She was seated in a far corner of the bar, next to a dark-haired dowdy-looking young woman; and Morse, after negotiating his way slowly through the throng, carefully placed the drinks on the table.

‘You didn’t mind, did you?’

It was the blonde who had spoken, looking up at him with widely innocent eyes; and Morse found himself looking at her keenly – noting her small and thinly nostrilled nose, noting the tiny dimples in her cheeks, and the lips that parted (almost mischievously now) over the rather large but geometrically regular teeth.

‘Course not! It’s a bit of a squash in here, isn’t it?’

‘You enjoying the play?’

‘Yes. Are you?’

‘Oh yes! I’m a great Marlowe fan. So’s Sheila, here. Er-I’m sorry. Perhaps you don’t know each other?’

‘I don’t know you, either!’ said Morse.

‘There you are! What did I tell you?’ It was the dark girl who had taken up the conversation. She smiled at Morse: ‘Wendy here said she recognized you. She says you live next door to her.’

‘Really?’ Morse stood there, gaping ineffectually.

A bell sounded in the bar, signalling the start of the last act; and Morse, calling upon all his courage, asked the two girls if they might perhaps like to have a drink with him after the performance.

‘Why not?’ It was the saturnine Sheila who had answered. ‘We’d love to, Wendy, wouldn’t we!’

It was agreed that the trio should meet up again in the cocktail-bar of the Randolph, a stone’s throw away, just along the street.

For Morse, the last act seemed to drag its slow length interminably along, and he left the theatre well before the end. The name “Wendy” was re-echoing through his mind as once the woods had welcomed “Amaryllis”. With the bar virtually deserted, he sat and waited expectantly. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. The bar was filling up now, and twice, with some embarrassment, Morse had assured other customers that, yes, there was someone sitting in each of the empty seats at his table.

She came at last-Sheila, that is-looking around for him, coming across, and accepting his offer of a drink.

‘What will-er- Wendy have?’

‘She won’t be coming, I’m afraid. She says she’s sorry but she suddenly remembered-’

But Morse was no longer listening, for now the night seemed drear and desolate. He bought the girl a second drink; then a third. She left at ten-thirty to catch her bus, and Morse watched with relief as she waved half-heartedly to him from the bar entrance.

It was trying to snow as Morse walked slowly back to St John Street, but he stopped where he knew he would stop. On the right of the door of Number 22, he saw four names, typed and slotted into folders, a plastic bell-push beside each one of them. The first name was ‘Miss W. Spencer (Top Floor)’, but no light shone at the highest window, and Morse was soon climbing the stairs to his cold bed-sitter.

For the next three days he spent much of the time hanging about in the vicinity of St John Street, missing lectures, missing meals, and missing, too, any sight of the woman he was aching to see once more. Had she been called away? Was she ill? The whole gamut of tragic forebodings presented itself to his mind as he frittered away his hours and his energies in fruitless and futile imaginings. On the fourth evening he walked over to the Randolph, drank two double Scotches, walked back to St John Street, and with a thumping heart rang the bell at the top of the panel. And, when the door opened, she was standing there, a smile of gentle recognition in her eyes.

‘You’ve been a long time,’ she said.

‘I didn’t quite know-’

‘You knew where to find me-I told you that.’

‘I-’

‘It wasn’t you who made the first move, was it?’

‘I-’

‘Would you like to come in?’

Impetuously-even that first night-Morse told her that he loved her; and she, for her part, told him how very glad she was that they had met. After that, their days and weeks and months were spent in long, idyllic happiness: they walked together across the Oxfordshire countryside; went to theatres, cinemas, concerts, museums; spent much time in pubs and restaurants; and, after a while, much time in bed together, too. But, during those halcyon days, both were neglecting the academic work that was expected of them. At the end of the Trinity term, Morse was gently reminded by his tutor that he might be in danger of failing to satisfy the examiners the following year unless he decided to mount a forceful assault upon the works of Plato during the coming vacation. After a similar interview with her own supervisor, Wendy Spencer was firmly informed that unless her thesis began to show more obvious signs of progress, her grant-and therewith her doctorate-would be in serious jeopardy.

Surprisingly, perhaps, it was Morse who saw the more clearly the importance of some academic success-and who sought the more anxiously to promote it. But such success was not to be. Just before the Christmas vac a tearful Wendy announced that her doctorate was terminated; her grant, w.e.f. January 1st, withheld. Yet the two of them lived on very much as before: Wendy stayed on in her digs, and almost immediately got a job as a waitress in the Randolph; Morse tried hard to curb his beer consumption and occasionally read the odd chapter of Rate’s Republic.

Ironically, it was one day before the anniversary of their first, wonderful evening together that Wendy received the telegram, informing her that her widowed mother had suffered a stroke, and that help was urgently required. So she had gone home-and stayed there. Scores of letters passed between the loversduring the dark months that followed; and twice Morse hadmade the journey to the West Country to see her. But he was very short of money now; and slowly he was learning to assimilate the truth that (for some reason) her mother was a more important figure in Wendy’s life than he was. His performances for his tutors were now so pathetically poor that his college exhibition was rescinded, and he had the humiliating task of writing to beg his county authority to make up the deficit. Then, three weeks before Greats, he had received his last letter from her: she could not see him again; she had almost ruined his life already; she had a duty to stay with her mother, and had irrevocably decided to do so; she had loved him-she had loved him desperately-but now they had come to the end; she implored him not to reply to her letter; she urged him to do himself some semblance of justice in his imminent examination; that would always be important for her. Morse had immediately sent a telegram, begging her to meet him once more. But he received no reply-and had no money for a further journey. In his despair, he did nothing-absolutely nothing.

Two months later he learned that he had failed Greats; and, although the news was no surprise, he departed from Oxford a withdrawn and silent young man, bitterly belittled, yet not completely broken in spirit. It had been his sadly disappointed old father, a month or so before his death, who suggested that his only son might find a niche somewhere in the police force.

Morse’s attractive young secretary came into the office and handed over his letters for signature.

‘Do you want to dictate the others, sir?’

‘A little later. I’ll give you a ring.’

After she had gone, he continued his earlier train of thought-but not for long. In any case, there was nothing more to recall. Of Wendy Spencer he had never heard another word. She would still be alive, though, surely? Even at that minute -that very second-she’d be somewhere. He repeated to himself the line from “Wessex Heights”: ‘But time cures hearts of tenderness – and now I can let her go.’ It was a lie, of course. But so it had been for Hardy.

Nor had Morse ever met any of his Greats examiners since he had first come down from Oxford. Yet even now he could remember with dramatic clarity the six names that were subscribed to the class-list on that bleak day some thirty years ago: