At Blades, M. ate his usual meagre luncheon — a grilled Dover sole followed by the ripest spoonful he could gouge from the club Stilton. And as usual he sat by himself in one of the window seats and barricaded himself behind The Times, occasionally turning a page to demonstrate that he was reading it, which, in fact, he wasn’t. But Porterfield commented to the head waitress, Lily, a handsome, much-loved ornament of the club, that ‘there’s something wrong with the old man today. Or maybe not exactly wrong, but there’s something up with him.’ Porterfield prided himself on being something of an amateur psychologist. As head waiter, and father confessor to many of the members, he knew a lot about all of them and liked to think he knew everything, so that, in the tradition of incomparable serva
