‘I shall have a nervous breakdown if they don’t settle things soon,’ said Robert Tolland. ‘I don’t expect you hear any news, Frederica?’

‘I can assure you, Robert, my own position is equally nerve-racking,’ said Frederica. ‘And I hear no news.’

She certainly looked dreadfully worried. I found Members and Quiggin discussing the ineluctable topic when I went to collect a book for review.

‘I am of course opposed in principle to monarchy, like all other feudal survivals,’ Quiggin was saying. ‘But if the country must have a king, I consider it desirable, indeed essential that he should marry a divorcée. Two divorces – double as good. I am no friend of the civilisation of Big Business, but at least an American marriage is better than affiliation with our own so-called aristocracy.’

Members laughed dryly.

‘Have you taken part in a procession of protest yet, J.G.?’ he asked, now in a sufficiently strong economic position vis-à-vis his old friend to treat Quiggin’s indignation with amused irony. ‘I believe all kinds of distinguished people from the intellectual world have been parading the streets with sandwich boards expressing outraged royalist sentiments.’

‘I regard the whole matter as utterly trivial in any case,’ said Quiggin, irritably shoving a handful of recently published novels back into the shelf behind Members’s desk, tearing the paper wrappers of two of them by the violence of his action. ‘You asked me my views, Mark, and I’ve told you what they are. Like Gibbon, I dismiss the subject with impatience. Perhaps you will produce a book of some interest this week, a change from these interminable autobiographies of minor criminals which flow so freely from the press and to which I am for ever condemned by you.’

I met Moreland in the street just after the story had broken in the newspapers.

‘Isn’t this just my luck?’ he said. ‘Now nobody is going to listen to music, look at a picture, or read a book, for months on end. We can all settle down happily to discussions every evening about Love and Duty.’

‘Fascinating subjects.’

‘They are in one’s own life. Less so, where others are concerned.’

‘You speak with feeling.’

‘Do I? Just my naturally vehement way of expressing myself.’

As it turned out, once the step had been taken, the Abdication become a matter of history, everything resumed an accustomed routine with much greater ease than popularly foreseen. There appeared no reason to suppose the box office for Moreland’s symphony would suffer. Priscilla (who had eventually taken the job in the organisation raising money for the promotion of opera) reported, for example, that the cross-section of the public seen through this particular microscope seemed to have settled down, after some weeks of upheaval, to its normal condition. Priscilla was not particularly interested in music – less so than Robert – but naturally this employment had brought her in touch to some degree with the musical world. At the same time, I was surprised when, the day before Moreland’s work was to be performed, Priscilla rang up and asked if she could come with us the following evening. Isobel answered the telephone.

‘I didn’t know you often went to concerts,’ she said.

‘I don’t unless I have a free ticket,’ said Priscilla.

‘Did you get a free ticket for this one?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who gave it you?’

‘One of the persons whose music is going to be played.’

‘I thought they were all dead, or living abroad, except Hugh Moreland.’

‘Hugh Moreland gave me the ticket.’

‘I didn’t know you knew him.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Oh, yes. You met him with us, didn’t you?’

‘And other times too. I meet him in my office.’

‘You never mentioned it.’

‘Look here, can I come with you and Nick, or can’t I?’ said Priscilla. ‘I am just asking. If you think being seen in my company will get you a bad name, I’ll go alone and pretend I don’t know either of you if we meet in the bar. Nothing easier.’

This conversation was reported later by Isobel, with the information that Priscilla was dining with us the following night.

‘Typical of Hugh to present a ticket to Priscilla, who is not in the least interested in music,’ I said, ‘when all sorts of people who might be useful to him would have been delighted to be remembered in that way.’

The statement was true, at the same time disingenuous. I was a little aware of that at the time. It was a priggish remark; not even genuinely priggish. There seemed no point in adding that it was obviously more fun to give a ticket to a pretty girl like Priscilla, rather than to some uncouth musical hanger-on whose gratification might ultimately pay a doubtful dividend. I felt it one of those occasions when a show of worldliness might be used as a smoke-screen. But why should a smoke-screen be required?

‘I suppose Hugh had a few drinks at some party,’ I said, ‘and distributed tickets broadcast.’

In the end I convinced myself of the probability of this surmise. Isobel did not express any views on the subject. However, when she arrived at the flat, Priscilla explained that Moreland, the day before, had visited, in some professional capacity, the place where the Opera fund was administered. There, ‘rummaging about in his pocket for his cigarettes’, he found this spare ticket ‘crumpled up among a lot of newspaper cuttings, bits of string, and paper-clips’. He had given the ticket to Priscilla, suggesting at the same time that she should come on to Mrs Foxe’s party after the concert. That was a convincing story. It had all the mark of Moreland’s behaviour. We talked of other things; of Erridge, who had cabled for thicker underclothes to be sent him in Barcelona, indicating in this manner that he was not, as some prophesied, likely to return immediately. We discussed Erridge’s prospects in Spain. By the time we reached the concert hall, Priscilla seemed to have come with us that evening by long previous arrangement.

Moreland was fond of insisting that whatever the critics say, good or bad, all works of art must go through a maturing process before taking their allotted place in the scheme of things. There is nothing particularly original in that opinion, but those who hold firmly to it are on the whole less likely to be spoiled by praise or cast down by blame than others – not necessarily worse artists-who find heaven or hell in each individual press notice. The symphony was, in fact, greeted as a success, but not as an overwhelming success; a solid piece of work that would add to Moreland’s reputation, rather than a detonation of unexampled brilliance. Gossage, fiddling about with the mustard pot at some restaurant, had once remarked (when Moreland was out of the room) that he would be wise to build up his name with a work of just that sort. In the concert hall, there had been a lot of applause; at the same time a faint sense of anti-climax. Even for the most self-disciplined of artists, a public taken by surprise is more stimulating than a public relieved to find that what is offered can be swallowed without the least sharpness on the palate. This was especially true of Moreland, who possessed his healthy share of liking to startle, in spite of his own innate antagonism to professional startlers. However, if the symphony turned out to be a little disappointing to those who may have hoped for something more barbed, the reception was warm enough to cast no suggestion of shadow over a party of celebration.

‘That went all right, didn’t it?’ said Isobel.

‘It seemed to.’

‘I thought it absolutely wonderful,’ said Priscilla.

I felt great curiosity at the prospect of seeing Mrs Foxe’s house again, not entered since the day when, still a schoolboy, I had lunched there with Stringham and his mother. Nothing had changed in the pillared entrance hall. There was, of course, absolutely no reason why anything should have changed, but I had an odd feeling of incongruity about reappearing there as a married man. The transition against this same backcloth was too abrupt. Some interim state, like steps in the gradations of freemasonry, seemed to have been omitted. We were shown up to a crimson damask drawing-room on the first floor, at one end of which sliding doors were open, revealing the room at right angles to be the ‘library’ – with its huge malachite urn, Romney portrait, Regency bookcases – into which Stringham had brought me on that earlier visit. There I had first encountered the chilly elegance of Commander Foxe; also witnessed Stringham’s method of dealing with his mother’s ‘current husband’.