introduced to the children, which involved further handshaking. His hand was cool and rather hard: they felt it should have been damp.
‘You’re nicely in time for coffee, Mr Torridge,’ Mrs Mace-Hamilton said.
‘Brandy more like,’ Arrowsmith suggested. ‘Brandy, old chap?’
‘Well, that’s awfully kind of you, Arrows. Chartreuse I’d prefer, really.’
A waiter drew up a chair. Room was made for Torridge between Mrs Mace-Hamilton and the Arrowsmith boys. It was a frightful mistake, Wiltshire was thinking. It was mad of Arrowsmith.
Mace-Hamilton examined Torridge across the dinner table. The old Torridge would have said he’d rather not have anything alcoholic, that a cup of tea and a biscuit were more his line in the evenings. It was impossible to imagine this man saying his dad had a button business. There was a suavity about him that made Mace-Hamilton uneasy. Because of what had been related to his wife and the other wives and their children he felt he’d been caught out in a lie, yet in fact that wasn’t the case.
The children stole glances at Torridge, trying to see him as the boy who’d been described to them, and failing to. Mrs Arrowsmith said to herself that all this stuff they’d been told over the years had clearly been rubbish. Mrs Mace-Hamilton was bewildered. Mrs Wiltshire was pleased.
‘No one ever guessed,’ Torridge said, ‘what became of R.A.J. Fisher.’ He raised the subject suddenly, without introduction.
‘Oh God, Fisher,’ Mace-Hamilton said.
‘Who’s Fisher?’ the younger of the Arrowsmith boys inquired.
Torridge turned to flash his quick smile at the boy. ‘He left,’ he said. ‘In unfortunate circumstances.’
‘You’ve changed a lot, you know,’ Arrowsmith said. ‘Don’t you think he’s changed?’ he asked Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton.
‘Out of recognition,’ Wiltshire said.
Torridge laughed easily. ‘I’ve become adventurous. I’m a late developer, I suppose.’
‘What kind of unfortunate circumstances?’ the younger Arrowsmith boy asked. ‘Was Fisher expelled?’
‘Oh no, not at all,’ Mace-Hamilton said hurriedly.
‘Actually,’ Torridge said, ‘Fisher’s trouble all began with the writing of a note. Don’t you remember? He put it in my pyjamas. But it wasn’t for me at all.’
He smiled again. He turned to Mrs Wiltshire in a way that seemed polite, drawing her into the conversation. ‘I was an innocent at school. But innocence slips away. I found my way about eventually.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she murmured. She didn’t like him, even though she was glad he wasn’t as he might have been. There was malevolence in him, a ruthlessness that seemed like a work of art. He seemed like a work of art himself, as though in losing the innocence he spoke of he had recreated himself.
‘I often wonder about Fisher,’ he remarked.
The Wiltshire twins giggled. ‘What’s so great about this bloody Fisher?’ the older Arrowsmith boy murmured, nudging his brother with an elbow.
‘What’re you doing these days?’ Wiltshire asked, interrupting Mace-Hamilton, who had also begun to say something.
‘I make buttons,’ Torridge replied. ‘You may recall my father made buttons.’
‘Ah, here’re the drinks,’ Arrowsmith rowdily observed.
‘I don’t much keep up with the school,’ Torridge said as the waiter placed a glass of Chartreuse in front of him. ‘I don’t so much as think about it except for wondering about poor old Fisher. Our headmaster was a cretin,’ he informed Mrs Wiltshire.
Again the Wiltshire twins giggled. The Arrowsmith girl yawned and her brothers giggled also, amused that the name of Fisher had come up again.
‘You will have coffee, Mr Torridge?’ Mrs Mace-Hamilton offered, for the waiter had brought a fresh pot to the table. She held it poised above a cup. Torridge smiled at her and nodded. She said:
‘Pearl buttons d’you make?’
‘No, not pearl.’
‘Remember those awful packet peas we used to have?’ Arrowsmith inquired. Wiltshire said:
‘Use plastics at all? In your buttons, Porridge?’
‘No, we don’t use plastics. Leathers, various leathers. And horn. We specialize.’
‘How very interesting!’ Mrs Mace-Hamilton exclaimed
‘No, no. It’s rather ordinary really.’ He paused, and then added, ‘someone once told me that Fisher went into a timber business. But of course that was far from true.’
‘A chap was expelled a year ago,’ the younger Arrowsmith boy said, contributing this in order to cover up a fresh outburst of sniggering. ‘For stealing a transistor.’
Torridge nodded, appearing to be interested. He asked the Arrowsmith boys where they were at school. The older one said Charterhouse and his brother gave the name of his preparatory school. Torridge nodded again and asked their sister and she said she was waiting to go to university. He had quite a chat with the Wiltshire twins about their school. They considered it pleasant the way he bothered, seeming genuinely to want to know. The giggling died away.
‘I imagined Fisher wanted me for his
