He swung back to face us and reverted to being Gloria's guardian. He looked at Gloria and then examined me as if trying to decide if my motives were honourable. What he decided did not show on his face. He was remarkably good at concealing his feelings when he was so inclined.

Art and science and cookery and politics and weather forecasting and ancient Greek architecture, and every so often there came that penetrating stare. And so for the whole evening he was roaring down the motorways of conversation and then slamming on the brakes as he remembered I was the man who was taking his old friend's little girl to bed every night.

It was during one of these abrupt pauses in the conversation that he suddenly extended his fist so it was only a few inches from my nose. I stared at him and made no move. Click! There was the handle of a flick-knife concealed in his hand and now its blade snapped forward so that its shiny point was almost touching my eye.

'Dodo!' Gloria yelled in alarm.

Slowly he drew his knife back and folded the blade back into the handle. 'Ha ha. I wanted to see what this fellow had in him,' he said and sounded disappointed that I'd been able to conceal my alarm.

'I don't like that sort of joke,' she said.

Gloria had bought two bottles of Hine brandy in the duty-free shop, and Dodo had got the cork out of the first one before we were far through his front door. I stuck to the local rose wine, a light and refreshing drink, but Dodo favoured the Hine through the black olives, the chicken and vegetable stew, the goat cheese and the bowl of apples and oranges that followed. By the end of the meal, he was uncorking the second bottle and when we went out on his patio to see the view, he was talking loud enough to be heard in Nice. The sky was clear and every star in the sky was gathering over his house but it was damned cold and the chilly air had no discernible effect upon his ebullience. 'It's cold,' I said. 'Damned cold.'

'One hundred and fifty years,' he answered and wiped drink from his chin. 'And the walls are a metre thick, darling.'

Gloria laughed. 'Shall we go back inside?' she said. I suppose she was used to him.

He held tight to the balcony to get back in through the sliding door.

Even so, he collided with the fly screen and banged his head on the door's edge.

Despite all his shouting about it not being necessary, Gloria went in to the kitchen to wash the dishes. In an attempt to show him what a good-hearted and inoffensive fellow I was, I tried to follow her but he pulled me aside with a rough tug at my sleeve.

'Leave her alone, darling,' he said gruffly. 'She'll do what she wants to do. Zu has always been like that.' He poured more wine for me and topped up his tumbler of brandy. 'She's a wonderful girl.'

'Yes, she is,' I said.

'You're a lucky man: do you know that?' His voice was soft but his eyes were hard. I was on my guard all the time and he knew that, and seemed to enjoy it.

'Yes, I do.'

He went suddenly quiet. He was staring out through the glass door at the lights that wound up into the hills: orange lights and blue lights and sometimes the headlights of cars that shone suddenly and then disappeared like fireflies on a summer's evening. The wonderful view seemed to wreak some profound change upon him. Perhaps it has that effect upon people who spend most of their working days studying the same landscape, its colours, patterns and contradictions. When he spoke again his voice was soft and sober. 'Make the most of every minute,' he said. 'You'll lose her, you know.'

'Will I?' I kept my voice level.

He sipped his brandy and smiled sadly. 'She adores you of course. Any fool could see that. I could see it in her eyes as soon as you walked into the house. Never takes her eyes off you. But she's just a child. She has a life ahead of her. How old are you… over forty. Right?'

'Yes,' I said.

'She's determined on this university business. You'll not persuade her otherwise. She'll go to college. And there she'll meet brilliant people of her own age, and because they are at college they'll all end up sharing the same appalling tastes and the same half-baked opinions. We're old fossils. We're part of another world. A world of dinosaurs.' He swigged his brandy and poured more. There was a lot of spite in him. His friendly advice was really a way of hurting me. And it was a method difficult to counter.

I said, 'Yes, thanks a lot Dodo. But the way I see it, you are indisputably an old tyrannosaurus but I'm a young dynamic brilliant individual in the prime of life, and Gloria is an immature youngster.'

He laughed loudly enough to rupture my eardrums and he grabbed my shoulder to save himself from falling over.

'Zu, darling!' he shouted gleefully and loud enough for her to hear him from the kitchen. 'Where did you find this lunatic?'

She came from the kitchen wiping her hands on a tea-towel decorated with a picture of the Mona Lisa smoking a big cigar. 'Are you on some sort of diet, Dodo?' she asked. 'How can you eat three dozen eggs?'

For a moment words did not come but then he stammered and said that they were the finest eggs he'd ever eaten and a nearby farmer supplied him but he had to take a lot at a time. 'Have some,' he offered.

'I'm not that fond of eggs,' said Gloria. They are bad for you.'

'Rubbish, darling. Arrant rubbish. A newly laid soft-boiled egg is the most easily digested protein food I know. I love eggs. And there are so many delicious ways of cooking them.'

'They won't be so newly laid by the time you get through three dozen of them,' said Gloria with devastating feminine logic. She smiled. 'We must be leaving you, Dodo.'

'Sit down for a moment longer, darling,' he pleaded. 'I have so few visitors nowadays and you haven't told me the latest news of your parents and all our friends in London.'

For the next ten minutes or so they talked of the family. Small-talk of Gloria's father's dental practice and her mother's charity committees. Dodo listened politely and with ever more glazed eyes.

At 10.25 exactly – I looked at my watch to see the time – Dodo threw himself up to his full height, drank to the health of 'Zu and her lunatic' and having upended his glass, bent and fell full-length on to the floor with a horrifying crash. The tumbler broke, and there was a flare from the log fire as brandy splashed on the embers.

Gloria looked at me, expecting me to revive him, but I just shrugged at her. He groaned and moved enough to reassure her that he wasn't dead. Having stretched himself across the carpet before the fire, he began to snore heavily. Gloria's attempts to wake him failed.

'I shouldn't have brought the brandy for him,' Gloria said. 'He has liver trouble.'

'And I can understand why,' I said.

'We must try and get him on to his bed,' she said. 'We can lift him between us.'

'He looks comfortable enough,' I said.

'You're a callous swine,' said Gloria. So I got his boots off and carried him into his bedroom and dumped him on to his bed.

In his tiny bedroom one more surprise awaited us. A table had been hidden in here. It was laden with pots of colour, a kitchen measuring spoon, a bottle of vinegar and a bottle of linseed oil. Balanced on a jug there was a muslin strainer through which raw beaten egg had been poured, and in the rubbish bin under the table there were half a dozen broken egg shells. Propped against the wall there was another panel, unpainted but smooth and shiny with its beautifully prepared chalk gesso ground.

'What the hell is this?' I said, looking at the half-finished painting leaning against the table. It was quite different to anything we'd seen in the living room or the studio: a Renaissance street scene – a procession – painted on a large wooden panel about five feet long. The colours were weird but the drawings were exact. 'What strange colouring,' I said.