Sir Vincent Macmaster

Macmaster is the friend from before the war — the man of letters who has made his name, married Edith Ethel, and accepted the knighthood that Tietjens' world would find faintly absurd. He is one of the few names that comes to Tietjens when he wonders who could be talking with Valentine for so long, and Tietjens trusts that Macmaster would not harm her. His respectability and his social ascent throw Tietjens' own stripped-down position into relief, and his presence in the novel's background keeps the pre-war world of letters and ambition alive against the trenches.