A gathering, as if for a class picture, at the entrance of the Taliesin building. Wright, in a tremendous wide-brimmed hat, stares up at something he has spied off-camera.

Here, says Wright, is what’s surprised and pleased him most. With only some direction on his part, these bright young men and women have developed skills to last a lifetime. His aim is to encourage their resourcefulness, instil a good work ethic, so later he might watch them thrive and practise an organic architecture of their own. It is, he says, a model for a better nation. For the place he calls Usonia.

Wright ambles through the tall grass with his cane, towards a single, wind-stirred tree.

The film went on, so bright and strange and fluid, and the great man continued his narration, swaying at the lectern. It had stirred Arthur’s blood already, sent a tremble through his legs, up to his neck. Those young apprentices on-screen, attending to their work with such a unity of purpose – he knew exactly how they felt. He saw their jokey solidarity and happiness. He recognized their inhibitions, too – the woodenness to their expressions, smiling under scrutiny. They weren’t quite being themselves. They were acting for the camera. On their best behaviour. Maybe that was all the feeling was – affinity with strangers – but he had the strongest sense that he was one of them.

*

Later that night, he lingered on the entrance steps at Portland Place and smoked a Woodbine in the rain. The day had been so pleasant only a rank pessimist would’ve thought to carry an umbrella, and the RIBA building had no portico, no awning – but, for Arthur, getting drenched was a small price to pay for privacy. He’d come upstairs after the lecture to discover half the audience still pressed inside the foyer, waiting for the shower to pass. He’d shunted through the crowd to reach the doors and rushed out with his hat sloped down. There was a hum inside his body that nothing but tobacco and fresh air could pacify. It was making his toes twitch inside his shoes. He didn’t know if it was possible to be in love with a philosophy, but that was how it seemed. And it was only as he struck a match to light up that he realized he’d abandoned both his colleagues in the lecture hall.

He’d been trying not to think about them: Miles Ibbot and Fred Cort. The three of them had walked to Portland Place together after work, chatting about office matters. ‘As far as I’m concerned, unless a bomb can bounce right off it, I don’t see the point in building with it now,’ Ibbot had been bleating on the way, ‘but Mr Stack is still insisting on that riven slate. It’s so short-sighted.’ When Cort had answered, ‘I should think a bouncing bomb would do a lot more damage,’ it had only prompted Ibbot to begin a rant about it being men their age, not Mr Stack’s, who’d have to shoulder the responsibility for fixing Europe’s mess, just wait and see. It hadn’t taken Arthur long to understand that when his colleagues got into a rhythm it was best to nod along and keep his mouth shut. Once they’d shown their tickets to get into Jarvis Hall, he’d gone to use the lavatory and made sure they’d remained apart all evening.