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refill the ice tray. He would have liked to settle down to the
Times
crossword, but there had been sufficient longueurs for him to have completed it at rehearsal.
    The digs boasted a television too, but a quick zap through the available channels told him that there was nothing he wanted to watch. That seemed to happen increasingly. Particularly with drama. The effort of engaging his interest in a new set of characters was becoming more and more difficult. Was that just a sign of age? Or was it the old thing of feeling jealous of actors who’d got lucrative television work when he hadn’t?
    He looked at the pile of books by his bedside, but nothing appealed. Charles was one of those people who’d always got a book on the go, but the last couple of weeks he’d started a few without finding one that commanded his attention. He found that was often the case when he began rehearsing something. Even when he was only playing a humble Broker’s Man, he found it difficult to focus on anything apart from the show.
    He remembered the thought he’d had walking back along the front. He could ring Frances. They were still married, after all, though the last time they’d spoken she’d sounded more distant than ever. Charles knew his track record as a husband wasn’t great. Young actresses were an occupational hazard of his profession, but it was a while now since he had even the mildest skirmish with anyone of the opposite sex. That made him feel almost virtuous.
    At times he wondered whether he really was past all that. The mornings he woke up alone with an arid hangover it seemed impossible to imagine that bed had ever been a place of such all-consuming pleasure. And he was getting older too. Maybe his libido was just fading away like the pain from an old injury.
    He’d have that thought for days, sometimes even weeks. Yes, it was all over. Charles Paris had made love for the last time. The thought made him walk around in numb despair.
    But then when he was on the tube he’d catch the swirl of a skirt or the wobble of a bottom … or he’d find himself after rehearsal chatting to some extraordinarily well-constructed assistant stage manager … and lust came surging back like a rainstorm in the desert, carrying all before it and enabling all kinds of hopes and fantasies to spring up in its wake. And he knew it wasn’t all quite over yet.
    He still felt lust for Frances too, but that was more complicated. He’d let her down so many times. There had been many rapprochements and many heartfelt vows from Charles to mend his ways. And he always meant what he said when he said it, when he was with Frances. But somehow when he was somewhere else, when he was with someone else … the vows he’d made didn’t seem so important.
    He thought the chances of his ever re-establishing a permanent position in Frances’s bed were remote.
    Still, he did want to ring her that evening. He needed to talk to her. He still loved her, after all. In a way. Ernest Dowson’s most famous line came unbidden into his head. ‘
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.
’ But he feared it wasn’t a definition of ‘faithful’ that Frances would accept.
    He was fairly confident, though, that she still felt something for him. But not confident enough to ask her to define what that something was.
    The phone rang for a long time. He was about to ring off when Frances answered. She sounded very tired. Of course, Charles reminded himself, getting towards the end of the autumn term. Everything that needed to be sorted out running up to Christmas. Always tough for a headmistress. (It was strange, Charles never thought about it at any other time, but the minute he got back in touch with Frances, he reminded himself how the rhythm of her year was dictated by school terms and holidays.)
    â€˜Hi, it’s Charles.’
    â€˜Oh. To what do I owe this rare