Children called to one another; a group of them were playing with something that looked like a surfboard, incongruous in this urban garden so far from any sea. They were sliding along the grass, pushing each other, laughing.

One night long, long ago in York, when he was in the repertory company there, just before he took Juliet Lyall to Brighton, Harry Donaldson had been beaten up on some waste ground near the railway station. He was wandering there that night, late after a performance, because he knew homosexuals came there and he knew he was a homosexual but he didn’t know what to do about it. I wanted to meet someone, I was twenty-four and I was unformed and I was desperate. He thought the man in the park was giving him a signal, he approached him and – he blushed even now to think of it – he’d put out his hand to touch the young man’s cock. The young man shouted out QUEER QUEER and two others had appeared from nowhere and had set upon Harry, kicking him, kicking him especially in his genitals but another man had also appeared suddenly with a stick and had hit out at the young men and told them the police were on their way. One more kick in the face and the young men fled and Harry lay there on the ground, weeping and bleeding, curled up in a ball.

The man with the stick had knelt down. It’s all right dear boy, he had said, it’s all right, and he had given him his handkerchief.

I wish I was dead, Harry had said.

No no, said the older man.

After a while Harry stopped crying, wiped the blood from his nose.

Where do you live? said the stranger. Can you get home all right?

I’m an actor at the theatre, said Harry, I live in digs just near there.

Good heavens I’m an actor too, I’m just waiting for the train connection to Edinburgh, I’m on a tatty tour, round the number two theatres, terrible play, terrible part, what are you playing?

Snug the Joiner, Harry sniffed into the handkerchief, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Ah, nice part.

I’m rubbish, said Harry, I’m just rubbish, all I am is rubbish, and he began again to cry.