She wrote him long letters from England and brought him back a marvellous gramophone and a great many records. He was now fifteen. The unpleasant memory of their last meeting had been thrust away at the back of his mind. He had found his feet at school and worked hard at his music. At first his encounters with his patron after her return from England were happy enough. Alleyn gathered that he talked about himself and that Flossie listened.

In the last term of 1940, Cliff formed a friendship with an English boy who had been evacuated to New Zealand by his parents; evidently communistic intellectuals. Their son, delicate, vehement and sardonic, seemed to Cliff extraordinarily mature, a man among children. He devoured everything his friend had to say, became an enthusiastic leftist, argued with his masters and thought himself, Alleyn suspected, a good deal more of a bombshell than they did. He and his friend gathered round them an ardently iconoclastic group all of whom decided to fight ‘without prejudice’ against Fascism, reserving the right to revolt when the war was over. The friend, it seemed, had always been of this mind. ‘But,’ said Cliff ingenuously, ‘of course it made a big difference when Russia came in. I suppose,’ he added, ‘you are horrified.’

‘Do you?’ said Alleyn. ‘Then I mustn’t disappoint you. The thing is, was Mrs Rubrick horrified?’

‘I’ll say she was! That was when the awful row happened. It started first of all with us trying to enlist. This chap and I suddenly felt we couldn’t stick it just hanging on at school and—well, anyway, that’s what we did. We were turned down, of course. The episode was very sourly received by all hands. That was at the end of 1941. I came home for the Christmas holidays. By that time I realized pretty thoroughly how hopelessly wrong it was for me to play at being a little gentleman at her expense. I realized that if I couldn’t get as my right, equally with other chaps, the things she’d given me, then I shouldn’t take them at all. I was admitting the right of one class to patronize another. They were short of men all over the high country, and I felt that, if I couldn’t get into the army, I’d better work on the place.’

He paused, and, with a very shamefaced air, muttered: ‘I’m not trying to make out a flattering case for myself. It wasn’t as if I was army-minded. I loathed the prospect. Muddle, boredom, idiotic routine and then carnage. It was just—well, I did honestly feel I ought to.’

‘Right,’ said Alleyn. ‘I take the point.’