Dovidl read these reports for himself in the newspapers he delivered for ten shillings a week, plus tips. The last word he had received from home was a letter routed via Switzerland, many times slit open and resealed by censors. It assured him, in his mother’s small hand, that the family were in good health, all things considered. He’d had a baby sister, Basya-Beyla, a beautiful, black-haired little girl who, sadly, had caught diphtheria when she was eight months old and died very suddenly, one night to the next. Pessia had sketched a marvellous charcoal portrait of the baby, but it was forbidden to send drawings abroad so he would have to wait until the war was over to see what she had looked like. Malkeh was growing into a fine young girl, always a great help to her mother.

They were to be resettled soon in the East where they had been assured that living conditions would be less cramped. Missing him terribly, they thanked the merciful Creator that their beloved son was safe, warm and cared-for, making good progress with his musical studies. Dovidl kept the letter in his breast-pocket, ever warm, buttoned up with his pain.

Out of respect for his feelings, we avoided discussing the fate of the Jews in his presence. ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers,’ my father warned me, on a summer night’s stroll. ‘Treat atrocity reports with care, taking into account the possibility of propaganda and the Jewish tendency to hysteria.’

‘But it does sound pretty horrible, Father.’

‘We shall have to wait and see,’ said Mortimer Simmonds. ‘The Allies have landed in France, Europe will soon be free, and then we must make every effort to help as best we can.’

I was tormented by several scenarios. If his parents had survived, Dovidl would surely wish to rejoin them. If they had been killed, he might go back to Poland anyway, or go off somewhere else to start a new life. He might go mad like Josef Hassid, who (I heard) had been diagnosed schizophrenic and locked up in a Polish hospital near Epsom. Any which way, I might lose him, and I could not bear the thought.

So I refrained from raising the subject, and Dovidl burrowed ever more into himself. Many mornings, seeing him at breakfast red-eyed and ashen-faced, I jollied him into a sunnier mood. Did I do wrong? Should I have joined him in tortured speculation? Should I have thrown an arm around his thin frame and tried to suction out the pain? Might that, perhaps, have averted the eventual catastrophe?

Retrospection is pointless. Like any adolescent, I was motivated primarily by self-concern. My main fear was losing Dovidl. With him in my life, I was confident, capable, presentable, almost eloquent. Without him, I would revert to being a fat slob with a speech defect. He was the Rabbi to my Golem, the Clara to my Schumann, the valve to my radio. If I failed to invade his privacy, when invasion might have been welcomed, it was because I dared not jeopardise our symbiotic unity. My need, I ignobly reckoned, was more immediate than his. If he could just get me through to full maturity, I would then be equipped to offer help in whatever way he required.