There is nothing new in this kind of filtered experience: in the theatre there are numerous classical examples of men and women who have fallen in love with actors or actresses from their image on the screen, and on occasion married them. It is not even surprising, for if an actor spends his life making love to the audience what can he expect but that from time to time love is the charge they will bring up against him? And I have since discovered that where Wyndham Farrar first saw me was not at Danny Owen’s party, nor at the Garrick Theatre noticeboard, but on the cover of a glossy fortnightly, posed in a brown wool dress against autumn and the Albert Memorial. I looked up the copy, a week ago, just to make sure that I was right, and there in that issue was a long and glowing review of Wyndham Farrar’s production of The Master Builder at the Gala. Sometimes thoughts of sale and merchandise flit horribly across my heart.

In the pub that lunchtime, as I thought about Wyndham, I talked to Julian: he told me about his parts, and that they were not very good, and that he did not want to spend his life playing boy princes and younger brothers.

“I just happen to look young,” he said, “but I’m not really that kind of person at all. It’s just the shape of my face,” he said sadly.

I found him very appealing: he reminded me of something immensely familiar and reassuring, and when he happened to tell me that his father lectured in English literature at Bristol, I suddenly saw what it was. “My father, too, is a don,” I said, and we exclaimed with excitement and compared our backgrounds, dominated as they had been by the well-bred, the quietly discursive, the mildly permissive. He did not seem to have a very precise grasp of the difference that was the theatre, he had not got beyond the fact that his father did not appear to understand that some actors are queer, and that not all actors play all parts, and that some people are destined for a life of juvenile leads.

“He just doesn’t seem to see any of the real problems,” said Julian plaintively, and although I knew he was being thus plaintive only because I was a woman and ready to listen, I listened. “He doesn’t seem to realize,” said Julian, “what one is in for.”

“I find the same thing in my father,” I said, because I had not had occasion to say it for a long time. “I never know whether it’s ignorance or innocence. I never know whether he really knows or whether he really doesn’t know.”