‘There were things they couldn’t spoil. I was bullied at first, of course, and miserable. It’s so bracing for one, being made to feel suicidal at the age of thirteen. But I turned out to be a slow bowler and naturally that saved me. I got a bit of kudos at school concerts and I developed a turn for writing mildly indecent limericks. That helped. And I went to a good man for music. I am grateful to her for that. Honestly grateful. He made music clear for me. He taught me what music is about. And I did make some real friends. People I could talk to,’ said Cliff with relish. The phrase carried Alleyn back thirty years to a dark study and the sound of bells. ‘In our way,’ he told himself, ‘we were just another clutch of little egoists.’

‘While you were still at school,’ he said, ‘Mrs Rubrick went to England, didn’t she?’

‘Yes. That was when it happened.’

‘When what happened?’

The story developed slowly. Before Florence Rubrick left for England, she visited young Cliff at his school, bearing down on him, Alleyn thought, as, a few years earlier, she had borne down on Ursula Harme. With less success, however. She seemed, in the extraordinarily critical eyes of a schoolboy, to make every possible gaffe. She spoke too loudly. She tipped too lavishly and in the wrong direction. She asked to be introduced to Cliff’s seniors and talked about him, in front of his contemporaries, to his house-master. Worst of all she insisted on an interview with his music teacher, a fastidious and austere man, at whom she talked dreadfully about playing with soul and the works of Mendelssohn. Cliff became morbidly sensitive about her patronage, and imagined that those boys in his house who came from the plateau laughed about them both behind his back. He had committed, he felt, the appalling crime of being different. He had a private interview with Flossie, who spoke in an embarrassing manner about his forthcoming confirmation and even, with a formidable use of botanical parallels, of his approaching adolescence. In the course of this interview, she told him that her great sorrow was the tragedy of having been denied (she almost suggested it was by Arthur Rubrick) a son. She took his face between her sharp large hands and looked at it until it turned purple. She then reminded him of all that she had done for him; kindly, breezily, but unmistakably, and said she knew that he would repay her just as much as if he really were her own son. ‘We’re real pals, aren’t we?’ she said. ‘Real chums. Cobbers?’ His blood ran cold.