“Exactly,” said Julian. “That’s exactly what I mean.” And then he thought for a moment, and turned his large disingenuous eyes upon me, a whole battery of purity. “Doesn’t know what?” he said.

Oh, I liked him very much, that fleshless, neatly split boy. Why could I not have someone like him instead? When I got home I found that I had left my olive oil in front of the noticeboard, and I had to return in the afternoon to collect it. I do not often forget things in that way.

6

IN THE first fortnight my life in Hereford settled down into what should have been its pattern. Shopping, mornings with Flora and Joseph in the parks, the odd lunch in a pub with actors, evenings with actors or the television and the occasional half hour in the theatre waiting for David and watching rehearsals that had overrun. David was very busy: he was rehearsing for two plays at once, one for Wyndham and one for an ineffectual man called Selwyn. He was often out during the evenings as well as during the day, working or talking. I was glad to see him preoccupied: mean I am, but not so mean, and I know the pleasure of preoccupation. I began to regret, though I would not admit it, that we had not taken the new house with the garden, because there was nowhere to leave Joseph in his pram, except in the downstairs garage, which faced directly onto the street and occupied what ground floor our house possessed. I should have made clear that the whole of our house was on the first floor: it had been two houses, now knocked into one, and under one side there was this garage, and under the other some locked and unexplained place which must have been a warehouse. Poor Joseph spent his day street-watching in this garage, amongst the packing cases, or being pushed by Pascal or me.