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listened. Sir William was a very
engaging old man, but he unwittingly touched continuously upon that chord of pathos that inhibited Edmund with an admixture of irritation and pity that does not make for a comfortable luncheon. His
wife, to whom he had been absolutely devoted, had died some years ago, leaving him with two sons (Army and Foreign Office, and chronically abroad), and nothing else at all except his office. He was
no longer really active there, but used it as a kind of club, where he read The Times and the Daily Telegraph from cover to cover; had a secretary who bought him razor-blades and
Floris toilet water and typed long letters to his sons and the editors of both newspapers that he read. He tried extremely hard to have lunch with Edmund (cheery little last-minute traps, like
coming in at five to one rubbing his dry, mulberry-coloured hands and saying, ‘What about a spot of lunch? Miss Hathaway tells me you are free’) at least twice a week, apart from the
formal engagements he made (‘Lunch on the 16th, my boy. Few things we ought to discuss’). ‘Ought to discuss ,’ he would repeat more loudly, his once hawk-like Lord
Kitchener eyes now watery and pleading. He always repeated things more loudly because he thought that Edmund was deaf. If these ploys failed, he went stoically to Brooks’s, where he had a
drink with anyone who recognized him, and did the crosswords. If he succeeded, he took Edmund to Wheeler’s, or Wilton’s, or Prunier’s, and lapsed into an almost agonizing
nostalgic gaiety, ordering Krug and Yquem, which he invariably said had been Irene’s favourites, and eating dressed crab and raspberries, neither of which he’d really liked when she had
been alive, but which he ate now – in spite of indigestion from the first, and terrible plate trouble from the second – because they had been her favourites, too.
    ‘Funny thing,’ he would explain interminably to Edmund. ‘It’s a kind of link, though. Trying to find out what she saw in the stuff.’ He would poke at his crab with
heroic joviality: ‘Looks like dog’s vomit to me, I always used to say to her. Never put her off, though. She had a marvellous sense of humour. Dog’s vomit ,’ he would
enunciate more clearly, and Edmund, touched, nauseated and embarrassed, would cringingly change the subject.
    Today, they were in Wheeler’s, in St James’s. Edmund was eating his sole normande – off the bone – and pretending to consult Sir William about Lea Manor. It was
very hot, and he knew that the champagne would make him first sleepy and then give him a headache on the train. Sir William sometimes made a pertinent and shrewd remark or suggestion that turned
out to be invaluable, but today his mind was not so orientated. He wanted to convince himself – and Edmund – that life had been worth living, and this took him well back into the
’twenties. Yachts, actresses, wild weekends all over the place; tailors’ and wine-merchants’ bills; pawning his guns just before the Twelfth; private rooms, a girl he had thought
he would have to marry, all these lasted them right up to what Sir William called pudding (black coffee and raspberries). ‘Then, of course, I met Irene. But you know about that,’ he
ended, or, as Edmund could see, rather hoped that he had begun.
    ‘Yes,’ Edmund said loudly.
    ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle, they say. Don’t know who they are, or were, but I always say that the sexual equivalent to one’s castle is one’s wife.
Marry the right girl, and you’ll never look back. You’re impregnable. I was incredibly lucky.
    Lucky. I often wonder,’ he continued, at top-volume rumination, ‘whether sex hasn’t got duller than it used to be – now that it’s all over the place. You see
three-quarters of a gal the moment you set eyes on her nowadays, and the whole lot, they tell me, at the drop of a mini-skirt. We used to find ankles exciting. I’m not talking about the