My mother was top-decked in a drama of millinery, a symphony of fake fruits, flowers and creatures of the air. She wore silk gloves up to her elbows and looked, for once, almost content. ‘Mazel tov, Violet,’ crowed Aunt Mabel, dislodging Mother’s hat with a misfired kiss. To me, she said, ‘I still don’t trust that pal of yours, Marty. Too smooth by half for my liking.’

‘Oh, Auntie,’ I protested.

‘Don’t worry. I’ve got you both a nice present.’

In normal circumstances, people of our circle would have proceeded to a dinner-dance at the Dorchester, to the music of Joe Loss and his band. In wartime, we made do with a kosher-catered Saturday lunch in the synagogue hall and whatever gifts our guests had, contrary to the strict observance of Jewish law, brought along. Dovidl and I shared between us five watches, eleven fountain-pens, forty-two books on varied subjects (two presented by the authors), six tie-pin and cufflink sets, a calligraphy kit, a cricket bat, a year’s subscription to Tribune (courtesy of Mrs Blair), a baroque music stand from a tearful Dr Steiner and one hundred and twenty-six pounds in cheques and cash. Aunt Mabel and Uncle Kenneth got Dovidl an initialled leather music-case and me a printed set of ex-libris stickers and a first-edition Thackeray. It took us almost a month to write all the thank-you cards.

Continuing the rites of passage, we left The House a few weeks later to take up places in long trousers at Corpus Christi School, an exclusive Hampstead academy – green blazer, black stripes – that served as gateway to the great Oxbridge colleges. Miss Prendergast kissed me sweetly goodbye. Father Jeffries pronounced Psalmic blessings. To Dovidl he said, ‘Upon the ten-stringed instrument and the fading lyre, in meditation on the harp, you have given me joy in your work, O God; I shall rejoice in the works of your hands.’ My benediction, from the same Psalm, was: ‘A crude man will not understand this, nor a prejudiced fool.’ He gave me a copy of the Book of Isaiah, in Greek.

At Corpus we were enjoined to ‘work hard, play hard’. Since neither of us enjoyed getting muddy knees, we skipped sports and maintained our extra-mural routines much as before, newspapers twice a day, Bildung every Wednesday night. Dr Steiner was sadly ailing. At his wife’s funeral, a bleak affair at the Hoop Lane crematorium, we discovered that she was not Jewish; she had gone into exile for love of her Hermann. In the car home, the mourner begged my father to let Dovidl make a public début. ‘Er ist ganz bereits, Herr Simmonds,’ said the old man, lapsing into mother tongue. ‘He is quite ready, and I wish to hear him make a success before I die. My Martha was so fond of the boy, almost like a grandchild.’