Bertie explained that his mother was having a lie-in. And so Daddy was somewhere in the school? No, he was not; he had to go into the office. And so … ‘I think that we’d better make a phone call,’ said Miss Maclaren Hope. ‘And if you don’t mind, Bertie, I’ll hold little Ulysses for the time being.’

Bertie and Miss Maclaren Hope left the room and made their way to the office. ‘Mummy said I could bring him,’ explained Bertie. ‘I asked her.’

Miss Maclaren Hope pursed her lips. ‘Well, be that as it may, Bertie, I think though that Ulysses is just a tiny bit young to come to school. So we’ll just give Mummy a quick ring and see if she could come up and get him. Don’t you think that’s best?’

Bertie did not. But he realised that this was not the point. It was such a pity for Ulysses, he thought: he was enjoying himself so much and now this. And when his mother arrived, he knew exactly what Ulysses would do: he would be sick. He would have to warn Miss Maclaren Hope about this, but it was difficult to know how to put it – it so often was.

39. Which World Am I Living In?

On the morning on which Bertie took Ulysses to school, Angus Lordie followed his normal routine of an early walk with Cyril round the Drummond Place Gardens, followed by a breakfast of coffee accompanied by two croissants. Living on his own, he felt no inhibitions about reading at table, alternating between a book, which he read on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and a newspaper or magazine on the other four days of the week. The newspaper was invariably the Scotsman, where he turned first to Duncan Macmillan’s art column – if it was a Macmillan day – or to Allan Massie, both of which writers he was in complete agreement with on all subjects. If it was a day for a magazine, then it would be the art review in the Burlington Magazine, where, in view of his impending trip to Italy, he was currently taking a particular interest in articles on Italian subjects. Thus a review of ‘Altarpieces and their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni’ was read over a croissant and strawberry jam; and coffee, black and strong, was the perfect accompaniment to an article on newly discovered miniatures by Pacino di Bonaguida.