He raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what I’ve heard. Besides, what good will it do to stay? St. Oswald’s is changing, Straitley. Might as well take the package, and enjoy the few good years we have left. Or would you rather die onstage?”

“Molière did,” I told him.

Eric made a huffing sound. “You always were a stubborn ass.”

“Better that than a management stooge.”

He gave me a look. “You’d better not be trying to get me involved in anything. I already told you what I felt about Harry Clarke’s memorial. No reason to dig up that story again. It can only damage us all.” He finished his tea and put down the cup. “I’ve lived too long in the past,” he said. “Now I think it’s time for a change.”

“What kind of a change?”

He gave a shrug. “I thought I could move to Paris at last. Find myself a little hotel. Go and see the Folies-Bergère.”

I stared at him. If he’d made a joke, then he was commendably deadpan. And yet, old Eric has always longed to go and live in Paris, an unlikely ambition that seems all the more so for the fact that his mother, aged ninety-two and suffering from dementia, needs constant attention at home, including a daily carer, which eats up most of his salary. I was suddenly reminded of Winter and his dreams of Hawaii, and of Spanish-eyed Gloria, at the door, with her rows of china dogs. Certain people seem to project something of immortality.

A dreadful thought occurred to me. “Eric—is your mother all right?”

For a moment, he said nothing. Then he looked up and smiled at me. It was a bleak little wavery smile, that made him look both very old and very like the schoolboy I knew.

“Eric?” I said.

He shook his head. Then he started to cry.

It was a stroke, the doctor had said. A kind of mercy, I suppose. Eric’s mother, Margery—whom I recalled from boyhood as a cheery, maternal type, with a beehive hairdo of frankly impressive proportions and a ten-a-day cigarette habit—had dwindled over the years into a tiny, rasping Tinker Bell, growing increasingly distant and fey until she had fully retreated into the snowbank of dementia, recognizing her son only on alternate days, and talking to people on the TV.

“I put her to bed on Monday night,” said Eric in a colourless voice. “And in the morning she was gone. It must have been quick. My room’s next door, but I never heard a thing.”