WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Richard II My father, Adam Bayliss, accountant, had one great friend, Victor Cray, solicitor. He would come to our house every month for dinner, and I would clamber over his vast belly, and pull from his waistcoat pocket his golden watch, which, after he had turned a tiny wheel on it, would chime to announce each quarter hour. I would sit on his lap and stare in silence as the big hand made its way round, and then shout with joy when the chimes began. How many years ago was that? I didn’t want to think about it as I made my way to his office in Morden. He met me at the door and I looked at him in wonder. ‘You’re a thin man,’ I said. ‘You didn’t used to be.’ He smiled an old man’s weary smile. He looked as though he had lost not only his weight but most of his vigour since the last time I had seen him, at my father’s funeral. ‘Had no choice,’ he said. ‘Health.’ Now where his great chin had had once hung and throbbed like a croaking toad’s there was only a sheaf of lizard folds.
