‘We’ve done a few of their juvenile and religious books in translation. They’re predominantly a religious publishing firm, the biggest, I fancy, in Europe. The angle is Calvinistic and as far as children’s books go, rather nauseatingly pi. The head of the firm, Welker, is said to be the fanatical king-pin of some extreme sect in Holland. As you may imagine, they do not publish much contemporary fiction.’

‘Not, one would venture, a congenial milieu for the romping Van der Veghels.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Sophy said vaguely. ‘I dare say they manage to adjust.’

‘What a world-weary child!’ Grant observed and shook his head at her. Sophy turned pink and fell silent.

They were in the second car with Major Sweet who was asleep. The other four had seated themselves, smartly, with Giovanni. Lady Braceley, offering the plea that she suffered from car-sickness, had placed herself in the front seat.

The horrific evening welter of Roman traffic surged, screeched and hooted through the streets. Drivers screamed at each other, removed both hands from the wheel to fold them together in sarcastic prayer at the enormities perpetrated by other drivers. Pedestrians, launching themselves into the maelstrom, made grand-opera gestures against oncoming traffic. At pavement tables, Romans read their evening papers, made love, argued vociferously, or, over folded arms, stared with portentous detachment at nothing in particular. Major Sweet lolled to and fro with his mouth open and occasionally snorted. Once he woke and said that what was wanted here was a London bobby.

‘Out there,’ said Grant, ‘he wouldn’t last three minutes.’

‘Balls,’ said the Major and fell asleep again. He woke when they stopped suddenly and added, ‘I’m most frightfully sorry, can’t think what’s come over me,’ and slept again immediately.

Grant found to his surprise that Sophy, too, was at the Pensione Gallico. He himself had only moved in the day before and had not yet eaten there. He asked her if he might give her a drink at Tre Scalini in Navona. ‘They could pick us both up there,’ he said.

‘Nice idea. Thank you.’

‘At half past eight then?’

He managed to make this clear to the driver.

The Major was decanted at his hotel and Sophy and Grant at the Gallico.

Grant’s room was like an oven. He bathed, lay down for an hour in a state of nature and extreme perturbation and then dressed. When he was ready he sat on his bed with his head in his hands. If only, he thought, this could be the definitive movement. If only it all could stop: now. And the inevitable reference floated up: ‘the be-all and the end-all here, but here upon this bank and shoal of time—’