‘Oh I don’t expect we shall,’ said the old man, getting up very stiffly from the garden chair, grateful for a moment for Harry’s arm. ‘By the time you’re old enough to come here dear boy I expect I will have gone to that Great Stage Show in the Sky. You have no idea how young you seem to me. But I’m extremely glad to have had the pleasure of your company and I do hope I haven’t bored you rigid. ‘

‘Not at all, not at all,’ Harry said. I think he remembers me. Yet why should he remember me? It was all so long ago. Would I even remember the one from the cemetery this morning if he came to my door? But finally he added because he had to, ‘I’m – I’m so very grateful to you, Roger.’

‘Yes,’ said the old man and for a moment he looked at Harry. Then he said, ‘Don’t think of old age before it comes to you Harry. You shouldn’t be thinking of it yet, you’re too young. And you know dear boy, I think anyway that a certain kind of queer like I am, and like you are, is used to being alone. That’s after all how it often was, wasn’t it?’

Harry looked startled, felt something, a blush almost, some expression he couldn’t hide in his own face. But the old man had moved ahead, gone into the lounge again to find Mrs Beale.

*

When Harry got back to his flat, there was a message from Juliet Lyall on his answering machine.

As soon as he heard her voice, which he recognised at once, he switched off the machine, lit a cigarette. They had bumped into each other, of course, at the reunion. Hello Harry, Juliet had said, Hello Juliet, said Harry. That was all. Just the sound now of her voice in his study disturbed him. Yet it was more than thirty years ago.

Finally he turned the machine on again. Juliet wasted no time on preliminaries.

‘Harry it’s Juliet could you call me as soon as you get this message either at home or at the theatre?’ She left two numbers.

The answering machine ran on; two more messages.

Michael: ‘Where are you Harry I need you, you know it’s your turn tonight.’

His agent: ‘Ring me darling about a costume fitting before you go to Morocco.’

Harry did not ring anybody. He was due to take over with Michael at nine, he was on all night again. He sat on the first-floor balcony of his small house in Kentish Town which overlooked communal gardens. A beautiful warm evening and yet somehow you knew it was the end of summer now, the light was different. Where is the test tube of blood now, this minute, is it sitting in some corner of the hospital, waiting quietly with its secrets in the dark?