I don’t know why, but there is a long pause on the tape here. Rocking seems an innocuous enough occupation to me, but perhaps Harry was reminded of Martha Brown’s swinging – that seemed to be fairly carefree initially, also. Anyway, Harry seemed to be full of alarm.

‘How do you mean rocking, exactly, Tommy?’

‘You know, backwards and forwards.’

‘What on?’

‘Her chair.’

‘What kind of chair?’ (I think Harry was chronologically confused and had visions of the electric.)

‘Her rocking chair.’ (Or Psycho.)

‘Tommy, is your mother alive?’

‘Of course she’s alive. She wouldn’t be rocking if she was dead, would she? We’re all alive.’

Harry Vilbert fingered the amulet around his neck – it’s perfectly audible on the tape – and gave a little prayer of thanks to the forces of benevolence. ‘Good, I’m very pleased to hear that,’ he said.

But he was a mite premature. ‘All except Mr Rush, that is,’ Tommy continued.

‘Mr Rush? Who’s Mr Rush?’

‘Don’t you know? Everybody knows who Mr Rush is. He shot people.’

‘How do you know about him, Tommy?’

‘My mother tells me. She is always telling us stories about murderers and witches and curses and the Bible.’

‘And which is your favourite story, Tommy?’

‘The one about Mr Rush. He was very brave, you see. On the night before he was executed he asked for roast pig and plenty of plum sauce for dinner. And in the morning he told them to tie the noose high and to take as much time as they wanted hanging him. He said he wasn’t in any particular hurry.’

‘I suppose he wasn’t,’ said Harry, dispiritedly.

‘Mother says it was the governess who hanged him, but I don’t see how a governess could be strong enough to hang a man, do you?’

Who can say what Harry saw? What I can tell you is that he sounded very low. He took failure personally. And he had a shrewd idea that I was not going to consider the eight-year-old Tommy any more of a success than the one of sixteen. But he gave it a half-hearted try. ‘Tommy,’ he asked, ‘what’s your second name?’

‘AAAAAH,’ said Tommy in my voice.

‘As I thought,’ said Harry Vilbert, and he woke me up, needing a break to roll a cigarette himself.

A half an hour later – I’d taken the opportunity to go to the bathroom and plunge my head in cold water – I was back in the chair. It was Harry’s idea to go forward in time, say seventy years, to see if Tommy had attained to the indifference and serenity of old age.