Mr Millar suddenly snapped like an over-cosseted poodle. ‘Shut-bloody-up, Jojo! Do not interrupt. I have told you before.’

Jojo uncoiled himself, meekly reached out for the emptying glass, and took it over to the drinks table.

Millar wiped his lips. ‘He had it in mind, Mr Caldicott, as early as the end of last summer, to go away, to, as he always used to say, seek oblivion. He was beaten as a man: he had screwed things up for himself with an idiotic “marriage”, landed himself with a house and a family, and fathered a disabled – I can say? – child. An event from which he never recovered. His guilt was unbearable to watch. He began to die.’

Jojo returned and handed Millar his glass. He put a finger to his lips, leant towards his master.

‘Can I say a little thing?’

‘What? What do you want to say?’

‘That he was so damned sad, that man? So desperate, it broke my heart. And that “wife”. God! She got so haughty. She was worse than the mother and she was worse than Medusa. James was destroyed. Right?’

‘You have said it. Now hold your tongue. Yes, he was sad. But he was also aware that it was mostly his own fault.’

‘Why his own fault? What fault had he committed in getting married?’ I said. ‘Or married in the eyes of God or whatever he preferred to call it?’

‘The “marriage” was a piece of romantic tosh. Simply that. It was all his own fault for one simple reason. He went against his true nature. He was playing the wrong part in the wrong play.’

‘I don’t follow you, I’m sorry. In the little I have which he has left, he did not consider his marriage “tosh”, he was radiant –’

‘He was also gay.’

I’m setting this down just as I remember it. I suppose I sat there with a blank face. I could have heard the dew settling, a leaf fall, a worm turn. I was, frankly, dumb. Somewhere, as if from fifty miles away, I heard Millar’s low, smiling, whispering voice saying, ‘I’m sorry. Obviously you were unaware.’

I was able to reply in a reasonable voice. ‘No. I did not know, this. Not remotely. It’s the last thing, the last thing …’

‘It is not catastrophic! But for James, I fear, it was the first thing.’

Jojo decided to rejoin the act. He sighed heavily. It could have been regret but clearly was not.

‘Gay as a carousel,’ he said.

Millar smoothed the cashmere rug over the shrunken thighs. ‘He was not absolutely certain of the fact himself, it must be at once admitted. It took a little time for him to come to terms with it all, but once that had been achieved, everything was fine. For a time.’

‘Genes,’ said Jojo. ‘Genes, chromosomes, whatever. Like me being an “Abyssinian”. You recall, Mr Caldicott?’