Stars and bars

Chapter One

Look at Henderson Dores walking up Park Avenue in New York City. “I’m late,” he is thinking; and he is, late for work. He is carrying his sabres in a thin bag over his right shoulder and trying to appear calm and at ease, but that permanently worried expression on his square open face gives him away rather. The crowds of Americans — neat, well-dressed — stride past him purposefully, unheeding, confident.

Henderson walks on. He is nearly forty years old — birthday coming up fast — and just under six feet tall. His frame is sturdy and his face is kind and agreeably attractive. To his constant surprise, people are inclined to like him on first acquaintance. He is polite, quite smartly dressed and, apart from that slight frown buckling his forehead he seems as composed and as unconcerned as, well, as you or me. But Henderson has a complaint, a grudge, a grumble of a deep and insidious kind. He doesn’t like himself anymore; isn’t happy with the personality he’s been provided with, thank you very much. Something about him isn’t up to scratch, won’t do. He’ll keep the flesh, but he’d like to do a deal on the spirit, if nobody minds. He wants to change — he wants to be different from what he is. And that, really, is why he is here.

He runs a hand through his thick hair, short, but cut long, as it were, in the English way. To the practised observer, indeed, everything about him proclaims his Englishness. His haircut — already noted — his pale lashed eyes, the bloom on his unshaven cheekbones, his old blue suit with its double vents in the jacket, the dull worn gold signet ring on the little finger of his left hand, his navy blue ankle-length socks (only butlers and chauffeurs wear black), and his shiny, well-creased, toe-capped black Oxford shoes.

This knowledge — that he is so distinguishable — would distress him because, in fact, his grand and only dream is to fit in; to merge and blend with the identity of these earnest, enviable people on their way to work. Just another Manhattanite, he tells himself, as he transfers his sabres to his left shoulder, just like everybody else here. He frowns again slightly and slows down. This is his problem: he loves America, but will America love him back? Up ahead the lunatic is waiting.

♦

“The furrier at midnight thinks his hands are full of clouds.”

“Go away, please.”

“The furrier at midnight thinks his hands are full of clouds.”

Usually, Henderson Dores didn’t speak to the madmen. He found that by pretending the person simply didn’t exist — actually wasn’t there — it was possible to ignore the most venomous rant. It was a trick he’d first seen perfected by timid dons at Oxford whenever they were accosted by importunate drunks in narrow lanes. The fixed smile, eyes straight ahead, and — abracadabra — there was no drunk. So, with a small effort of will he cancelled the madman, set his features in the requisite mild false smile, took two paces to the left and moved off again.

The lunatic loped along at his side.

Don’t stop, that was the rule. He shouldn’t have stopped, but what this one was saying made some sort of perverse sense.

He looked about him, trying to ignore the malign companion at his side. On this bright April morning New York seemed to expand and rejoice in the thin clean air. Above, the sky was an unobstructed blue. It was what he termed a ‘meringue’ day: crisp, sharp, frangible…

A series of tugs at his elbow. You do not exist, Henderson said to himself, therefore you cannot be tugging at my elbow. His arm was gripped, uncompromisingly. He stopped. Vague fear stimulated his pulse rate. The undeodorized lunatic wore a beige overcoat (collar up), scarf, battered trilby, sunglasses, and held an opened black umbrella above his head. Henderson saw sweat slide from beneath the hat brim.

“Please. Leave me alone,” Henderson said firmly.

The crowd swirled round this impediment.

“Charming people have something to hide.” The lunatic spoke in a sing-song woman’s voice. His face was too close; his breath smelt curiously of old lemons.

“Leave me alone or I shall call the police.”

“Ah fuck you, asshole.”

That was more like it. The lunatic stood back and levelled a finger at him, thumb cocked.

“BAM!”

Henderson flinched with genuine shock, turned and strode on. “Bam! Bam! Bam!” faded behind him. He shuddered. Good Lord, he thought, what a disturbing encounter. He eased the weight of his sabres and checked that the shoulder strap wasn’t creasing his suit. The furrier at midnight thinks his hands are full of clouds. That wasn’t too bad actually, for a crazy, he thought, calming down somewhat. It was like a coded spy-greeting; or a line from a better symbolist poem.

He trudged on up Park Avenue’s gentle slope. Younger people overtook him. A pretty girl in an elegant, mushroom-coloured silk suit walked strongly by, incongruous in her training shoes. Her breasts leapt beneath the sheen of her blouse. Her streaked blonde hair was clamped with tiny headphones. She mimed to the song she alone was hearing. Henderson wondered whether he should wish her a ‘nice day’. You could do that sort of thing here: confer cheery blessings on any passing stranger. “Hey, enjoy your music!” he could shout. Or, “Have a great lunch!” or even, “Be well!” He shook his head admiringly and said nothing.

He increased his speed. With the palp of a forefinger he squeezed moisture from his wiry blond eyebrows. He was getting a little concerned about his eyebrows. They had been unexceptionable, inconspicuous things until recently. Now they had thickened and coarsened; certain hairs had begun spontaneously to grow and curl: they were becoming a feature. Just like his nipples, he thought…He checked himself: save the worries for the way home.

Home was a small apartment in a block on East Sixty-second between Lexington and Second Avenues. Convenient enough for the office, if a somewhat uphill hike, but the evening downhill amble was a compensation for the early morning effort. He looked at his watch again. He was late. Astonishingly and gratifyingly he had fallen into a deep sleep sometime after five a.m. and had woken at eight, his head empty of dreams. He had felt a sob of relief in his throat: perhaps, finally, it was all going to change now; perhaps this was a sign: America really was going to work…

He was keen on signs, these days; he analysed them with the assiduity of an apprentice hierophant. And at first they all seemed to bode well.

He had arrived in America, at J.F.K. airport, some two months previously. It had been raining, heavy drops slanting yellow through the airport lights. He had half-planned to kiss the ground (given a discreet moment) pontiff-like, but stepped straight from the plane into a mean corridor. He passed through surly immigration and taciturn customs in a benign trance: those drawls, those impossible names, the real gun on the real cop’s hip.

Outside, the rain had worsened. A tall, very angry black man in a glossy oilskin controlled the queue for taxis with hoarse shouts and imperious gestures. The taxis and the queue formed an obedient line. The gleaming, battered yellow cabs…

Henderson stood beside the taxi-marshal for a while, happy to wait. The man was muttering to himself under his breath. Askance, Henderson looked at his moustache, his thick curved lips, the way he seemed to keep moving even while standing still. Water dripped steadily from his cap’s peak.

“It could be worse,” friendly Henderson said. “It’s snowing in England.”

The taxi-marshal looked round, the whites of his eyes were yellow like butter.

“Fuck England,” he said.

Henderson nodded. “Fuck England,” he agreed, nodding. “You bet.”

It had been an epiphanic moment, he now thought, as he waited at a traffic light to cross to the west side of Park Avenue. An omen. The traffic stopped and he hurried to the island, paused, and crossed again. He had pondered on it a long time and he had come to confer on his departure from England an importance which the ostensible and unremarkable business reasons wouldn’t at first seem to warrant. He was going to a job in New York — granted — but he was also making an escape. An escape from the past and from himself.

He strode on more speedily, the aluminium guards on his sabres clinking dully together as the bag banged against his thigh.

He had quit Britain, he had decided, in a conscious and deliberate flight from shyness, in a determined escape from timidity…A man on roller skates glided silently by him and leant sinuously through the crowd. Henderson’s admiration was immediate. “Enjoy your skate!” he wanted to shout after him, but he didn’t. Why not? Because he was shy.

He was (he categorized himself with no trace of self-pity) a shy man. Not chronically shy — he didn’t stammer or spit or flinch or sweat in the manner of the worst afflicted — no, he was shy in the way most of his countrymen were shy. His flaw was a congenital one: latent, deep, ever present. It was like having a birthmark or a dormant illness; an ethnic trait, a racial configuration.

He stepped into shade cast by a tall building and gave a shiver from the sudden chill. Sunny start, rain later, the forecast had said. He had only his raincoat today, trusting the jovial forecaster. Perhaps that was a little foolhardy. He overtook two young men, strolling, talking loudly, one smoking a lime-green cigar. He screwed up his eyes as he walked through a slate-blue cloud of smoke, smelling the vomit-smell of cigars, souring the crispness of the morning.

Shy.

True, his education and his upbringing provided him with a reasonably efficient kit of tools and methods to overcome his disability. Observe him nattering at a cocktail party; see him engage his dull partner at a dinner table with conversation and one would never guess the nature of his disease. But it was there, and beneath this socio-cultural veneer he suffered from all the siblings of shyness too: the feeble air of confidence, the formulaic self-possession, a conditioned wariness of emotional display, a distrust of spontaneity, a dread fear of attracting attention, an almost irrepressible urge to conform…

He briskly turned the corner off Park, lurched and just skittered round three raw shiny steaming turds, freshly deposited in the rough environs of a sapling root. He overtook the fur-clad crone and her nasty pooch. He shot her a hostile, stern glance brimming with reproach. He longed to demand where her poop-scoop was or at least make some withering rejoinder. Only last week he’d heard of a man in the city who, confronted with the sight of a splay-legged great dane dumping its load in front of him, had removed a gun from his jacket and shot the beast there and then. A very, intrinsically American act that, he thought, as he made his way down the street towards his office. A disapproving look, a tut-tut tightening of the lips, that was the best he could manage. It was typical and it was what was wrong. And that was why he had to leave, why he had to come to America for the cure. Because, here, shyness was banned; shyness was outlawed, prohibited.

That of course was nonsense, he realized, as he steered round a postman pushing his trolley. There were plenty of shy people in America, but they were shy in a different way, it seemed, their insecurity had a different stamp to it. And if he had to be shy all his life, then he wanted to be shy like them.

He paused at the door of Mulholland, Melhuish, Fine Art Auctioneers. Brave talk, he said with heavy irony, fine words. The only problem was he kept relapsing. He had been making real progress: look at Melissa, look at Irene. But he kept falling back. Consider the run-in with the madman a few minutes ago; he had handled that appallingly.

He stepped into the entrance hall, black and white marble squares, oak panelling.

“Good morning, Mr Dores. How are you today?” the receptionist called from behind her desk.

Henderson, on his way past, smiled automatically then stopped. That was not the way.

“I’m very well, thank you, Mary. Very well indeed. Thank you for asking.”

“Oh…Oh. Good. You’re welcome.”

He entered the small lift. Elevator. He pressed ‘Door closed’. They slid to, trapping someone’s pale blue arm.

“Yawks! Agh!”

He punched ‘Door open’ and Pruitt Halfacre stepped in.

“Didn’t you see me, Henderson? Jesus.”

“Sorry, Pruitt. Miles away.”

“Jesus, God. That’s oil.” Halfacre examined his crushed sleeve. “I’m going to have to charge you, Henderson.”

Was he joking or was he being serious? Henderson could never tell with Americans. He smoothed his eyebrows. They ascended.

“Wonderful news, don’t you think? At last, at last,” Halfacre said.

“What?”

“You haven’t heard? We think we may have an Impressionist sale. A chance at one anyway.”

“Good God!”

“Yeah. Tom has the details.”

They stepped out of the lift onto the fourth floor. After the plush of the lobby here was scarred paintwork, bright lights, worn linoleum.

“Morning, Ian,” Halfacre said.

“Snap,” said Toothe. He and Halfacre were both wearing bow ties.

“Great minds, Ian.”

“Bit on the late side, Henderson?” Toothe said. “Naughty. You look very hot and bothered.” Toothe was English, an English version of Halfacre. Two sensitifs of the worst kind. Henderson forgave Halfacre because he was American, but, to be honest, he disliked Toothe intensely.

“It’s that haul up from the flat. Apartment,” he said apologetically.

“Getting old.”

“Death where is thy sting,” Half acre said. Teethe laughed.

Henderson laughed too, waved gaily and left them in the corridor. He walked to his office, suddenly feeling angry. Getting old. Thirty-nine wasn’t old. Impudent little sod. And who was he to clock-watch? Bastard. Forty on the horizon. Prime of life…But, then again, there were these disturbing things happening to his body. His eyebrows, his nipples, his shins, his arse. Ass.

As he approached his office door it opened.

“Oh.”

“Hello.” He greeted Kimberly, the immaculate Kimberly, his secretary. Eighteen going on thirty. The hair, the skin, the nails, the eyes, the clothes. Everything looked new, just on. Very spic, very span. In strong contrast to him.

“What are you doing here, sir?”

“Sorry?”

“The ten o’clock flight to Boston? The man with the Winslow Homers?”

“Oh Jesus.” Henderson remembered. “Oh, look, phone him up and postpone. Tell him I’m ill. I’ll come tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

“Monday, then. God,” he rubbed his eyes. “I overslept. Clean forgot. Sorry Kimberly.”

“There are messages.”

“Already?” He looked at his watch. Nine forty-five.

“A Ms Dusseldorf and Mrs Wax.”

“Fine.”

Kimberly left. Henderson propped his sabres behind the door and sat down. He could see a section of Central Park through his window. The plane trees were just coming into leaf; the sun on the smooth hillocks made it look vernal and fresh.

Ms Dusseldorf. That was Irene. It was a code he insisted on: she had to use a pseudonym — a city — whenever she phoned. The last time it had been Pnom Penh.

He wondered whom he should phone first. His ex-wife or his mistress. He should phone Melissa, he knew, she liked her calls returned. He phoned Irene.

“Hello, Irene. It’s—”

“Tonight, don’t forget, that’s all.”

“I’ll see you there. I haven’t forgotten. Christ, I asked you.”

“Don’t be late. I’ll give you fifteen minutes then I’m gone.”

“I won’t. Bye.”

Henderson stood up and took off his jacket. He moved to the door to hang it up and paused there for a moment, his jacket in one hand, his square jaw in the other. He stroked his jawbone gently, like a man coming round after a novocaine jab. What on earth was he doing, he asked himself, getting more deeply involved with Irene when what he really wanted to do was re-marry Melissa? He shook his head. This too was typical: a clear and predetermined course of action had become complicated by his own maverick and wayward desires and his seeming inability ever to resist them. Now he was being driven to the brink of having to make a choice. The worst possible state of affairs.

As he fitted his jacket onto the coat hanger he saw the envelopes in the inside breast pocket, and among them the red and blue flashes of the airmails. Rushing out of the apartment that morning he’d snatched up his post without looking at it.

He laid the two airmail envelopes on his desk, feeling sensations of reverence and trepidation behind his ribcage. They were from Britain; his own handwriting was on the envelopes — he always sent stamped, addressed envelopes to ensure prompt replies. On one the postmark said ‘Northampton’. With a blunt thumb he ripped it open.

Dear Mr Dores,

Thanking you for your letter of the 7th March. I remember Captain Dores well. He was my company commander during the operations around Inchon in ‘43. He was a fine and fair man and popular with the other lads.

I am sorry to say that I was taken ill with cerebral malaria and sent back to India where I spent three months in hospital. By the time I rejoined the unit your father had died six weeks previous, and there was not much left of the company I’m sorry to say as we had seen a lot of action.

I suggest that you write to the following who were in the company when your father was killed. Pte David Lee, Royal British Legion, 31 Hardboard Road, Chiswick, London and L⁄cpl Campbell Drew, Royal British Legion, Kelpie’s Wynd, Innerliethen, Peebleshire. I last saw these chaps at a regimental reunion in 1967 so cannot vouch as for their being still about.

As I said, Capt. Dores was respected by all the chaps. It was a great sadness to us all to hear of his death at the time. Trusting I have been of some assistance.

Yours sincerely,

Sgt (retd) Graham Bellows and Btn Loyal West Kents.

Another blank, but at least he had another name to write to. He had already written to Drew. He looked at the postmark on the other letter — Galashiels — and this, doubtless, was his reply.

Drew’s handwriting was large and jagged; he clearly pressed down very hard on his biro.

Dear Sir,

With reference to your letter about your father. I was in the company near Inchon when he died. It was a very difficult time for us all, operating as we were behind enemy lines. We had fatalities almost every day from disease, enemy action and even accidents. Your father was a good man and a good officer. It was a great blow to us all when he died.

Yours faithfully,

Campbell Drew

Henderson smoothed Drew’s scored crisp page flat on the desk. He sat back and exhaled. At last. Someone who had been there. But the letter was maddeningly obtuse and uncommunicative. What exactly had been going on that day — list March 1943—in Burma? More precisely what were the circumstances of Captain Dores’s death? How, where, when and by whom? He felt a sudden envy for this heavy handed Scot. Drew had known his, Henderson’s, father; had served under him and conceivably joked and suffered with him; shared a kind of intimacy, in short, that had been denied his son.

He stared at the reproduction of a Monet landscape which Mulholland, Melhuish had sold in London in 1963 for £45,000. The colours shifted. He let his eyes cross and attempted to go into a brief trance, hoping to expunge the sadness that seemed to brim in his body. It didn’t work. Why didn’t he feel more tired, he wondered? As a chronic insomniac surely he had a right to feel permanently exhausted?

Kimberly buzzed him.

“Mrs Wax, sir. Line one.”

With only the briefest pause, Henderson picked up the phone.

“Melissa,” he said enthusiastically. “Just got your message.”

“You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

“Of course not.” He wondered what he hadn’t forgotten. Everyone reminding him today.

“See you later, then.”

“Exactly.” He fenced. “What time did you say again?”

“About seven. Bryant’s looking forward to seeing you.”

“Likewise. Seven it is.”

Mrs Wax hung up. He thought he heard a spat kiss come winging down the wire. That was something, he reflected, with dubious pleasure. He frowned. One of the most onerous of the multitude of conditions Melissa had laid down — before she would even consider the thought of them getting together again — was that the children of her second marriage should ‘learn to love Henderson as a father’. Henderson, for his part, was so eager to please that he agreed to anything, including the rather staid ban on pre-remarital sex. Hence this meeting tonight. He remembered: it was Bryant’s birthday, and Bryant was his stepdaughter to be. He did some computing. Melissa’s at seven. He was meeting Irene at nine, in the bar of a restaurant in Soho. He should make it all right. Now all he had to do was buy the girl a present.

Henderson looked at his in-tray: three letters. With some guilt he realized it was only now that his mind was turning to his work and he had been in the building an hour. His own private concerns, as ever, took up an increasing portion of his day…He forced himself to concentrate.

Business couldn’t be said to be booming at Mulholland, Melhuish. Which was precisely why he’d been brought out from England: to get things moving, whip up some trade, start making a name for the firm. He thought suddenly of Pruitt’s news: prospects of an Impressionist sale. He winced; he should really be finding out more, exhibiting some curiosity, instead of reading letters and phoning girlfriends. After all, it was his area.

Mulholland, Melhuish had needed an ‘Impressionist man’ and accordingly had sent for him. For some reason, the key factor in establishing an auction house in America was a large Impressionist sale. Only then did you seem bona fide; only then did you acquire a reputation. Or so the pattern had proved in the case of the New York offices of the other famous London auction houses. Little real, profitable business was attracted until there had been a significant Impressionist sale. It was a rite of passage. Why this should be so wasn’t exactly clear; it was just one of the illogical rules of the game.

He drew concentric circles on his blotting pad. Mulholland, Melhuish had opened their New York office eighteen months ago. Since that day there had been no significant Impressionist sale. He had been brought over as a final gamble. As an authority on late-nineteenth-century French painting, his expertise, his academic contacts, his knowledge of the private collectors were meant to lure and instil confidence in potential clients.

At first — another sign, another omen — it had gone gratifyingly smoothly. In the first fortnight he had acquired for sale a large Berthe Morisot. Morale was raised; relief and hope became an almost palpable presence in the offices. But since then, nothing.

He drummed his fingers on the desk. This news of Pruitt’s was a company triumph, but something of a personal failure for him. He just hadn’t been working at it hard enough, he realized. His personal life and its problems were taking up too much time. If only Melissa had been more tractable. If only he hadn’t met Irene…

He got up and looked at the crammed shelves of heavy art books, thumbed catalogues, sale-room records. He wandered through into Kimberly’s tiny office. She was typing, her gleaming nails snicking off the typewriter keys. Did they ever chip, he wondered? Did she ever get worried, break into a sweat? He ran his fingers through his thick hair and hitched up his trousers. He smiled aimlessly at Kimberly’s curious glance. He really should go and find out about this sale, otherwise people would think he was sulking.

A head came round the door.

“Good Lord, I thought you were in Boston.”

It was Thomas Beeby, his boss. Beeby was very tall and thin and would have looked like a classically distinguished English gentleman had it not been for his surprisingly plump rosy cheeks, which gave him the disconcerting look of a superannuated cherub.

“Postponed, Tom,” Henderson said. “Seems the man’s sick.” Kimberly’s nails rattled on without a pause.

“But that’s wonderful. You’ve heard the news?”

“About the sale? Yes, I was on my way—”

“Seems we may have the Gage Collection.”

“Oh?” Gage, Gage. The name rang no bells as a patron of the arts. “Gage.”

“Come along, I’ll tell you all about it. Thank God you’re not in Boston.”

He followed Beeby along the corridor to his office. From the floor below came the sound of the sale-room filling up. Porcelain today. A deferential Toothe eased by to take it.

“It’s all right, Ian,” Beeby said. “Henderson’s not in Boston. He can go now.”

Go where? Henderson thought.

“Oh. Right you are,” Toothe said, failing to keep the disappointment out of his voice. Henderson felt a brief elation. The little swine, he thought, never told me about this Gage collection, wanted to sneak off and keep it for himself.

Beeby put his hand on Henderson’s shoulder.

“This is it, Henderson,” he said. “This is what we’ve been waiting for.”

They entered Beeby’s office, slightly larger than Henderson’s but no less functional. It had a better view of Central Park, however. The sun still shone on the trees, a distant honking rose up from Madison Avenue. Beeby lit a cigarette. Henderson could sense his excitement and he felt a sudden generous warmth towards the tall man. It was Beeby who had brought him to America, who had pulled the strings and created the job, and for that Henderson would be forever grateful.

“Loomis Gage,” Beeby began. “Reclusive, Southern millionaire. An old man with a small but very select collection. Some seventeenth-century Dutch—‘school of’ stuff — rather dull, nothing significant. But. But. Two! fine Sisleys—‘72 he says — two van Dongens, a big Derain, a Utrillo, a small Braque and two Vuillards.”

“Well!”

“I want you to get down there, Henderson. Check it out and then get it for us. Go straight for no seller’s commission. Promise him a full colour catalogue. Exhibition in London if he wants it. Anything.”

“Right.” Henderson began to share Beeby’s excitement. He started adding up rough sums in his head, computing the ten per cent buyer’s commission Mulholland, Melhuish would charge. They would do very nicely, thank you. More importantly it would signal their arrival in the New York auction house world…However, one aspect of this miraculous opportunity perplexed him.

“I hope you don’t mind my asking, Tom, but — purely personal curiosity this — what made him bring the paintings to us?”

“Sheer good fortune. He claims to have known old man Mulholland in the twenties. Asked to speak to him. When I told him he was dead he almost hung up. Then I said I was Archie Melhuish’s son-in-law and he cheered up again. Stroke of luck, that’s all,” Beeby smiled joyfully. “Trumps came up;”

Henderson smiled with him. Good old Tom, he thought, nice to see him looking happy for a change.

“I want you to get down there by Monday.”

“Monday?”

“Yes.”

“Of course.” Henderson kept smiling. “Where is it? Exactly.”

“He lives in a place called Luxora Beach.”

“Qne of those purpose-built condominium things?”

“Actually I’m not all that sure.” Beeby frowned. “It’s in Georgia, I think. Or Alabama. Somewhere like that. All I know at the moment is you’ve got to be in Atlanta on Monday.”

“Bit vague, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But deliberately. He’s concerned about his ‘pryvacy’. Hasn’t even given me his phone number yet. He’s calling back this afternoon with the details. Anyway, sew it all up as quickly as possible.”

“Right you are.” He had an idea. “Wonderful news, Tom,” he said to the beaming Beeby. “Very pleased. Congratulations.” Impulsively — unusually — they shook hands.

Back in his office Henderson got Kimberly to phone Irene.

“Ms Dusseldorf?”

“OK, Henderson, what is it?”

“Do you fancy a few days’ holiday? Starting tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. Where are we going?”

“The South.”

Chapter Two

He was still feeling pleased with himself an hour later when Pruitt Halfacre came into his office.

“Free for lunch?” Halfacre asked. Today Henderson’s benevolence knew no bounds.

“Grand news about this Gage collection,” he said as they walked down Madison.

“Oh yes. Yes,” Halfacre agreed. He seemed a bit woebegone.

“Anything wrong?”

“We need to talk, Henderson.”

“Well, sure. What about?”

“Can we save it till lunch? I’d like that.”

They walked down some steps into a pale honey and lime-green restaurant. The bar area at the front was full of brilliant women and tall, broad-shouldered men. Everyone spoke in loud firm voices and seemed laughingly at ease. Sadly, as he knew it would, Henderson felt his own confidence begin to ebb away. There must be some law of Newtonian physics to explain this phenomenon, he considered; something about the power of a superior force to sap and drain energy from an inferior one of the same type. He looked about him at the fabulous lunchers. Pruitt shouted clear strong welcomes to people he knew. I want to be like you lot, Henderson thought, as he felt his shoulders round and his chest concave; I want your confidence and purpose, I want your teeth and tans, he pleaded, stepping out of the way and apologizing to a waiter. It’s not fair.

They shouldered their way to the bar, Henderson slipstreaming Halfacre. He caught gusts of a dozen different scents. Jasmine, rose, nectarine, musk, civet. Gems flashed demurely, expensively.

“Henderson, may I be totally honest with you?” Halfacre said in a deep voice at his ear. Henderson looked round in astonishment. “Can’t we get a drink first?”

A film-star barman approached.

“Morning, gentlemen. What is your need?”

“Dewars on the rocks,” Halfacre said. “With a twist. Henderson?”

“I’ll have a Budweiser, please,” Henderson said. “Straight up.”

The barman was not amused. He dipped a glass in a crunching, glistening coffer of ice and filled it to the brim. He sloshed copious amounts of whisky into it, pinched a twist of lime and dropped it in. How can they do that to perfectly good whisky, Henderson thought? Ice and limes in everything. A profligacy of ice in this country. Immense wealth of ice. He drank some of his beer.

“You were saying,” he turned to Halfacre, “something about total honesty.”

“Pruitt, your table’s ready.” It was the waiter.

“Thatcher, hi.” Halfacre and Thatcher hugged manfully, with much clapping of hands on shoulders. “I heard you were here. How’s it going?”

“Not so bad. I’m working on a novel.”

“Great!..Hey, Jesus. Sorry about Muffy. I heard. I guess she couldn’t hack it.”

“You win some—”

“You lose some. Bastard, man.” Halfacre spent a second deep in thought. “Thatcher, this is a colleague, Henderson. Thatcher and I were at school together.”

“Good to know you, Henderson.” Thatcher’s grip was knuckle-grinding.

“How do you do?” Henderson muttered, entirely unmanned by now. Thatcher led them through the shining throng to their table. Henderson felt as if his neck had disappeared and his shoulders were about to meet in front of his chin. He sat down with a sigh of relief. Halfacre seemed to have forgotten about their projected conversation so Henderson happily let it ride for a moment. He studied the menu and studied Halfacre above its uppermost edge. He looked at Half acre’s plain, lean face, his sharp jaw, his short hair, his — just donned — modish tortoiseshell spectacles. He considered his Harvard Ph. D., his ‘old’ family, his modest but comfortable private income. Here was the paradigm, the Platonic ideal. American man, late-twentieth-century model. Look how easily he wore his clothes, how at home he was in this smart restaurant. Consider the masterful aplomb with which he could initiate and terminate casual conversations. Listen to the rigidity and reasonableness of his opinions. What was more, this man was engaged to an intelligent and beautiful girl. And what was even more, Henderson thought, this man is eleven years younger than me.

Thatcher reappeared to take their orders.

“Chicken omelette,” Halfacre said. “Grilled plaice, side salad, no dressing. Sancerre OK for you, Henderson?”

“Lovely.” Henderson’s eyes skittered desperately over the menu searching first for something he liked, then for something he recognized. Halfacre’s requests didn’t even seem to be listed here. This sort of man ordered what he wanted, not what was offered.

“I’ll, um, start with the, ah, crevettes fumees aux framboises. Followed by…” Jesus Christ. “Followed by…Filet Mignon with butterscotch sauce.”

“Vegetables, sir?”

Henderson looked. Salsify, fenugreek, root ginger. What were these things? He saw one that was familiar. “Braised radishes.”

The menus were removed.

“Sorry, Pruitt,” he said, flapping out his napkin. “There was something you wanted to talk to me about.”

Pruitt was drawing furrows on the thick white linen of the tablecloth with the tines of his fork.

“That’s right.” He paused. “How would you react, Henderson, if I said…if I said that the one word I associate with you is ‘hostel’?”

“‘Hostel?’”

His mind raced. “As in ‘Youth Hostel’?”

“No, for God’s sake. As in hostel aircraft, hostel country, as in ‘The Soviets are hostel to American policy’.”

“Oh. Got you. We say ‘style’. ‘Hostyle’.”

“Why,” Pruitt now held his fork with both hands as if he might bend it, “why do you hate me, Henderson? Why do I sense this incredible aggression coming from you?”

♦

It took the whole of the unsatisfactory lunch (Henderson had been agog at his lurid shrimps and managed one mouthful of his candied steak) to convince Halfacre that, far from disliking him, Henderson on the contrary both admired and respected his colleague. That he was, moreover, an ideal confederate and a brilliant mind. Halfacre took twenty minutes to travel from scepticism through grudging apologies to overt gratitude. Henderson’s quizzing established that the misconception had arisen a week before when Halfacre had called a greeting down a corridor and Henderson — so Halfacre had thought — had rather curtly returned it.

“And you thought it meant I disliked you?”

“God, Henderson, I just didn’t know. It was so…you know, implicit with…with…What was I meant to think?”

“You said: ‘Hi there, Henderson’ and I said: ‘Hello’ back?”

“But it was the way you said it.”

“Hello.”

“‘Hello.’ There is only one way.”

“There you go again. ‘Hler, hler.’”

“But that’s the way I talk, Pruitt.”

“But I felt that you…Look, OK, so I’m a little paranoid. I know. I’ve got problems of self-alignment. I worry about these things. The aggression in this city, Henderson. The competitiveness…I mean, there are guys I was at school with, guys I grew up with — dentists, brokers — earning twelve times what I do. Twelve.” He went on listing his complaints and fears. Henderson watched him light a thick cigar to go with his ‘black tea’, and wondered what Halfacre really had to worry about. If only he had Halfacre’s problems…Then it struck him that perhaps all that was important to the Halfacres of this world was actually to be in a state of worry — about something, about anything. I worry, ergo sum.

“I think it’s good for us to talk this way,” Halfacre said round his cigar. “You know if we — you and I — can get that sort of supportive holistic flow,” pushing motion with both hands, “God, could we generate and strengthen…We internalize, Henderson. I internalize. All the time, I know. It’s my fault. My hamartia, hah.” He frowned. “And that can’t be good, can it?”

“Well, no. I suppose. But on the other hand—”

“You’re right. You’re so right.”

They walked slowly up Fifth Avenue, the huge Park on their left, back towards the office.

“I’m very grateful, Henderson,” Halfacre said.

“Don’t mention it.”

“I want you to know how I value our friendship. How much I admire your books, and your learning.”

“Don’t give it another thought.” Henderson broke out in a sweat of embarrassment.

“No, I feel—”

“Let’s go to the Frick,” he said suddenly, inspired.

They paid their dollar each and entered the dim cool gallery. The splash of water from the courtyard, the solid grey stone and marble and the immaculate plants exuded a green tranquillity and worked their usual spell. Henderson relaxed. If only I could set my bed up here, he thought, I know I could sleep.

They moved slowly through a roomful of Goya, Lorrain and Van Dyck, then into another large room. Halfacre was silenced at last, looking at the paintings. Henderson’s mind wandered, pondering the logistics of his trip South. He decided to drive, spend a couple of days on the road. See Kentucky, Virginia…one night in Washington, perhaps. Irene could give him a guided tour round the capital. He smiled at the prospect. Stay in really nice hotels. Find somewhere near this Luxora Beach. Irene could swim and sunbathe while he worked at the Gage house during the day. Spend the evenings with Irene, just the two of them, Melissa and his conscience back in New York.

He paused. That was not exactly the sort of attitude one should develop towards one’s future wife. He grimaced slightly. He wondered why he persisted in being so divided, so untrue to his best instincts, so wayward in regard to his duty? Perhaps Pruitt would say that was his tragic flaw…

He looked round. Halfacre had gone on ahead. Henderson wheeled left and cut across the courtyard into another room. On the walls were Romneys, Gainsboroughs and Constables. For an instant he felt a tremor of homesickness for England. He thought dreamily of English landscapes, the reality behind the images hanging there. Now it was April the leaves would be well advanced, and in the fields…The enormous, hedgerowless fields would be loud prairies of brutal shouting yellow; some Common Market incentive having encouraged the farmers to sow every available acre with rape. And then in the autumn it was like driving through a wartorn country, vast columns of smoke from the burning stubble rising into the sky, the sky itself finely sedimented with flakes of ash. One weekend last summer, sitting outside a friend’s cottage in the Cotswolds reading the Sunday papers, he was driven indoors by a fragile rain of cinders that drifted softly but steadily down upon him from an apparently clear sky.

In this mood of harsh realism he turned to ‘Richard Paul Jodrell’ by Gainsborough. There was the supercilious, self-satisfied face of England. And in ‘The Mall in St James’s Park’ were the smug English belles, unchanged in two centuries. He could imagine the conversation; hear the very tones of their lazy voices. He peered closer. To his vague surprise one of the women looked remarkably like his mother.

He thought of her now, a sharp-nosed, well-preserved sixty-five-year-old, living in her neat ‘villa’ in Hove. Her over-made-up face, her grey hair cut in a youthful bob, her deep, unshakeable and unreflecting conservatism. She spent a lot of time with her grown-up nieces and their young families, a rich and popular visitor to their green-belt homes. Henderson was her only child, and they gamely maintained an appearance of filial and maternal affection that on the whole effectively disguised mutual disapproval.

Henderson strode urgently out of the room. This was what he was escaping; that was his past, now behind him forever, he hoped. He slowed down and strolled through a roomful of frothing pastel Fragonards. No Halfacre. He retraced his steps.

Halfacre seemed hardly to have moved. He was standing in front of a Vermeer, ‘Mistress and Maid’. Henderson looked at him more closely. Tears ran down his face. His chest and shoulders twitched with little sobs.

“Pruitt,” Henderson said with alarm. “What’s wrong?” Had he somehow caused further offence?

Halfacre gestured at the painting.

“It’s so true,” he said. “It’s so true.”

Henderson suppressed his automatic sneer. That’s the difference between us, he thought sadly. An immense unbridgeable gulf. We’ve both made art our careers, but he can weep in galleries. I would rather die.

Henderson moved away, somewhat disturbed. He had no idea what to say and was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the progress he still had to make before he felt at home in this country.

Look at the paintings he told himself. He obeyed. ‘The Deposition’, by Gheerhart David. ‘The Painter’, by Franz Hals. ‘Judith and Holofernes’, by Jakob van Hoegh. He paused by this one, vaguely shocked by the relish of Judith’s expression as she hacked her way crudely through Holofernes’ neck. Judith had a pert, small-chinned face, heart-shaped. Holofernes’ tongue, livid purple and foam-flecked, stuck out a good three inches.

“Pruitt, come and have a look at this,” Henderson said. That should stop him crying.

♦

Later that afternoon Beeby looked into the office with Gage’s telephone number and the instructions about where and when to meet up. They were quite simple. When Henderson arrived in Atlanta he was to phone the given number between four and five a.m. He would then be told where to proceed.

“Is that all?”

“Afraid so.”

“It’s a bit cloak and dagger, isn’t it? Is it all really necessary?”

“You know these types,” Beeby said solemnly. “Insecure. Jealous of their solitude. He was absolutely adamant on proceeding this way. Adamant. We’ve got to respect it, Henderson. Can’t afford to give offence.”

“Softly, softly.”

“Exactly.” Beeby screwed up his eyes and waggled a hand. “He sounds a bit of a dodgy number. I think we’ll have to go very carefully.”

Henderson walked with him to the door. Beeby fiddled with his signet ring.

“Good luck,” he said, and patted Henderson on the elbow. It was an expression of genuine affection and concern.

“Don’t worry,” Henderson said, his fingers brushed Beeby’s sleeve, expressing his affection in return. Whole paragraphs of information and sentiment had been conveyed in the four words.

“I’ll give you a phone once I’ve made contact. And, Tom; it’ll be fine.”

“I know. See you next week.”

Henderson watched Beeby’s tall figure amble down the corridor. He felt his eyes moist. He’s relying on me, he thought. Like a father. Almost.

Chapter Three

The gym was down by the East River in the basement of an old building between Queensboro Bridge and F.D.R. Drive. It was the only place in Manhattan where Henderson had been able to find a sabre coach and so he charitably attempted to ignore its less salubrious qualities.

The basement windows were heavily barred and opaque with grime. The basement well was brightened by drifts of wax-paper cartons and aluminium beer and soft-drink cans. The studded and battered double steel doors were luridly and professionally graffitied with futuristic names and numbers.

Henderson went in. An ancient man behind a grille scrutinized his Queensboro Health Club membership card.

“Is Mr Teagarden here?” Henderson asked.

“Yep.”

Henderson walked along a passageway and turned into the humid locker room. Thin avenues of grey lockers took up most of the space. Low benches ran between them. Three Puerto Rican kids in boxing gear smoked in a line near Henderson’s locker.

He tried to undress with nonchalance. Then he pulled on his white socks and white polo neck jumper and stepped into his white knickerbockers. He heard the chuckles and jibes break out behind him.

“Hey, what that shit you wearing?”

Henderson laced his gym shoes.

“Some kinda fairy, man?”

He slung his sabre bag over his shoulder. Sticks and stones.

“Snow White. He Snow White!”

May break my bones. He picked up his mask, gloves and padded waistcoat. But names will never harm me.

“Spiderman! He Spiderman!”

He strode out of the locker room with as much dignity as he could muster.

The low-roofed gym area was surprisingly large. There was a boxing ring; a scrapyard of fitness machines — chain and pulley systems, canting seats and legrests, short conveyor belts with dials and handrails — and the usual barbells and weights for the glistening, walnut-brained beefcakes to toss around. There was a large padded that area for the martial arts enthusiasts and behind a door at the far end, a steam room and plunge pool.

In the far corner he could see Teagarden marking out the fencing piste with chalk.

“You’re late,” Teagarden said.

“Busy day,” Henderson apologized. “And I’ve got to be out of here by half six.”

“Ain’t no reduction.”

“Oh no. I wasn’t suggesting…”

Eugene Teagarden was black. The only black sabreur in America, he claimed, which was why he charged such high rates. He was slim and dapper with a tidy wide moustache and a manner that vacillated erratically between hostility and scorn. He was, as far as Henderson could tell, a brilliant swordsman. He taught, moreover, not fencing but ‘zencing’. The raw technique came with a heady garnish of philosophy and consciousness-expanding routines. Impelled by the continuous exhortation in America to exercise, Henderson had plumped for fencing, the only sport he had vaguely enjoyed while at school. It wasn’t so much the exercise he was after as the topic of conversation it provided him with at dinners and parties. When the talk inevitably moved to working out, aerobics, discussions of the stride-length factor in jogging, Henderson could chip in with a fencing anecdote.

He took a sabre out of his bag.

“Don’t want to waste no time, then,” Teagarden said. “Masks on. On guard.”

Henderson slid on his mask, the big Cyclopean fly-eye. He liked the mask; it made his head as featureless as a light bulb.

“Remember the drills,” Teagarden said.

Controlled relaxation, Henderson intoned, controlled relaxation. This was the key to the Teagarden approach; this was the core of zencing. And this was why he persisted with Teagarden’s abuse and truculence: it did him good, he hoped. He didn’t need to exercise, he needed the therapy.

“On the toes.”

Henderson rose on his toes, legs apart, left hand perched on his hip, the sabre held angled in front of him.

“Feel that blade,” Teagarden said, now masked and on guard opposite him. “You are that blade. There is only the blade. You do not exist. What are you?”

“I, um, am the blade.”

“Controlled relaxation.”

Henderson relaxed and tried to stay in control.

“Take your measure.”

The sabres made contact. A tinny scratching sound.

“Feel it?”

“What?”

“The sensation du fer.”

“Oh yes. I feel it.”

“OK. Fleche attack any time you like.”

The fleche attack was a sort of mad scampering charge that often took the attacker thundering past his opponent. At some point during the attack one was meant to deliver a cut to the cheek or the flank.

Henderson swayed. Teagarden was poised and immobile. Henderson thought he might fall over he felt so relaxed.

He sang a song to himself, another of Teagarden’s drills. For some reason he always sang ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’.

Nymphs and shepherds, come away, come away. I am the blade, he reminded himself, I am the blade. Come, come, come, come away. He was going to make a fleche attack on Teagarden’s left side — unorthodox — but administer a cut to the right side of the face — even more unorthodox. So fingernails of the sword hand down, sword arm straight behind the guard, breathe out, relax, a feint to the right and charge!

He felt Teagarden’s stop cut jar on the inside of the right elbow and, almost simultaneously, the thwacking cuts to the head and left cheek as he galloped by, skewering air.

“What you doing, man?” Teagarden shouted, as Henderson caromed into a wall ladder. “You was wide open. You was fuckin’ slashin ‘, too.”

He wandered over, mask perched on the top of his head. “The cut is a twitch of your little finger.” Ping, bock, rasp, scratch, ping. Teagarden’s sabre administered five cuts to Henderson’s mask in as many milliseconds.

“You ain’t Errol fuckin’ Flynn. Is all wrist, man. You’re like chopping meat.” He swished madly in the air in illustration. “You ain’t a butcher, you a artist. You’re a art-man, it should come natural.”

“Sorry,” Henderson mumbled.

“OK. So just breathe.”

They breathed for a couple of minutes.

“Controlled relaxation,” Teagarden said.

Henderson relaxed.

“Let’s do it this way,” Teagarden said. “You’re on top of a mountain, OK? In a white room. You was born there. You lived there all your life. Why? ‘Cause you’re the king of fencing. The lord of sabreurs. People come from all over to your mountain to watch you in your room. To watch your fleche attacks. Why? Because you fleche attack purely, man. Pure. Got that?”

“Mountain, white room, pure. Yes.”

“Shut your eyes.” His voice dropped a tone. “You are the lord of sabreurs in your white room on the mountain. Think about it. Imagine it. Be there. What are you?”

Henderson opened his eyes and looked about him edgily. Nobody appeared to be listening. He shut his eyes again.

“I’m, ah, the (little cough) lord of sabreurs.”

“Louder.”

“I am the lord of sabreurs.”

“Louder.”

“I am the lord of sabreurs!”

“Louder!”

“I AM THE LORD OF SABREURS!”

Henderson opened his eyes. People had stopped exercising, a small crowd had gathered. For some reason he felt curiously elated, almost lightheaded with embarrassment. Only Teagarden could make him behave like this. Only in America would he have complied.

“OK. I’m going to feint at the head and you parry quinte. Got that?”

“Yes.”

“Then parry at flank with seconde and riposte at right cheek.”

“OK.”

“Then I’ll cut at flank, parry tierce on the lunge, make a counter riposte to head and we’ll take it from there.”

“Fine.”

“And do it purely, for God’s sake. Pure.”

♦

In the locker room afterwards Henderson and Teagarden towelled down after their shower. Henderson tried not to look at Teagarden’s long thin cock and attempted as best he could to preserve his own modesty. Ever since leaving his boarding school he felt ill-at-ease being naked with other men. What made this occasion worse was that Teagarden was the first black man he had ever seen naked, outside of books and National Geographic magazines, and Henderson was concerned not to seem curious. He hummed ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’ quietly and appeared unduly interested in a corner of the ceiling. Teagarden did a lot of unselfconscious walking around, his towel slung about his neck, but eventually put on his underpants.

Henderson told him he was going away for a few days and probably wouldn’t make the Wednesday lesson.

“That’s up to you,” Teagarden said aggressively.

Henderson pulled on his shirt. Really, the man was impossible. The most neutral exchange of information denigrated into some sort of offence.

“Where you going?”

“The South. Georgia, I think. To start with. I’ve got to go to Atlanta first.”

“Shit. What you want to go there for?”

“It’s for work.”

“Hell, you don’t want to go down there.”

“Why?”

“It’s bad, man.”

“Worse than here?”

Teagarden shrugged. “Maybe not. It’s different, that’s for sure.”

“How? How do you mean?”

“Shit, I don’t know…Well, maybe everyone’s the same everywhere. Dishin’ out the same shit.” Teagarden looked intensely at him. “Dishin’ the shit. That’s what it’s all about, ain’t it? Dishin’ the shit?”

Henderson was perplexed. “Well, not all the time. Some of the time, but not all the time, surely.”

Teagarden sat down to lace up his shoes. “That what you think?”

“I suppose I do.”

Teagarden laughed. He seemed to find the notion genuinely amusing.

“Then good luck to you, Mr Dores. You sure gonna need it.” A little unsettled, Henderson said goodbye and left.

♦

Henderson picked up a cab on East Fifty-ninth Street and gave the driver Melissa’s address. He sat back on the red leatherette seat and tried to forget Teagarden’s words and his laughter. He thought, with only second order guilt, of going south with Irene. He felt at once tired and invigorated after his exercise with the sabres. Perhaps he would sleep tonight.

He banished all thoughts of Irene from his mind as he approached Melissa’s apartment in the upper eighties. Neither of the women in his life knew anything of the existence of the other. Accordingly certain levels of concentration had to be maintained to prevent a careless slip.

He paid off the cab and paused for a moment outside the doorway of the apartment block. It was cool and he stood beneath the firmament of shining windows collecting his thoughts. He adjusted his tie and cleared his throat. It was like paying court; then he remembered he was paying court. Last week Melissa had allowed that they were on the point of becoming ‘unofficially engaged’ again. He was quite expecting her to demand a ring.

He had met Melissa at Oxford, in the mid-sixties, getting on for two decades ago now. He was subsidizing his Ph. D. by teaching at a summer school which various American colleges held in Oxford. Melissa had been one of his tutees. Even then, with his love affair with America not fully developed, Melissa — fresh, her dark hair tied back, her impossible aura of cleanliness — had seemed overpoweringly alluring. She, as was confessed in the third tutorial, was recovering from the unhappy termination of a college love affair. Henderson’s donnish affectations (French cigarettes, rumpled erudition) his utter dissimilarity to her previous lover (called, oddly, ‘Jock’, as far as he could make out) and the predictable student — teacher crush had propelled them swiftly into as fervid a romance as he had ever known. It started with picnic lunches and progressed to half-pints in hot summer-evening pubs then weekend trips to London. It moved quickly, with a strong momentum of emotion, because each saw in the other a timely and fortuitous answer to his or her particular requirements. They were married three months later in his college chapel (her daunting parents flew over for the wedding) and they rented a cold cottage in Islip. The momentum was still going a year later. Looking back on it now, it still seemed to Henderson to have been his life’s only sustained experience of true happiness. That next summer they had gone to France and Italy. They were in the final planning stages of their next trip — to the States, Henderson agog with anticipation — when, one November afternoon, she came home early from her job to find him in bed with the woman next door.

This woman’s name was Agnes Brown; its very drabness summed her up perfectly. It had been his sole occasion of marital infidelity and to this day he wondered how they had so fatefully contrived to find themselves in bed together.

Agnes was a faintly grubby woman who always seemed harassed and overburdened with chores and extra work. She was somewhat older than Henderson, a divorcee with three young, noisy and potentially neurotic children. Henderson and Melissa had come to know her quite well — as next-door neighbours will — but he had never entertained even a half-hearted sexual or erotic fantasy about her, for, in Agnes, Henderson recognized a fellow sufferer: Agnes Brown was shy. She confessed as much to Henderson and Melissa on numerous occasions, bemoaning her disability and the obstacle it posed to her ever finding a new husband.

For such people often the only means to physical contact is a collision, and one rainy afternoon she and Henderson collided. She had come to borrow one of Melissa’s bright American magazines. Henderson picked it up, turned too quickly and bumped into her.

Why had he kissed her? In the intervening decade and a half that question had been asked hundreds of times, with no satisfactory answer. There was even less likelihood of explaining the fumbling embarrassed haste with which they had fallen on the sofa and the chilling, semi-clothed shuffle into the bedroom some minutes later.

At first he told himself that he must have felt like a final dose of European grime before exposing himself to the gleaming hygiene of the New World, but as a motive it rang a little false. He knew that he had done it because he was shy too — though not as shy as she was. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The same power-equation applies to the parish of the mild, he now knew. There the modestly emboldened exercises real sway. Modestly emboldened, he seized the opportunity: he simply didn’t have the confidence to say no. The truth was, he thought, remembering the wet, rather sore clash of mouths, she was keen on me and I was flattered and weak. This was the fearful side-effect of shyness. Because he lacked the confidence to disagree, to spurn, to go his own way, it was always easier to conform. He wasn’t making love with Agnes that ghastly afternoon when Melissa breezed in to discover them, he was conforming.

And Melissa had gone by that evening. Infidelity was the one unforgivable crime. Henderson never got to the States that summer. Instead he received an alarming transatlantic battery of legal threats, injunctions and instructions. Somehow, somewhere (Reno? Mexico?) he and Melissa were swiftly divorced.

As inadvertent consolation and second best course of action — something he and Agnes Brown were naturally inclined to accept as their lot in life — they joined forces for three years. But the hyperactive, squalling children and the doomed nature of their alliance (it got off to a bad start and seemed threatened thereafter) made a parting inevitable. It came — with sullen resignation, no tears — and Henderson moved to London to begin what he now termed the lost decade. He founded his ‘reputation’ by writing his three books on the Impressionists, composed sundry articles, co-edited an art magazine for four years, spent 1976 in France on a foundation grant, lectured on art history in art schools throughout the south-east of England, edited a festschrift for an old professor, wrote introductions to numerous catalogues. It was a flat, joyless and rather lonely time, of hard work and monotonous insolvency only periodically relieved by the odd financial windfall (two coffee-table books for a Swiss publisher, and the saving of half his foundation grant which went towards the purchase of a small flat in Baron’s Court). It ended — officially — in 1981 when Thomas Beeby — an old friend of his mother — offered him a job as a valuer at Mulholland, Melhuish.

He liked deliberately to think of the ‘lost decade’ before he saw Melissa because it reaffirmed his new commitment to her and their eventual re-marriage. Thus committed, he gave his name to the doorman, who phoned up, and looked suspiciously at him before allowing him to enter the lift. As it moved steadily up to the fifth floor Henderson reflected that although his professional life (prior to Mulholland, Melhuish) had attained some sort of meagre plateau his emotional one had faltered and all but died after his divorce. Strangely, it was after Melissa’s departure that his insomnia developed, the most persistent reminder of his foolishness that afternoon.

It seemed that there was no European equivalent of what Melissa had given him; or rather his maddened regret at his fall from grace punished him further by making all substitutes unsatisfactory. As time moved on from his divorce, his one year of marriage came to assume in his memory an almost legendary brightness and bliss, especially when compared to the few brief and sad affairs he experienced (with a brittle academic, a pretty but dull student, and an ambitious sub-editor at a magazine he wrote for). His fault, he admitted. He became, for steadily longer periods of his life, a sort of asexual. Sex played a minor, or solitary, role in his life: the eternal substitute at the football match, only rarely called from the benches and instructed to warm up beside the pitch. It took off its track suit, ran up and down the sidelines, but it wasn’t really in the game any more.

Melissa stood at the doorway to her apartment. At her ankles two pekingese barked shrilly.

“Hello,” he said, leaning forward to kiss an emerald earring.

“What have you got there?” Melissa asked.

“My sabres.”

“How dashing,” she laughed and pushed him in the chest. He rocked back on his heels. “My God, you’re a funny man, Henderson.”

He followed her into the Wax domain.

“Gervase, Candice, stop that!” she said to the dogs, still barking annoyingly. “It’s Henderson. Say hello now.” The dogs growled. “Say hello to them, Henderson. They’ve got to learn the sound of your voice.”

“What?…You mean, say hello to those dogs?”

“Yes. Come on, just say hello.”

“Hello, Gervase. Hello, Candice.”

Melissa bent down and scratched their crowns with long nails. “Come on, babies, it’s Henderson. Keep talking, Henderson.”

Muttering greetings to the dogs he followed her through the hall.

Shortly before Beeby had offered him the New York job he had heard from Melissa. She wrote to tell him of her second divorce — from Mr Wax — and obliquely to let him know that bygones were bygones. By the time of his third letter — a one-sided correspondence had begun — he was able to tell her of his impending arrival in New York — the ‘astonishing coincidence’ that would bring them together again.

He had taken it, of course, as another sign, another portent and blessing on the enterprise. His memories revived and amplified themselves: a new print was made of his year of marriage. The reunion, and the several dinners afterwards had been warm, pleasingly coy, maturely reflective. Mentally, the way had already been prepared: it seemed entirely natural that they should seek to recapture their former happiness together. There had been no swooning revelation, no ardent campaign on either side. Their first kiss had a dreamy predictability about it to Henderson; he had been rehearsing it for weeks. The hints about consolidating their reconciliation had followed soon after.

The trouble was, Henderson now realized, that he had allowed himself to be driven on too easily by his own lonely aspirations rather than by any realistic assessment of what it involved or of life’s many contingencies…He frowned and looked at her neat legs. For example, he had never remotely taken into account the possibility of an Irene emerging. Or of the fact that both he and Melissa were now different people. And Melissa had changed radically too, in some ways. The dark glossy brown hair had gone for a start. It was now blond, a streak job, shoulder length and held in place by fearsome mastic sprays. She was, if anything, slimmer, wore light expensive colours and was a little too heavily tanned. But the moral imperatives remained implacable, however. She had married Irving Wax a year after leaving Henderson. Wax was very big in concrete and an exceedingly rich man. She had divorced him the year previously. “He was fucking his secretary, Henderson. What could I do? Really, you men are impossible.”

He could recall her tone of voice exactly. No outrage, no indignation, just a calm logical assessment. Melissa’s strength was that she was one of those women who know exactly what they want from life and set about methodically acquiring it. There was an unruffled placidity and certainty at the basis of their natures, as if life and the world were somehow in their debt…When Henderson thought about his relationship with Melissa he sometimes asked himself if it had been not so much love and affection that had drawn him towards her, but envy. Envy’s role in human emotional affairs was seriously undervalued, he considered. The people we fall in love with are very often people we envy. Marry them, become close to them, and that poisonous resentment becomes easier to live with, easier to handle…How did that poem go? “Tight-fisted as a peasant, eating love.” In that regard, he thought, enviously following Melissa into the drawing room, he hadn’t changed that much at all, and Melissa too was as alluringly confident and sure of herself as ever — with the deep tranquillity of an abbess.

The drawing room was the same colour as Melissa’s clothes: blond, beige and cream. She was completely camouflaged in it. Once, he looked round from pouring a drink and thought she had disappeared — but she had only moved in front of the curtains.

A twelve-year-old boy sat in front of a television set. He didn’t acknowledge them as they came in. Irving Wax jnr.

“Irving, it’s Henderson. And switch that off.”

“Hi,” the boy glanced round. His mouth was a canteen of orthodontic braces, the first acne clusters were evident on his chin. In general the pubertal cocktail currently being shaken up inside him coarsened his features, making him look awkward, slightly subnormal.

“Hello, Irv,” Henderson said jovially.

“Where’s Bryant?” Melissa asked.

“I’m here.”

Henderson looked round. Bryant was a tall thin pretty girl with short wild fair hair. Small breasts barely denting her baggy T — shirt, very old jeans, training shoes. He had only ever seen her looking bored or sulky.

“Happy birthday,” Henderson said and handed her the envelope that contained her present.

“What’s this?”

“Open it, Bry,” Melissa said.

She did. “Life membership,” she read slowly. “Friend of the Frick? What do I do with this?”

“Aw, Henderson. How thoughtful.”

“Yes. I thought—”

“Say thank you, little missie.”

“Yeah, but what can I do with it?”

“Well. Ah…” Melissa looked at Henderson for help.

“You can go to the Frick free, for a start. For the rest of your life.”

“What’s the Frick?”

“For Prick’s sake,” snorted Irving Wax.

“I’ll take you, baby,” Melissa said. She mouthed ‘thank you’ at Henderson and pouted a kiss in his direction. Henderson stiffened. Despite the guilt he felt, he still wanted desperately to go to bed with Melissa. He called into mind memories of Oxford, all those years ago, and tried to ignore the ungrateful way Bryant tossed her membership card on the coffee table.

Henderson opened a bottle of champagne. They toasted Bryant’s health and congratulated her on reaching the age of fourteen. She didn’t really look fourteen, Henderson thought. If he hadn’t known better he would have said twenty-two.

He sat beside Melissa on a long suede couch while a Philipino maid distributed birthday cake. Then they had coffee and Melissa lit a very long cigarette. Bryant’s request for one was turned down. She was allowed two a day and had already exceeded her quota. Henderson was vaguely shocked at this. Eventually the kids wandered out.

Henderson kissed Melissa gently on the lips. He tasted lipstick and tobacco.

“Love you, darling,” Melissa said absently.

“Me too…That is, I love you too.”

Henderson put his hand on her thigh and kneaded it gently. Melissa combed the hair above his left ear with her long nails. Henderson realized he was smiling and frowning at the same time. No wonder: he felt at this moment greatly attracted to Melissa, and wanted keenly to remarry her, and yet simultaneously was planning a dirty weekend with Irene. Once again he was dismayed at the ease with which he fell into and coped with duplicity. Was this, he wondered, something that was basically — seriously — wrong with him, or did everybody behave the same? Perhaps it was the only response possible to the generosity of America: here you could have your cake and eat it too…It was a very un-English notion, that, he reflected. We disapprove strongly of that sort of attitude.

“Melissa, darling,” he said carefully. “I’ve got to go away tomorrow for a few days. Business.”

“Oh? Where?”

Don’t give away too many clues, he thought.

“Um, near Washington. Still waiting for details.”

“Washington? But that’s wonderful.”

“It is?”

“Of course. You can go with Bryant. She’s going to stay with Mom and Daddy Wax. Flying tomorrow.”

“Ah. Shame. I’m driving, you see.”

“Henderson! Take the train as a last resort. Nobody drives to Washington.” Melissa laughed delightedly at this eccentricity.

“I do. I mean, you know how I hate flying.” Something in his mind seemed to flail around, like a snake pinioned at the neck.

“Well, look, OK. So much the better then. You must drive down with Bryant.” Melissa put her hand on Henderson’s thigh. “Think how you’ll be able to get to know each other.” She prattled on. To Henderson’s eyes the room seemed to darken with foreboding. His frail excuses and blocking tactics were swept aside as new, plans were made and schedules altered. He began to feel sick and frightened.

“What time is it?” he asked eventually.

“Quarter of nine.”

“Oh God! I’ve got to go!”

Chapter Four

Henderson arrived gasping at The Blue Room just as Irene was leaving.

“Hey. You are one lucky guy,” she said, pointing a finger at him.

They walked back inside. Henderson deposited his coat and sabres and followed her to the bar. Stark white, thin, naked trees had been planted here and there, and the tiny blue lights festooned in their boughs gave the place an odd doleful-yet-festive air. The bar was busy. People in New York, Henderson noted, seemed to consume alcohol in vast quantities.

“Good evening,” another handsome barman said. Where do these guys come from, Henderson asked himself? Where are they made?

“Same again please. And a large scotch.”

The glasses were plunged in the ice trough, the measures were poured from a height of three feet, small limes were crushed in clean powerful fingers.

“Oh and, um,” a lime segment plopped into his whisky. “No twist.”

“Sorry, sir?”

“Cough,” Henderson cleared his throat and thumped his chest. He coughed. “Nothing.”

He turned to Irene and smiled at her.

“Here’s how,” he said in weak self-parody and sipped his drink. Then he leant forward and kissed the muscle that ran from her neck to her shoulder. He noticed she was wearing high heels. It was a bad sign: she wasn’t pleased with him. On high heels she was an inch taller than he. He told himself to relax. Controlled relaxation. He felt the whisky sluice through his veins, gee-ing up the corpuscles. Irene looked at him and laughed.

“I don’t know how you do it, Henderson,” she said. “You make me so fucking mad. Then you show up with your golf-clubs and I’ve got to laugh.”

“My sabres,” he explained. “How are you? Look nice.”

“I’ve got a cold coming. I need some Southern sun.”

“Ah.”

He had met Irene a month before at a private view in a Madison Avenue gallery. It had been raining and, like this evening, he had arrived late, damp and slightly out of breath. Standing at a wide white desk covered in catalogues and xeroxed price-sheets had been a dark, well-built girl. Absentmindedly, Henderson handed her his dripping umbrella and raincoat.

“I’m not the fucking hat-check, numbnuts,” she had said reasonably, and had turned on her heel, oblivious to his stream of aghast apologies. Later on during the dull party, while pouring himself a white wine at the makeshift bar, she approached with an empty glass and asked to be topped up.

“I’m not the bloody barman,” he said, with a boldness that astonished him (he couldn’t quite bring himself to say ‘fucking’). She found this very amusing. They started to talk and discovered that they disagreed violently about the paintings on show. Henderson thought they were puerile and derivative; Irene was a friend of the artist — hence her invitation — and greatly admired them.

Henderson had been initially and immediately attracted to Irene because she bore a considerable resemblance to a girl who worked in a butcher’s shop in Spain, about and around whom he had spun a tingling sexual fantasy which had enlivened an otherwise banal and tedious holiday some years ago. He bought meat from this girl twice, sometimes three times a day, never saying anything more than ‘jamon’, ‘chuletas de cerdo’, ‘es todo’, ‘gracias’. The girl, unlike her tanned and rubescent clients, was pale, as if she never went out in the sun. She had broad shoulders and strong arms. She cut meat expertly and powerfully. Henderson stood across the bloodied marble from her, finding difficulty in breathing, while she handed him soggy, heavy plastic bags full of chops, steaks, liver, chicken breasts and any other cut of meat he could find in his dictionary. As he was staying in a hotel he had later to throw all this away. He spent a fortune on uneaten meat that holiday.

The girl came to recognize him, and they would make a long and direct eye-contact throughout their transaction. Sometimes, counting out his change, her encarnadined fingernails would scratch his damp palm.

Irene, like this nameless she-butcher, was strong-looking and pale. She had thick black hair that curled onto her neck. Her eyes were brown; her features were emphatic: prominent nose, distinct lips, unplucked eyebrows. And she was tall. That night at the gallery she was taller than Henderson.

“You know,” he had interrupted their futile disquisition on the paintings’ merits, “you remind me of someone.”

“Oh yes? Who?”

“A girl who worked in a butcher’s shop in Alicante.”

Irene had looked around the room. “I suppose that’s some kind of compliment.”

“God. No, um, what I meant to say,” his left hand had clutched air, seeking straws, “to ask. Is…is if you had any Spanish blood in you. That’s what I…yes.”

“No. I’m Jewish.”

“Oh.” Nods. “Aha.”

“You’re not Jewish,” she had said, a horror-struck expression on her face.

“Lord no. I’m English.”

Irene had laughed so hard, people had stopped talking and looked round.

Henderson considered her now, perched on a bar stool. She was wearing a sleeveless dark blue dress. Her skin looked almost pure white. White as a fridge. He put his hand on her knee.

“I can get away. No problem,” she said. “When do we leave?”

“Ah yes.” Henderson swallowed hard and removed his hand.

“Mr Dores? Your table is ready, sir.”

By the time they sat down Henderson was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. How was he going to tell Irene that her place in the car had been usurped by Bryant?

“I’ve been to New Orleans,” Irene said, “but never to the real South. Where exactly are we going?”

The waiter crept up behind Henderson.

“Hello there, people,” he said cheerfully, “my name is James—”

Henderson looked round with a start. “Oh! Hello. My name’s Dores. Henderson Dores.” He rose to his feet. “This is Miss — Ms — Stien.” Unthinkingly, he held out his hand.

The waiter flashed a puzzled glance at Irene, before shaking it. “Nice to meet you, sir.” His discomfiture lasted a second only. “As I was saying, my name is James, I’m your waiter for this evening and I’ll be looking after you.” He handed over the menus. “Enjoy,” he beamed, and left.

Henderson sat down. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought…”

Irene stared irritatedly at him. “What do you think you’re doing? Are you all right?”

“Yes, fine. Trying day, what with one thing and another.”

She shook her head in mock despair. “Are you coming home with me tonight?” she asked, scrutinizing the menu.

Henderson did likewise, trying to ignore his popping cardiac valves.

“Yes please.” He would have to tell her about the trip later. “Good God,” he said, “what’s happening to menus in this city?”

♦

Henderson ate sparingly, his fillet of hake in lager and cranberry sauce failing to stimulate his appetite. Irene ate her two roast baby pigeons in fresh grapefruit nests with relish. Conscious of having to prepare the ground somewhat he asked her if she was really sure it was all right for her to take a few days off work. Irene reassured him once more. She was a co-director — with her brother — of a firm that sold personal computers. She was her own boss, she reminded him, she could take a holiday when she wanted. Good, Henderson said, good.

When they left the restaurant it was after midnight and a light rain was falling.

“We’ll get a cab on West Broadway,” Henderson said. “This way.”

Irene had a collapsible umbrella which she erected. Henderson slung his sabre case over his shoulder and linked arms with her. He smelt her hair, a vague fruit fragrance — apples or sultanas — lingering from her shampoo. They made their way leisurely down the street, picking their way through the rubbish and the puddles, from time to time pausing to look into the lighted windows of the boutiques and small galleries that proliferated here. At one of these windows, he kissed her. He shut his eyes and gently fitted his lips to hers, her bottom lip snug in the hollow between his two. He pressed his nose into her cheek, felt his teeth bump and grate against hers as she opened her mouth slightly. He felt suddenly helpless, victim of his rampaging desire.

They walked on, the rain a little heavier, the streets almost deserted as people took shelter.

“I thought you said you knew your way,” Irene said.

“I do. Along here.”

They turned and walked down a shopless street. High up he could see the lambent plant-filled windows of the lofts. Rain runnelled off the fire escapes.

“Next left, I think.”

They turned. Someone jogged down the street in a sodden track-suit. These madmen really will jog at any time of the day or night, Henderson thought with vague admiration.

“I think we should go back,” Irene said. “Call a taxi from the restaurant.”

“It’s not far from here, I’m sure.” Henderson stepped out from the shelter of Irene’s umbrella and looked up and down the street. There was a junction at the top. He looked for a street sign. Nothing.

“Let’s go back,” he said suddenly. He had seen four figures — strolling, unhurrying, masculine figures — turn the far corner. He felt a spontaneous, improbable thirst. Irene was rummaging in her handbag.

“I’ve got to blow my nose.”

Henderson looked round again in what he hoped was an unconcerned, natural way. The figures — dark, lithe-looking — had crossed to their side of the street with what looked like more urgency. Henderson clenched a fist. He looked quickly right and left. They were alone. Irene still searched for a tissue.

Jesus Christ, Henderson thought, they say it happens to everybody sooner or later — like a car crash or a burglary. He felt a surging panic begin to overwhelm him. It’s only when you haven’t got any money that they kill you. Or pour petrol over you and set you alight. Or rape you. Gang-sodomize you. They were only ten yards away.

“Got it,” said Irene, and honked noisily into a Kleenex.

“RUN!” Henderson screamed, simultaneously flinging away the umbrella and giving Irene a mighty push. He hauled off his sabres and dropped them on the ground. His hand closed around his wallet, fat with credit cards and dollars.

“Yow can have it, you bastards!” he yelled at the muggers and with all his strength bowled his wallet in their direction. He saw it fly open and notes and cards shower out, then he turned and ran. At once he tripped over his sabres and barked his knee savagely on the road. Through tears of pain he saw no sign of Irene and assumed she had made her escape. He heard shouts close behind him. Without a rearward glance he got to his feet and started to sprint away up the street, making difficult progress as his belted and buttoned raincoat got in the way of his pounding knees — one of which felt as if it were on fire, the kneebone like some white hot, abrasive nugget. He thrashed frantically on, though, skidding in a puddle, glancing off a dustbin. He was impelled to even greater efforts by another hoarse shout from behind and by the sound of running footsteps — light, energetic, athletic paces, slapping on the wet tarmac. Oh God, just don’t let them pour petrol on me, he prayed. Just don’t let them kick all my teeth out. He thought he was going to vomit with the effort. He felt a hand clutch at his elbow. He screamed and thrashed out wildly behind him, somehow forcing himself to keep running. A hand caught his flying coat-tail.

“OK,” he bellowed in mingled rage and terror as he was hauled to a stop, “kill me, kill me! I don’t card”

He collapsed gasping against a wall. The end of the street and safety still a dark twenty yards away. Would anyone hear his screams?

Both his arms were firmly gripped. “Sir,” a quiet voice came. “Relax, please, sir. We have your wallet and your money here.”

♦

Henderson lay in his bed in his apartment. Alone. He felt like a man awakening from a deep coma, or like an airliner emerging from a dense cloud bank into clearer air. The white clouds were his shame and embarrassment. Occasionally they swirled round to re-engulf him, but now, several hours later, they appeared finally to be on the wane.

The mighty push he had given Irene, and which was meant to propel her up the street, had in fact been badly askew. She had thudded heavily into a wall and collapsed, wordless and winded, to observe her frenzied screaming lover hurl his wallet at four returning moviegoers and then run frantically away, raincoat cracking, tumbling and falling in desperate panic-stricken flight. Two of the young men had helped her to her feet and pumped air into her lungs while the other two had overtaken the bawling, fearful Henderson. He had reconstructed this version of events later. Shame rendered him a docile automaton. Irene had been bundled into a passing taxi (now, they passed) while he, with the assistance of the four young men (they were so helpful) had scrabbled about in search of his scattered damp money and credit cards.

He looked at his watch. Half past three. The last time he had looked at his watch it had been twenty-seven minutes past three. This was, he reckoned, insomnia’s cruellest curse. Time dawdled. Time loitered. Time forgot what it was meant to be doing. Henderson could lie awake and review his entire autobiography in merciless detail — all the false starts, the self-delusions, the errors, the if-onlys — in the time it took for the minute hand on his watch to advance one tiny calibrated square. He turned over. He turned over again. He got hot and thrust a leg out from beneath the quilt. It got cold. He drew it back in. He looked at his watch. Twenty-six minutes to four.

By rights he should have been in bed with Irene. Those round flat breasts with their curiously small dark nipples. Her unshaven armpits. Her smells…They had slept together twice before. The first time as he had hovered uncertainly above her (his first sex in eight months, all technique forgotten, trusting hopefully to instinct) she had reached down, grabbed his cock at the root and virtually — there was no other adequate verb — plugged him in. The second time, as he had humped away with damp-browed, slack-jawed abandon in the dark, she had said in his ear: “Shall we stop, Henderson? Do you really think it’s worth it tonight?” He had stopped at once, his shock at the matter-of-fact reasonableness of her tone detumescing him rapidly. She had said that it had all seemed a bit pointless that night — if he’d forgive the expression — she wasn’t in the right mood for all that shoving and pounding. Nothing to do with him, she added, it was just that at certain times she found the sex-act, well, ludicrous and absurd. He had found himself agreeing, to his surprise, but there was a quality about Irene’s scornful logic that, once engaged, brooked no argument. It was like the laser-eye of a guided missile: once locked-on it couldn’t be evaded, no matter how one jinked, side-tracked or doubled back.

Tonight, though, until the disastrous arrival of the four ‘muggers’, had been different, and would have been different, he felt sure. He sank his teeth into his pillow. He enjoyed being with Irene: she could be so odd, so strange. The first time he had gone back to her apartment with her, she had invited him in then picked up a block of wood and a hammer lying in the hall way, placed the wood against a wall and hammered at it for a couple of minutes — an act she repeated every quarter of an hour. She explained to her baffled guest that her neighbours had been redecorating their apartment for the last month at all hours and, now that they were finished, she was letting them have a taste of their own medicine. The last Sunday, she confessed, she had drilled and hammered for a good two hours. “I give,” she had said; with a tough smile and looking at him directly, “as good as I get.”

That was true, Henderson had come to realize. And there also, he admitted, was the source of Irene’s potent allure. She was the very antithesis of him. Rather as cannibals are renowned to eat the brains of their enemies to acquire extra intelligence and cunning, so Henderson fancied his association with Irene might allow some of her forthright vigour to strengthen his soul…

He sat up and replumped his pillows. Over the years, as he had first located, analysed and tried to face up to his problem, the suspicion had grown that it in some way wasn’t his own fault, that in some way his country was to blame. Perhaps…

With a great thrashing heave he turned over.

He slid his hand into the cool crevice between sheet and pillow. That was what he needed. He thought of his lamentable day. He needed some of that strength. He itched with residual shame. There was no hope in ringing her up, asking if he could come round. No hope…Besides he didn’t know if he was up to it himself. When he had fallen over his sabre bag he had cut and grazed his right knee rather badly, and ruined his suit.

He looked at his watch. A quarter to four.

He turned on his side, hunched into his pillow and closed his eyes. But his brain’s life bubbled on, like an indefatigable party goer. It was something about bed, something about his body being in repose that seemed to trigger it into hyperactive motion. He ran through his favourite sexual fantasies, duly got an erection, but then found he was thinking about the problems of replacing his American Express card, which had not been uncovered by the diligent search he and his four new friends had carried out.

He wondered if he should take a sleeping pill, but decided not to. They left him more tired the following day than his usual undrugged night on the rack. Once, in a fit of frustration, he had taken three of the particular brand he was prescribed. They made him go to sleep, after a fashion; but what was worse was that he stumbled around like a moron for the next day — heavy-lidded, rubber-lipped, senses all but shut down, barely able to string three words together. At times in any given night he did drift off but never, it seemed, for more than half an hour. It was a source of constant wonder to him how his body survived on such meagre rations. He had read somewhere that eight hours of sleep per day was a mythical requirement. He was living proof of the fallacy — if such a concept were possible. For a while he played around with the words: can you prove a fallacy, disprove a fallacy…

He woke up to a horrible grinding noise punctuated by shouts and clangs. He rubbed his eyes. Wearily, he went to the window and looked out. The back of his apartment block overlooked the rear of a large hotel. In the courtyard behind it two huge green garbage trucks were being filled with rubbish. Eight foot dustbins — the size of a steamer’s smoke-stacks — were rumbled out from the kitchen by gangs of men, attached to an hydraulic arm, and automatically tipped into the truck. Throughout this, the men engaged in constant shouted conversation, competing valiantly with the whining hydraulics, the rumbling cast iron wheels of the dustbins and the surging, churning noise that emanated from the viscera of the garbage trucks.

For the first week that he had lived in the apartment block, Henderson had hung out of his sixth floor window and had vainly issued requests for a little less noise. “Excuse me,” he would call, “is there any chance of you men keeping the noise down?” The men seemed to hear him and shouted back but he couldn’t make out their replies. It had no effect, in any event. The noise lasted for fifteen to twenty minutes and took place between four and five in the morning, every morning. When, outraged, he had raised the matter with other residents of the block they assured him he would get used to it very soon. To a man and a woman, it seemed, they now slept tranquilly through the infernal din.

But they weren’t insomniacs. Henderson turned away from his bedroom window, went through to his modern kitchenette and made himself a cup of tea. He took a sip and thought about his drive South with the charming Bryant. At least it would please Melissa. He thought fondly of her for a moment. She might not be as exciting as Irene but, under the current circumstances, that seemed like a huge asset. Perhaps, he thought, he should wind up the Irene affair. But that idea saddened him. But then perhaps it was already wound up. You could never tell with Irene.

To distract himself he went back into his sitting room and took out pen and paper. He had decided to write to Lance-corporal Drew and urge him to reply promptly with all the information he possessed about Captain Dores’s death.

“Please do not worry about sparing my feelings,” Henderson wrote. “I never knew my father and am consequently deeply concerned to learn as much as I can about him. I know the place and time of his death, but not the manner of it. If you can tell me anything — or provide me with the name and address of anyone who can — I will be eternally grateful.”

He wrote out an envelope addressed to himself and rummaged in the desk drawer for his supply of British stamps. As he did so, he uncovered an unmarked, age-yellowed envelope. He felt his face spontaneously screw up with disappointment and regret. It was a letter from his father, written on his last leave home, before he departed to the Far East, to his unborn child.

Henderson had learnt of its existence only a year and a half previously and it had been responsible for initiating this quest to discover the details of his father’s death in action.

One afternoon, in the middle of a desultory conversation, his mother had referred casually to ‘that old letter of your father’s’. After the incredulous and heated recriminations had died down (“It’s taken forty years for you to deliver it!”) his mother had hurtfully handed it over.

“Read it,” she had said, a hint of tears in her voice. “You’ll understand why I never gave it to you.”

He unfolded it now, a curious taut expression on his face, and spread it carefully on the top.

My Darling Girl,

In case anything should happen to me I want you to keep and treasure this. All I have is at your disposal. My faith in you is as my affection for you and knows no bounds.

With all my love,

Your Old Dad.

Henderson had tears in his eyes as he read this, tears of frustration. Every time he read this letter he had to suppress a monstrous urge to tear it up.

“He was absolutely convinced you were going to be a girl,” his mother had said. “Utterly convinced. Nothing I said would change his mind. ‘Look after my little girl’ were his last words to me. I thought it would only upset you. It has upset you.”

Henderson sat back in his chair. There was a vague tremble running haphazardly through his body. He put the letter away and sat for a while tracing the contours of his nose with thumb and middle finger. The knowledge that letter contained represented his life’s greatest disappointment, all the more bitter because there was nothing he could do about it — could ever have done about it. It seemed absurd to worry about a father’s speculations on the sex of an unborn child in 1943…But if you were that unborn child…? Somehow by being born male he had let his father down, even though the man had never known.

He stood up. “This is ridiculous,” he said out loud. He must be cracking up. He forced himself to think of something else. Irene. There must be some way of getting Irene south. Perhaps a quick, contrite visit tomorrow. Work out some sort of compromise? He paused. Contrition, apologies, compromise, backslide. He watched his tea cool, its taste metallic in his mouth. He felt an old familiar anger at his indecisiveness. What did he really want from his life? Melissa or Irene? Always assuming they’d have him…He was tired of his own company, he realized; he wanted to inflict it on somebody else, before he got too old and it all got too late.

Chapter Five

Henderson walked into the diner round the corner from his apartment. It was long and thin and tastelessly decorated in colours of maroon and brown. In a corner near the door two or three hat-stands crowded in on a blonde Latin-American woman who kept the till. Along one wall ranked booths filed back into the gloom. Opposite them was a high formica bar, with fixed bar stools. Behind the bar in the middle was the stainless steel kitchen.

The diner was staffed with the friendliest middle-aged ladies Henderson had ever met. By his third breakfast there he was thinking of them as favourite aunts, so overwhelming was their celebration of his arrival each morning. The women all had the same hard-curled perm in varying shades of grey. Their voices were harsh — cigarette harsh — but kind. When they weren’t telling Henderson how wonderful it was to see him again, they joked and grumbled loudly to each other, shouting unconcernedly the length of the diner or joshing with Ike. Ike was the short-order cook and enjoyed teasing the waitresses and laughing at them. He did this constantly (“Martha, is that new shoes? What you old man do to you this weekend?”) regardless of the fact that the ‘girls’ never ceased bellowing their orders at him.

While he talked and traded insults he shimmied and swerved above the grills and toasters. He could crack three eggs in one hand, butter five muffins, scramble, poach, fry and slice without breaking into a sweat. At busy times the orders were coming in every three seconds. Henderson never saw him write anything down. And all the while he kept up the banter. “Hey, Joy, what you settin’ yo hair in now? Ceement?” He found his own jokes intensely diverting; his face would screw up as if in pain, his knee would bang the door of a fridge, he’d buckle slightly to one side.

This morning, being a Saturday, the diner was less busy. Henderson still felt irritated and let down by his wasted night. His eyes were hot, his nasal passages dry and prickly. He nodded to the olive-skinned blonde at the till and allowed Martha to hang up his coat.

“How are you today, Mr Dores? Feeling fine today?”

“Not so good, I’m afraid, Martha.”

“MR DORES AIN’T FEELIN’ SO GOOD, JOY!”

“Did you sleep last night, Mr Dores?”

Henderson had confessed his insomnia in week one.

“No, not very well.”

“MR DORES DIN’T SLEEP LAST NIGHT, JOY!”

“THAT’S TOO BAD. SORRY TO HEAR THAT, MR DORES!”

“Looks like Joy din’t get too much sleepin’ done neither.” Ike’s left leg gave way and he dug his elbow into his hip.

“TWO EGGS OVER, BACON, TOASTED BAGEL,” Joy bellowed from the recesses.

Two eggs hit the skillet as she spoke, a bagel slammed into a toaster, rashers fizzed under a grill.

“Martha wisht she could be kep awake nights. Right, Martha?”

“Not by you, that’s for sure.”

High-pitched wheezing from Ike.

“What’s it gonna be this morning, Mr Dores?”

Henderson thought. “Poach one, scramble one on lightly toasted rye. Three rashers of bacon — burned — um, cottage fries. Orange juice and a toasted English, one side only.”

“POACH ONE, SCRAMBLE ONE ON PALE RYE. CREMATE THE BACON, THREE. FRIES. TOASTED ENGLISH, ONE SIDE ONLY.”

“Actually, could you make that poach two, no toast, hold the fries, some bacon and a bagel and lox?”

“IKE, MAKE THAT LAST ONE POACH TWO, NO TOAST, HOLD THE FRIES, BAGEL AND LOX.”

Henderson smiled with guilty satisfaction. He had been trying for days to concoct an order that would thwart Ike’s astonishing memory and co-ordination. This was anew and unfair ploy, changing the order after it had been delivered.

“You comin’ out wit me tonight, Martha?” Ike asked over his shoulder.

“Not if you was the last man in the world!”

Ike ran on the spot for five seconds.

“SCRAMBLE ONE ON A MUFFIN, TO GO. TWO EGGS UP, CREMATE THE BACON!” Joy boomed.

Henderson tensed. Three orders at once, Ike and Martha were still shouting at each other. The juice came. About — it seemed — thirty seconds later his eggs were in front of him. Two poached, three perfect crisp rashers, a bagel and lox. He sighed and looked up. Ike was drinking ice-water.

“Don’t get a breakfast like that in England, do you, Mr Dores?” Martha asked.

Henderson had to concede the rightness of this remark. The last time he’d ordered a cooked breakfast in England, the egg yolk nestled in a halo of transparent albumen, the grease in the fried bread furred up his palate for several hours and he had been unable to remove the bark-like rind from the floppy bacon.

The thought of England subdued him. He ate his breakfast quickly, silently resolving to make his peace with Irene before he picked up his hired car. Perhaps she could fly down and meet him later? He’d suggest it to her, make up some story about a colleague coming in the car at the last moment.

Outside, he stood for a while on the pavement. The sun shone, but it was cooler today after the rain. He breathed deeply, flexed his shoulders and summoned a cab from the slow moving stream of traffic. He got in and sat back on the wide seat. He was beginning to feel slightly better. The city in the morning always had that effect on him. The cab took him smoothly across town to Irene’s apartment on the upper west side.

Once there, he paced up and down for a moment or two rehearsing his apology before attempting to step into the lobby. Irene’s apartment was in an old brownstone that had been extensively renovated inside. There were heavy plate-glass doors at the entrance, through which he could see an expanse of tiled flooring leading to a stainless steel lift. A small man sat at a kind of lectern to one side.

The heavy glass doors would not open. Henderson pressed the buzzer beneath a loudspeaker on a slim pedestal.

“Yeah?” The little man spoke into a microphone at the side of a lectern.

“I’ve come to see Ms Irene Stien.”

“She expecting you?”

“Well not exactly…”

“Name?”

“Dores.”

The man pressed some buttons on the console in front of him and spoke — inaudibly to Henderson — into the microphone.

“She’s not in.”

Henderson pressed the entryphone button again. He detested these machines.

“Could I speak to her, please?”

The little man ignored him. Henderson rapped loudly on the thick glass, hurting his knuckles. Wearily, the man got off his stool and approached the doors. Henderson recognized him. A small Slavonic-looking fellow with a waxy, heavily-pored skin. He had one of the most negligible foreheads Henderson had ever seen: his hairline began an inch above his eyebrows. On his nylon blazer was pinned a badge. “A. BRA.” This was Adolf Bra, Irene’s doorman.

By leaning his weight against one door a half-inch gap could be created. Bra approached.

“Could I speak with Ms Stien,” Henderson repeated firmly. Speak ‘with’, he thought. Good God.

“Ms Stien is not within her domicile.”

For some reason this pedantry made Henderson even angrier.

“Did you learn that at doorman school? Look, you know me. And I saw you speaking to her, for Christ’s sake. I just want a word.”

Bra looked at his fingers. With the edge of one thumbnail he slid something from beneath the other.

“I told you. Ms Stien is not within—”

“Her domicile. I know.” Henderson forced a smile. “I don’t believe you. I’m a friend of Ms Stien. If you can’t let me speak to her I shall report you to—” he couldn’t think to whom. “I shall report you.”

Bra waggled his forefinger and leant towards the gap. Reflexively, Henderson did the same.

“Go suck your cock,” Bra breathed. His breath had a pungent, pickled odour, as if he lived exclusively on a diet of capers.

Henderson recoiled, too surprised and nauseated to retort. If he had had his sabre he would have driven it through the gap in the door and skewered Bra’s narrow body.

“You’ll regret this!” he shouted. He should have sworn as colourfully back at him, he realized seconds later, but he felt he had already made something of a fool of himself, a capital crime in the Englishman’s book. Reverting to type, he gathered what he could of his dignity around him and smiled pityingly at Bra, now back behind his lectern. Common little man, he said to himself. Serf. Nation of peasants, what do you expect? Diet of turnips and liverwurst. Vitamin deficiency, rickets, inbreeding. Subnormal, subhuman…He checked himself, feeling suddenly ashamed. He’d have him in the gas chambers next. The man was only doing his job — albeit uncourteously — there was no need for such poisonous hatred.

He walked up the street until he found a phone, inserted a dime and prodded out Irene’s number.

“Hi there, this is Irene. I’m really sorry I’m not in right now—”

Answering machine. It was like trying to see the President.

“—promise I’ll get back to you. Beeee.”

Henderson wanted to say he was sorry, explain everything, categorize his emotions.

“Irene. This is Henderson…I’ll phone tomorrow.” He hung up. His voice had sounded stilted, pompous. She’d never phone back someone who spoke like that…He stood alone on the street, balked, frustrated, all his good intentions stymied and snookered. What more could he do? There was nothing for it but to hire the car, collect Bryant and head south.