Clara looked tolerantly at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I think perhaps they are rambling around.’

‘Oh, who knows what George is doing with him!’ said Freda, and frowned at her own sharp tone.

‘He may have lost his connection at Harrow and Wealdstone,’ said Clara.

‘Quite so,’ said Freda; and for a moment the two names, with the pinched vowels, the throaty r, the blurred W that was almost an F, struck her as a tiny emblem of her friend’s claim on England, and Stanmore, and her. She stopped to make adjustments to the framed photographs that stood in an expectant half-circle on a small round table. Dear Frank, in a studio setting, with his hand on another small round table. Hubert in a rowing-boat and George on a pony. She pushed the two of them apart, to give Daphne more prominence. Often she was glad of Clara’s company, and her unselfconscious willingness to sit, for long hours at a time. She was no less good a friend for being a pitiful one. Freda had three children, the telephone, and an upstairs bathroom; Clara had none of these amenities, and it was hard to begrudge her when she laboured up the hill from damp little ‘Lorelei’ in search of talk. Tonight, though, with dinner raising tensions in the kitchen, her staying-put showed a certain insensitivity.

‘One can see George is so happy to be having his friend,’ said Clara.

‘I know,’ said Freda, sitting down again with a sudden return of patience. ‘And of course I’m happy too. Before, he never seemed to have anybody.’

‘Perhaps losing a father made him shy,’ said Clara. ‘He wanted only to be with you.’

‘Mm, you may be right,’ said Freda, piqued by Clara’s wisdom, and touched at the same time by the thought of George’s devotion. ‘But he’s certainly changing now. I can see it in his walk. And he whistles a great deal, which usually shows that a man’s looking forward to something… Of course he loves Cambridge.