iii

Watchman, with his cousin for company, ate his lobster in the private tap-room. There is a parlour at the Feathers but nobody ever uses it. The public and the private tap-rooms fit into each other like two Ls, the first standing sideways on the tip of its short base, the second facing backwards to the left. The bar-proper is common to both. It occupies the short leg of the Public, has a counter for each room, and faces the short leg of the Private. The top of the long leg forms a magnificent inglenook flanked with settles and scented with three hundred years of driftwood smoke. Opposite the inglenook at the bottom angle of the L hangs a dart board made by Abel Pomeroy himself. There, winter and summer alike, the Pomeroys’ chosen friends play for drinks. There is a board in the Public for the rank and file. If strangers to the Feathers choose to play in the Private the initiates wait until they have finished. If the initiates invite a stranger to play, he is no longer a stranger. The midsummer evening was chilly and a fire smouldered in the inglenook. Watchman finished his supper, swung his legs up on to the settle, and felt for his pipe. He squinted up at Sebastian Parish, who leant against the mantelpiece in an attitude familiar to every West End playgoer in London.

“I like this place,” Watchman said. “Extraordinarily pleasant, isn’t it, returning to a place one likes?”

Parish made an actor’s expressive gesture.

“Marvellous!” he said richly. “To get away from everything! The noise! The endless racket! The artificiality! God, how I loathe my profession!”

“Come off it, Seb,” said Watchman. “You glory in it. You were born acting. The gamp probably burst into an involuntary round of applause on your first entrance and I bet you played your mother right off the stage.”

“All the same, old boy, this good clean air means a hell of a lot to me.”