The house felt hollow without Florrie, who promised to write but never did. Perhaps she had found happiness with her devoted mechanic in half-empty Australia, with its beach-eaten turkeys on a baking Christmas and a cup of tea to cure all woes. Perhaps life behind a mock-Hampshire hedge in year-round sunshine was all she had ever wanted, untouched by the agonies of art. Florrie’s going felt like a generic rejection. It made me wonder whether the things we valued were not confined to the educated classes, worthless to the uninitiated, a slap in the face of my father’s faith in the universally elevating power of art. If Florrie could leave it all without a backward glance, might it count for nothing? Were we admiring an emperor in new clothes? As heir to the Simmonds empire, the thought was disturbing, but the disregard worked both ways. Florrie had declared her role in our lives incidental and she was now declared to be dispensable. An Irish ‘daily’ took her place the following week, succeeded before very long by a trail of Jamaicans. None imprinted so much as a name on my memory.

It was time for us to leave. Dovidl and I matriculated that summer with what we were told were among the highest marks in the country. Exempted from National Service – I as an asthmatic, he as a Polish national – we went up to Cambridge, he to physics at Trinity and I to history at St John’s. Most of our fellow students were ex-servicemen, four or five years older and battle-hardened. There were few girls about, and most were set fixedly on career or early marriage. Our minds were equally end-oriented. The aim was to earn double-quick doctorates. With maths and physics, Dovidl would join Israel’s hush-hush nuclear plant in Rehovot. With history and languages, I would join the intelligence and diplomatic services, plying carrots to his explosive stick, partners all the way.

A sun-bronzed, open-shirted attaché from the new Israeli embassy came to lecture at the Jewish Society, presenting himself as the prototype New Jew, arms-bearing, blond and unafraid. He read out a selection of mawkish New Hebrew poetry, not a patch on the Psalms, and recruited shamelessly for volunteer summer workers on his Galilean kibbutz. Dovidl and I exchanged superior grins. ‘Spare us the peasant poets,’ he whispered.

‘Sing unto God a new song,’ I chanted ironically, ‘his praise is among a commune of devotees.’

We kept pace with one another at college, without much contact. So far as I knew, he was immersed in his studies. I might not see or hear from him for a fortnight, but my faith in him was firm. One Friday evening I went down to the synagogue on Thompson’s Lane for social chit-chat and a hot meal, trying to remember when I had last seen Dovidl. He was not at dinner, but as I strolled home with a crowd after supper, he appeared as if by magic from a side alley and asked me back to his rooms for coffee. The Great Court at Trinity was lit by a full moon and ornamented by the orange lights of scholars in their chambers, at study or at leisure. Instead of going up for coffee, we walked arm in arm round and round the adjacent cloister, Nevile’s Court, gazing up at glinting galaxies and arguing over ursine particulars: which was the Great Bear and which the Small.