‘No, he was ringing up from England. He’ll be back tomorrow morning, wants to come to lunch.’

‘So he shall,’ I said. ‘So he shall. But, more to the point, is there anything for my supper tonight?’

‘Yeah, I got you a nice little treat of kidneys done in wine and mustard on fried bread with a few sauté potatoes all garlicky.’

‘The very thing!’ I cried. ‘I trust you will join me, Jock?’

‘Too bloody right I will, Mr Charlie.’

9

What adders came to shed their coats?

What coiled obscene

Small serpents with soft stretching throats

Caressed Faustine?

Faustine

Spring was infesting the air in no uncertain fashion the next day and I awoke, for once, with a feeling of well-being and an urge to go for long country walks. Needing to share this feeling I marched into Johanna’s room and flung the curtains wide.

‘How can you lie there,’ I cried, ‘with the sun streaming in and all the world going a-Maying?’

I didn’t quite catch the two words she mumbled in reply, but they were not ‘good morning’.

Soon I was downstairs, stamping about and disrupting the household by demanding a proper breakfast instead of my usual Alka-Seltzer and Dexedrin. It was all quite delicious – porridge and kippers and bacon and eggs and toast and marmalade except that the last mouthful of bacon turned to ashes in my mouth when Jock dumped the mail beside my plate, for on top of the pile lay one of those dread, buff-coloured envelopes marked OHMS. I quaked as I read. Her Majesty’s Inspector of Taxes noted with feigned puzzlement that, according to my Tax Return for the previous year, my expenditure had exceeded my income; what, then, he asked with concern, had I been living on? He managed to suggest, although not in so many words, that he was worried about me. Was I eating properly?

I wrote him a cheque for an entirely irrelevant £111.99 which would fox the computer for a month or two, then I spent a happy ten minutes erasing the name and address on the letter and typing in a fresh one, re-directing it to my new-found friend, the lady-don of Scone College. Share the good things of life is what I always say. We shall pass this way but once, you know.