The Sparsholt Affair

2

When Evert Dax started reading, Johnny took his small sketchbook from his pocket and held it closed on his knee. It gave him a sense of purpose, and security, while he sipped from his glass of punch, smiled with the general laughter at something Dax had said, and looked around in a curious prickle of feelings. There had been a strange moment, as people were finding their seats, when Denis mentioned he’d asked ‘the boy from Hendy’s’ to stay on. Dax had peered at him pleasantly over his glasses, Johnny came forward to shake hands, raising the candle in his other hand as if to see his way, and said his name – and then, instead of the usual quick blink or two of absorption and adjustment, Dax blushed, laughed rather oddly, a queer five seconds while his blue eyes ran quickly over Johnny’s face and then away, as if too shy to look at him again: ‘Johnny, you say? . . . yes, indeed . . . well, of course – please!’ before he turned his back, ‘Right! Right!’, raising his voice and calling them all to order. These days the fairly rapid deduction that Johnny was David Sparsholt’s son rarely led to such obvious confusion.

He was glad he was at the back. He opened the sketchbook and tilted it discreetly towards the candle beside him. It was really a subject that needed colour, the room reimagined in soft-edged zones of crimson and grey, with a dozen little flames picked up in the mirror and in the broad still depth of the window. The elderly faces were hollowed and highlit by the candle glow, caressed and gently caricatured. Dax’s boyish head, with its wavy grey hair and blurred glasses, was a subject Johnny could stare at without being rude – and Dax himself still seemed shy of looking at him: he sat forward, the bright edge of the typewritten sheaf trembling slightly. On the wall beyond him were six or seven pictures, hints of colour and dim reflections lost in shadow. The event he was describing took place in Oxford during the War – it seemed his famous father was a writer, who had come to speak to a club that Dax was a member of, an occasion when various things had gone wrong. There was no mention of his only having one leg, and Johnny wondered if this was another thing this group of old friends took for granted. The tone was ironic and old-fashioned, and Freddie Green himself appeared in the story, which added a kind of nervous humour to the reading: people glanced at him all the time. Beyond that, the article was bobbing with names that meant nothing to Johnny, and he knew from the start, with the buzz of the drink and the distraction of drawing, that he wasn’t going to take much of it in. The present gathering of unknown faces had opened at once into another, a crowd without faces and even more ungraspable.

He peered across the rough half-circle of guests, who were drinking and smoking and paying attention in their own ways, one woman with her eyes closed but moving her hands on the arm of her chair to show she wasn’t asleep. Furthest away, by the window, and almost hidden behind Dax, a middle-aged man with a grey goatee was leaning into the light to take notes. Johnny quickly captured the tilt of his head, and the way he kept glancing at Clover, who was on the floor, curled like an enormous cat at Freddie’s feet. They made a base for the drawing, with the bearded man at the apex, a triangle of unguessed relationships, with all the teasing oddity and secret connectedness of London life.

He tried to get Freddie’s long comical face, fixed in a self-deprecating smirk, which slid, before Johnny could get it right, into a listener’s unwitting look of regret and boredom. Iffy, leaning on the arm of the sofa, was smoking, her head lowered and eyes raised towards Dax, nodding now and then as if taking instruction from him. When the others laughed she carried on staring and nodding, then gave a rueful grunt and stubbed out her cigarette. Next to her the grey lady sat with her empty glass in her lap and her left eyebrow raised a sceptical quarter-inch, as if she’d already thought of several things to say.

Behind them both and leaning on the console table Denis Drury stood watching. Had he given up the last chair for Johnny? Or did he, as Dax’s secretary, prefer to stand, like a servant, while the guests were seated? He didn’t laugh with the others, he had the functionary’s blankness of respect or indifference, his thoughts possibly focused on what was to follow the reading. The candlelight suited his pale clear skin, arched eyebrows and large brown eyes; Johnny outlined the fine nose, small full-lipped mouth, the glossy black lick of hair, shaded it tight over the ears. Maybe his mother was Italian, or Spanish? He was like the Carreras twins at Johnny’s school who came from Tenerife. Denis Drury was hardly an exotic name – unlike Evert Dax, though Dax himself, in a well-cut tweed suit, looked wholly English, and spoke in a pleasant deep voice like an ideal family doctor, or solicitor. ‘Such,’ he said, ‘were my father’s troubles, equipped with a wife and two mistresses who lived, unknowingly he supposed, within half a mile of each other. Faced with such troubles, his reaction was naturally to make them worse.’ Now Freddie was grinning again, and Dax himself, with a sudden smile, paused and looked at Johnny before going on. One or two of the others turned, and then looked away with the tact that betrays itself. Denis himself slowly turned his head, stared at him for four or five seconds, then closed his eyes with an almost invisible smile. Johnny blushed and reached down for his drink; a minute later he turned back the page and went again over the lines around Dax’s mouth and neck, knowing he was spoiling it.

Over by the window, the grey-bearded man caught his eye, shot him a narrow smile, looked down, stared up at him through his eyebrows, then looked down again: Johnny looked down quickly too, at the simple but confusing recognition that he wasn’t taking notes, and that all the while he’d been drawing he was being drawn himself. He closed his little notebook, sheathed the pencil in its spine, and tilted the last oily drop out of his glass. The man frowned and rubbed and peered again, as if the relation had acceptably cleared between them, and put in what Johnny knew were the long swoops of his hair. He couldn’t help a quick shiver under the inspection, as he turned his head.

The reading seemed to end sooner than anyone expected, after a moment there was a scatter of thoughtful applause and a few nods and murmurs of praise, as people reached for their glasses and several stood up. It wasn’t clear if Dax also expected more – as he tidied his papers he had the haunted look of someone who must adjust in ten seconds to a smaller success than he’d hoped for. Johnny picked up his parcel and came forward quickly. ‘Yes, very good, Evert,’ Freddie Green was saying, and Dax said, ‘Was it all right?’ as though he’d already forgotten it.

‘Someone should write a history of the old Club.’

‘I think Evert sort of has,’ put in Iffy, who standing up was taller than both of them, and a striking figure with her red hair and long red skirt above brown suede boots.

‘That year I was in charge, it was really rather marvellous,’ said Freddie. ‘I got Orwell later on, of course.’

‘Well, indeed,’ said Dax, ‘I was in the Army by then,’ smiling anxiously at Johnny as though his opinion was what he most wanted: ‘I hope that wasn’t too dreary for you.’

‘Oh! . . . not at all,’ said Johnny, and feeling as he said it that he might sound rude, ‘I’m afraid I didn’t know who most of the people were.’

‘Ah, no, I suppose not . . .’ said Dax.

‘Sic transit,’ said Iffy.

Johnny felt he must be clear. ‘The reason I came was to bring you this, from Mr Hendy’ – handing over his parcel crumpled at the edge now from carrying.

‘Ah, yes!’ said Freddie, as if the evening had suddenly become interesting.

Johnny bit his lip gently while Dax tore the wrapping and let it drop away when he took hold of the inner cocoon of tissue paper. ‘Mr Hendy says he’s done the best he can, but some of the damage was quite severe.’

‘Right, let’s see,’ said Dax, with a little throat-clearing at the mention of damage.

‘Oh, that’s come up nicely,’ said Freddie, as Dax discarded the tissue and held the picture under the light from the candelabra. ‘I’d quite forgotten it was that colour.’

‘What’s this?’ said the grey lady, coming up.

‘It’s the little Goyle, Jill, you may not remember, it used to hang in my study. One of the first pictures I ever bought.’ Dax turned it over – it was signed on the back ‘Goyle 36’. ‘I don’t know what Stanley did to his blacks, but they always crack up. And no doubt thirty years of coal fires and cigarette smoke had rather dulled its impact.’ To Johnny, in the shop, the wonder had been that something so modern could look already so injured and antique; though out of its frame, the original colours, covered and squashed by the off-white slip, had showed brightly round the edges, as if still wet. Now, restored, the small abstract landscape, thick blocks of black and green beneath a stripe of white, gave no hint of these indignities. ‘Well, there you are.’

Jill seemed cautiously satisfied. ‘I’m sure Ivan will be pleased,’ she said.

‘Oh . . .’ said Iffy. ‘Ivan’s not here tonight.’

‘I’ve just seen him,’ said Jill.

‘Do you know Ivan?’ said Freddie, with raised eyebrows and a wondering shake of the head, his amusing readiness to picture Johnny’s confusion.

‘Um, I shouldn’t think so,’ said Johnny. ‘Who is he . . . ?’

‘Ah, there he is!’ said Dax, warmly focusing attention away from himself. Just inside the door now was a smiling young man also in a tweed suit, talking to Herta as if she were the Queen and not just the grumpy old woman handing him a drink. He gave a hoot of laughter, then charmingly pursued an anecdote of some kind, while Herta, head on one side, looked up at him with coy signs of the approval she had firmly withheld from Johnny.

‘You don’t know him?’ Jill made sure.

‘I don’t know anyone!’ Johnny said.

‘Oh, you’ll like him,’ said Iffy, with her heavy nod.

‘We’ve all grown awfully fond of him,’ said Jill. ‘He’s Stanley Goyle’s nephew.’ Johnny wasn’t sure if this was offered as the reason for their fondness.

‘Oh, I see . . . really . . .’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Freddie, with another humorous shake of the head, ‘you won’t easily dislodge Ivan from our affections.’

Now Ivan slipped across the room towards them, neat, self-possessed, with the hunch of playful apology, dark eyes glittering in the candlelight. Johnny felt curious, relieved, and under some kind of social expectation, as in childhood, when there was someone else his own age he would have to play with. He tried not to take Ivan’s suit, not new, but smart, and worn with a waistcoat and wide red tie, as a comment on his own tight cords, bush jacket and open-neck shirt. Ivan greeted his elders with rapid nods, ‘Hello, hello . . .’ and grinned at Johnny, and shook his hand. ‘You must be Jonathan,’ he said, with a Welsh lilt and sense of meaning something more: ‘I’m Ivan.’

‘You missed a marvellous talk,’ said Freddie.

‘Oh, I know, I know, I’m sorry . . .’ said Ivan, kissing Iffy, nodding to Jill, and then kissing Dax himself on both cheeks, which caused a fleeting self-consciousness in them both.

‘Ivan’s been helping me with it,’ said Dax. ‘He knows all about it’ – looking at him, Ivan’s suit somehow mimicking the older man’s style. ‘He’s been a terrific help.’

‘Isn’t that Denis’s job?’ said Jill.

‘Oh, Denis has got his own work to see to,’ said Dax.

Jill looked round for Denis. ‘I thought you were his work,’ she said.

*

Johnny went to the lavatory, and waited politely some way from the door but not too far off to claim he was next. He was happy to escape from Ivan and then as soon as he’d left the room he was anxious to get back. Along the carpeted passageway many pictures hung, and he picked up the candlestick from the table to see them better. There was a large brown portrait photograph of a man with a bald head and a white moustache who Johnny thought might be Evert’s father; two framed cartoons of impenetrable pre-war humour; and nearest the bedroom at the end (beyond whose open door his candlelight bobbed back at him from a mirror) a red chalk drawing of a naked man, with a body-builder’s chest and ridged stomach, artily cut off at the knee and the neck, and with a high-minded blur where the cock and balls should be. He heard the loo flush just as Denis came towards him along the hallway. ‘Aha . . !’ Denis said, and stopped to peer briefly at the drawing too. ‘Ancient pornography – is there anything more sad.’

‘Oh . . .’ said Johnny, as if nervously agreeing.

‘Or perhaps you like it,’ said Denis.

‘Well,’ said Johnny, ‘no, not really my sort of thing,’ but seeing it almost as a symbol of the London life – it could certainly never have hung in his father’s house, or even his mother’s.

‘No, I’m sure.’ Denis pondered for a moment. ‘Come and look at this,’ he said, going past him into the bedroom.

‘Is it urgent?’ said Johnny, and laughed apologetically – the lady who’d been interested in his hair was emerging at that moment from the lavatory.

‘It won’t take long,’ said Denis sharply, but then stopping and giving him an abruptly courteous, almost grateful smile. Johnny had to leave the candle where it was for the lady and followed Denis stiffly into the bedroom. It was more than a mere reflex that made him flick the dead light switch on and off. The glimmer from the passageway showed red curtains hitched back, the side of a wardrobe, and the shadowy edge of a bed. He saw himself stoop forward, in the mirror, in cautious silhouette.

‘There’s a flashlight here somewhere,’ said Denis, feeling on a bedside table behind the door – there was a clatter of small things knocked over. Then a beam of light, stifled at first in the shrouded hump of the pillows, then swinging round, blindingly reflected for a moment in the uncurtained window. ‘Ah, there you are.’ Denis played the torch up and down, with the murmur of uncertain judgement, over Johnny wincing and turning his head. It was a game whose rules had yet to be explained. ‘I thought, since you like art’ – he let him go, sent the beam across to where a dark-framed picture hung above the fireplace. ‘Yes, that’s right, you’re the art-Johnny.’ He reached out to steer him across. ‘Come over here,’ taking Johnny’s wrist.

‘Oh yes . . .’ – dazzled and cringing he saw Denis was mocking him for suspicions they both knew he was right to feel. The white glare of the torch floated on his retina, jumped and floated across what seemed to be a large Graham Sutherland, its hooded picture-light now casting shadow, the red skeletal plant or tree dramatic in the gloom. ‘Mm . . . great,’ said Johnny, who’d been taught to respect Sutherland but had never really liked him.

‘I knew you’d like it,’ said Denis, relaxing his grip – at which Johnny took his hand back. ‘I’ve never cared for it myself, though I’m told it’s worth a packet’ – and he laughed, as he had stared earlier, with an odd mixture of respect and disdain.

‘Yes, I suppose so . . .’ said Johnny. The unworldly ethos at Hoole, when he was a student, discouraged all talk about the price of a picture, and he still felt unhappy with the subject now he found himself working for a dealer. Denis toured the torch’s beam across the painting, which showed it as eerily material, a surface blankly unconcerned with what it depicted; the rough sweeps of white and grey flared back.

‘So are you often to be found in the Notting Hill station Gents?’

‘What . . . ?’ Johnny said, blinking as the light swept into his face again, and feeling for a moment as if the sudden arrest he’d felt almost certain of there had come for him now. The idea only lasted for a dreamlike two seconds, but the blood rose to his face. All he managed to say was, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You probably couldn’t see much through all that hair’ – Denis seemed to dare him to move as he reached out and lifted Johnny’s hair and pushed it back past his right ear and held his scared but indignant gaze with his large dark eyes. ‘But I saw you,’ he said, ‘very clearly,’ just as he turned off the torch and tossed it on to the bed. He laughed distantly, pulled Johnny hard against him, made him gasp and in that same moment stuck his tongue into his open mouth. For a breathless five seconds of surprise and curiosity, Johnny let it happen, not quite responding as Denis’s tongue, neither warm nor cool, and abnormally long, seemed to worm its way into him – until he twisted his head away. Denis had him caught against the side of the bed. ‘What?’ he said.

‘Sorry . . .’ said Johnny, ‘please . . .’ pushing at him, but with an anxious sense that perhaps this was what people did, he was rejecting a compliment, even a privilege – Denis, under that waistcoat and silk tie, was hard and sinewy, his breath in his face as he pressed against him, but visible only as a dark obstruction against the faint candlelight from outside. It was confusing, the moment Johnny gave in, Denis lost interest, and had let him go.

‘I see you’re not your father’s son,’ he said.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Johnny, and Denis gave a surprising laugh, as if pleased at a show of spirit after all. Johnny slid round him and out of the room, and locked the lavatory door behind him with a gasp of relief, though his face in the mirror revealed something further, the little flinch of guilt, whatever happened.

Ten minutes later he was sitting on the window seat with Ivan, their plates on their laps. He smiled at him and said, ‘So you were expecting me.’

‘Mm?’ said Ivan, shaking the tip of his fringe from his eyes.

‘You knew my name.’

Ivan smiled back. ‘Oh, well, Denis said you might be coming.’

‘Oh did he?’

‘A little surprise for Evert, I think.’

Johnny wanted to say he’d had a bit of a surprise himself, but he didn’t like to sound stupid. He had the soft burn in his mouth still, and kept it to himself, but imagined just mentioning it, not sure if Ivan would think he was complaining or boasting. Denis was going round with two wine bottles, and when he got to them he refilled their glasses with a bored look as if he barely knew who they were.

‘Why would it be a surprise?’ Johnny said.

Ivan looked at him and after three seconds gazed out and nodded at the rest of the room. ‘Well . . . fresh blood,’ he said.

‘Oh . . .’

He lowered his voice. ‘The thing is, Denny’s still quite young, and as you can see most of the rest of the gang are getting on a bit. You know Freddie and Evert were at Oxford together – well, you’ve just heard. So was Jill. Freddie’s going to be fifty-five on the fourth of June.’

‘Is that all?’ said Johnny.

Ivan shot him a glance. ‘The old lady talking to Evert was one of his father’s girlfriends, Glynis Holt. She’s the one Evert mentioned in his reading. I thought she looked a bit shocked; but you know that’s the point with the Memo Club – they have to tell the truth.’

‘Oh, do they.’

‘Not all the time, obviously! – just on the third Tuesday of the month . . .’

‘Right . . .’

‘You know, that’s when someone reads a memoir.’

‘And how do you fit in, then?’

‘I sort of come and go,’ said Ivan. He peered at them all fondly.

‘I’d have thought you were a bit young to write a memoir,’ said Johnny.

‘Yes, but I’m saving things up,’ Ivan said.

‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’

‘Ooh, I don’t know about that.’ Ivan looked at him oddly, Johnny felt the attraction of his soft pale face and brilliant dark eyes that he watched the tips of his fringe slide into and be blinked away. His small white teeth leant inwards in a moistly carnivorous way. ‘So how is your father?’ he said.

‘My father . . .’ Johnny blinked too. ‘He’s fine.’

‘Because he remarried, didn’t he, after . . . all that?’ said Ivan quickly, and as if David Sparsholt’s personal happiness were his main worry. He went red but he went on, ‘His secretary – if I’ve got that right.’

‘Well, yes, he did – it was a while ago now. Six years.’

‘Ah . . . good, good’ – and perhaps sensing he was going too fast on the question, ‘And what have you been getting up to in London?’

Johnny told him, flatly, taking a moment still to get over the previous question: working all day on pictures and picture frames, with the bus down to Chelsea each morning from Shepherd’s Bush. ‘I’m living with my aunt,’ he said.

‘And is that OK for you? Your father’s sister?’

‘No, my mother’s. It’s all right,’ said Johnny, though Kitty’s determined attempts to look after him only made him miss his mother more. ‘I don’t want to be there for ever.’

‘We’ll have to see what we can do about it,’ said Ivan, whose confident grasp seemed to reach into the future as well as the past.

‘And the three-day week, as well, it’s all been a bit strange.’

Ivan tilted his head towards the group sitting nearest them, where the situation was being talked about. The man who’d been speaking when Johnny first arrived, a tall, red-faced man with a bow-tie, said, ‘The City’s virtually ground to a standstill. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see total collapse within a month.’ One of the people with him looked crushed by this, the other slyly sceptical. ‘You know what Gerry’s saying – sell up while you can, the Communists will be in charge by the end of February.’

‘What am I supposed to sell?’ said the worried man. ‘You mean the house?’

‘And I’ve been going to some concerts,’ Johnny said. Ivan smiled sympathetically. ‘I went to hear Haitink conduct Mahler 6 last week.’

‘How was it?’ said Ivan.

‘It was amazing,’ said Johnny, ‘as you can imagine.’

But it wasn’t clear Ivan could. ‘You’ll have to talk to Evert about that – he’s mad about Mahler. I think he may even have been there. Is it the very loud, very long one?’

‘Well, yes . . .’ Johnny said, not feeling that this told the whole story, or indeed distinguished it from half a dozen other Mahler symphonies. ‘It was the first time I’ve heard it live.’

‘Brian, of course,’ said Ivan, his smile redirected at two older people who’d been going round with their plates and not finding anywhere exactly right to sit down. One of them was the pointed little man with a grey beard and half-moon glasses who’d been drawing Johnny earlier, now with the small pretty woman who’d been worried about his hair; the subject seemed still to be between them, a possible link or embarrassment. The boys shoved up together, thigh to thigh, and when Ivan reached round Johnny’s shoulder to put his glass on the windowsill behind them Johnny felt the first glow and lift of nearly certain consent and concealed his excitement with his napkin.

‘I’m Brian Savory,’ the man said, as they settled.

‘Oh, Brian and Sally,’ said Ivan: ‘Jonathan Sparsholt.’

‘Johnny,’ said Johnny.

‘That’s a good name,’ said Brian, with a quick smile, spreading his napkin. ‘Yes, we had a Sparsholt generator at our last place – started up like a dream, never gave us a moment’s trouble.’ This was a kind of blundering tactfulness Johnny was used to, and didn’t mind. ‘You must be connected? . . . It’s an unusual name.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Johnny said.

Sally seemed more conventionally sensitive to the matter. She gave her hesitant smile: ‘Did you say you work with Cyril Hendy?’

‘That’s right,’ said Johnny again.

‘Wily old Cyril,’ said Brian.

‘You know he knew Sickert?’ said Sally.

‘Yes, I did, actually,’ said Johnny.

‘I expect he talks very fascinatingly about it. He worked for Sickert when he was a boy.’

In fact Cyril was reserved, nearly silent, on all subjects of such obvious interest. ‘He doesn’t talk much,’ said Johnny.

Sally narrowed her eyes for a moment. ‘I think he even knew Whistler.’

‘He can’t have known Whistler, love,’ said Brian. ‘Whistler died seventy years ago.’

‘Well, how old’s old Cyril . . . ? No, I suppose you’re right. But Sickert he certainly knew – knew him very well. And a lot of the painters, I think.’

Brian sawed off a square of cold beef and balanced some coleslaw on top of it. ‘Evert’s memoir was rather good, I thought.’

‘Mm,’ said Johnny, with a mouthful himself, a valuable delay.

‘Do the young still read the great A. V., I wonder?’

‘Oh,’ said Johnny, swallowing, ‘well, I haven’t . . .’ He looked to Ivan, who said,

‘Did you know him, Brian?’

‘I met him once, very briefly. I’m not sure I could read him now.’

‘He’s not my author,’ said Sally.

‘Not much fun, is he, love,’ said Brian. He smiled at Johnny. ‘You’re a friend of Denis’s.’

‘Well . . .’ said Johnny. ‘Does Denis have a lot of friends?’

‘Oh, you know, a certain amount,’ said Brian. He glanced across the room. ‘I keep meaning to say, I like your trousers.’

‘Oh, thank you . . .’ said Johnny, confused, though he loved them himself.

‘Elephant cord, aren’t they?’

‘Are they, yes, I think . . .’ – feeling now that Brian was trying to put him at his ease about being so casually dressed.

‘Jolly snug, I bet.’

Sally peered at Johnny’s knees with a smile of timorous interest. ‘They’re certainly a lovely colour.’

‘Honey,’ said Brian; then flinched and looked away again. Johnny ran his hands down his thighs and leaning forward flapped a crumb off the wide triangle of the flare. He felt hurried into boldness,

‘I want to see your sketches.’

‘Ah!’ said Brian. ‘So you shall. But only if I can see yours.’

When he spotted the first people coming in with trifle, Johnny took all their plates for them and went into the kitchen, where Herta told him curtly to leave them on the table; she seemed annoyed at being helped, or at least at being helped by him. On the landing as he came back Freddie and Clover were doing up their coats. ‘Oh, are you off?’ said Johnny, amused by his own tone.

Freddie nodded, and looked round with a quick wince; Clover, throwing her hair back over her coat collar, gave him an expectant look. ‘Yes, we’ll slip away,’ said Freddie. There was something confidential in his smile. ‘We like to be home in time for Kojak.’

‘Oh, well . . . !’ said Johnny, as Freddie, picking up the candlestick he’d given him earlier, moved to the top of the stairs. Above them, a further flight rose into immediate darkness. ‘But the telly won’t be working, will it.’

‘Of course I take your point,’ said Freddie. ‘But it would be awful to miss it if the power comes on. You know the plots can be quite hard to follow, and we’ve found if you miss the start . . .’

‘Right,’ said Johnny. He was puzzled to be still here when they were going, but he had already a preoccupied sense that he had to get back to Ivan.

‘We’ll see you again, I’m sure,’ said Freddie, while Clover nodded in her oddly teasing solidarity with him, and they set off carefully downstairs, with one or two sharp admonitions to each other. Johnny watched the candlelight inattentively pass a dark portrait below, and then fan and fade when they’d turned the corner and were hidden by the cage of the lift.

‘Oh, are they going.’ It was Ivan, beside him, amused but unsurprised.

‘Oh hello!’ – with the soft jolt of happiness he touched his arm. Then, ‘You’re not going too?’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Johnny boldly.

Now Ivan leant to his ear: ‘My dear, I live here.’

‘Oh, do you? What, in this house . . . ?’

Ivan stood close, looking over his shoulder as if quickly assessing the situation. ‘Come and see my room if you like.’

Johnny’s heart skittered with worry, and pleasure too, and he said, ‘So how many people live here?’

‘Oh, more than you’d think,’ said Ivan, turning but with his left hand resting still in the curve of Johnny’s back, where Denis’s hand had laid claim to him before. He led him upstairs, and in the stumbling shadow of the next landing took a pen from his pocket and turned a narrow line of white light on the doorways to left and right.

‘So what does Mr Dax do?’ said Johnny, just behind him.

Ivan looked round, seemed surprised. ‘Well, he’s a writer, and an art historian, obviously.’

‘He seems very nice,’ said Johnny, not sure if he meant it.

‘Evert? Yes, isn’t he heaven – now careful here . . .’ – at the far end of the landing a door like a large black cupboard opened on a narrower, steeper stair. The short ascent was a muddle of shadows and lost bearings.

‘My God . . .’ said Johnny, chuckling, careful but not wanting to be left behind. Now in the space under the roof the spindly beam jumped across bookshelves, heaps of books, a desk with a typewriter, a small bed that had been made and then lain on, the cover screwed up. It was extremely cold, and Johnny hugged himself before he hugged Ivan, hands slipped round him inside his jacket, and then he found he had kissed him.

‘So this is my room,’ Ivan said, holding him back with his free hand, as if overlooking what had just happened, and delaying whatever might happen next. Johnny laughed in the dark just at the moment the overhead light came on: ‘Oh shit!’ From far downstairs the noise of jeering relief just tinged with regret made a weird acoustic comment on their situation, squinting under the bright bulb of the attic room.