‘But . . . but we can’t,’ I said. ‘If we were caught, well, we’d go to prison, I mean real prison.’

‘Yes, that is true,’ Francis nodded judiciously. ‘But what are the real chances of being caught? This picture has hung undisturbed in student rooms since it was bequeathed to the college in nineteen forty-four. That is over half a century of uninterrupted peace. On the open market, I have had it valued at twelve million. In our present circumstances, we could expect to make about a third of that. A million each. Work, to me, to work for a living, that would be a prison, a life sentence. Papa wouldn’t have paid for me for ever, even without this evening, and I won’t inherit any money. To work and sweat, and answer to others, and watch your waist eat up the space between your chair and the lip of your desk, so that every day you find yourself a little further from your computer screen. Can you imagine me as . . . as . . .’ He searched desperately for a job that would sufficiently convey his contempt for life’s practicalities. ‘. . . as a lawyer? I would rather die or go hungry. Everything in life is a risk, and I would say this is a risk worth taking.’

‘But, but . . .’ I said feebly, my body already caught in the riptide, swept out to sea on the current of dreams, ‘is it right? It would be stealing, taking something precious from the nation and putting it for ever in some private vault. And I mean, to fake someone else’s work, I would feel wrong.’ I hated myself for using such childish terms, but I could think of no other way to express myself. ‘I want to paint my own pictures, to make money that way.’

‘In nineteen forty-seven, when Van Meegeren was convicted of forging a Vermeer, he said: “Yesterday this picture was worth millions of guilders, and experts and art lovers would come from all over the world and pay money to see it. Today, it is worth nothing, and nobody would cross the street to see it for free. But the picture has not changed. What has?” It will still be your picture, it will still be a work of art. You will just be getting better rewards. Never let them convince you that something is impossible, James. That is how they con everybody, how they keep everyone in line. The hard bit will be admitting to yourself that it can be done, because to do that, you will have to acknowledge that the system by which everybody else lives is a chimera. You have to bid goodbye to your father’s dream of a good career, forget your good degree. Cut your ties, float away. Unlearn your . . . expectations. After that, it’s easy. Easy-peasy.’

His speech became less lucid as the Valium wound its sinuous coils around his body, lifting him and turning him over into the fetal position, squeezing the sense out of him. I told him quietly that I needed to be alone, that I needed time to consider what he had said, but I think he knew already what my answer would be. He wanted to buy his freedom, to pay off responsibility, and he had shown me a glimpse of a future in which we could be young for ever. He had planted a seed in my mind, a new species that had no business in that ordered and domestic setting, that would grow up around every native thought, strangling it, stealing its sustenance and blocking it from the light. The drugs began to assert their authority more strongly. He became sleepy, a long feline yawn shuddering through his strong body, making him arch his back on the bed, parting the bottom of his shirt and the waistband of his trousers to show his dark muscular stomach. I removed his shoes, and set them down by the bed.