I went occasionally to Clapham, to the Sunday evenings of chamber music, and Bertie continued to smuggle me in to rehearsals at Covent Garden.  He gave me a ticket for the first performance in England of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.  I sat through the opera, convinced that I was immersed in a glaucous, underwater world, where all motion was slow and tidal, and all colour but gradations of green.