So when the library closed at ten, I didn’t go home, but to the Cave. It was an underground club on two levels, with a bar and tables above, and a stage and dance floor below; the air was full of smoke, and a couple of kids were playing jazz. The music had no melody – was that free jazz? Was The Black – black skirts, black jeans, black sweaters, black jackets – existentialism? Was that what lent cool ease to the way people moved, sat down, stood up, lit each other’s cigarettes and smoked, and raised their glasses and drank? What let the men, who in fact wanted to get near the beautiful women, look so blasé, and the women look at the men as if they were tedious? I looked around and—

Irene laughed loudly. “Where did you get that nouvelle vague cliché? By the end of the sixties, nobody was wearing black; the girls at university wanted all the excitement they’d missed in their little towns, and the boys tried to impress us with grand speeches about critical theory and revolutionary praxis. Did all that really pass you by?”

“Like I told you, I did nothing but study.”

“And later you did nothing but work? The firm took you on, and you took over, and made it bigger and bigger?”

“What do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything from you.” She took me in her arms. “I’m trying to picture your life. Your walled-in life. Maybe if you live behind walls, the world outside is bound to become a cliché.”

I didn’t know what to say. My work often takes me abroad and I keep an open mind wherever I go. At home, I read two newspapers, the business and finance sections first, but also politics and culture. I’m better informed about the world than most. Just because I wasn’t familiar with the student fashions of the late sixties – does that make me someone who lives behind walls?

She felt me holding back in her embrace, and pulled me closer. “Did you never go visit your kids at university? And go to their hangouts, their parties?”

“My children went to boarding school when they were fourteen, and they stayed in England. I went to Cambridge for their graduations, terrific occasions, all pomp and circumstance. And I was there when my youngest won the Boat Race against Oxford.”

“Do you see each other often?”

“They all stayed in England, the eldest and the middle one as lawyers, the youngest with his own software company. I go over whenever a grandchild is born or the three of them celebrate something. I don’t want to be a burden.”

Slowly and gently, Irene ran her hand down my back. “My pure fool. You always want to do the right thing.” She said it again, tenderly, and sadly. “My pure fool.”