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black-out.’
    He tugged open the broad front door. The door had got damp at some point in the past, and was faintly buckled, and grated horribly against the marble as it moved. I joined him at the top of the steps, and the heat of the day billowed in around us.
    He grimaced. ‘Still blistering, I’m afraid. I don’t envy you the run back to Lidcote … What’s that you’re driving? A Ruby? How do you find her?’
    The car was a very basic model, and there wasn’t much to admire in her. But he was clearly the sort of boy to be interested in motors for their own sake, so I took him over, and pointed out a couple of features, finally opening up the bonnet to show him the layout of the engine.
    I said, as I closed the bonnet again, ‘These country roads rather punish her.’
    ‘I’ll bet. How far do you take her, day by day?’
    ‘On a light day? Fifteen, twenty calls. A heavy day might have more than thirty. Local, for the most part, though I’ve a couple of private patients as far out as Banbury.’
    ‘You’re a busy man.’
    ‘Too busy, at times.’
    ‘All those rashes and cuts.—Oh, and that reminds me.’ He put his hand to his pocket. ‘How much do I owe you for seeing to Betty?’
    I didn’t want to take his money at first, thinking of his mother’s generosity with the family photograph. When he pressed me, I said I would send him out a bill. But he laughed and said, ‘Look here, if I were you, I’d take the money while it’s offered. How much do you charge? Four shillings? More? Come on. We’re not at the charity-case stage just yet.’
    So I reluctantly said I would take four shillings, for the visit and the prescription. He brought out a warm handful of small coins and counted them into my palm. He changed his pose as he did it, and the movement must have jarred with him somehow: that puckering reappeared at his cheek, and this time I almost commented on it. As with the cigarettes, however, I didn’t like to embarrass him; so let it go. He folded his arms and stood as if quite comfortable while I started the car, and as I moved off, he languidly raised his hand to me, then turned and headed back to the house. But I kept my eye on him through my rear-view mirror, and saw him making his painful-looking way up the steps to the front door. I saw the house seem to swallow him up as he limped back into the shadowy hall.
    Then the drive made a turn between unclipped bushes, the car began to dip and lurch; and the house was lost to me.

    T hat night, as I often did on a Sunday, I had dinner with David Graham and his wife, Anne. Graham’s emergency case had gone well, against some substantial odds, so we spent most of the meal discussing it; and only as we were starting on our baked-apple pudding did I mention that I’d been out to Hundreds Hall that day on his behalf.
    He at once looked envious. ‘You have? What’s it like there now? The family haven’t called me out in years. I hear the place has gone badly downhill; that they’re rather pigging it, in fact.’
    I described what I had seen of the house and gardens. ‘It’s heart-breaking, ’ I said, ‘to see it all so changed. I don’t know if Roderick knows what he’s doing. It doesn’t look much like it.’
    ‘Poor Roderick,’ said Anne. ‘He’s a nice sort of boy, I’ve always thought. One can’t help but feel sorry for him.’
    ‘Because of his scars, and all that?’
    ‘Oh, partly. But more because he seems so out of his depth. He had to grow up too quickly; all those boys of his age did. But he had Hundreds to think about, as well as the war. And he isn’t his father’s son, somehow.’
    ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that might be in his favour. I remember the Colonel as rather a brute of a man, don’t you? I saw him once when I was young, going off pop with a motorist whose car he said had startled his horse. In the end he jumped out of his saddle and kicked the car’s headlamp in!’
    ‘He had a temper, certainly,’ said