Drove truck-loads of this sort of stuff down to the studios to ‘dress the sets’. The whole house looks like one great big set. A multi-million production. All very elegant and upper class: like a sherry commercial. It’s all from some other time, it’s all on a different plane. I got on the wrong escalator somewhere during today; it’s going backwards.

The bed was so high that he had to climb two leather-covered steps to reach the mattress and, laughing, rolled across crisp linen sheets. If you fall out of this having a nightmare you’ll break your neck.

‘It’s only a scratch supper, I’m afraid,’ Archie Charlie had apologized worriedly. ‘We weren’t expecting my wife back from London until tomorrow, you see. Caught us quite by surprise. I normally only have a boiled egg or something when I’m on my own; saves fuss.’

A scratch supper. Four ruddy courses, if you count the cheese, two kinds of wine and the pissed-off French woman waiting at table. He’s never had a scratch supper in his life, I’d say. Tinned spaghetti on wet toast? Soggy schnitzels? ‘Country-style’ pork pies sagging in limp chips? If you were lucky. He’d seen me look a bit doubtful, I suppose. Came to, what he thought was, the rescue.

‘Use your hand-irons from the outside inwards. That was my father’s advice always. Bruna is still very formal, even in these careless days. In my father’s time, of course, we used only one set. Knife and fork: cleaned them on a piece of bread between courses … except if we had soup, of course, but we seldom did. “Can’t found a meal on a lake!” my father used to say.’ Chattering away nervously. Probably worried about his wife. ‘Can’t think what she was doing down there by the rocks. She never goes there as far as I know. So dangerous, one can slip so easily. As she did. Obviously?’ He had looked up with clear eyes, a worried frown. I didn’t say anything. A conspiracy. That seemed to fuss him more. Fiddled with his finger-bowl. Spilled it. I know all about the cutlery. Been there before, although he’s not to know, I suppose. Decca saw to all that. Good old Decca, bringing me up to be a little gentleman. In the early days. The very early days. When she had hopes. High hopes. Silly bitch. Silly, silly ‘Mummy’. But it was never ‘Mummy’, or ‘Mother’, ‘Mum’ or even just ‘Ma’. Decca. Her choice, God knew why. ‘Looks better on the canopy,’ she said. ‘“Decca York” throbbing in crimson neon outside all the theatres.’