"Yes." Eleanor retrieved her cigarillos from her bra and lit up. "A bully." She blew a thin line of smoke high into the sky. "And a seedy old groper."

"I am no such thing!" the colonel blustered.

"You chased May around the garden. Twice, Colonel."

"Only in jest. Have you no sense of humour, woman?"

"You also chased me, Colonel Burrows. I was not amused."

"She wasn't." May shook her head solemnly. "She got her kaftan caught."

"Ahem. Bit of a tangle with the hibiscus," Colonel Burrows explained, his rosy cheeks ripening.

"My husband had one of those," May put in. "Got in a terrible tangle when he was trying to prune it."

"Yes, and he'll have a tangle if he's not careful, with someone who's prepared to put a bloated old b--"

"Tut, tut. Swear box, Eleanor."

"Shut the sod up, May!"

May zipped her lips.

"...bloated, lecherous, old...blunderbuss in his place!" Eleanor finished, avoiding a fine for swearing. Colonel Burrows looked fit to implode. "Lecherous!? Never! I'll have you know a soldier knows how to contain his emotions, Ms. Simpson. He's trained not to flinch under attack, whether it be by man, beast or mad women!"

"You were leching, Colonel Burrows. Really, you were. Whoops." May zipped up again.

"I might have cast my eyes in your direction momentarily," the colonel admitted to Eleanor, more composed, bar one rapidly tapping Reebok. "Caught orf guard, you see. What's a man supposed to do when a woman parades herself half-naked?"

Eleanor and Celia gazed down at her thigh-length flowing kaftan. "Nice top." Celia observed.

"Thank you." Eleanor smiled. "www.shaaditime.com. Indian couture on the internet. Wonderful jewellery." She turned back to the Colonel. "Grow up and act like a man, perhaps? Instead of an adolescent who's just found out where to put his penis?"

"My husband had one of those." May filled the astounded silence. "Great red globular thing it was. His pride and joy. People often stopped to admire it as they passed the front gate."

"Peony," Celia clarified to the colonel, whose cheeks had paled. Wonder what's on daytime TV, she mused, ushering Eleanor and May off to join the waiting others.

"Mad as hatters. Lot of 'em," the colonel muttered behind them. "And what did you ever do for queen and country, hey? Win a frilly rosette at the local gymkhana?" he shouted after Eleanor, clearly piqued and refusing defeat.

Much to Celia's dismay, Eleanor stopped, debated, then turned around. "Actually, I did two things," she said, calm under fire. "Came back from India when daddy packed me off to boarding school, thus enabling him to carry on being a good British Army Officer without the inconvenience of having a daughter, then I single-handedly saved Cheltenham Ladies' College from scandal by having an abortion. Do counties count? Or was I supposed to save the whole country?"