Rougetel, it penetrated Dyer, as they entered Phoenix Lane, was not looking to be rescued or understood; he was too involved in trying to understand. He was content with his life, its arrangement suited him. Not for an empire would he be in Dyer’s trainers.

Every instinct in Dyer had prompted compassion for this poor creature, but it was Rougetel who pitied him, who saw Dyer as benighted.

Dyer said quickly in a new voice, overtaking any note of disbelief: ‘At least you had a real go, probably the only one of us who did. You took a journey none of us dared to do.’

After all that, they had arrived early at the Phoenix. There was no one else in the playground. Side by side, like brothers who have never quarrelled, they walked towards the Rink.

Rougetel looked up to the bell on the roof.

‘I remember ringing that,’ in a slow voice.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, I was head of something.’

‘School?’

‘Something like that.’

He lowered his eyes to the team notices. Leandro’s name was posted for the final match of term, against the Dragon School.

‘Your son?’

‘That’s right.’

Rougetel went on staring. ‘“Parents are welcome to the match tea …”’ His mouth was open. ‘Do they serve scones still?’

‘They do.’

‘Custard creams?’ The tip of his tongue. Seeking the taste.

‘As well.’

More memories resurfaced. He had been wicket-keeper for the first XI. Also, captain of swimming – although this hadn’t stopped Slimy from beating him.

Dyer turned. He was still processing the image of Rougetel keeping wicket. ‘Slimy beat you? Whatever for?’

Rougetel screwed up his eyes to the window above the white clock – Slimy’s study.

‘I’d gone to the barge …’

The graininess of memory. The scene unreeled in his mind with the haphazard continuity of the films they would watch in Hall on Sunday nights. The rain belting down. A notice with the words: ‘Fields out of bounds’. Behind the window, a man with thin lips adjusts a lens.

On certain wet afternoons, Slimy spied on boys who trespassed onto the waterlogged pitches. ‘He wrote down our names,’ said Rougetel, as if he could see the outline of a telescope afloat on the glass, ‘then summoned us to his room one by one.’

If anything, the punishment – ten whacks with a gym-shoe of Rougetel’s choice, and much less painful than symbolic – had served to make the barge a destination yet more tantalising. Not long afterwards, Rougetel had spent the night in its hold. In defiance of every rule, he had stolen out of his dormitory carrying a punnet of raspberries, hoarded over from Sunday tea, in case he got hungry, and a towel to dry himself following a midnight dip.