At last, and very slowly, one of Monty’s eyes reappeared and flickered open. ‘My name’s not Monty,’ he said. ‘If you want me to answer you, you’ve got to call me Sam Hall from now on.’

‘Sam Hall? Why Sam Hall?’

‘Because he took no shit from anybody.’

‘But who is he?’

‘Who is he? Who’s Sam Hall?’ Monty looked at me in disgust. It’s possible he was just sick of telling me things. Anyway, he wasn’t going to give me a straight answer. He sang me a song instead.

‘Oh my name it is Sam Hall, it is Sam Hall.

Oh my name it is Sam Hall, it is Sam Hall.

Oh my name it is Sam Hall and I hate you one and all,

Blast your eyes!’

I suppose he was trying for a lawless hillbilly accent. But to me, as he rocked to and fro on his gallows, his pyjama cord running up through his left sidelock, he sounded for all the world as though he were davening, wishing boils and locusts and God knows what else on the Egyptians.

Nonetheless, he was known to all his friends as Sam Hall from that morning onwards; and even his asthmatic mother, dragging herself to the door to call him in for tea, shouted, ‘Sam? Sam Hall? Your dinner.’