“I don’t even pretend to,” she said. “I never could. I’m pure 1930—and American. You can’t turn that into verse.”
“You’re Audrey de Lisle,” said John. “And Audrey de Lisle might have sat for most of the sonnets I know.”
Audrey tilted her chin.
“Sonnets aren’t nursery rhymes.”
“Or rhymes, either. Hang it, my dear, if you’re 1930, so’s Sundial. Don’t forget that. I don’t say it looks it, but then—neither do you.”
Audrey plucked at her dress.
“This came from Paris,” she said, “six weeks ago. I hardly think Bo-Peep was so extravagant. And then I sleep in pyjamas and use bath-salts and smoke. And I powder my nose and drive a high-powered car. You won’t find that sort of stuff in a nursery rhyme.”
“ ‘The Queen was in the parlour,’ ” said Christopher John. “It doesn’t say how she was dressed, but I imagine she did herself just as well as she could. I don’t know about the pyjamas, and I’m sure her stockings weren’t in the same street as yours, but I’ve always sort of believed that the—the contents were. And that’s the point. One reads of queens and fine ladies and maidens and all, and then one day, if one’s lucky, one comes across you. And there’s the original of the lot.”
Audrey lay back on the turf and stared at the trembling green and the blue beyond.
“That’s very charming of you, but——”