‘You’re going back to sleep now, Tommy,’ said Harry Vilbert in his most defeated voice, and I’m sure I only agreed to it because I was sorry for him. I certainly couldn’t think of any other reason to stop hitting Sharon. And I felt that I had plenty of filthy French left in me yet.

So I closed my eyes and opened them a few moments later and said ‘Where am I? What’s happening?’ But I wasn’t at all disconcerted or dismayed to see Sharon bruised and sobbing softly on the floor, her breasts all but out of her dress, and Fitzpiers with his arms round her, white and shaking.

Many years afterwards, long after Sharon and I had severed all connections with each other, she sent me a postcard from Paris where she was attending a bookfair. ‘Just stumbled on an interesting addition to your genealogy,’ it said. ‘B. Fugleman born June 2 1940; T. Hardy born June 2 1840 – as you are aware. But did you know M.de Sade born June 2 1740? Thought you’d like to. Sharon.’

It was thoughtful of her. But in fact by then her news was stale. Very stale. Because only about a week after Fitz’s party I received substantially the same information, also, as it happened, on the back of a postcard. Except that in this case the postcard was not illustrated with one of Goya’s war atrocity sketches, and the writer was more interested in tracing the sources of my French invective than in assembling amazingly coincidental data. The writer was evidently not out to cause me any pain either, since the communication concluded with a cheerful congratulation and the words, ‘What larks!’ What’s more – and this is a pretty big more – it was signed Gertrude Bugler.