He didn’t approve of talking barmen. They were there to serve up drinks and keep their traps shut. This one was a big slow fellow with a sloping forehead and a keg-sized belly. He meant no harm.

‘We say a glass, not a half,’ he said. ‘A glass of stout, a glass of Smithwick’s. See? It’s just a difference.’ He leaned a  chubby elbow on the bar. ‘English, yourself, are you?’

‘That’s right. London. Cockney to the core. Bow bells, all that.’

It amused him to tell these little lies. It was like firing an air rifle. Harmless practice. Anyway, he might be a Londoner, for all he knew. No one had ever told him what he was, or how he had come to be in an orphanage, in Ireland.

‘A cousin of mine is over there. Works at the building – McAlpine’s Fusiliers.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a sort of a nickname they give themselves, the lads on the building. Roads. Skyscrapers. The Irish will have rebuilt London by the time they’re finished.’

Percy Antrobus had known a McAlpine, Terry recalled. Jimmie McAlpine? Jamie? Quite the boy. Collected cars, Rolls-Royces, Alvises, and the one with the Spanish-sounding name, Hispano-something. Never out of the clubs, roistering till dawn. Decent chap, though, Percy said, and free with his dosh. Terry thought now of Oxford Street at night, lights gleaming on the wet pavement and music coming up from the Soho dives. He felt a twinge of homesickness, then laughed at himself. Barely a day away from the Smoke and already he was crying into his beer.

‘One and six, that’ll be,’ the barman said. ‘You should have come over sooner, they put tuppence on in the last Budget.’

Terry counted the coins on to the prickles of a rubber mat. An elderly type at the far end of the bar, in a brown overcoat with a fur collar, was giving him the look. He wondered, not for the first time, what it was about him that attracted the old buggers in particular, the ones with dentures and dandruff and gummy eyes.