So there I was in his flat with a silent, Sunday London outside. I fear I was very smug with self-satisfaction, warmed by the strength of the pink gins before lunch and a pleasurable sense of being wanted by a man who didn’t lightly give his confidence. That I was wanted a deal more elsewhere did not, then, impress me at all. When Cecily and the children showed themselves a little hurt that I should use a free Sunday to go to London, I remember pointing out – I hope not too pompously – that I was still on the Reserve, and that an order, however it was given, was an order. ‘You’ll never believe who has had the cheek to come and see me,’ said Roland. ‘Somebody I know?’ I asked. ‘I don’t think you ever actually spoke, but you certainly knew each other. It was Pink.’ Pink wasn’t a man against whom I bore any malice. True, he had fired a few shots in my general direction, but even in them there was a certain style. He wasn’t a treacherous, slinking, brilliant pansy like his former boss, Colonel Hiart.
