‘Sorry, Aunt Grace.’ Sophia dutifully showed her teeth. ‘But they aren’t on the telephone. Eleanor had to come out to the call box in the fog, to telephone.’

Harry and Francis still in the background, had assumed the expression which Sophia called ‘our cheese look.’ Their faces looked as much like two sections of Empire cheese at eightpence a pound as human faces can look. Nevertheless, Harry had picked up his coat and hat, and both had sidled nearer to the door.

‘It’s very tiresome, Sophia. Very annoying indeed,’ said Uncle Preston. ‘Just when there is so much to be settled. Where does this friend live? Could you not come back here this evening?’

‘At Mill Hill, I’m afraid, Uncle. Rather a long way out. It’s foggy, too.’

‘And I’ve got to catch the 9.50 back to Wolverhampton from Paddington,’ said Harry suddenly. ‘There’d hardly be time.’

‘No, no, I suppose not. Well, it is extremely irritating. Very annoying indeed. There are endless things to be discussed, and arranged, which cannot be settled unless the three of you can talk them over with Mr Marriot and myself. However, there is no hurry. No immediate hurry, that is. How much longer has your tour to run, Harry?’

‘About three days, if we’re lucky,’ said Harry gloomily.

‘How’s that? Aren’t you doing well? I thought old Budgy could get away with anything?’ said Aunt Maxine sharply. ‘His companies used to do so well.’

Harry shrugged his shoulders and muttered that the competition from the cinemas was pretty fierce, and there were other things, too, against their being a success. He included old Budgy among these, but did not say so.

‘I suppose, then,’ pursued Uncle Preston, ‘you’re likely to be back in Town quite soon?’

‘Jolly likely, I should think.’

‘Ah … well, I shall expect to hear from you as soon as you arrive, and we will arrange a meeting. And if your tour lasts longer than you anticipate, possibly Mr Budgett would give you permission to come down for a long weekend, and then we can really discuss matters and get things settled.’

‘Rather,’ said Harry, smiling enthusiastically.

And by the simple process of beginning to kiss everybody the three fobbed off further questions and enquiries, and managed to get downstairs and out of the front door.

The plate with their father’s name on it, which had been bright when Sophia had admired herself in it at lunch time, was already dulled by the creeping fog. The evening was still and heavy, full of the deadened distant voices of children playing in the streets. The trams were already lit; their yellow lights rocked past, and the sky was deepening with foggy twilight.

‘I don’t feel like trams,’ said Francis, and just at that moment by great luck a cruising taxi rolled past the end of the alley. It was most unusual to see one in that slum; they raced towards it, and stopped it. Sophia told the driver to go to the Ivy Bush, in Northgate Ride, and then she would tell him where to go from there.