‘Isn’t that your answer? ‘ Charles said. ‘If she doesn’t like it you can offer it elsewhere?’

‘It isn’t,’ Richard said, ‘as simple as that.’ And looking at these two men, each old enough to be his father, each with thirty years’ experience of Mary Bellamy, he saw that he was understood.

‘There’s been one row already this morning,’ he said. ‘A snorter.’

Warrender shot a look at Charles. ‘I don’t know if I’m imagining it,’ he said, ‘but I’ve fancied the rows come a bit oftener these days, isn’t it?’

Charles and Richard were silent.

Warrender said: ‘Fellow’s got to live his own life. My opinion. Worst thing that can happen to a man’s getting himself bogged down in a mistaken loyalty. Seen it happen. Man in my regiment. Sorry business.’

Charles said: ‘We all have our mistaken loyalties.’

There was a further silence.

Richard said violently: ‘But – I owe everything to her. The ghastly things I began to write at school. The first shamingly hopeless plays. Then the one that rang the bell. She made The Management take it. We talked everything over. Everything. And now – suddenly – I don’t want to. I – don’t – want – to. Why? Why?’

‘Very well,’ Charles said. Richard looked at him in surprise, but he went on very quietly. ‘Writing plays is your business. You understand it. You’re an expert. You should make your own decisions.’

‘Yes. But Mary …’

‘Mary holds a number of shares in companies that I direct, but I don’t consult her about their policy or confine my interests to those companies only.’

‘Surely it’s not the same thing.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Charles said placidly. ‘I think it is. Sentiment,’ he added, ‘can be a disastrous guide in such matters. Mary doesn’t understand your change of policy: the worst reason in the world for mistrusting it. She is guided almost entirely by emotion.’

Warrender said: ‘Think she’s changed? Sorry, Charles, I’ve no kind of business to ask.’

‘She has changed,’ her husband said. ‘One does.’

‘You can see,’ Richard said, ‘what happened with Pinky and Bertie. How much more will she mind with me! Was there anything so terrible about what they did? The truth is, of course, that they didn’t confide in her because they didn’t know how she’d take it. Well – you saw how she took it.’

‘I suppose,’ Warrender began dimly, ‘as a woman gets older …’ He faded out in a bass rumble.

‘Charles,’ Richard said, ‘you may consider this a monstrous suggestion, but have you thought, lately, that there might be anything – anything – ?’

‘Pathological? ‘ Charles said.

‘It’s so unlike her to be vindictive. Isn’t it?’ He appealed to both of them. ‘Well, my God, isn’t it?’