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immediately wondering whether he could face the embarrassment of undressing in front of her? These things could be managed, he knew, but at the same time he knew that it would not be given to him gracefully to manage them. All in all there was nothing further to be said on this matter; he was elderly, if not yet old; he was as dignified as he knew how to be, and he must manage the rest of his life as best he could. And if he could not face the prospect of the end when it came he had the sleeping pills which his complaisant doctor had prescribed. They were good for two years, he had managed to ascertain, and in his mind he gave himself two years in which either to flourish or to be overcome by habit or by disappointment. The saving grace was his lucidity: he would know whicheverof the two conditions presented itself, and what he would do to confront either one.
    He had to come to terms with the fact that there was no consolation. He was an unbeliever: the comforts of religion had been reported to him, but they had sounded more like torments. The idea of being overtaken by unearthly bliss, by secret communion, was profoundly disturbing, like an intimation of madness. The example of the religiously minded, like the repellent Rogersons, had distanced him for ever. Nor did he feel moved to seek succour on his own account; he preferred a modest stoicism, which he saw as essentially secular. This meant a scrupulous attention to the tasks of every undistinguished day, and the good conscience that he occasionally felt at the end of such a day. Art was different, particular, separate; there was no possibility of tying it in to some vague impulse towards love. Art, and by this he meant painting and literature, music rather less, perhaps, stirred him with intimations of a world beyond his own small world. Great ideas, noble themes, opened up his mind and his heart. He went to libraries and museums as others might go to church. And he came away bemused, impressed by otherness, and grateful for the tremendous and no doubt painful energies that went into the fabrication of such artefacts, grateful too for his own tender responses. He could not share, but he could apprehend: that was enough for him. Some days he could only observe, but even these observations, such as a careful student might manage, caused him to experience respect, a respect mysteriously unavailable in other circumstances. He regarded himself as an unregenerate twentieth-century man, unlikely to be redeemed by last-minute revelations, or indeed by any revelations at all.
    He took his unopened bag into the bedroom, checkedthat Mrs Cardozo had put fresh sheets on the bed, and went over to open another window. Already he was conscious of the lack of air, both in his inner and his outer worlds. He told himself that his brief excursion had done him no good at all, had merely unsettled him, whereas the task in front of him was to make the best of already easy circumstances, and be thankful that when he declined, as he undoubtedly would, there would be no witnesses to what would be his physical disgrace, that he could mop and mow without shaming any close relatives, for he had no relatives, having been the only son of a couple so feckless that he often wondered at his own mild equanimity. His long training in contained patience had been learned at his mother’s knee, and at his father’s too. For this he could not blame them, for the faculty had served him well, until now, that was. Again he felt tremors of some distant restlessness, which, as he knew so well how to do, he now disarmed by some sort of action, trivial though it might appear. To him it was a strategy which had long proved useful in moments of frustration; he would have recommended it to any young person, a son or a nephew, had such existed. As none did he was forced to benefit from his own advice. He would run a bath, he decided, make coffee, have a quiet half-hour with
The Times
, then stroll to Selfridges Food