Pete bathed him with a smile. ‘Eight for eight thirty, your secretary said, Sir Arnold. It was I who spoke with her when she called to confirm the time.’

‘That accounts for it,’ Arnold said with relief to Marianne. ‘I had begun to think the cabinet minister I’ve invited had decided to snub me at the eleventh hour. He is known to be somewhat mercurial and has done that to others. As for the young woman who called you,’ he said to Pete, ‘thankfully she is not my secretary but a stand-in while that reliable person is on leave.’

When Arnold went to have a word with the head waiter about the delay, Matthew said to Marianne, ‘I shall probably spend the evening pinching myself to believe I’m here! How did my father talk you into hostessing the occasion?’

‘Can’t a woman do her brother a favour?’

‘I’d say that depends on the brother. Have you any idea why he invited us?’

‘Since you’re no longer starving theatricals, it couldn’t have been that,’ she said lightly.

‘When we were, I only recall eating a meal in a restaurant with him once and it was at my suggestion,’ said Matthew. ‘I was daft enough to think, since I’m his son, he might like to be one of those prepared to help us get the company started.’

Matthew had a mental picture of himself striding out of the place, heads turning to watch his stormy exit, and his father left stranded with his sole meunière at the table. The flat refusal to contribute a penny hadn’t come as a shock, nor was it the reason for this remembrance remaining so painful. Matthew had cut short Arnold’s expressing his opinion of homosexuals by revealing the truth about his own son.

On the tube train back to the dump he and Pete had then called home, he had found himself seated beside one of the young actresses he encountered at auditions. What was her name? No matter, it was what she said on the train that had heightened his feeling of having let his father down: ‘If only you were straight, Matt – it’s a real waste.’

Matthew was left in no doubt that she fancied him and she was by no means the first girl to be disappointed in that respect. But it was another kind of waste that had from then on dogged his father. Despite Arnold’s noxious attitudes, the effect of Matthew’s being gay upon his parents’ natural expectations continued to haunt him. He could no longer let himself hope that his sister would one day give them grandchildren.

Arnold returned from the restaurant, consulted his watch, and tried to look interested while Matthew and Pete spoke of their plans to tour Europe with their new play.

‘What’s the theme?’ he had the good grace to inquire.

‘The rise of neo-Nazism,’ Matthew replied.