Gwyn Barry was nearing the climax of a combined interview and photo session. Richard entered the room and crossed it in a diagonal with one hand  effacingly raised, and sat on a stool, and picked up a magazine. Gwyn was on the windowseat, in his archaeologist’s suit, also with archaeologist’s aura of outdoor living, rugged inquiry, suntan. He filled his small lineaments neatly, just as his hair filled the lineaments (only a rumour, for now) of male-pattern recession. Gwyn’s hair was actually grey, but bright grey: not the English grey of eelskin and wet slates; nor yet the grey that comes about through tiredness of pigment, and dryness. Bright grey hair – the hair (Richard thought) of an obvious charlatan. Richard himself, by the way, was going bald too, but anarchically. No steady shrinkage, with the flesh stealing crownwards like rising water; with him, hair-loss happened in spasms, in hanks and handfuls. Visits to the barber were now as fearful and apparently hopeless as visits to the bank-manger, or the agent – or the garage, in the tomato-red Maestro.

‘Have you any thoughts’, the interviewer was saying, ‘on turning forty?’

‘Happy Birthday,’ said Richard.

‘Thanks. It’s just a number,’ said Gwyn. ‘Like any other.’