And so we leave the city of dreaming spires, where learning is learnt and learned, and the dons swill the profits on their High Tables, and the undergraduates are all exactly as Max Beerbohm described them in Zuleika Dobson, all dukes or faintly undesirable Americans or absolutely spineless members of the lower orders: city of crumbling stone where the moss gathers and is cherished by comical men in bowler-hats, called ‘porters’, characters to a man, and the young gentleman idles away his days, preparing himself for the rigours of a life of politics or the law, or often, simply, of looking after his estates, so sadly diminished, in so many cases, by the tragically class-directed death-duty tax, a noble city, founded with a noble purpose, which it nobly fulfils.

And now, welcome to Didcot, famous throughout the world as a magnificent example of the nineteenth-century railway-junction, set in the timeless peace of the Berkshire countryside, conveniently close to Aldermaston, where after the whistle of a train you may hear the lyrical singing of the lark, where nature and industry combine in a permanent embrace to make life more satisfying for us all … richer … more traditional … more English….

Well, it all seems a long way away now, both in time and space, though more in time, as it happens, than space, because, although I now live several thousand miles away in Accra, I’m still in academic surroundings, because I got my Ph.D. in the end, largely because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, and I came out here to teach, quite why I’ve never decided. But here I am, though probably not for ever, trying to work off my feelings of colonial guilt by teaching the Africans just how little old Great Britain managed to pull such a fast one over the rest of the world and grab an empire without so much as a by-your-leave. You may well ask what the alum industry of the late sixteenth century has to do with all this, and frankly I wonder myself at times, but it got me my job, and I’m very happy in it, and the guilt gets less and less every day. I don’t know why I should feel guilty more than anyone else, but I strongly suspect it’s Nicholas’s fault, and anyway someone ought to feel guilty, I think. It’s hot here, of course, but it’s fun, and I may soon get rid of the guilt altogether, because there’s a girl here with whom I am rapidly falling in love, and who seems to be falling fairly rapidly in love with me, too, which is nice for both of us. She’s called Susan, but you couldn’t pronounce her surname even if I told you what it was, because she’s African and has a surname of great phonetic difficulty, which I try not to spell unless I really have to, and anyway I hope she’ll soon change it for mine.

God knows what people will say in England, but I wrote and told Jack and Elaine, and Elaine wrote back at once and said she thought it was absolutely typical of me, trying to annoy my parents again, but I don’t think she’s one to talk. Those two got married in the end, though it was pretty tough going for a time, especially when Elaine told her family that if they didn’t relent they’d find themselves the parents of an unmarried mother or a fallen gentlewoman, whichever they preferred, and they found she was lying to try and chivvy them up. There was a terrific row, but they gave in in the end, though I don’t think they were at all happy about it, and Jack won’t speak of them without prefacing his remarks with: ‘My parents-in-law are both gentlemen.’ They don’t have any children yet, but Elaine said in that last letter that there was one on the way, and it will only be justice, won’t it, if the child turns out to be even more difficult than they’ve been themselves?

To Nicholas and Giles the inevitable happened, which was rather depressing. Nicholas got a job on some more lasting left-wing scandal-sheet, and at the last election stood as a Labour candidate against a Tory Cabinet Minister, reducing his majority by exactly two. But everyone apparently thought he’d done very splendidly, and he’s been promised another go at a convenient bye-election. Giles worked at some travel bureau, and they used to take cheap trips abroad together, usually to some ghastly place where the social conditions would make a good subject for an article by Nicholas. Giles once wrote to me that if only there were unemployment among beach-guards they might get a bit more relaxation, but he didn’t mind, really. They were, in fact, remarkably happy together for quite a long time, and then they broke up, why I never discovered, but queers do break up, don’t they, and they’d had about a tenth of their adult life together, which wasn’t bad, and, though I’m sorry about it, because I like both of them, there was obviously nothing anyone could do about it.

I wrote to Nicholas and said how sorry I was, and he wrote back and said:

And I think he means it, too. Nicholas will always have my greatest admiration, whatever he does.

Well, that’s what’s happened, that’s what we’re all up to, and that’s all there is to say, really. We were all beginners in those days, we hadn’t, as we used to say, a clue, we were all learning. And what we learnt, I suppose, is what we now are, if you see what I mean. Anyway, I mustn’t keep Susan waiting.