Ivan Goldberg sat at the big desk in his ground-floor office at Warren House sharpening a bunch of pencils very methodically and neatly with a small penknife. Boys banging in for conferences could cast an eye on him, a somehow formidable presence sitting there rather like a Chinese god to whom one might make an obeisance, but with whom one would not carry on a casual conversation. He sat very erect, the shadow of a smile on his lips, immaculately dressed (was it true that he changed his shirt three times a day?) and looking rather more like a banker than a professor, his keen black eyes always alert, magnified by thick glasses. This was a face that never relaxed, was never to be caught off guard. If Cavan seemed to Pen too exposed, Goldberg had contrived a façade which no one had ever seen through completely. With students he maintained the upper hand on principle. He had made it his business to have all the answers within his field of English and American literature, and he did not range outside it. Absolutely concentrated, with a mind like a fencer’s, he was bound to win. He was feared because he had deliberately chosen to be feared; he believed in an absolute hierarchy. His god was the University but he considered himself a high priest to be treated accordingly. He expected a student due for a conference to be there on the dot. As Chapel rang the hour, he adjusted his watch. Perkins was late again.

But it was not after all Perkins who swung open the heavy door into the hall; it was Edward Cavan.

“Have you got a few minutes, Ivan?”