot ten, and everybody else looks rather dim beside him."
"He sounds interesting," I said.
"He is interesting.
He's a Greek from Smyrna. Aristide Leonides." She added, with a twinkle, "He's extremely rich."
"Will anybody be rich after this is over?"
"My grandfather will," said Sophia with assurance. "No soak-the-rich tactics would have any effect on him.
He'd just soak the soakers.
"I wonder," she added, "if you'll like him?"
"Do you?"
I asked. "Better than anyone in the world," said Sophia.
Chapter 2
It was over two years before I returned to England.
They were not easy years.
I wrote to Sophia and heard from her fairly frequently.
Her letters, like mine, were not love letters.
They were letters written to each other by close friends - they dealt with ideas and thoughts and with comments on the daily trend of life.
Yet I know that as far as I was concerned, and I believed as far as Sophia was concerned too, our feeling for each other grew and strengthened.
I returned to England on a soft grey day in September.
The leaves on the trees were golden in the evening light.
There were playful gusts of wind.
From the airfield I sent a telegram to Sophia.
"Just arrived back. Will you dine this evening Mario's nine o'clock. Charles."
A couple of hours later I was sitting reading the Times; and scanning the Births Marriages and Death column my eye was caught by the name Leonides: On Sept.
19th, at Three Gables, Swinly Dean, Aristide Leonides, beloved husband of Brenda Leonides, in his eighty-fifth year.
Deeply regretted.
There was another announcement immediately below: Leonides.
Suddenly, at his residence Three Gables, Swinly Dean, Aristide Leonides.
Deeply mourned by his loving children and grandchildren.
Flowers to St Eldred's Church, Swinly Dean.
I found the two announcements rather curious.
There seemed to have been some faulty staff work resulting in overlapping.
But my main preoccupation was Sophia. I hastily sent her a second telegram:
"Just seen news of your grandfather's death.