That night, Tom learns that Seferis is a poet as well as a diplomat, who has lived in London and translated T. S. Eliot’s poems into Greek. Tom is able to tell him that his grandfather knows Mr Eliot – ‘he’s an old soldier, though, and somehow I’ve never been able to imagine him reading The Waste Land.’

‘Have you?’ asks Seferis, amused.

‘I have. “Unreal City / Under the brown fog of a winter noon / Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant / Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants …”’

‘“C.i.f. London: documents at sight, / Asked me in demotic French / To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel / Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.”’ Seferis finishes the stanza. ‘Curious thing to memorise.’

‘I knew someone from Smyrna. And …’ He shrugs.

‘You knew someone from Smyrna? I am from Smyrna!’ says Seferis.

‘Unreal city.’

‘Alas, yes.’

Tom dines several more times with George Seferis and his wife. ‘You’ve both saved my sanity,’ he tells them one night, after the prime minister and his cabinet have finally left for Athens. It is already 16th October. Tom has not been able to wangle his way onto the ship, and it looks as if he’ll have to wait until the 22nd to find himself a place, along with the Seferises and the other diplomats and functionaries. The disappointment is crushing but he tries to hide it as best he can. His mood isn’t helped, though, by the bug he is coming down with. His skin is crawling and his body is swinging wildly between hot and cold, but a few aspirin and some wine will surely set him straight. Maro Seferis has just asked him about the life of a war artist, and he is trying not to sound too bitter.

‘The WAAC – they’re the hand that feeds me, of course, but I’m dying to bite it,’ he tells her.

‘We are all impatient,’ says Maro. ‘Though I am intrigued: why are you so keen to return to Greece? It is more than a painter’s interest, it must be. But you are not Greek.’

‘Tom is in love,’ says Seferis.

‘Rubbish, George,’ says his wife. But Tom must look guilty, because then she laughs. ‘Heavens, I think you are right! Can we enquire, Tom? Or is it something deep and secret?’

‘Oh, Maro. Don’t torture the poor boy. This is a serious business.’ Seferis takes a sip of his wine. ‘Can I guess? Your lover is in Greece, of course. Perhaps in the refugee settlements, yes, those unreal cities? Because she is the one you know who is from Smyrna.’

Tom makes a face. His fever, or whatever it is, has just given him a good shaking but it is also the effect of being found out.

‘You shouldn’t tease him,’ Maro objects. ‘He isn’t enjoying it, George.’