‘Of course, you’re a believer in acting the part, aren’t you? Well, get that pipe out and rehearse some of your better opening moves while I get your suitcase. The old boy’s quite sharp-eyed although he seems a nonentity. And don’t worry about me. I won’t let on that you’ve ever associated with a man who’s working as a chauffeur. And I’ll call you “sir” in front of the family, as long as you’ll tip me five bob when you leave.’

‘I see you’re determined to make my position uncomfortable.’

‘It’ll be uncomfortable without my doing anything about it. Wait till you meet your pupil. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t take one look at you and ask you to run away and tell your mother she wants you.’

‘Whose mother what?’ asked Hutchins, becoming seriously confused.

‘Never mind. Get in and I’ll fetch your bag. Sir.’

‘The main trouble is this,’ said Walter. ‘I could see when I bought the engine that the valve seats were going to give trouble. It was just what I expected. The valve stem was too long, and what do I have to do but pack up the rocker-shaft standards, to bring up the height of the rocker fulcrums; and now, of course, I’ve got push-rod trouble.’

‘Of course,’ said Charles.

Walter sighed, and bent over the grotesque mass of machinery on the bench. It reminded Charles of one of Cecil Beaton’s photo­graphs of wrecked tanks in the North African desert. Walter’s square, powerful hands, with black-edged nails broader than they were long, moved lovingly about among the entrails of the beast, tapping, levering, adjusting. He was wearing dungarees black and stiff with oil, and wherever his person emerged from their pro­tection it, too, was flecked and streaked with dark grease. A long stripe of it ran up the side of his face.

‘Of course,’ he said bitterly, ‘I’m handicapped all along the line. No money, and having to do the whole job on the quiet. I can’t even afford the proper tools. I spend hours checking my piston rings to get the gaps right, and then I have to mess them up just because I haven’t got a proper ring expander. Just have to slide the bastards on over the pistons any old how.’

‘Why are you having to do it on the sly, anyhow?’