“It gets harder every day. You know—less grub, more exercise.”

“Tell me about it,” she said, her face pantomiming remorse.

“Business good?”

“Just as usual.”

It was the usual that Zeno loved about the place. Ever since he had cast his own horoscope, he had known that his horror of modernisation was related to the position of Mars crossing the orbital path of Uranus, but this insight did not ease the dismay he felt, with so many things being transformed around him.

“Shall I fetch you a nice poppy-seed slice and a coffee then, Zeno?”

“A poppy-seed and a glass of hot milk, please. You didn’t ask Louis about making the slice with rice flour, I suppose?”

“You!” She waved her hand like a wet-nail-varnish actor. “A little of what you fancy does you good—you’ll get so rare you’ll float away.”

Zeno chastised himself. You must stop doing that, he told himself, smacking his forehead. Trying to heal himself he had been pushed into the byways of alternative medicine. It all appeared simple now, but he remembered the nightmare nights of ulcerous agony, and was frequently prompted to share the knowledge of his cure. Having taken a swallow of his milk, he was about to tuck into his treat when he heard his name spoken by an unfamiliar voice.

“It’s Zeno Studd, isn’t it?”

Zeno paused, his dessert fork full of poppy-seed pulp equidistant between his plate and his mouth. When he looked up, his face bore that expression of prepared saintliness usually reserved for royals and ruthless politicians. In front of his table stood two youths; one callow, the other homely. They had a glow about them, as though they had recently discovered it biologically possible for boys to love each other.

“My name is Stanley,” said callow—apparently the Arthur of the species—“and this is . . .”

Zeno somehow expected ‘Martha’, but the spotty one was evidently an ‘Eric’.

“Would you mind awfully if we share your table?” Zeno’s eyes flickered to the many vacant tables. Stanley confessed, “We recognised you when we came in . . .” He half turned to Martha—who was perhaps Arthur after all, for he prodded Stanley to stick to the story he had obviously concocted— “. . . and it isn’t often that one gets to meet in the flesh anybody who’s been there, all the way. To the top, I mean.”

He stopped, out of breath, forgetting the text or just overcome by feminine modesty. Zeno, who had not worked for years, could not understand how these babes, unborn when he was scorching the charts, could possibly know him. Unless the network had revived his old potboiler on morning TV. The companies must be desperate for fodder to feed the monster they had created: soaps from Australia, black-and-white pops from a bygone era. Perhaps he had been resurrected and given icon status.

Stanley had overcome his awe, and with a sunrise of a smile said, “We’d just love to talk to you.”