I looked about, recognizing many familiar faces, some as wrinkled as old penises. I’d worked and argued with some of these people for more than thirty years. These days, when we met it was less an excited human exchange than a litany of decline; no one would put on our work, and if they did it wasn’t sufficiently praised. Such bitterness, more than we were entitled to, was enervating. Or we would talk of grandchildren, hospitals, funerals and memorial services, saying how much we missed so-and-so, wondering, all the while, who would be next, when it would be our turn.

“Okay,” I said. “Why would I be in a hurry? I was only thinking recently that after a certain age one always seems to be about to go to bed. But it’s a relief to be done with success. I can lie down with the electric blanket on, listening to opera and reading badly. What a luxury reading badly can be, or doing anything badly for that matter.”

Two young women had stationed themselves out of earshot, but close enough to observe us, turning occasionally to glance and giggle in our direction. I knew that the face out of which I looked was of no fascination to them.

He leaned toward me. “It’s time I explained myself. Let’s say … once there was a young man, not the first, who felt like Hamlet. As baffled, as mad and mentally chaotic, and as ruined by his parents. Still, he pulled himself together and became successful, by which I mean he made money doing something necessary but stupid. Manufacturing toilet rolls, say, or a new kind of tinned soup. He married, and brought up his children.

“In his middle age, as sometimes happens, he felt able to fall in love at last. In his case it was with the theater. He bought a flat in the West End so he could walk to the theater every night. He did this for years, but though he loved the gilt, the plush seats, the ice creams, the post-show discussions in expensive restaurants, it didn’t satisfy him. He had begun to realize that he wanted to be an actor, to stand electrified before a large crowd every night. How could anything else fulfill him?

“But he was too old. He couldn’t possibly go to drama school without feeling ridiculous. He was destined to be one of those unlucky people who realize too late what they want to do. A vocation is, after all, the backbone of a life.