‘Hugo will never find a place for himself in the contemporary world,’ his sister Norah had declared.

Norah’s conclusion, reached after an argument with Hugo about Spain, was not much at variance with the opinion of the rest of the family. However, this judgment turned out to be a mistaken one. Unlike many outwardly more promising young men, Hugo found a job without apparent difficulty. He placed himself with Baldwyn Hodges Ltd, antique dealers, a business which undertook a certain amount of interior decorating as a sideline. Although far from being the sort of firm Molly Jeavons would – or, financially speaking, could – employ for renovating her own house, its managing director, Mrs Baldwyn Hodges herself, like so many other unlikely people, had fetched up at the Jeavonses’ one evening when Hugo was there. Very expert at handling rich people, Mrs Baldwyn Hodges was a middle-aged, capable, leathery woman, of a type Mr Deacon would particularly have loathed had he lived to see the rise of her shop, which had had small beginnings, to fashionable success. Hugo and Mrs Baldwyn Hodges got on well together at the Jeavonses’. They met again at the Surrealist Exhibition. Whatever the reason – probably, in fact, Hugo’s own basic, though not then generally recognised, toughness – Mrs Baldwyn Hodges showed her liking for Hugo in a practical manner by taking him into her business as a learner. He did not earn much money at first; he may even have paid some sort of fee at the start; but he made something on commission from time to time and the job suited him. In fact Hugo had shown signs of becoming rather good at selling people furniture and advising them about their drawing-room walls. Chips Lovell (who had recently been told about Freud) explained that Hugo was ‘looking for a mother’. Perhaps he was right. Mrs Baldwyn Hodges certainly taught Hugo a great deal.

All the same, Hugo’s employment did not prevent him from frequenting the society of what Mr Deacon used to call ‘naughty young men’. When out on an excursion with companions of this sort, a car was overturned and Hugo’s leg was broken. As a result of this accident, Hugo was confined to bed for some weeks at Hyde Park Gardens, where he set up what he himself designated ‘a rival salon’ to Erridge’s room at the nursing home. This situation, absurd as the reason may sound, had, I think, a substantial effect upon the speed of Erridge’s recovery. Hugo even attempted to present his own indisposition as a kind of travesty of Erridge’s case, pretending that the accident to the car had been the result of political sabotage organised by his sister Norah and Eleanor Walpole-Wilson. It was all very silly, typical of Hugo. At the same time, visiting Hugo in these circumstances was agreed to be more amusing than visiting Erridge. However, even if Erridge made no show of enjoying visitors, and was unwilling to reveal much of his Spanish experiences, he tolerated the interest of other people in what had happened to him in Spain. It was another matter if his relations came to his bedside only to retail the antics of his youngest brother, who represented to Erridge the manner of life of which he most disapproved. The consequence was that Erridge returned to Thrubworth sooner than expected. There he met with a lot of worry on arrival, because his butler, Smith, immediately went down with bronchitis.

At about the same time that Erridge left London, Moreland rang me up. Without anything being said on either side, our meetings had somehow lapsed. We had spoken together only at parties or on such occasions when other people had been around us. It was ages since we had had one of those long talks about life, or the arts, which had been such a predominant aspect of knowing Moreland in the past. On the telephone his voice sounded restrained, practical, colourless; as he himself would have said ‘the sane Englishman with his pipe’.

‘How is Matilda?’

‘Spending a good deal of time out on her own with rehearsals and so on. She is going out with some of her theatre people tonight as a matter of fact.’

‘Come and dine.’

‘I can’t. I’m involved in musical business until about ten. I said I would drop in on Maclintick then. I thought you might feel like coming too.’

‘Why?’

‘The suggestion was made to help myself out really. I agree it isn’t a very inviting prospect.’

‘Less inviting than usual? Do you remember our last visit?’

‘Well, you know what has happened?’

‘No.’

‘Maclintick’s wife has walked out on him.’

‘I hadn’t heard.’

‘With Carolo.’

‘How rash.’

‘On top of that Maclintick has lost his job.’

‘I never thought of him as having a job.’

‘He did, all the same. Now he hasn’t.’

‘Did a paper sack him?’

‘Yes. I thought we might meet at a pub, then go on to see Maclintick at his house. He just sits there working all the time. I have been talking to Gossage about Maclintick. We are a bit worried. A visit might cheer him up.’

‘I am sure he would much rather see you alone.’

‘That is just what I want to avoid.’

‘Why not take Gossage?’

‘Gossage is busy tonight. Anyway, he is too old a friend. He gets on Maclintick’s nerves.’

‘But so do I.’

‘In a different way. Besides, you don’t know anything about music. It is musical people Maclintick can’t stand.’

‘I only see Maclintick once every two years. We never hit it off particularly well even spaced out at those intervals.’

‘It is because Maclintick never sees you that I want you to come. I don’t want an embarrassing time with him téte-à-téte. I am not up to it these days. I have troubles of my own.’

‘All right. Where shall we meet?’

Moreland, from his extensive knowledge of London drinking places, named a pub in the Maclintick neighbourhood. I told Isobel what had been arranged.

‘Try and find out what is happening about Priscilla,’ she said. ‘For all we know, they may be planning to run away together too. One must look ahead.’

The Nag’s Head, the pub named by Moreland, was a place of no great attraction. I recalled it as the establishment brought to Mrs Maclintick’s mind by her husband’s uncouth behaviour at Mrs Foxe’s party. Moreland looked tired when he arrived. He said he had been trudging round London all day. I asked for further details about the Maclintick situation.

‘There are none to speak of,’ Moreland said. ‘Audrey and Carolo left together one afternoon last week. Maclintick had gone round to have a talk with his doctor about some trouble he was having with his kidneys. Not flushing out properly or something. He found a note when he returned home saying she had gone for good.’

‘And then he lost his job on top of it?’

‘He had written rather an astringent article about a concert he was covering. The paper didn’t put it in. Maclintick made a fuss. The editor suggested Maclintick might be happier writing for a periodical aiming at a narrower public. Maclintick agreed that he himself had been feeling that for some time. So they parted company.’

‘He is absolutely broke?’

‘Probably a few minor irons in the fire. I don’t know. Maclintick is not a chap who manages his business affairs very well.’

‘Is he looking for another job?’

‘He has either been working at his book or knocking them back pretty hard since all this happened – and who shall blame him?’

We set off for Maclintick’s house.

‘When is Madlda’s play coming on?’

‘They don’t seem to know exactly.’

Moreland showed no sign of wishing to pursue the subject of Madlda’s stage career. I did not press the question. I wondered whether he knew that Matilda had told me of her former marriage to Carolo. We passed once more through those shadowy, desolate squares from which darkness had driven even that small remnant of life that haunted them by day. Moreland was depressed and hardly spoke at all. The evening before us offered no prospect to stimulate cheerfulness. At last we reached Maclintick’s horrible little dwelling. There was a light upstairs. I felt at low ebb. However, when Maclintick opened the front door he appeared in better condition than I had been led to expect. He wore no collar and had not shaved for several days, but these omissions seemed deliberate badges of emancipation from the servitudes of marriage and journalism, rather than neglect provoked by grief or despair. On the contrary, the nervous tensions to which he had been subjected during the previous few days had to some extent galvanised his normally crabbed manner into a show of geniality.