It was an impossible choice. How he yearned for India, for the comforting embrace of his old ayah, the warm nights, the birdsong, the smells of incense mingled with the mouth-watering aroma of spices drifting on the still air from the kitchens. More than at any time since he’d left, nearly a decade ago, he felt adrift, uprooted, alone.

But he had no money to pay for a repeat year.

Vic hardened his heart, and carried on.

As his finals approached, he refused to contemplate what might happen next. Although he still longed for India, he now felt entirely British. He’d lived here for more years than in his home country, after all. His tutor said he ‘showed exceptional promise’ and hoped he might apply for a doctorate, but Vic couldn’t imagine how he might support himself through a further two or three years of study.

He would have to find a job, he supposed, but what could he do? His passion was radio waves. He loved the notion that sounds could fly invisibly through the air, undetectable until they met the human ear or a receiver that could translate them and turn them into beautiful images of waves moving across a screen. Although most people thought radio was just broadcast entertainment, anyone in the know understood the wider potential for wireless telephony between ships and planes. Some had even spoken of interplanetary communications.

The only place he’d heard of doing work in this field was Marconi in Essex, but it was said that jobs there were ‘like hens’ teeth’, from which he vaguely understood they must be very rare indeed. Unlike some of his better-connected colleagues, he had no network of contacts which might ease his passage into one of these prized positions.

He passed his finals with a starred first, and to his astonishment the college offered him a bursary – in effect a scholarship for taking his doctorate, along with ten hours a week of associate lectureship, which would pay for his living expenses. ‘We can’t afford to lose a brain like yours, Mackensie,’ his physics tutor told him, giving him the glad news. ‘You have a very bright future ahead of you.’

Vic spent that summer in Tunbridge Wells, where his father had come to live with an unmarried aunt. Since the death of his wife, Mr Mackensie had found life in India increasingly difficult. Gandhi’s demonstrations, religious riots and the passing of the Government of India Act had left him convinced that it was only a matter of time before the British were thrown out. His lifetime’s investment in the tea plantation could become worthless, he reasoned, so it was better to sell now. It was only once he’d landed on English shores and begun to read the newspapers that he realised there was an even more alarming threat on this side of the world: Hitler and his increasingly aggressive behaviour in Europe.

They were walking his aunt’s small yappy dog in the nearby park on the South Downs when Vic’s father dropped his bombshell. ‘I suppose if we go to war you’ll have to join up, lad.’