Our Air Force was still knocking hell out of the Ruhr; Rumania was still desperately bickering with her neighbours.
The news was as it had been for three months, since France was overrun.
I went in and had my dinner.
Howard was already in the dining-room; apart from us the room was very nearly empty.
He had a waiter serving him who was very nearly as old as he was himself, and as he ate his dinner the waiter stood beside his table and chatted to him.
I could hardly help overhearing the subject of their conversation.
They were talking about cricket, re-living the Test Matches of 1925.
Because I was eating alone I finished before Howard, and went up to pay my bill at the desk.
I said to the cashier:
'That waiter over there - what's his name?'
'Jackson, sir?'
'That's right. How long has he been here?'
'Oh, he's been here a long time.
All his life, you might say.
Eighteen ninety-five or ninety-six he come here, I believe.'
'That's a very long time.'
The man smiled as he gave me my change.
'It is, sir.
But Porson - he's been here longer than that.'
I went upstairs to the smoking-room and stopped before a table littered with periodicals.
With idle interest I turned over a printed list of members.
Howard, I saw, had joined the club in 1896.
Master and man, then, had been rubbing shoulders all their lives.
I took a couple of illustrated weeklies, and ordered coffee.
Then I crossed the room to where the two most comfortable chairs in my club stand side by side, and prepared to spend an hour of idleness before returning to my flat.
In a few minutes there was a step beside me and Howard lowered his long body into the other chair.
A boy, unasked, brought him coffee and brandy.
Presently he spoke.
He said quietly: 'It really is a most extraordinary thing that you can't get a decent cup of coffee in this country.
Even in a club like this they can't make coffee.'
I laid down my paper.
If the old man wanted to talk to me, I had no great objection.
All day I had been working with my eyes in my old-fashioned office, reading reports and writing dockets.
It would be good to take off my spectacles for a little time and un-focus my eyes.
I was very tired.
I felt in my pocket for my spectacle-case. I said: 'A chap who deals in coffee once told me that ground coffee won't keep in our climate.
It's the humidity, or something.'
'Ground coffee goes off in any climate,' he said dogmatically.
'You never get a proper cup of coffee if you buy it like that.
You have to buy the beans and grind it just before you make it.
But that's what they won't do.'
He went on talking about coffee and chicory and things like that for a time.
Then, by a natural association, we talked about the brandy.
He approved of the club brandy.
'I used to have an interest in a wine business,' he said.
'A great many years ago, in Exeter.
But I disposed of it soon after the last war.'
I gathered that he was a member of the Wine Committee of the club.
I said: 'It must be rather interesting to run a business like that.'
'Oh, certainly,' he said with relish.