Justin gave Alex a couple of consoling pats as he drew away from him. “Well, you should see him now.”

“That was a long time ago,” said Alex, explaining the hairstyle, the whole look, to himself.

“Oh god darling. It’s pre-war. I mean, it’s Julia Margaret Cameron, that one.”

And that was a kind of comfort, along with the cold tomato-juice and its after-burn of strong spirits. All he’d known of his successor till that morning was his name, his profession, and his addresses in London and here. He had wanted as little as possible for his imagination to worry at. So it was something to learn that he hadn’t been left, in his thirty-seventh year, for a kid on a sports scholarship.

Justin flushed and smirked like a braggart anticipating jeers. “No, he’s gorgeously old.”

(Even so, thought Alex, I hope I haven’t lost him to a pensioner. And then dimly saw the powerless absurdity of such hopes – the muddled desire to have been replaced by someone better, which was crushing but evolutionary, and by someone inferior, which would show Justin’s weakness of judgement, and prove to Alex that he was better off without him.)

They went up the narrow box staircase for a quick orientation of bathroom and sleeping arrangements – Alex only glanced over Justin’s shoulder into the almost unfurnished main bedroom: he saw a huge bed with an oak headboard and footboard and invalidish stacks of pillows, and the little brass clock under the bedside lamp. His own room was next door, with only a plank wall, and a single bed under a flowered counterpane. He said he liked it, although he knew the bed would give him cramps like an adolescent, and he had a vague sense of being in a servant’s room, despite the facetious collection of old brown books on the chest of drawers: Queer Folk of the West Country, Who’s Who in Surtees, Remarkable Sayings of Remarkable Queens. Justin hung in the doorway. “So are you seeing anyone?” he said.