‘And I seem to recall, back in our commune days, that our friendship almost came a cropper when I stopped you from fooling yourself.’

‘Me, too,’ Martin said with chagrin. ‘And I never did bring myself to thank you. Instead, I wasted time licking my wounds when you read my brain-child and told me I wasn’t a novelist.’

‘Your finally accepting my judgement was thanks enough. And our lunching here is certainly an exercise in nostalgia,’ Bill remarked while refilling their glasses with Burgundy.

‘In our undergrad days we couldn’t afford to lunch here,’ Martin reminisced, ‘though at table in our seat of learning we were somewhat splendidly wined and dined.’

‘My father,’ said Bill, ‘has been known to joke to his friends that Oxford metamorphosed me into a connoisseur of vintages if not into a professor.’

‘When mine said that sort of thing he wasn’t joking!’

‘They might both have changed their tune had they tasted that dreadful plonk we were constrained to imbibe at the commune.’

‘And I sometimes wish myself back with what Omar Khayyam conjured up in a couple of lines.’

‘“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, a Flask of Wine, A Book of Verse – and Thou—”’ Bill quietly quoted.

‘I shan’t bother asking how you knew.’

‘That all is not well with you and Moira? If I may dip into The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam again,’ said Bill, ‘she wasn’t, figuratively speaking, beside you singing in the Wilderness in the days you’re now yearning for. The Wilderness wasn’t quite Paradise for you then, though I have to say it was for me.’

The onlooker sees more of the game than the participants, Martin reflected. Or was it that there was much I didn’t let myself see?

They fell silent while their soup plates were removed and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding put before them. Visible from the dining alcove was the bar beside which Martin had first set eyes on Moira, its polished oak patina seeming timeless as did the pewter tankards hanging above it, and the hunting prints on the wall that were there when Martin was a student.

Time, though, had moved on, and with it his hope of happiness had crumbled to dust.

Bill was helping himself to roast potatoes and cauliflower, his appetite as ever belied by his bony appearance.

‘Is your life with Sukey still paradise, Bill?’

‘Good Lord no! I should like to meet the fellow who a decade and a half on could honestly say his marriage is.’ Bill spooned horseradish sauce on to his plate and poured a small pyramid of salt beside it.