Although the purpose of these visits was to identify Conrad to as many of the elderly residents as possible before he returned to the hospital the main effort at conversion would come later, when the new limb was in place — Conrad had already begun to doubt whether Dr Knight’s plan would succeed. Far from arousing any hostility, Conrad’s presence elicited nothing but sympathy and goodwill from the aged occupants of the residential hostels and bungalows. Wherever he went the old people would come down to their gates and talk to him, wishing him well with his operation. At times, as he acknowledged the smiles and greetings of the grey-haired men and women watching on all sides from their balconies and gardens, it seemed to Conrad that he was the only young person in the entire town.

‘Uncle, how do you explain the paradox?’ he asked as they limped along together on their rounds, Conrad supporting his weight on two stout walking sticks. ‘They want me to have a new leg but they won’t go to the hospital themselves.’

‘But you’re young, Conrad, a mere child to them. You’re having returned to you something that is your right: the ability to walk and run and dance. Your life isn’t being prolonged beyond its natural span.’

‘Natural span?’ Conrad repeated the phrase wearily. He rubbed the harness of his leg beneath his trousers. ‘In some parts of the world the natural life span is still little more than forty. Isn’t it relative?’

‘Not entirely, Conrad. Not beyond a certain point.’ Although he had faithfully guided Conrad about the town, his uncle seemed reluctant to pursue the argument.

They reached the entrance to one of the residential estates. One of the town’s many undertakers had opened a new office, and in the shadows behind the leaded windows Conrad could see a prayer-book on a mahogany stand and discreet photographs of hearses and mausoleums. However veiled, the proximity of the office to the retirement homes disturbed Conrad as much as if a line of freshly primed coffins had been laid out along the pavement ready for inspection.

His uncle merely shrugged when Conrad mentioned this. ‘The old take a realistic view of things, Conrad. They don’t fear or sentimentalize death in quite the way the younger people do. In fact, they have a very lively interest in the matter.’

As they stopped outside one of the chalets he took Conrad’s arm. ‘A word of warning here, Conrad. I don’t want to shock you, but you’re about to meet a man who intends to put his opposition to Dr Knight into practice. Perhaps he’ll tell you more in a few minutes than I or Dr Knight could in ten years. His name is Matthews, by the way, Dr James Matthews.’

‘Doctor?’ Conrad repeated. ‘Do you mean a doctor of medicine?’

‘Exactly. One of the few. Still, let’s wait until you meet him.’

They approached the chalet, a modest two-roomed dwelling with a small untended garden dominated by a tall cypress. The door opened as soon as they touched the bell. An elderly nun in the uniform of a nursing order let them in with a brief greeting. A second nun, her sleeves rolled, crossed the passage to the kitchen with a porcelain pail. Despite their efforts, there was an unpleasant smell in the house which the lavish use of disinfectant failed to conceal.

‘Mr Foster, would you mind waiting a few minutes. Good morning, Conrad.’

They waited in the dingy sitting room. Conrad studied the framed photographs over the rolltop desk. One was of a birdlike, grey-haired woman, whom he took to be the deceased Mrs Matthews. The other was an old matriculation portrait of a group of students.

Eventually they were shown into the small rear bedroom. The second of the two nuns had covered the equipment on the bedside table with a sheet. She straightened the coverlet on the bed and then went out into the hall.

Resting on his sticks, Conrad stood behind his uncle as the latter peered down at the occupant of the bed. The acid odour was more pungent and seemed to emanate directly from the bed. When his uncle beckoned him forward, Conrad at first failed to find the shrunken face of the man in the bed. The grey cheeks and hair had already merged into the unstarched sheets covered by the shadows from the curtained windows.

‘James, this is Elizabeth’s boy, Conrad.’ His uncle pulled up a wooden chair. He motioned to Conrad to sit down. ‘Dr Matthews, Conrad.’

Conrad murmured something, aware of the blue eyes that had turned to look at him. What surprised him most about the dying occupant of the bed was his comparative youth. Although in his middle sixties, Dr Matthews was twenty years younger than the majority of the tenants in the estate.

‘He’s grown into quite a lad, don’t you think, James?’ Uncle Theodore remarked.

Dr Matthews nodded, as if only half interested in their visit. His eyes were on the dark cypress in the garden. ‘He has,’ he said at last.

Conrad waited uncomfortably. The walk had tired him, and his thigh seemed raw again. He wondered if they would be able to call for a taxi from the house.

Dr Matthews turned his head. He seemed to be able to look at Conrad and his uncle with a blue eye on each of them. ‘Who have you got for the boy?’ he asked in a sharper voice. ‘Nathan is still there, I believe ‘One of the younger men, James. You probably won’t know him, but he’s a good fellow. Knight.’

‘Knight?’ The name was repeated with only a faint hint of comment. ‘And when does the boy go in?’

‘Tomorrow. Don’t you, Conrad?’

Conrad was about to speak when he noticed that a faint simpering was coming from the man in the bed. Suddenly exhausted by this bizarre scene, and under the impression that the dying physician’s macabre humour was directed at himself, Conrad rose in his chair, rattling his sticks together. ‘Uncle, could I wait outside…?’

‘My boy — ‘ Dr Matthews had freed his right hand from the bed. ‘I was laughing at your uncle, not at you. He always had a great sense of humour. Or none at all. Which is it, Theo?’

‘I see nothing funny, James. Are you saying I shouldn’t have brought him here?’

Dr Matthews lay back. ‘Not at all — I was there at his beginning, let him be here for my end…’ He looked at Conrad again. ‘I wish you the best, Conrad. No doubt you wonder why I don’t accompany you to the hospital.’

‘Well, I…’ Conrad began, but his uncle held his shoulder.

‘James, it’s time for us to be leaving. I think we can take the matter as understood.’

‘Obviously we can’t.’ Dr Matthews raised a hand again, frowning at the slight noise. ‘I’ll only be a moment, Theo, but if I don’t tell him no one will, certainly not Dr Knight. Now, Conrad, you’re seventeen?’

When Conrad nodded Dr Matthews went on: ‘At that age, if I remember, life seems to stretch on for ever. One is probably living as close to eternity as is possible. As you get older, though, you find more and more that everything worthwhile has finite bounds, by and large those of time — from ordinary things to the most important ones, your marriage, children and so on, even life itself. The hard lines drawn around things give them their identity. Nothing is brighter than the diamond.’

‘James, you’ve had enough—’

‘Quiet, Theo.’ Dr Matthews raised his head, almost managing to sit up. ‘Perhaps, Conrad, you would explain to Dr Knight that it is just because we value our lives so much that we refuse to diminish them. There are a thousand hard lines drawn between you and me, Conrad, differences of age, character and experience, differences of time. You have to earn these distinctions for yourself. You can’t borrow them from anyone else, least of all from the dead.’

Conrad looked round as the door opened. The older of the nuns stood in the hall outside. She nodded to his uncle. Conrad settled his limb for the journey home, waiting for Uncle Theodore to make his goodbyes to Dr Matthews. As the nun stepped towards the bed he saw on the train of her starched gown a streak of blood.