First I took it to be a black and white print, housed in an ebony and gilt frame with a brass plaque screwed to the bottom edge. It was a foot and a half high, and one foot wide. I could see at once that it was not a complete picture; it was the preliminary sketch for a larger oil. On the paper a group of angular female nudes clustered around a fruit bowl. The women at the centre had their arms slung up behind their heads in an attitude of posturing allure, the curving lines of the sheet the central figure held over her naked groin contrasting with the sharp, inorganic lines of her torso. The whole composition had the crudeness and the vitality of experimentation. As I looked at the picture, I became aware of a certain yellowness to the cream paper upon which it was drawn, and a grainy quality in the black lines that seemed almost like texture.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘It almost looks real.’

Francis laughed, and found his shoes. ‘It is real! Well . . . It’s part of the college’s art collection. Scholars can apply to have pieces hung on the walls of their rooms. I had to go in front of the art committee, all these old men with beards, and old women too, bearded women, and tell them why I wanted it. They made me sign the most complicated forms, and if I go out without locking the doors I get sent down, but in the end they let me have it.’

I made it a point of pride with my new friends never to register how much they surprised and even shocked me. They had an air of expecting and deserving all the benefits that life extended them, and as a result no one ever begrudged or questioned them. They were self-fulfilling prophets, and it was a trick I desperately hoped to emulate. On this occasion, however, I did not have time to bring down the shutters, and my natural reaction escaped me in an incredulous burst. ‘Do you know what this is? This is the first study for cubism, an idea of an idea. Nineteen-oh-seven, just after he came back to the rue Ravignan from Spain . . .’

‘Really?’ Francis said, reaching up and taking the picture down from its nail on the wall. ‘How fascinating.’