We were experiencing, in fact, all the difficulties that beset young couples who live at home and have nowhere to go; and this for me increased the interest greatly. We could not go to Wyndham’s flat as it adjoined the theatre and people were always likely to drop in, nor to my house because of the children and Pascal’s habit of coming home early in tears in the middle of her evenings out, after quarrels with her boyfriend. We did once risk going to Wyndham’s after our habitual excursion for dinner, and we had just settled on the settee when the bell rang and Neville, Julian, the boy with fanatic eyes and a girl I did not know all arrived and started to deliver some elaborate complaint about what the house manager had been saying to their relatives about getting tickets. Wyndham told them it was nothing to do with him and poured them all a drink, which was more probably what they had come for, and we sat round and tried to stop the fanatic man from telling us about what was going on with his soft palate and his epiglottis. They did not seem unduly impressed by my presence, and as far as I know, David never learned about this particular instance.

It is quite clear, I suppose, to all that this pace suited me far more than it suited Wyndham Farrar, men being what they are and women being what they are said to be. He would say as much from time to time. He would make remarks like “I suppose we are going to make it some time, aren’t we?” and “We’ve only got three months of the season left, you know.” The first serious attempt which he made to get things organized was about three weeks after he had begun rehearsals for the Carpenter play. He had a cold, and he told everyone that he was going to bed for the evening, as indeed I am sure he had every intention of doing, and that he was not to be disturbed. He arranged for me to call on him, carrying a parcel with a Boots label on.

“It’s perfectly plausible,” he said over the phone, “for me to have asked you to buy me some things, don’t you think?”

It seemed ludicrous to me, the kind of idea that David might have had, but I said nothing, and called on him at the appointed hour, apparently unobserved. I found when I saw him that he really had got a cold.

“Hello,” he said. “I thought we’d have a quiet evening at home. I just don’t feel up to driving all round the bloody countryside.”