‘And you?’

Moreland possessed that quality, rather rare among men, of not divulging names. At the same time, the secretiveness he employed where his own love affairs were concerned was not without an element of exhibitionism. He was always willing to arouse a little unsatisfied curiosity.

‘I am going to marry,’ said Moreland, ‘I have decided that. To make up my mind is always a rare thing with me, but the moment for decision has arrived. Otherwise I shall become just another of those depressed and depressing intellectual figures who wander from party to party, finding increasing difficulty in getting off with anyone – and in due course suspected of auto-erotic habits. Besides, Nietzsche advocates living dangerously.’

‘If you have decided to base your life on the philosophy of writers of that period, Strindberg considered even the worst marriage better than no marriage at all.’

‘And Strindberg earned the right to speak on that subject. As you probably know, his second wife kept a nightclub, within living memory, not a thousand miles from this very spot. Maclintick, of all people, was once taken there.’

‘But you haven’t told me who your wife – your three wives – will be.’

‘There is only one really. I don’t know whether she will accept me.’

‘Oh, come. You are talking like a Victorian novel.’

‘I will tell you when we next meet.’

‘This is intolerable after I offered my names.’

‘But I am serious.’

I dismissed the notion that Moreland could be contemplating marriage with the heroine of a recent story of Barnby’s about one of Mr Cochran’s Young Ladies.

‘Moreland pawned the gold cigarette case Sir Magnus Donners gave him after writing the music for that film,’ Barnby had said, ‘just in order to stand her dinner at the Savoy. The girl had a headache that night – curse, too, I expect – and most of the money went on taking her back to Golders Green in a taxi.’