Fitzpiers had had the decency – and it wasn’t lost on me – to put his proposition to me in person rather than to go through Sharon. But it didn’t help his cause. I was determined. I was not going to be hypnotized on stage across America; I was not going to address historical associations on the actualities of life as I had lived it in rural Dorset in the 1850s, nor would I take to the university circuit with the truth and nothing but the truth about the prototype of Tess. I was not willing to appear on television as my present and then, after the adverts, as my former self, and I was not prepared to help Fitzpiers, who knew people in films, script my predicament, along the lines of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, for Alan Bates and Dustin Hoffman. Fitzpiers improved the deal: ‘Dustin Hoffman could play Hardy,’ he compromised. But I still wasn’t having it. ‘Not even if it was Jimmy Durante and Clark Gable,’ I told him. And I also warned him, while I was at it, that I would do everything in my power to stop Sharon selling the story of her crazy mixed-up life with two husbands – meaning Hardy and me, not me and Fitzpiers – to whichever Sunday paper bid the highest.

‘I can’t understand you,’ said Fitzpiers. And he really couldn’t. He scratched his face raw under his beard, so perplexed was he. ‘It’s a golden opportunity. Aren’t you the slightest bit tempted?’

I shook my head. I was, of course. I would have enjoyed a lecture tour across America, the money, the fuss, the food, the girls – yes, Sharon had correctly predicted it, I was beginning to feel I had some rights in that direction, a few special treats owing. But the conditions were all wrong. I would be taking pleasures under false pretences. I would be up there on the stage but it would be Thomas Hardy they were turning up to see. I was then, as indeed I still am, scrupulous and egoistic; I wanted to be loved and lauded for myself.

‘Not the slightest bit,’ I lied.

‘And nothing I can possibly do will make you change your mind?’

‘Nothing.’

Fitzpiers sighed. For a moment he looked a broken man. I could see that he couldn’t believe he had come so close to the pot of gold but was not a jot the richer. I think that if his cheeks had not been covered in black hair I would have seen rivulets of tears on them. As it was, Sharon had to cradle his head in her arms and rock him gently to sleep that night. And the pair of them kept me awake for hours, she with her lullabies and he with his whimpering.