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more than deeply inculcated divisions of class and education, and he and they regarded each other with the kind of mutual awe tinged with fear which only a class-conscious Briton would appreciate. Robert used a small rod made of two sections of an ancient Avon rod that his grandfather had adapted for him. It had chrome-plated rings whipped carefully on to it in red button thread, and it had been craftsmanly rubbed down and varnished so that it gleamed. Many of the posher boys were envious of it, and once he had even refused an offer for it of as much as thirty shillings and a Goliath catapult, and a Milbro catapult that needed new rubber. Robert used a small brass centre-pin reel that his grandfather had also passed on, and which was the very same reel with which he had fished in the pond when he had been a little boy. Robert longed for a spinning reel, the kind where you could just open the bail arm and cast as far as you liked, but he was nonetheless adept at pulling out loops of line from the centre pin and placing his bait exactly where he wanted to. One day collectors would be paying implausible money for old brass centre pins such as his, but just now Robert wanted, more than anything, an Intrepid Prince Regent, which was even better than an Intrepid Black Prince, because it had a proper roller on the bail arm. Robert wanted an Intrepid Prince Regent just as much as other people wanted a Colston dishwasher or an E-Type Jaguar. The Prince Regent cost exactly thirty shillings, and so he was in the paradoxical and self-defeating position of being able to buy one only if he sold his rod to one of the rich boys.
    Robert was reeling in another small rudd, hoping it would be bigger than it was, when a voice behind him said, ‘Oh, you are clever. Do tell me what it is.’
    ‘It’s a rudd, missus,’ said Robert, turning round and dangling the unfortunate creature in front of the lady’s face.
    The lady concerned was Mrs Rendall, blonde and pretty and vivacious, who, one day soon, would be carried away by cancer before she was forty. All the boys experienced a sensation of longing in the throat when they saw her or thought of her, and none of them could ever imagine growing up to be loved by someone as lovely as she. They thought of her husband as especially blessed, as if he were like God, his status much enhanced by the devotion of angels.
    ‘How do you know it’s a rudd?’ she asked, with genuine interest.
    ‘The mouth turns up, missus, ’cause it feeds on the top, and it’s all golden. If it were a roach its mouth would turn down, and if it were a bream it’d be silver, and anyway, I just know it’s a rudd.’
    ‘You are clever,’ repeated Mrs Rendall, genuinely impressed. She watched as the little boy unhooked it and put it into his keepnet. ‘What do you do with them?’ she asked.
    ‘At the end of the day I count them up, and then I put them back.’
    ‘Can’t you eat them?’
    ‘Don’t know, missus. Haven’t tried.’
    ‘What’s the most you’ve ever caught? In one day?’
    ‘Twenty, missus,’ Robert told her, exaggerating by five.
    ‘Twenty! That’s an awful lot!’ She watched him as, very self-consciously, he cast his line back out. He was determined to do it beautifully, because Mrs Rendall was very nice and very pretty, and her niceness and prettiness made him want to do everything perfectly when she was near him.
    ‘Have you ever caught a pike?’
    ‘No, missus. I never even seen one.’
    ‘Do you think that you could? Would you like to?’
    Robert’s eyes gleamed. There was nothing in the whole world more marvellous than the prospect of catching a pike. It was probably more marvellous even than catching a shark. Robert knew someone who had been dangling his toes in the water when they had been savaged by a pike. He had heard of an Alsatian dog that had been bitten on the paw by one.
    ‘I don’t know if I could,’ admitted Robert. ‘I may not yet be old enough. If I was older, I