‘It’s a pity Hardy didn’t write Christmas stories like Dickens,’ Sharon said idly, much later in the afternoon, when it was quite dark outside and we had all woken up together after dozing fitfully. I can’t remember now whether it was snowing but I feel as if it must have been; in my memory it was a soft silent day, eerily free of the usual clamour of London, in which every infrequent footfall was as on a carpet.

I lay flat on my back and looked up at the ceiling. The fingers of Sharon’s left hand drummed companionably on the inside of my right thigh just as, for all I knew, the fingers of her right drummed companionably on Fitz’s left. ‘I have to say that I am glad he didn’t write any more than he did,’ I said. ‘As you know, I’m something of a reactionary when it comes to Thomas Hardy. I subscribe to the doctrine that more must mean worse.’

Fitzpiers rolled over onto one elbow and addressed me over my wife. ‘Ah, but that’s a value judgement,’ he said. He had bits of bed stuck in his beard, which oddly pleased me. And bits of Sharon stuck between his teeth, which oddly didn’t. ‘Whereas I thought I detected a regret more commercial than aesthetic in Sharon’s words.’

Can I say that what I thought I detected was that Fitzpiers was already explaining my wife to me?

‘Oh commercial, most certainly,’ Sharon confirmed. Indeed, her remark had been prompted by the vicissitudes of Christmas trade which, while it had been fast for Eustacia’s On The Heath, had by no means been furious. She wasn’t complaining; business, touch wood, could have been a lot worse. But she did feel that her specialized stock was always bound to let her down at this time of the year; that it of necessity lacked the festive element. Life’s Little Ironies, she explained, gift-wrapped with ribbons and a rosette, made a pretty enough present, but as a seasonal seller it couldn’t hold a candle to A Christmas Carol.

‘In which case,’ said Fitzpiers, ‘It’s not a question of more meaning worse but more meaning richer.’ In all fairness to him I don’t think he intended that as a gibe at our Jewishness. I don’t think he intended it as a criticism at all. As I was soon to find out with a vengeance, he was all for making a good living out of literature himself.

I meanwhile was more concerned with value judgements than my livelihood – they released more tension. ‘I think Hardy was wise to stay away from the genre,’ I persisted. ‘He had none of the necessary feeling for food and drink.’ I was rather disappointed with the way that sounded; if I’d been in better spirits I’m sure it would have come out more sybaritic.