Mr Bird had been a man of some bulk, tall and proportionally broad. His head was hairless except for a furrow of white fluff that grew at the back, from ear to ear. He wore, both inside and out and in all seasons, a panama hat, and he carried on his walks a silver-topped cane that he had found one day, twenty years before his death, in a public lavatory. On all these walks, and in fact all his lifetime, Mr Bird’s left leg had not adequately performed its function: he moved unevenly, aided in his progress by the silver-topped cane.

Mr Bird’s face had been, and still was for a short time, pale and round and not remarkable except for its paleness and its roundness and the fact that his eyes seemed colourless. In sixty-seven years no one had ever noted and remembered the colour of Mr Bird’s eyes, not since the time when he had been in a cradle, when the noting of such details is common practice.