‘A long time,’ he repeated.

‘Would you like to dictate your letter now?’ she asked.

‘I feel tired,’ he said.

It worked: she left him alone.

The comfort of his new quarters aided his resolution not to think. Attempts to puzzle out this mystery of Bernard Roderick’s generosity simply brought on an acute pain behind the eyes; it was safer to push it into the limbo where he had pushed the Bunder episode and all that led up to it. If ever he came out of this and resumed normal life, so much would have to be forgotten that one or two items on the list did not matter much.

The greatest surprise of all was that he did not find it difficult to avoid thinking of Veronica. In fact it was easier, as well as more comfortable, not to think of her. Once or twice, when he allowed his mind to recall their moments of profoundest happiness, of joy so deep that he had no means of telling whether he was remem­bering or imagining, the pain became, simply, intolerable: frightened, he lay back and allowed blankness to flood over him. If in his day-dreaming he saw her at all clearly, the agony of lying helpless, not being able to go to her, was not to be borne; if she were merely there as a vague presence, the effect was comforting. Obviously his fierce mental shying away from the thought of her was, in origin, physical; his body, in the struggle to piece itself together, required the co-operation of his mind, and when insanity was threatened, took swift action by means of drowsiness or nausea. And so the impossible happened: he passed long stretches, amounting to hours, without thinking of Veronica.

The wireless with its ceaseless half-heard droning was a great help. On the afternoon of the second day in his new room, he was lying half-asleep, listening to Children’s Hour. A bright, sexless female voice had just said, ‘And now we’re going over to the Birmingham studio for a new story for the under-nines, told by Jeremy,’ when the door opened and the nurse ushered in a visitor. It was Bernard Roderick.