Did my mother know … Of course she did — and she didn't mind a bit. They had an incredibly happy marriage, but my father wasn't faithful to her for a single second.

There was scarcely a trace of jealousy in her character. She worshipped the ground he walked on, but she wasn't very highly sexed — she was quite glad that other women were taking the weight off her, as it were. I once asked her if she minded. She said: "They were the flowers, but I was the tree.