‘Right-oh, then. You see, when I was a kid she started taking an interest in me. What they said when I used to go to the Lake School over there on the flat,’ he jerked his head at the plateau, ‘about my liking music and so on. I was scared of her at first. You may have the idea that in this country there’s no class consciousness but it’s there, all right, don’t you worry. The station-holder’s wife taking an interest in the working manager’s kid. Accent on “working.” I felt the condescension, all right. Her voice sounded funny to me at first too, but after a bit when I got used to it I liked the way she talked. A bit of an English accent. Crisp and clear and not afraid to say straight out what she thought without drawling “You know” after every other word. The first time she had me over here, I was only about ten and I’d never been inside the drawing-room. It seemed very big and white and smelt of flowers and the fire. She played for me. Chopin. Very badly, but I thought it was marvellous. Then she told me to play. I wouldn’t at first, but she went out of the room, and then I touched the keyboard. I felt guilty and silly, but nobody came in and I went on striking one note after another, then chords, and then picking out a phrase but nobody came in and I went on striking one note of the Chopin melody. She left me alone for quite a long time and then she brought me in here for tea. I had ginger beer and cake. That was the beginning.’

‘You were good friends in those days?’

‘Yes. I thought so. You can imagine what it was like for me, coming here. She gave me books and bought new records for the gramophone and there was always the piano. She used to talk a lot about music; terrible stuff, of course, bogus and soulful, but I lapped it up. She began teaching me to “speak nicely” too. Dad and my mother used to sling off at me for it, but Mum half-liked it all the same. Mum used to buck at Women’s Institute meetings about the interest Mrs Rubrick took in me. Even Dad, for all his views, was a bit tickled at first. Parental vanity. They never saw how socially unsound the whole thing was; that I was just a sort of highbrow hobby and that every penny she spent on me was so much purchase money. Dad must have known, of course, but I suppose Mum talked him out of it.’

‘How did you feel about it?’