He poured a cup of tea, produced a pack of cigarettes and lit one, something I’d never seen him do before and the hand that held it trembled very, very slightly.

“I’ve taken up a vice or two since you last saw me, Stacey boy,” he said.

“So it would seem.”

“Was it bad back there?”

“Not at first. The prison in Cairo was no worse than you’d expect anywhere. It was the labour camp that wasn’t so good. I don’t think Husseini had been right in his head since Sinai. He thought there was a Jew under every bed.”

He looked puzzled and I explained. He nodded soberly when I finished. “I’ve seen men go that way before.”

There was silence for a while as if he couldn’t think of anything to say and I poured another cup of tea and helped myself to one of his cigarettes. The smoke bit into the back of my throat like acid and I choked.

He started to rise, immediately concerned. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

I managed to catch my breath and held up the cigarette. “Something I had to manage without back there. It tastes like the first one I ever had. Don’t worry – I’ll persevere.”

“But why start again?”

I inhaled for the second time. It tasted rather better and I grinned. “I agree with Voltaire. There are some pleasures it’s well worth shortening life for.”

He frowned and tossed his own cigarette over the balustrade as if attempting to right some kind of balance for what I had said went completely against his own expressed beliefs. For him, a man – a real man – was completely self-sufficient, a disciplined creature controlling his environment, subject to no vices, no obsessive needs.

He sat there now, a slight frown still in place, staring moodily into space, and I watched him closely.