In Cardiff he had the job of interviewing many snoops, and weighing them in the balance of his information and judgement. Some of them had been working in MI6, the overseas branch. Again and again Ruth’s voice sounded in his head, in a wisdom pieced together from many of their conversations.

“Some of our best agents are very bad boys, Frank, and some of the worst are members of the Homintern—you know, the great international brotherhood of homosexuals. Imagine squealing on somebody you had gone to bed with! But a lot of it’s done, and more by the men than the women, I believe. Really, they need more women in the secret-service game: men are such frightful goofs. You can trust a woman—except in love, maybe—because women are proud of what they know, but men are proud of what they can tell. It’s a nasty world, and you and I are too innocent ever to get any of the top jobs in the profession.”

Yet there he was, in Cardiff, in a job which, if not anywhere near the top, seemed pretty important. Had he sunk so low? Or had Ruth simply spoken from the goodness other decent heart, without really knowing what she was talking about?

As well as the job, he had to find time for some of the obligations, and the nuisances, of common life. Roderick Glasson wrote to him about once a month, bemoaning the lot of the agriculturist in wartime, and hinting strongly that if more money were not forthcoming which would make possible really big reforms on his estate, all would be lost, and Francis would have his own close-fistedness to blame for bringing the family to ruin. Aunt Prudence wrote less often, but perhaps more pointedly, to report on the growth and progress of Little Charlie, for whom more money was needed if the child were to be brought up in a manner befitting a Cornish. It was in one of these that Aunt Prudence said frankly that it was time Little Charlie had a proper home with parents in it, and should not Francis and Ismay reconsider their position?

This letter was followed in a few days by one from Ismay herself, written from Manchester, saying nothing about Little Charlie, or a proper home, or that she had his address from her mother. But stating plainly that she was very hard up, and did Francis feel like doing anything about it?

So Francis absented himself from his work for a few days, making the roundabout journey, doubly difficult in wartime, from Cardiff to Manchester, and met Ismay again, after almost ten years, over a bad dinner in a good hotel.

“I should judge that this substance had once been whale,” he said, turning over the stuff on his plate. But Ismay was not fastidious; she was eating with avidity. She was very thin and, though still a beauty in her own particular way, she was now bony, almost gaunt, and her hair looked as if she might have cut it herself. Her clothes were grubby and of several dark colours, and everything about her spoke of a woman devoted to a cause.

So it was: Ismay was now a full-time zealot, but for what it was hard to tell. Hints that she dropped suggested that she was doing everything in her power to bring about a Revolt of the Workers. Such a revolt, in all the warring countries, would force the conflict to a halt in a matter of weeks, and substitute a Workers’ International that would create order and justice in a much-wronged world.

“You don’t have to go into detail,” said Francis. “As I came through London I was allowed, as a great favour, to look at the file on you at our offices. How you have kept out of jail I don’t really know, but my guess is that you are too small fry to worry about.”

“Balls!” said Ismay, whose vocabulary had not greatly changed from her student years. “Your lot simply hope that if they leave me at large I’ll lead them to people they really want. Catch me!” she said rancorously through a mouthful of whale.

“Well, that’s not what we need to talk about,” said Francis. “I gather that you have been having some sort of correspondence with your mother, who naturally has no idea what you’re up to; she thinks we ought to get together again.”

“Fat chance,” said Ismay.

“I fully agree. So what have we to talk about?”

“Money. Will you let me have some?”

“But why?”

“Because you’ve got a lot of it, that’s why.”

“Charlie used to have some. What’s happened to Charlie?”

“Charlie’s dead. Spain. Charlie was a fool.”

“Did he die for the Loyalists?”

“No, he died because he didn’t settle some gambling debts.”

“I can’t say you surprise me. Charlie never understood the grammar of money.”

“The what?”

“I am pretty good at the grammar of money. Money is one of the two or three primary loyalties. You might forgive a man for trifling with a political cause, but not with your money, especially money that Chance has sent your way. That’s why I’m not rushing to give you money now. Chance sent it to me, and I hold it in trust far more than if I had earned it by hard work.”

“Come on, Frank. Your family is rich.”

“My family are bankers; they understand the high rhetoric of money. I am simply a grammarian, as I said.”

“You want me to beg.”

“Listen, Ismay, if I am to help you, you must answer a few straight questions in a straight way and shut up about the people’s war. What’s chewing you? What’s all this underdoggery really about? Are you simply revenging yourself on your parents? Why do you hate me? I’m just as much against tyranny as you are, but I see lots of tyranny on your side. Why is a tyranny of workers any better than a tyranny of plutocrats?”

“That’s so simple-minded I won’t even discuss it. I don’t hate you; I merely despise you. Your mind works in clichés. You can’t imagine any great cause that doesn’t boil down to a personal grievance. You can’t think and you have no objectivity. The fact is, Frank, you’re simply an artist and you don’t give a sweet God-damn who rules as long as you can paint and mess about and stick spangles on an unjust society. My God, you must know what Plato had to say about artists in society?”

“The best thing about Plato was his good style. He liked inventing systems, but he was too fine an artist to trust his systems fully. Now I’ve come to hate systems. I hate your pet system, and I hate Fascism, and I hate the system that exists. But I suppose there must be some system and I’ll take any system that leaves me alone to get on with my work, and that probably means the least efficient, ramshackle, contradictory system.”

“Okay. No use talking. But what about money? I’m still your wife and the cops know it. Do you want me to have to go on the streets?”

“Ismay, you astound me! Don’t try that sentimental stuff on me. Why should I care whether you go on the streets or not?”

“You used to say you loved me.”

“A bourgeois delusion, surely?”

“What if it was? It was real to you. You haven’t forgotten how you used to work up artistic reasons for getting me to strip so that you could stare at me for hours without ever getting down to anything practical?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten that. A fine, high-minded ass I was, and a slippery little cockteaser you were, and I dare say the gods laughed fit to bust as they watched us. But time has passed since then.”

“I suppose that means you’ve found another woman.”

“For a time. An immeasurably better woman. Unforgettable.”

“I’m not going to beg, so don’t think it.”

“Then what are we doing here?”

“You want me to beg, don’t you? You shit, Frank! Like all artists and idealists, a shit at the core! Well, I won’t beg.”

“It would do no good if you did. I won’t give you a penny, Ismay. And it’s no good murmuring about cops, because you deserted me—scarpered. I’ll go on supporting Little Charlie, because the poor brat isn’t to blame for any of this, but I won’t support her like a princess, which seems to be your mother’s idea. I’ll even go on for a few more years pouring money into that ill-managed mess your father calls an estate. But I won’t give you anything.”