‘I can take it,’ he said. ‘I’m going to be a doctor.’

Meanwhile, at home in Stamford Hill, Esau and Sarah, locked in prayer through the twenty-four hours of the Sabbath, wondered what would happen to their boy who had fallen into the clutches of a flame-haired temptress.

‘She’ll ruin him,’ said Esau, ‘he’s doomed. We’re all doomed.’

‘My boy, my boy,’ said Sarah. ‘And only five feet seven.’

They didn’t attend the wedding held in a Registry Office in Cambridge. How could they when Elgin had arranged it for a Saturday? There was Louise in an ivory silk flapper dress with a silver headband. Her best friend Janet holding a camera and the rings. Elgin’s best friend whose name he couldn’t remember. Elgin, in a hired morning suit just a size too tight.

‘You see,’ said Louise, ‘I knew he was safe, that I could control him, that I would be the one in charge.’

‘And what about him, what did he think?’

‘He knew I was beautiful, that I was a prize. He wanted something showy but not vulgar. He wanted to go up to the world and say, “Look what I’ve got.” ’

I thought about Elgin. He was very eminent, very dull, very rich. Louise charmed everyone. She brought him attention, contacts, she cooked, she decorated, she was clever and above all she was beautiful. Elgin was awkward and he didn’t fit. There was a certain amount of racism in the way he was treated. His colleagues were mostly those young men he had been taught with and inwardly despised. He knew other Jews of course, but in his profession they were all comfortable, cultured, liberal. They weren’t Orthodox from Stamford Hill with nothing but a squatted semi between themselves and the gas chamber. Elgin never talked about his past, and gradually, with Louise beside him, it became irrelevant. He too became comfortable and cultivated and liberal. He went to the opera and he bought antiques. He made jokes about Frummers and matzos and even lost his accent. When Louise encouraged him to get in touch with his parents he sent them a Christmas card.

‘It’s her,’ said Esau behind the dark counter. ‘A curse on women since the sin of Eve.’

And Sarah, polishing, sorting, mending, serving, felt the curse and lost herself a little more.

‘Hello Elgin,’ I said as he came into the kitchen in his navy blue corduroys (size M) and his off-duty Viyella shirt (size S). He leaned against the stove and fired a staccato of questions at me. That was his preferred method of conversation; it meant he didn’t have to expose himself.

Louise was chopping vegetables. ‘Elgin’s going away next week,’ she said, cutting through his flow as deftly as he would a windpipe.

‘That’s right, that’s right,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Got a paper to give in Washington. Ever been to Washington?’ Tuesday the twelfth of May 10.40. British Airways flight to Washington cleared for take-off. There’s Elgin in Club Class with his glass of champagne and his headphones on listening to Wagner. Bye Bye Elgin.