‘You all look hungry.’ Their uniforms were loose on them, as if they’d borrowed them from larger people. George was still thin decades later, but he’d been too thin then. I’d never heard of My Word.

‘We were young and busy.’ He took a step towards the photo. ‘And we’d found some people who needed our rations more than we did. We were in Germany by then, deep into Germany. We came across something. Called in the intelligence and who turned up the day after this photo was taken but Major Derek van den Bogaerde? That’s Dirk Bogarde to the wider world. Wasn’t a star then. He’d done some stage work and a Formby picture before all that started, but that was it.’ He flipped the record over and checked the text on the label. ‘Right.’

He walked back to the record player, lifted the lid and placed the record on the turntable. From next to the record player, he picked up a red velvet brush the size and shape of a mouth organ and held it on the spinning record to remove any dust.

‘You lot missed the war, didn’t you?’ he said, lifting the brush. ‘At home, I mean. Japs didn’t quite get there. I met some Aussie troops, so I know you were in it. Fierce blighters when they needed to be. Damn fine show. Your father’d be too young for all that, of course. Did you even have rationing in Australia?’

‘I don’t know.’ I had never heard it talked about. ‘All I know about my parents and the war is that my father went to kindergarten with Douglas MacArthur’s son in Brisbane. I think his name was Arthur.’ I was sure it was Arthur, but Arthur MacArthur suddenly seemed like something I’d made up. ‘My father can’t really remember him but he can remember the big black car that’d bring him there every day. We’ve got a newspaper clipping about him at home, from 1949. One of Dad’s aunts sent it, since she knew they’d gone to kindy together. Arthur MacArthur with the sons of the Japanese emperor at a swimming carnival.’ I couldn’t really remember it, other than it being three boys’ faces. The emperor’s sons were looking at the camera, but Arthur MacArthur wasn’t. It was from a Murdoch paper, my father did say that. ‘Dad works for the Murdochs now, for Rupert Murdoch. He worked for him in Brisbane at Queensland Newspapers, the Courier-Mail. Now he’s with Mr Murdoch’s London papers.’

George looked surprised. ‘And despite that, you are welcome in my house.’

I knew the British didn’t like Mr Murdoch. My father had told me to be ready for that at school, and said it was due mostly to Mr Murdoch committing the offence of buying their newspapers from them and running them better than they did. It was more than that, though. Australians were Barry McKenzie, all struth and breeziness and cock jokes, and Rupert Murdoch was the Australian known to have bought a London newspaper, sent in a new editor and told him, ‘I want a tearaway paper with lots of tits in it.’