‘Yes, quite.’ No need to communicate directly was implicit.

I led him to the front door and opened it for him. I managed a bright smile as he went out. He looked at me thoughtfully.

‘Nice chap, your son,’ he said. ‘Interesting.’

He descended the steps into the street in his rather oversized black overcoat. Perhaps that was the Paris look this season? He certainly had the carefully knotted à la mode scarf. I watched as he went down the road in the opposite direction to Ned, but also, I noted with some relief, in the opposite direction to Prothero Road.

9

It wasn’t strictly true, what Ned had said back there in the kitchen, but I knew what he meant. He hadn’t changed horses: he just hadn’t initially been allowed to get on the one he wanted. He’d been keen to go into the Church from an early age, ever since he was confirmed at school. The lessons he’d received in preparation for it had fascinated him, and he’d come home wanting to talk about them, discuss it. Added to which he was a chorister, so he was in chapel a lot. He said there wasn’t much he heard in there that he disagreed with. At Oxford, his environment became equally ecclesiastical since he was on a choral scholarship, and I must admit, on the occasions I went to Brasenose to hear him sing, sitting in the intimate, ancient chapel, the sermons, often given by visiting preachers, were inspirational. I wasn’t surprised he was impressed, although Imo, a non-believer, would mutter cynically that if you couldn’t get a motivational speaker somewhere like that, where could you? After university, however, he’d been persuaded by Michael to at least look at other jobs. Ned had explained that what he planned to do wasn’t exactly a job, it was a calling, and Michael had flown into a terrible rage. He said he hadn’t spent all that money on a private education for his son to fritter it away in some country parish giving sermons to one man and his dog, and he could bloody well think again.

Ned had put up a fair amount of resistance, helped by me and Imo, but he was a sensitive soul, and one day, after Michael had taken him out to lunch – suit and tie job at Simpsons in Piccadilly – he’d caved in. Said he’d be happy to try banking, like Imo. He’d been very pale when he’d returned. I’d asked him to tell me what his father had said, but he wouldn’t. Imo had tried too. Obviously Michael and I had a huge row about it, which had been absolutely vile, and had taken ages for me to recover from, but neither Michael nor Ned were ever going to tell me what had gone on. I knew that.