What a Carve Up!

1

It was purely by chance that I found myself writing a book about the Winshaws. The story of how it all came about is quite complicated and can probably wait. Sufficient to say that if it had not been for an entirely accidental meeting on a railway journey from London to Sheffield in the month of June, 1982, I would never have become their official historian and my life would have taken a very different turn. An amusing vindication, when you think about it, of the theories outlined in my first novel, Accidents Will Happen. But I doubt if many people remember that far back.

The 1980s were not a good time for me, on the whole. Perhaps it had been a mistake to accept the Winshaw commission in the first place; perhaps I should have carried on writing fiction in the hope that one day I would be able to make a living at it. After all, my second novel had attracted a certain amount of attention, and there had at least been a few isolated moments of glory — such as the week when I’d been featured in a regular Sunday newspaper article, usually devoted to vastly more famous writers, entitled ‘The First Story I Ever Wrote’. (You had to supply a sample of something you had written when you were very young, along with a photograph of yourself as a child. The overall effect was rather cute. I’ve still got the cutting somewhere.) But my financial situation remained desperate — the general public persisting in a steely indifference to the products of my imagination — and so I had sound economic reasons for trying my luck with Tabitha Winshaw and her peculiarly generous offer.

The terms of this offer were as follows. It seemed that in the seclusion of her long-term inmate’s quarters at the Hatchjaw-Bassett Institute for the Actively Insane, Miss Winshaw, then aged seventy-six and by all accounts madder than ever, had taken it into her sad, confused head that the time was ripe for the history of her glorious family to be laid before the world. In the face of implacable opposition from her relatives, and drawing only upon her own far from inconsiderable resources, she had set up a trust fund for this purpose and enlisted the services of the Peacock Press, a discreetly operated private concern which specialized in the publication (for a small fee) of military memoirs, family chronicles and the reminiscences of minor public figures. They, for their part, were entrusted with the task of finding a suitable writer, of proven experience and ability, who was to be paid an annual, five-figure salary throughout the entire period of research and composition, conditional upon a progress report — or a ‘significant portion’ of completed manuscript — being presented to the publishers and forwarded for Tabitha’s inspection every year. Otherwise, it seemed that time and money were no object. She wanted the best, the most thorough, the most honest and most up-to-date history that it was possible to compile. There was no deadline for final submission.

The story of how I came to be offered this job is, as I mentioned, a long and complicated one, and must wait its turn; but once the offer was made, I had little hesitation in accepting it. The prospect of a regular income was itself too much to resist, but I was also, if truth be told, in no hurry to start writing another work of fiction. So it seemed like the perfect arrangement. I bought my flat in Battersea (property was cheaper in those days) and set to work with some eagerness. Inspired by the very novelty of the enterprise, I wrote the first two thirds of the book in a couple of years, delving deep into the Winshaws’ early history and recording everything that I found there with absolute candour: for it was quite obvious to me, from the very beginning, that I was essentially dealing with a family of criminals, whose wealth and prestige were founded upon every manner of swindling, forgery, larceny, robbery, thievery, trickery, jiggery-pokery, hanky-panky, plundering, looting, sacking, misappropriation, spoliation and embezzlement. Not that the Winshaws’ activities were openly criminal, or indeed ever recognized as such by polite society: in fact, as far as I could determine, there was only one convicted felon in the family. (I refer, of course, to Matthew’s great uncle, Joshua Winshaw, universally acknowledged as the most brilliant pickpocket and burglar of his time — the most celebrated of his achievements being, as you will scarcely need to be reminded, his audacious visit to the country home of a rival family, the Kenways of Britteridge: where, during the course of a public guided tour in the company of seventeen tourists, he succeeded — quite unnoticed — in pilfering a Louis XV grandfather clock worth tens of thousands of pounds.) But because every penny of the Winshaw fortune — dating right back to the seventeenth century, when Alexander Winshaw first made it his business to corner a lucrative portion of the burgeoning slave trade — could be said to have derived, by some route or other, from the shameless exploitation of persons weaker than themselves, I felt that the word ‘criminal’ fitted the bill well enough, and that I was performing a useful service by bringing this fact to the attention of the public, while staying scrupulously within the bounds of my commission.

There came a point, however, somewhere in the mid 1980s, when I realized that I had lost nearly all enthusiasm for the project. For one thing there was my father’s death. I hadn’t been in close contact with my parents for a number of years, but the days of my childhood — a calm, happy and untroubled childhood — had formed bonds of empathy and affection between us which made the fact of our physical separation irrelevant. My father was only sixty-one when he died and his loss affected me deeply. I spent several months in the Midlands, doing whatever I could to comfort my mother, and when I returned to London and the Winshaws it was with unmistakable feelings of distaste.

In another two or three years’ time I was to abandon work on the book altogether, but before that happened a significant change had taken place in the nature of my research. I had by now reached the final chapters, in which I was to have the honour and the duty of celebrating the achievements of those members of the family who still had the good fortune to be with us: and it was here that I began to meet with serious opposition, not only from my own conscience, but from the Winshaws themselves. Some of them, it grieves me to say, became unaccountably shy in the face of my inquiries, and even began to show a scarcely befitting modesty when I invited them to discuss the details of their glittering careers. Thus it became something of a pattern for my interviews to break up amid scenes of what can only be described as unpleasantness. Thomas Winshaw threw me out on to the street when I asked him to disclose the precise nature of his involvement with the Westland Helicopters incident which had resulted in the resignation of two cabinet ministers in 1986. Henry Winshaw attempted to throw my manuscript on to the fire at the Heartland Club, when he discovered that it drew attention to some minor discrepancies between the socialist programme upon which he had first risen to power, and his subsequent role (for which he will perhaps be better remembered) as a prominent spokesman for the extreme right and, above all, one of the key figures behind the clandestine dismantling of the National Health Service. And I sometimes wonder, even now, whether it was entirely by coincidence that I happened to be assaulted in the street late one night as I walked back to my flat, only two days after a meeting with Mark Winshaw during which I had pressed him — perhaps a little too forcibly — for further information about his post as ‘sales co-ordinator’ for the Vanguard Import and Export Company, and the real reasons for his frequent visits to the Middle East throughout the bloodiest years of the Iraq — Iran war.

The more I saw of these wretched, lying, thieving, self-advancing Winshaws, the less I liked them, and the more difficult it became for me to preserve the tone of the official historian. And the less I was able to get access to solid and demonstrable facts, the more I had to bring my imagination to bear on the narrative, fleshing out incidents of which I had been able to learn only the shadowy outline, speculating on matters of psychological motivation, even inventing conversations. (Yes, inventing: I won’t fight shy of the word, even if I’d fought shy of the thing itself for nearly five years by then.) And so, out of my loathing for these people came a rebirth of my literary personality, and out of this rebirth came a change of perspective, a change of emphasis, an irreversible change in the whole character of the work. It began to take on the aspect of a voyage of discovery, a dogged, fearless expedition into the darkest corners and most secret recesses of the family history. Which meant, as I soon came to realize only too well, that I would never be able to rest, would never consider my journey at an end, until I had uncovered the answer to one fundamental question: was Tabitha Winshaw really mad, or was there a vestige of truth in her belief that Lawrence had, in some devious and obscure way, been responsible for his brother’s death?

Not surprisingly, this was another subject on which the family was reluctant to give me anything in the way of concrete information. Early in 1987, I was lucky enough to be granted an interview with Mortimer and Rebecca at a hotel in Belgravia. I found them by far the most approachable and helpful of the Winshaws, and this in spite of Rebecca’s serious ill-health: it is largely to them that I owe what little knowledge I have of the events surrounding Mortimer’s fiftieth birthday party. Lawrence had died a couple of years earlier and they now, as Rebecca had once fearfully predicted, found themselves in possession of Winshaw Towers, although they spent as little time there as possible. In any case, she too passed away within a few months of my visit; and shortly afterwards Mortimer returned, a broken man, to live out his last days in the family seat which he had always so heartily detested.

My investigations became ever more sporadic and desultory, until one day they stopped altogether. I forget the exact date, but it was on the same day that my mother came down to stay with me. She arrived one evening and we went out for a meal at a Chinese restaurant in Battersea and then she drove straight back home again the same night. After that I didn’t go out or talk to anyone for two, perhaps three years.

On Saturday morning I settled down to continue work on the manuscript. As I suspected, it was in a serious mess. Parts of it read like a novel and parts of it read like a history, while in the closing pages it assumed a tone of hostility towards the family which was quite unnerving. Worse still, it didn’t even have a proper ending, but simply broke off with the most tantalizing abruptness. When I finally rose from my desk, then, late in the afternoon of that hot, sweaty, summer Saturday, the obstacles which stood between me and the book’s completion had at least taken on a certain starkness and clarity. I would have to decide once and for all whether to present it as a work of fact or fiction, and I would have to renew my efforts to delve into the mystery of Tabitha’s illness.

On Monday morning, I took three decisive steps:

— I made two copies of the manuscript, and sent one of them to the editor who had once been responsible for publishing my novels.

— I sent another copy to the Peacock Press, in the hope that it would either earn me another instalment of salary (which I hadn’t been paid for three years) or alternatively so horrify Tabitha, when she saw it, that she would cancel our arrangement and release me from the contract altogether.

— I placed the following advertisement in the personal columns of the major newspapers:

And that, for the time being, was all I could do. My burst of energy had in any case turned out to be temporary, and I spent the next few days mostly slumped in front of the television, sometimes watching Kenneth Connor scuttle in fear from the beautiful Shirley Eaton, sometimes watching the news. I became familiar with the face of Saddam Hussein, and started to learn why he had recently become so famous: how he had announced his intention of absorbing Kuwait into his own country, claiming that according to historical precedent it had always been an ‘integral part of Iraq’; and how Kuwait had appealed to the United Nations for military support, which had been promised by both the American President, Mr Bush, and his friend the British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher. I learned of the British and American hostages or ‘guests’ who were being detained in hotels in Iraq and Kuwait. I saw frequent re-runs of the scene where Saddam Hussein brought these hostages before the television cameras and put his arms around the flinching, unwilling child.

Fiona dropped by two or three times. We drank cool drinks together and talked, but something about my manner must have put her off, because she usually left to go to bed early. She told me she was having trouble getting to sleep.

Sometimes, lying hotly awake at night, I could hear her dry, irritable cough. The walls in our building were not thick.

2

At first there was little sign that my strategy would bear fruit. But then suddenly, after two or three weeks, I got telephone calls from both publishers and managed to fix up two appointments for the same day: the Peacock Press in the afternoon, and, in the morning, the rather more prestigious firm which had once been pleased to consider me one of their most promising young writers. (Long years ago.) It was a small but well-respected imprint which had run its business, for most of the century, from a Georgian terrace in Camden, although recently it had been swallowed up by an American conglomerate and relocated to the seventh floor of a tower block near Victoria. Something like half of the personnel had survived the change: among them the fiction editor, a forty-year-old Oxford graduate called Patrick Mills. I arranged to meet him shortly before lunch, at around eleven-thirty.

It should have been a simple enough journey. First of all I had to walk to the tube station, which meant going through the park, across the Albert Bridge, past the fortress-like homes of the super-rich on Cheyne Walk, up Royal Hospital Road and into Sloane Square. I stopped only once, to get myself some chocolate (a Marathon and a Twix, if memory serves). It was another viciously hot morning, and there was no escaping the palls of thick black smog which issued from the backsides of cars, trucks, lorries and buses, hanging heavy in the air and all but forcing me to hold my breath whenever I had to cross the road at a busy junction. But then, when I arrived at the station and rode down on the escalator, as soon as the platform came into view I could see that it was absolutely packed. There was some fault with the service and there couldn’t have been a train for about fifteen minutes. Even though the line at Sloane Square isn’t deep, the steady downward motion of the escalator made me feel like Orpheus descending to the underworld, confronted by this throng of pale and sad-looking people, the sunlight which I’d just left behind already a distant memory.

… perque leves populos simulacraque functa sepulchro …

Four minutes later a District Line train arrived, every inch of every carriage filled with sweating, hunched, compacted bodies. I didn’t even try to get on, but in the pandemonium of people fighting past each other I managed to manoeuvre my way to the front of the platform in readiness for the next train. It came after a couple of minutes, a Circle Line train this time, just as full as the last one. When the doors opened and a few red-faced passengers had forced their way out through the waiting crowd, I squeezed inside and took my first mouthful of the foul, stagnant air: you could tell, just from that one taste, that it had already been in and out of the lungs of every person in the carriage, a hundred times or more. More people piled in behind me and I found myself squashed between this young, gangly office worker — he had a single-breasted suit and a pasty complexion — and the glass partition which separated us from the seated passengers. Normally I would have preferred to stand with my nose up against the partition, but when I tried it that way I found there was a huge slimy patch, exactly at face-level, an accumulation of sweat and grease off the back of the earlier passengers’ heads where they had been rubbing up against the glass, so I had no choice but to turn round and stare eyeball-to-eyeball at this corporate lawyer or swaps dealer or whatever he was. We were pushed up even closer after the doors closed, on the third or fourth attempt, because the people who had been standing half in and half out of the train now had to cram themselves inside with the rest of us, and from then on his pallid, pimply skin was almost touching mine, and we were breathing hot breath into each other’s faces. The train shunted into motion and half the people who were standing lost their balance, including a builder’s labourer who was pressed against my left shoulder and was wearing nothing on top except a pale blue vest. He apologized for nearly falling on top of me and then he reached up to hang on to one of the roof-straps, so I suddenly found that my nose was right inside his moist, gingery armpit. As unobtrusively as I could I put my fingers up to my nostrils and started breathing through my mouth. But I consoled myself, thinking, Never mind, I’m only going as far as Victoria, one stop, that’s all it is, it’ll be over in a couple of minutes.

But the train was already slowing down, and when it finally came to a standstill in the pitch dark of the tunnel I reckoned that it had only travelled three or four hundred yards. As soon as it stopped you could feel the atmosphere grow tense. We can’t have been there for more than a minute, perhaps, or a minute and a half, but already it seemed like an eternity, and when the train started crawling forward there was visible relief on all our faces. But it turned out to be short-lived. After only a few seconds the brakes came on again, and this time, as the train shuddered to a decisive halt, it was with a terrible sense of finality. At once everything seemed very quiet, except for the hiss of a personal stereo further up the carriage, which grew louder as the passenger in question took her headphones off to listen for announcements. In no time at all the air had grown unbearably warm and clammy: I could feel the uneaten chocolate bars turning to liquid in my pocket. We looked around anxiously at each other — some passengers raising despairing eyebrows, others tutting or swearing under their breath — and anyone who was carrying a newspaper or a business document started using it as a fan.

I tried to look on the bright side. If I were to faint — which seemed entirely possible — then there was no chance of falling over and sustaining an injury, because there was nowhere to fall. Similarly, there was little danger of death by hypothermia. It was true that the charms of my neighbour’s armpit might begin to pall after an hour or two: but then again perhaps, like a mature cheese, it would improve upon acquaintance. I looked around at the other passengers and wondered who would be the first to crack. There were several possible candidates: a rather frail and wizened old man who was clinging weakly to a pole; a slightly plump woman who for some reason was wearing a thick woollen jumper and had already gone purple in the face; and a tall, asthmatic guy with an earring and a Rolex who was taking regular gulps from his inhaler. I shifted my weight, closed my eyes and counted to one hundred very slowly. In the process, I noticed the level of noise in the carriage increasing perceptibly: people were beginning to talk to one another, and the woman in the woollen jumper had started moaning softly to herself, saying Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God — when suddenly, the lights in the carriage went out, and we were thrown into total darkness. A few feet away from me a woman let out a little scream, and there was a fresh round of exclamations and complaints. It was a scary feeling, not only being immobilized but now completely unable to see, although at least I had the compensation that I was no longer required to stare at City Slicker’s blackheads. But I could sense fear, now, fear all around me whereas before there had only been boredom and discomfort. There was desperation in the air, and before it proved contagious I decided to beat a retreat, as far as possible, into the privacy of my own mind. To start with, I tried telling myself that the situation could be worse: but there were surprisingly few scenarios which bore this out — a rat on the loose in the carriage, perhaps, or a busker spontaneously whipping out his guitar and treating us all to a few rousing choruses of ‘Imagine’. No, I would have to try harder than that. Next I attempted to construct an erotic fantasy, based on the premise that the body I was pressed up against belonged not to some spotty stockbroker but to Kathleen Turner, wearing a thin, almost transparent silk blouse and an unbelievably short, unbelievably tight mini-skirt. I imagined the firm, ample contours of her chest and buttocks, the look of hooded, unwilling desire in her eyes, her pelvis beginning unconsciously to grind against mine — and all at once, to my horror, I was getting an erection, and my whole body went taut with panic as I tried to pull away from the businessman whose crotch was already in direct contact with mine. But it didn’t work: in fact, unless I was very much mistaken, now he was getting an erection, which either meant that he was trying the same trick as me, or I was giving out the wrong signals and was about to find myself in very serious trouble.

Just at that moment, thank God, the lights flickered back on, and a muted cheer went up around the carriage. The speaker system also crackled into life, and we heard the laconic drawl of a London Underground guard who, without actually apologizing for the delay, explained that the train was experiencing ‘operating difficulties’ which would be rectified as soon as possible. It wasn’t the most satisfying of explanations, but at least we no longer felt quite so irredeemably alone and abandoned, and now as long as nobody tried leading us into prayer or starting a singalong to keep our spirits up, I felt that I could cope with a few more minutes. The guy with the inhaler was looking worse and worse, though. I’m sorry, he said, as his breathing began to get faster and more frantic, I don’t think I can take much more of this, and the man next to him started making reassuring noises but I could sense the silent resentment of the other passengers at the thought that they might soon have to deal with the problem of someone fainting or having a fit or something. At the same time I could also sense something else, something quite different: a strong, sickly, meaty sort of smell which was now beginning to establish itself above the competing bouquets of sweat and body odour. Its source quickly became apparent as the lanky businessman next to me squeezed open his briefcase and took out a paper bag with the logo of a well-known fast food chain on it. I watched him in amazement and thought, He isn’t going to do this, he can’t be going to do this, but yes, with the merest grunt of apology—‘It’ll go cold otherwise’—he opened his gaping jaws and crammed in a great big mouthful of this damp, lukewarm cheeseburger and started chomping on it greedily, every chew making a sound like wet fish being slapped together and a steady dribble of mayonnaise appearing at the corners of his mouth. There was no question of being able to look away or block my ears: I could see every shred of lettuce and knob of gristle being caught between his teeth, could hear whenever the gummy mixture of cheese and masticated bread got stuck to the roof of his mouth and had to be dislodged with a probing tongue. Then things started to go a bit hazy, the carriage was getting darker and the floor was giving way beneath my feet and I could hear someone say, Watch out, he’s going! and the last thing I can remember thinking was, Poor guy, it’s no wonder, with asthma like that: and then nothing, no memory at all of what happened next, just blackness and emptiness for I don’t know how long.

‘You look a bit done in,’ said Patrick, once we’d sat down.

‘Well, it’s just that I haven’t been out much lately. I’d forgotten what it’s like.’

Apparently the train had started up again just two or three minutes after I’d fainted, and then the businessman, the asthmatic and the woman in the woollen jumper had between them taken me to a First Aid room at Victoria station, where I slowly recovered with the help of a lie-down and a strong cup of tea. It was nearly midday by the time I arrived at Patrick’s office.

‘Bit of a sticky journey, I suppose, on a day like this?’ He nodded sympathetically. ‘You could probably do with a drink.’

‘I could, now that you mention it.’

‘Me too. Unfortunately my budget doesn’t run to that sort of thing any more. I can get you a glass of water if you like.’

Patrick looked even more depressed than I remembered him from our last meeting, and his new surroundings were made to match. It was a tiny office, done out in an impersonal beige, with a smoked-glass window offering a partial view of a car park and a brick wall. I had expected there to be posters advertising the latest books but the walls were in fact quite bare, apart from a large and glossy calendar supplied by a rival firm, which hung in the dead centre of one wall directly behind Patrick’s head. His face had always been long and lugubrious, but I’d never seen his eyes looking so sleepy before, or his lips set in such a resigned, melancholy pucker. For all that, I think he was quite pleased to see me, and as he fetched two plastic beakers full of water and set them down on his desk, he managed to summon the ghost of a smile.

‘Well, Michael,’ he said, settling into his chair, ‘to say that you’ve been keeping a low profile these last few years would be putting it mildly.’

‘Well, I’ve been working,’ I lied. ‘As you can see.’

We both looked at my typescript, which lay on the desk between us.

‘Have you read it?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes, I’ve read it,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve read it all right.’

He fell silent.

‘And …?’

‘Tell me something, Michael: can you remember when we last saw each other?’

I could, as it happened. But before I had the chance to answer, he said:

‘I’ll tell you. It was April the 14th, 1982.’

‘Eight years ago,’ I said. ‘Fancy that.’

‘Eight years, five months, seven days. That’s a long time, in anybody’s book.’

‘It certainly is.’

‘We’d just published your second novel. You were getting excellent reviews.’

‘Was I?’

‘Magazine profiles. Newspaper interviews.’

‘But no sales.’

‘Oh, but the sales would have come, Michael. The sales would have come. If only you’d—’

‘—stuck at it.’

‘Stuck at it, exactly.’ He took a long sip from his beaker of water. ‘Not long after that, you wrote me a letter. I don’t suppose you can remember what you said in that letter?’

I remembered only too well. But before I could get a word in, he said:

‘You told me that you wouldn’t be writing any more novels for a while, because you’d been commissioned to write an important non-fiction book, by another publisher. A rival publisher. Whose name, I think it’s true to say, you never disclosed.’

I nodded, waiting to see what he was driving at.

‘I wrote you two or three letters subsequently. You never replied.’

‘Well, you know how it is, when you’re … wrapped up in something.’

‘I could have pushed it. I could have chivvied you along. I could have come down on you like a ton of bricks. But I chose not to. I decided to wait in the background, and see what developed. It’s one of the most important parts of my job, you see, being prepared to just wait in the background, and see what develops. There are times when you can tell you need to do something like that, simply by instinct. Especially when you’re dealing with a writer you’ve taken a personal interest in. One that you feel close to.’

He fell silent and gave me what can only have been intended as a meaningful look. Not knowing what it meant, I ignored it and shifted slightly in my chair.

‘I felt very close to you, back then, Michael. I discovered you. I pulled you out of the slush pile. In fact — and correct me if I’m being fanciful here — you would have had grounds, in those days, for looking on me not just as your editor, but as your friend.’

I felt no inclination to correct him on that point, but couldn’t make up my mind whether to nod or shake my head, and so did neither.

‘Michael,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘allow me one favour.’

‘You’ve got it.’

‘Allow me, for one moment, to speak as your friend, and not as your editor.’

I shrugged. ‘Feel free.’

‘OK, then. Speaking as your friend, and not as your editor — and I hope you won’t take this the wrong way — may I just say — in a spirit of constructive criticism, and personal interest — that you look fucking terrible.’

I stared back at him.

‘Michael, you look as though you’ve aged about twenty years.’

I struggled for words. ‘What … Are you saying that I look old?’

‘The thing is that you always used to look so young. Back then, you always looked ten years younger than you really were, and now you look ten years older than you really are.’

I thought about this for a moment, and wondered whether to point out that in that case, allowing for the eight years which had gone by in the meantime, I should really have been looking as though I’d aged about thirty years. But instead I just sat there, my mouth opening and shutting like a land-locked fish.

‘So what happened?’ said Patrick. ‘What’s been going on?’

‘Well, I don’t know … I don’t really know where to begin.’ Patrick got up at this point, but I carried on talking. ‘The 1980s weren’t a good time for me, on the whole. I suppose they weren’t for a lot of people.’ He had opened a cupboard, and seemed to be staring at the inside of the door. ‘My father died a few years ago, and that hit me quite hard, and then — well, as you probably know, ever since I split up with Verity, I haven’t had much—’

‘Do I look older?’ Patrick asked suddenly. I realized that he was peering into a mirror.

‘What? No, not really.’

‘I feel it.’ He sat down again, with an exaggerated flop. ‘It suddenly seems all such a long time ago, you showing up in my office, full of youthful promise.’

‘Well, as I was saying, so much has happened since then: first there was my father dying, which was all a bit of a blow, and then—’

‘I hate this job, you know. I really hate what it’s become.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ I waited for him to elaborate, but there was just a heavy pause. ‘Anyway, and then, as you know, since Verity and I broke up, I haven’t been all that successful when it comes to—’

‘I mean, it’s just not the same job any more. The whole business has changed out of all recognition. We get all our instructions from America and nobody pays the slightest bit of attention to anything I say at editorial meetings. Nobody gives a tinker’s fuck about fiction any more, not real fiction, and the only kind of … values anybody seems to care about are the ones that can be added up on a balance sheet.’ He poured himself another beakerful and took a deep swig, as if it was neat whisky. ‘Now, here—here’s something that’ll make you laugh. This’ll really crease you up, this will. I read a new novel the other day, in typescript. Do you want to guess who it was by?’

‘All right, tell me.’

‘A friend of yours. Someone you know a lot about.’

‘I give up.’

‘Hilary Winshaw.’

Once again I found myself at a loss for words.

‘Oh yes, they’re all at it now, you know. It’s not enough to be stinking rich, land yourself one of the most powerful jobs in television and have two million readers paying good money every week to find out about the dry rot in your skirting-board: these people want fucking immortality! They want their names in the British Library catalogue, they want their six presentation copies, they want to be able to slot that handsome hardback volume between the Shakespeare and the Tolstoy on their living-room bookshelf. And they’re going to get it. They’re going to get it because people like me know only too well that even if we decide we’ve found the new Dostoevsky, we’re still not going to sell half as many copies as we would of any old crap written by some bloke who reads the weather on the fucking television!’

His voice rose almost to a shout on the last word. Then he sat back and ran his hands through his hair.

‘So what’s it like then, her book?’ I asked, after he had had time to calm down a bit.

‘Oh, it’s the usual sort of rubbish. Lots of media people being dynamic and ruthless. Sex every forty pages. Cheap tricks, mechanical plot, lousy dialogue, could have been written by a computer. Probably was written by a computer. Empty, hollow, materialistic, meretricious. Enough to make any civilized person heave, really.’ He stared ruefully into space. ‘And the worst of it is they didn’t even accept my bid. Somebody tipped me by ten grand. Bastards. I just know it’s going to be the hit of the spring season.’

There appeared to be no easy way of breaking the ensuing silence. Patrick’s eyes were popped out like a frog’s as he looked straight past me, and he seemed to have completely forgotten that I was in the room.

‘Look,’ I said at last, making a big show of glancing at my watch. ‘I really have to go and keep another appointment quite soon. If you could just give me a few pointers about the stuff I sent you …’

Patrick’s eyes slowly turned in my direction and came into focus. A dreamy, rueful grin spread over his face. I don’t think he had heard me.

‘Then again, maybe none of this matters,’ he said. ‘Maybe there are more important things going on in the world and my little problems don’t count for much at all. Perhaps we’ll be at war soon, anyway.’

‘At war?’

‘Well, it’s beginning to look that way, isn’t it? Britain and France sending more troops to Saudi Arabia. On Sunday we expel all those people from the Iraqi Embassy. And now the Ayatollah’s joining in and calling for a holy war against the United States.’ He shuddered. ‘I’m telling you, the implications of this situation look pretty grim from where I’m sitting.’

‘You mean that as soon as the fighting starts, Israel is going to get involved and before we know it relationships in the Middle East will be even worse. And then if the United Nations breaks up under the strain, the whole Cold War situation is wide open again and we could be looking at the possibility of a limited nuclear war?’

Patrick’s glance expressed pity at my naivety.

‘That’s hardly my point,’ he said. ‘The thing is that if we don’t get a biography of Saddam Hussein into the shops in the next three or four months, we’re going to get crapped on by every publisher in town.’ He looked up at me with a sudden desperate gleam in his eye. ‘Maybe you could do one for us. What do you say? Six weeks’ research, six weeks’ writing. Twenty thousand upfront if we keep all the overseas and serial rights.’

‘Patrick, I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’ I got up, paced the room a couple of times and then looked him square in the face. ‘I can’t believe you’re the same person I had all those discussions with eight years ago. All that stuff about the — permanence of great literature; the need to look beyond the horizons of the merely contemporary. I mean, what’s the business doing to you these days?’

I could see that I’d caught his attention at last and, from the way his face was rapidly falling, that my message had a chance of getting through. So I decided to press the point home.

‘You used to have such faith in literature, Patrick. I’ve never known faith like it. I used to sit in this chair listening to you talk and it was like a — like a revelation. You taught me about the eternal verities. The values which transcend generations and centuries, and which are encoded in the great imaginative works of every culture.’ I couldn’t keep this bullshit up for much longer, that was for sure. ‘You taught me to forget about everyday truths, ephemeral truths, truths that seem significant one day and irrelevant the next. You made me see that there’s a higher truth than any of that. Fiction, Patrick.’ I thumped the manuscript which was still lying on his desk. ‘Fiction — that’s what’s important. That’s what you and I believed in once, and that’s what I’ve returned to now. I thought you of all people would understand that.’

He was silent for a little while, and when he spoke again, his voice quivered with emotion.

‘You’re right, Michael. I’m sorry, really I am. You came here to get my opinion about something you’ve written, something you feel very deeply about, and all I can talk about is my own problems.’ He waved me back to my chair. ‘Come on, sit down. Let’s talk about your book.’

Determined to retain my advantage, I held my hand up in a gesture of deprecation and said: ‘Perhaps it’s not such a good time. I have this other appointment, and you maybe need a little longer to think before you can reach a decision, so why don’t we—’

‘I’ve already reached a decision about your book, Michael.’

I sat down immediately. ‘You have?’

‘Oh yes. I wouldn’t have called you in here if I hadn’t.’

Neither of us spoke for a few seconds. Then I said: ‘Well?’

Patrick leaned back in his chair and smiled teasingly. ‘I think you’d better tell me a little bit about it first. The background. Why you’ve written a book about the Winshaws. Why you’ve written a book about them which seems to have started out as a history and turned into a novel. What on earth gave you the idea?’

I answered these questions truthfully, precisely and at some length. After which, neither of us spoke for a few seconds. Then I said: ‘Well?’

‘Well … I hardly need to tell you that we have a serious problem with this book, Michael. It’s flagrantly libellous.’

‘That’s not a problem,’ I said. ‘I’ll change everything: names, locations, timings, the lot. This is just a beginning, you see, it’s just a basis. I can cover my tracks, make the whole thing practically unrecognizable. This is just the start.’

‘Hmm.’ Patrick put his forefingers together and laid them thoughtfully against his mouth. ‘Well, what does that leave us with, exactly? That leaves us with a book which is scurrilous, scandal-seeking, vindictive in tone, obviously written out of feelings of malice and even, in parts — if you don’t mind me saying this — a little shallow.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘So you’ll publish it?’

‘I think so. Subject to your carrying out the necessary revisions, and, of course, providing it with some sort of ending.’

‘Absolutely. I’m working on that at the moment, and I expect to come up with something … soon. Very soon.’ In my exhilaration I felt a sudden rush of warmth towards Patrick. ‘You know, I was sure that this book was perfect for the market right now, but I can’t tell you how much I needed to hear you say this. I was worried, you know, with it being so different from my other novels—’

‘Oh, not that different,’ he said, with a wave of his hand.

‘You don’t think so?’

‘There’s a definite stylistic link between this stuff and your last book, for instance. I could recognize your voice immediately. In many ways, this has the same strengths, and the …’

‘… and the what?’ I asked, after he’d tailed off.

‘Pardon?’

‘You were about to say something. The same strengths, and …?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. Really.’

‘The same weaknesses, that’s what you were about to say. Isn’t it? The same strengths, and the same weaknesses.’

‘Well yes, if you must know.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘Oh, we don’t want to bother about that now.’

‘Come on, Patrick, tell me.’

‘Well …’ He got up and walked to the window. The car park and the brick wall didn’t seem to inspire him. ‘I don’t suppose you can remember, can you, what we talked about the last time we met? That last conversation we had, all those years ago?’

I remembered it vividly.

‘Not offhand, no.’

‘We talked a lot about your work. We talked a lot about your previous work, and your future work, and your work in progress, and I ventured to make a small criticism which seemed to upset you, to a certain extent. I don’t suppose you can remember what it was?’

I could almost remember his exact words.

‘Can’t put my finger on it, I’m afraid.’

‘I suggested … well I suggested, to be frank, that there was a certain element of passion lacking from your writing. You don’t remember that?’

‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘Not that this suggestion in itself would have caused you to take offence. But I did also go on to suggest — and here I really was being a bit presumptuous, I suppose — that the explanation for this might lie in the fact that there was also a certain element of passion lacking in — well, how shall I put this? — your life. For want of a better word.’ He watched me carefully: carefully enough to be able to say, ‘You do remember, don’t you?’

I stared back at him until my indignation got the better of me. ‘I don’t know how you can say that,’ I spluttered. ‘This book is full of passion. Full of anger, anyway. If it communicates anything at all, it’s how much I hate these people, how evil they are, how much they’ve spoiled everything, with their vested interests and their influence and their privilege and their stranglehold on all the centres of power; how they’ve got us all cornered, how they’ve pretty well carved up the whole bloody country between them. You don’t know what it was like, Patrick, having to surround myself with that family for so many years; day after day with no one but the Winshaws for company. Why do you think the book turned out like that? Because writing it all down, trying to put down the truth about them, was the only thing that stopped me from wanting to kill them. Which somebody should do one of these days, incidentally.’

‘All right then, let me put it another—’

‘So how you can say there’s no passion in it beats me, I must say.’

‘Well, perhaps “passion” is the wrong word.’ He hesitated, but only for a second. ‘In fact it wasn’t even the word that I used when we first had this conversation. To be absolutely blunt, Michael, I pointed out that there was an absence of sex in your work — sex was the very word I used, now I come to think of it — and I then went on to speculate whether this might mean—might mean, I go no further than that — that there was also, and equally, a parallel and … concomitant absence of … sex … in your … Let me put this another way: there’s no sexual dimension to your writing at the moment, Michael, and I only wondered if this might possibly be because there is no — or at least not much — sexual dimension to your … to your life. As it stands.’

‘I see.’ I stood up. ‘Patrick, I’m disappointed. I didn’t think you were the kind of editor who told authors to put sex in their books just to help the sales along.’

‘No, that’s not what I’m saying. Not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that there’s a crucial aspect of your characters’ experience which is simply not finding expression here. You’re avoiding it. You’re pussyfooting around it. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were afraid of it.’

‘I’m not staying here to listen to any more of this,’ I said, making for the door.

‘Michael?’

I turned.

‘I’ll get a contract in the post for you tonight.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and was about to leave, when something made me stop and say: ‘You hit a bit of a nerve, you know, when you went on about … an element, being lacking in my life.’

‘I know.’

‘Good sex scenes are very difficult to write, anyway.’

‘I know.’

‘Thanks, all the same.’ Another afterthought. ‘We must have lunch together soon, like in the old days.’

‘The firm won’t let me buy lunch for authors any more,’ said Patrick. ‘But still, if you know somewhere cheap, we could always go Dutch.’

He was pouring himself more water as I left.

3

My meeting with Patrick had gone on for much longer than I’d expected, and I was almost late arriving at Vanity House. I’d been hoping to have a meal somewhere on the way, but there wasn’t time, so I had to make do with some more chocolate instead. I tried one of these new bars called Twirls: spirals of flaky chocolate covered in a rich, creamy, succulent coat. Not bad, as a matter of fact, although they did have a bit of nerve describing it as ‘new’, since it clearly owed a large conceptual debt to the Ripple. This one seemed firmer, somehow, though: chunkier and more substantial. I’d bought a packet of Maltesers as well but didn’t feel like opening it.

I was looking forward to visiting the Peacock Press, and partly for a reason which will perhaps seem foolish. The first person I had ever spoken to there — the person who had actually approached me with the idea for the Winshaw book — was a woman called Alice Hastings, and we had, I thought, struck up an immediate rapport. I might as well add that she was also young and very beautiful, and not a small part of the attraction of the whole project lay in the opportunities it promised for further meetings with her. But this was not to be. After that initial encounter, I was passed on to the attention of one Mrs Tonks, a plain-speaking and by no means unfriendly woman of late middle age who subsequently assumed complete responsibility for overseeing the progress of the book. She took her duties seriously and did her best to make me feel well looked after: every Christmas, for instance, she would send me a parcel of her favourite books from the year’s catalogue, wrapped up in gift paper. This was how my library came to be adorned with such choice items as Great Plumbers of Albania, 300 Years of Halitosis, the Reverend J.W. Pottage’s pioneering study, So You Think You Know about Plinths?, and a frankly unforgettable memoir — although its author’s name escapes me — entitled A Life in Packaging — Fragments of an Autobiography: Volume IX — The Styrofoam Years. Much as I appreciated this generosity, it was no substitute for seeing Alice again, and on the rare occasions (no more than three or four) when I had visited the office in person, I had always made a point of asking after her. As luck would have it, though, she had always been out at lunch, or away on holiday, or busy dealing with an author. And yet even now, absurdly, eight years since I had last seen her, I felt a sweet ache of sexual nostalgia as I entered the building, and the thought that I might glimpse her again or even exchange a few words with her put a tiny spring in my step and a flourish in the movement of my wrist as I pressed the lift button for the ninth floor.

Today, in any case, even the unassuming efficiency of Mrs Tonks offered a cheering prospect: doing business with her would be a blissfully uncomplicated affair after my dealings with Patrick. That at least was my expectation, as I stood peering into the mirror and wiping a smudge of chocolate from my lower lip, while the lift carried me smoothly upwards.

I caught a sense that something different was in the air, however, when Mrs Tonks, instead of keeping me waiting in the reception area, hurried out to see me as soon as she heard that I’d arrived. Her stout, businesslike face wore more than its habitual flush, and her fingers fiddled nervously with the heavy wooden beads which hung low over her pendulous bosom.

‘Mr Owen,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to telephone you all morning. I was hoping to save you a journey.’

‘You didn’t manage to look at the manuscript?’ I asked, following her into a large, comfortable office, handsomely decked out with bonsai trees and modern abstracts.

‘I was intending to read it today, before you came in,’ she said, waving me to a chair, ‘but circumstances didn’t permit. The fact is, we’re in disarray. There’s been a little upset. Not to keep you in suspense any longer, we were burgled last night.’

I can never think of anything intelligent to say in response to such statements. My reply was something like, ‘How awful’. Followed by: ‘I hope you didn’t lose anything valuable.’

‘Nothing was stolen at all,’ said Mrs Tonks. ‘Except your manuscript.’

That shut me up.

‘It was in the top drawer of my desk,’ she continued. ‘It doesn’t seem to have taken long for the thief to find it. We haven’t notified the police yet: I wanted to talk to you first. Mr Owen, is there any reason why this should have happened now, so soon after we received it? Have you done anything recently which might have alerted someone to the fact that you’d resumed work on this book?’

I thought for a moment and said, ‘Yes.’ Pacing the room angrily (the anger directed at myself) I explained about the newspaper advertisement. ‘It was meant as a declaration of war, as much as anything else. A coded challenge. Well, someone’s obviously taken me up on it.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Mrs Tonks. ‘Not given them our address, without consulting us first. Anyway, that leaves the field wide open. It could have been anyone.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said, as a suspicion began to take shape within me. ‘There are certain members of the family who’ve already expressed an interest in suppressing this book, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised—’

Mrs Tonks wasn’t listening.

‘I think we’re going to have to bring Mr McGanny in on this,’ she said. ‘Come with me, will you?’

She led me out into reception and for a few moments disappeared into another office, leaving me alone with the secretary. Lulled by the gentle tapping of her computer keyboard, I drifted off into some random speculations as to which of the Winshaws might have pilfered my manuscript (or more probably hired someone else to do it). The obvious candidate was Henry: after all, he had already attempted to burn the thing once. But then none of the others could be entirely ruled out. Whoever was behind it, their objective was unlikely to be the suppression of the book: they would surely have anticipated my taking several copies, so the intention presumably was just to find out how far my investigations had proceeded. I decided not to worry about this until I was in possession of a few more facts. The time was ripe to ask another, more urgent question.

I wandered over to the secretary’s desk and said, with affected carelessness: ‘I don’t suppose … Miss Hastings wouldn’t be here this afternoon, by any chance, would she?’

She stared back at me, her eyes bored, without expression.

‘I’m only temporary,’ she said.

Just then Mrs Tonks re-emerged and beckoned me to follow her. I had never met Mr McGanny, the managing director of the Press, and wasn’t sure what to expect. The sumptuousness of his office took me by surprise, for one thing: it boasted leather armchairs and a huge picture window fronting on to the local park. As for the man himself, I placed him somewhere in his mid fifties: his face made me think of a horse — thoroughbred, perhaps, but slightly on the lean and cunning side — and instead of the Scottish brogue which I’d been anticipating, he spoke in the suave drawl of the Oxbridge- and public-school-educated Englishman.

‘Sit down, Owen, sit down.’ He faced me across the desk. Mrs Tonks stood by the window. ‘This is serious news about the Winshaw book. What do you make of it?’

‘I think my line of inquiry has started to prove a little too controversial for certain members of the family. I think they may have wanted a foretaste of exactly what I was proposing to write.’

‘Hmm. Well, it’s a damned underhand way of going about it, that’s all I can say.’ He leaned forward. ‘I’ll be frank with you, Owen. I don’t approve of controversy.’

‘I see.’

‘But there are two sides to every coin. I didn’t commission you to write this book, and I don’t give a damn what you put in it. That’s Miss Winshaw’s business. It’s down to her what goes in and what comes out, and it seems to me that this arrangement gives you a pretty free hand, since we all know, and there’s not much point beating around the bush here, that she’s one or two fly-leaves short of a folio. To put it mildly.’

‘Quite.’

‘Now I’ll be frank with you, Owen. My understanding is that through her solicitors, Miss Winshaw has fixed up a pretty cosy financial arrangement on your behalf.’

‘You could say that.’

‘And there’s no harm in letting you know that she’s done very much the same for yours truly. By which I mean the firm.’ He coughed. ‘So the fact of the matter is that there’s no hurry for you to get this book finished. No hurry at all. The longer the better, one might say.’ He coughed again. ‘And by the same token, I would hope that there’s no question of you dropping it at any point, just because of a bit of intimidation from various interested—’

A buzzer sounded on his desk.

‘Yes?’ he said, jabbing at a button.

The secretary’s voice: ‘I finally got through to Wing Commander Fortescue, sir. He says he’s sure he put the cheque in the mail last week.’

‘Hm! Send him the usual letter. And don’t disturb me again unless it’s urgent.’

‘Also, sir, your daughter phoned.’

‘I see — cancelling dinner, I suppose. Some new boyfriend she’d rather be seeing instead.’

‘Not exactly: she said her audition this afternoon was called off so she’s coming to meet you early. She’s on her way now.’

‘Oh. All right then, thank you.’

Mr McGanny thought for a few seconds, then rose abruptly.

‘Well, Owen, I think I’ve said all I needed to say at this juncture. We’re both busy men. As indeed is Mrs Tonks. No point in hanging around when there’s work to be done.’

‘I’ll see you to the lift,’ said Mrs Tonks, coming forward and taking my arm.

‘Good to meet you at last, Owen,’ said Mr McGanny as she propelled me towards the door. ‘Head down and pecker up, eh?’

I was out of his office before I had time to reply.

‘How are you getting home?’ asked Mrs Tonks, who surprised me somewhat by travelling down with me in the lift. ‘Taking a cab?’

‘Well, I hadn’t really thought—’

‘I’ll call you one,’ she said; and sure enough, she accompanied me out on to the street and had hailed a taxi in less than a minute.

‘Really, there was no need,’ I said, opening the door and half-expecting her to follow me inside.

‘Don’t mention it. We like to pamper our authors. Especially’ (with a simper) ‘the important ones.’

The cab moved off and stopped at a set of traffic lights almost immediately. As we waited, I noticed a taxi pass us in the opposite direction and pull up outside the main entrance to Vanity House. A woman got out and I turned to watch, assuming that it would be Mr McGanny’s daughter and stirred by an idle curiosity to see what she looked like. But no; much to my surprise and — irrationally — my delight, it turned out to be none other than Alice Hastings.

‘Alice!’ I called out of the window. ‘Alice, hello!’

She was bending down to pay the driver and didn’t hear me: then the lights changed and my taxi pulled away. I had to be content with the knowledge that she was at least still working for the company, and that she hadn’t, from what I could see, changed very much in the years since our meeting.

Not many minutes had gone by when the driver pulled back the partition and said, ‘Excuse me, mate, but you wouldn’t happen to know anybody who might be following you, would you?’

‘Following me? Why?’

‘There’s this blue Citroen 2CV. Couple of cars behind us.’

I turned to have a look.

‘It’s difficult to tell in this kind of traffic, of course, but he’s still with us after a couple of short cuts I know, so I just wondered …’

‘It’s not impossible,’ I said, straining to get a look at the driver.

‘Well, I’ll speed up a bit and see what happens.’ He didn’t speak again until we had nearly reached Battersea. ‘No, we’ve lost him. I must’ve been imagining it.’

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief and sank back in my seat. It had been a long day. I wanted nothing more, now, than to spend the evening alone in my flat with the television and the video recorder. I’d had enough of people for a while. They were exhausting. I didn’t even want to see Fiona when I got home.

The taxi driver was counting out my change and handing it through the window when a blue Citroen 2CV chugged noisily by, gathering speed as it passed us.

‘Well, bugger me sideways,’ he said, staring after it. ‘We were being followed. You want to watch out, mate: I think somebody’s on your case.’

‘You might be right,’ I murmured, as the car disappeared around the corner of my mansion block. ‘You might very well be right.’

And yet at the same time, I couldn’t help thinking — a battered old Citroen 2CV? Would even Henry Winshaw be that devious?

1

‘The fact is,’ said Fiona, ‘that I don’t really trust my GP. From what I can see, most of his energy these days goes into balancing his budget and trying to keep his costs down. I didn’t get the sense that I was being taken very seriously.’

I did my best to concentrate while she was telling me this, but couldn’t help keeping a watchful eye on the other diners as the restaurant started to fill up. It was beginning to dawn on me that I was underdressed. Hardly any of the men were wearing ties, but everything about their clothes looked expensive, and Fiona herself seemed to have been much more successful in judging the mood: she wore a collarless, herringbone-patterned jacket over a black cotton T-shirt, and cream linen trousers, cut a little bit short to show off her ankles. I hoped she hadn’t noticed the worn patches on my jeans, or the chocolate stains which had been ingrained on my jumper for longer than I cared to remember.

‘I mean, it’s not as if I’m some flappy little thing who comes running into his surgery every time I get a cold,’ she continued. ‘And this has been going on for nearly two months now, this flu or whatever it is. I can’t just keep taking days off work all the time.’

‘Well, Saturday’s probably his busiest day. He was bound to be rushed.’

‘I think I deserved more than just a pat on the head and a few antibiotics, that’s all.’ She bit into a prawn cracker and sipped some wine: an attempt, it seemed, to wash the irritation away. ‘Anyway.’ She looked up and smiled. ‘Anyway, this is very nice of you, Michael. Very nice, and quite unexpected.’

If there was an irony intended, it managed to pass me by. I still couldn’t quite get over my amazement at the thought that I was actually sitting with another person — a woman, no less — at a table for two in a restaurant. I suppose part of me, the most vocal and persuasive part, had simply given up believing that such a thing might happen: and yet it could hardly have been easier to accomplish. I’d spent the previous evening slumped in front of the television, almost mad with boredom even though my intentions had been admirable enough. Over the last few years I’d accumulated a pile of unwatched videos, and it had been my hope that this time I’d find the stamina to get through at least one of them. But it seemed that optimism had got the better of me again. I watched the first half of Cocteau’s Orphée, the first thirty minutes of Ray’s Pather Panchali, the first ten minutes of Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu Monogatari, the opening credits of Tarkovsky’s Solaris and the trailers at the beginning of Wenders’ The American Friend. After that I gave up, and sat in front of a silent screen, steadily making my way down a bottle of supermarket wine. This continued until about two o’clock in the morning. In the old days I would have just poured myself a final glass and gone to bed, but now I realized that this wasn’t good enough. Fiona had called by a couple of hours earlier and I hadn’t even answered when she knocked; she would have seen the light under my door and must have known that I was ignoring her. And now suddenly, sitting by myself with only the television’s dumb flickering to combat the darkness, it seemed ridiculous to me that I should prefer these blank, unresponsive images to the company of an attractive and intelligent woman. It was anger, above all, which drove me to perform an impetuous and selfish act. I went directly on to the landing and rang the bell to Fiona’s flat.

She answered after a minute or two, wearing a light, Japanese-style dressing-gown. An expanse of freckled breastbone was exposed, sheened thinly with sweat although I for one thought the temperature had dropped quite sharply this evening.

‘Michael?’ she said.

‘I’ve been really unfriendly these last few weeks,’ I blurted out. ‘I came to apologize.’

She looked puzzled, of course, but managed to take it in her stride.

‘That’s not necessary.’

‘There are some things — possibly there are some things you ought to know about me,’ I said. ‘Things I’d like to tell you.’

‘Well, that’s wonderful, Michael. I certainly look forward to that.’ She was humouring me, I could tell. ‘But it is the middle of the night.’

‘I didn’t mean now. I thought maybe … over dinner.’

That seemed to surprise her more than anything. ‘Are you asking me out?’

‘I suppose I am.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow night?’

‘OK. Where?’

This put me in a corner, because I only knew one local restaurant and didn’t want to go back there. But there wasn’t much choice.

‘The Mandarin? Nine o’clock?’

‘I look forward to it.’

‘Fine: well, we could either get a taxi from here, say ten minutes beforehand, or actually it’s not very far to walk, and then we could maybe stop on the way …’

I realized that I was talking to a closed door, and went back to my flat.

Now Fiona was spreading plum sauce over a pancake with the back of her spoon, and filling it with thin strips of duck and cucumber. Her fingers worked neatly.

‘So, Michael, what are these revelations about yourself that you’ve been bursting to tell me? I’m agog.’

I smiled. I had been nervous all day, thinking how peculiar it would be to share a meal with someone again, but now I was beginning to feel quietly euphoric. ‘There are no revelations,’ I said.

‘So last night — that was just a subtle way of getting to see me in my dressing-gown, was it?’

‘It was just an impulse, that’s all. It had only just occurred to me how strange my behaviour must seem. You know — the way I keep myself to myself, how I barely answer you sometimes, all the time I spend watching things on the television: you must wonder what on earth’s going on.’

‘Not really,’ said Fiona, biting into her folded pancake. ‘You’re hiding from the world because it frightens you. I frighten you. You’ve probably never learned to form real relationships with people. Did you think I wouldn’t be able to see that?’

Wrongfooted, I tried to bite into my pancake, but I hadn’t folded it properly and the contents spilled out just as I was about to put it into my mouth.

‘You have to work at these things, that’s the point,’ said Fiona. ‘If it’s depression we’re talking about then let me tell you, I’ve been there. But, you know … Take that bike ride I went on the other week. Agony, it was. Complete bloody agony. But at least I met some people, went for a drink afterwards, got a couple of dinner invitations out of it. It may not sound like very much, but after a while you realize … there’s nothing worse than being on your own. Nothing.’ She sat back and wiped her fingers on her napkin. ‘Well, it’s just a thought. Perhaps we shouldn’t get heavy this early in the evening.’

I wiped my fingers too. Huge amounts of plum sauce seemed to come off and smudge the napkin with great brown patches.

‘You made a good choice here,’ said Fiona, glancing around the restaurant. It had a comfortable atmosphere, somehow intimate and convivial at the same time. ‘Have you been here before?’

‘No, no. I just read about it somewhere.’

But this, of course, was a lie, since we were in the very place where my mother and I had had the last, explosive argument from which our relationship was yet to recover. I had vowed never to come back here, fearing that someone on the staff might recognize me and make some embarrassing reference — for we had created quite a scene at the time — but now, finding myself both calmed and exhilarated by Fiona’s company, this anxiety seemed preposterous. It was after all one of the most popular restaurants in the area, and when I thought of all the thousands of customers who must have come and gone during the last two or three years … Really, I was flattering myself to suppose that anybody might have found the incident at all memorable.

A waiter came to clear our plates. ‘Good evening, sir,’ he said with a slight bow. ‘How nice that you come back again after all this time. Your mother is well?’

I sat speechless for a while after he had gone, unable to meet Fiona’s eyes which were laughing even as her mouth remained politely quizzical. Then I admitted: ‘Well, yes, I did come here with my mother once. We had a terrible row and … well, it’s not something I really wanted to talk about.’

‘I thought that was the whole point of this evening,’ she said. ‘To tell me things.’

‘Yes, it is. And I will. It’s just that there are certain things, certain areas …’ This was coming out badly, and it was clear that if I was to regain her confidence, a major gesture was called for. ‘Come on, you can ask me anything. Anything at all. Ask me a question.’

‘All right then: when did you get divorced?’

I put my wineglass down in mid-sip, spilling some on the table. ‘How did you know about that?’

‘It was on the cover of that book you showed me.’

And yes, it was true: I’d wasted no time in trying to impress Fiona by showing her a copy of my first novel, the dustjacket of which did indeed contain this little nugget of personal information. (Which had been Patrick’s idea: he said that it made me sound more interesting.)

‘That would have been in 1974, believe it or not,’ I said. I could hardly believe it myself.

Fiona raised her eyebrows. ‘What was her name?’

‘Verity. We met at school.’

‘You must have married very young.’

‘We were both nineteen. Neither of us had been out with anyone before. We didn’t know what we were doing, really.’

‘Are you bitter about it?’

‘I suppose not. I just look on it as my misspent youth: genuinely misspent — not taking drugs and sleeping with lots of different people, which would probably have been good fun, but this … perverse drive towards conformity.’

‘I’ve never liked the name Verity,’ said Fiona decisively. ‘I knew someone called Verity at college. She was prissy. Set a great value on telling the truth but I don’t think she ever told it to herself. If you see what I mean.’

‘You think names are important, then?’

‘Some names. Some people grow to resemble their names, like owners and their dogs. They can’t help it.’

‘I came across a curious one today. Findlay. Findlay Onyx.’

I had to pronounce the two halves quite distinctly before Fiona could be sure what I was saying. Then I explained to her how the name had come to my attention.

Earlier in the day I’d gone out to the newspaper library in Colindale to chase up further reports concerning the death at Winshaw Towers on the night of Mortimer’s fiftieth birthday. You may remember that the local newspaper had promised to keep its readers informed of every development. I had naïvely expected from this that there would be a series of stories dealing with the subsequent investigation in some detail. But, needless to say, I had reckoned without the fact that the Winshaws happened to own the newspaper in question, and that Lawrence Winshaw was Grand Master of the lodge which also numbered several representatives of the constabulary among its most influential members. Such an investigation had either not been reported, or, more likely, had never been undertaken at all. There was only one item of interest, a brief sequel to the report which I had already seen, and that was more cryptic than enlightening. It said that no further information had come to light, but that police were anxious to interview a private detective who was known to operate in the area — the aforementioned Mr Onyx. It seemed that someone answering to the description of the dead man (who had still not been identified) had been seen dining with the detective at a restaurant in Scarborough on the evening of the burglary attempt; furthermore, according to a local solicitor who had been acting as proxy for Tabitha Winshaw, Mr Onyx was known to have visited her at the Hatchjaw-Bassett Institute on at least three separate occasions earlier in the month, presumably on business. For good measure the report added that he was also wanted for questioning on three counts of gross indecency under Section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act (1956). After that, there was no further mention of the mysterious incident. The lead item in the next edition concerned an unprecedentedly large aubergine which had been grown by a local gardener.

‘So, that would appear to be that,’ I said, as we were served with a plate of steaming king prawns, heavy with ginger and garlic. ‘This guy was nearly sixty, it said, so there’s not much chance of him still being around. Which means the trail has more or less gone cold.’

‘Becoming quite the little detective yourself, aren’t you?’ said Fiona, spooning out a modest portion. ‘Is there any point to all this, though? I mean, does it really matter what happened thirty years ago?’

‘Somebody thinks so, obviously, if they’re prepared to break in to my publishers and follow my taxi home.’

‘But that was more than a month ago now.’

I shrugged. ‘I still reckon I’m on to something. It’s just a question of where to start looking next.’

‘Perhaps I could help you,’ said Fiona.

‘Help me? How?’

‘I’m used to doing research. That’s what my job is, really. I write abstracts of articles from the scientific press, and then they’re indexed and put into this huge reference book which usually winds up in university libraries. The name Winshaw comes up quite often — you’d be surprised. Thomas, for instance, he’s still involved with quite a few of the big petrochemical firms. And then of course there’s Dorothy Brunwin — wasn’t she a Winshaw, originally? Every year there’s a whole stack of pieces about some wonderful innovation she’s thought up, some new way of processing various disgusting parts of a chicken’s anatomy and passing it off as meat. We go back all the way to the 1950s, so I could check out all the contemporary references — you never know, there might be a clue buried in there somewhere.’

‘Thanks. That would help,’ I said, and then added (equally insincerely): ‘Sounds like interesting work. Have you been doing it for long?’

‘I started … just under two years ago. It was a few weeks before my divorce finally came through.’ She caught my eye and smiled. ‘Oh yes, you’re not the only one to have screwed up on that front.’

‘Well, that’s a relief, in a way.’

‘Did you and Verity have children?’

‘We were children: we didn’t need to have any. What about you?’

‘He had children. He had three daughters, from his first marriage, but he wasn’t allowed access to them. Understandably, I suppose. He was a manic-depressive and a born-again Christian.’

I didn’t know quite how to react to this. A large chunk of beef covered in oyster sauce fell from my chopsticks and landed on my shirt, and that distracted us for a while. Then I said: ‘Of course, I don’t know you very well, but somehow he doesn’t sound like your type.’

‘True: you don’t know me very well. Oh, he was my type all right. You see, unfortunately I’m one of those people … I have a giving nature.’

‘I’d noticed.’

‘The way I showered you with pot plants, for instance.’

‘The way you give money to beggars — even when they don’t really want it.’

This was a reference to an old man who had approached Fiona as we were walking to the restaurant. Although he had merely asked her for the time, immediately she had taken twenty pence out from her purse and pressed it into his palm. He seemed more taken aback than pleased, and it was left to me to tell him that it was actually a quarter to nine — for which he thanked me as he went on his way.

‘Quite,’ she said. ‘I take pity on people.’

‘Even when they don’t really want it?’

‘But nobody really wants it, do they? However desperate their case is. That’s what you find out, in the end.’ She sighed and stroked her wineglass pensively. ‘I won’t be marrying out of pity again, that’s for sure.’

‘His case sounds pretty desperate, anyway.’

‘Well, he and his wife had both been devout evangelicals for a while. They had these two kids and then she had an incredible job giving birth to the next one. The upshot was that she lost her religion — with a vengeance — and walked out on him, taking these three daughters with her. Faith, Hope and Brenda.’

‘How long did it last?’

‘What, him and me? Five years, nearly.’

‘Quite a while.’

‘Quite a while.’ She took the last shred of green pepper from her bowl and popped it in her mouth. ‘There are even moments — moments of great weakness, I have to say — when I miss him a little bit.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, it’s nice just to have somebody there, sometimes, isn’t it. He was quite helpful when my mother died, for instance. Quite kind.’

‘What about your father: is he … still …?’

‘Alive? I’ve no idea. He ran off when I was ten.’

‘Brothers and sisters?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m an only child. Just like you.’

After that we found ourselves staring in silence at the debris of our meal. Fiona had replaced her chopsticks tidily on their cradle and, apart from a few stray grains of rice, her half of the tablecloth remained spotless. Mine looked as though it had recently been used by Jackson Pollock to form the basis of a particularly brutal composition fashioned entirely out of authentic Chinese foodstuffs. We ordered a pot of tea and a bowl of lychees.

‘Well,’ said Fiona. ‘I wouldn’t exactly say that you’d opened up to me this evening, after all those promises. I wouldn’t say that your soul had been laid naked before me across the dinner table. All I’ve found out is that you got married at a ridiculously young age and that most of the time you’d rather watch films than talk to people.’

‘I don’t just watch films,’ I said, after a short pause during which I had the sensation of standing poised to dive into uncertain waters. ‘I obsess over them.’

She waited for me to clarify this.

‘Well, just one film, actually. And you’ve probably never heard of it.’

I told her the title and she shook her head.

‘I was taken to see it by my parents when I was only small. We left the cinema in the middle and ever since then I’ve had this strange feeling that it’s — that it’s never really finished, I suppose. That I’ve been … inhabiting it.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘Oh, it’s a silly film. All about this wealthy family who turn up at a big country house for the reading of a will, and get bumped off one by one. It’s meant to be funny, of course, but I didn’t see it like that at the time. It scared me to death, and I fell wildly in love with the heroine, who was played by Shirley Eaton — do you remember her?’

‘Vaguely. Didn’t she come to a nasty end in a James Bond film, once?’

‘In Goldfinger, yes. She gets covered in gold paint and suffocates. But in this other film she has a scene with Kenneth Connor, where she invites him to stay the night in her room, and he’s very attracted to her and she’s obviously very kind and sensible as well as being beautiful, so it would be the best thing from every point of view, but he can’t bring himself to do it. There are all these terrible things going on in the house, this homicidal maniac wandering around the place, and yet he finds all of that less frightening than the thought of being alone with this wonderful woman for a whole night. And I’ve never forgotten that scene: it’s been with me for the last thirty years. For some reason.’

‘Well, that’s not hard to understand either, is it?’ said Fiona. ‘It’s the story of your life, that’s why you’ve never forgotten it.’ She took the last lychee out of the bowl. ‘Do you mind if I have this? They’re so refreshing.’

‘Go ahead. My tastebuds are crying out for some chocolate, anyway.’ I signalled for the bill. ‘Maybe there’ll be a shop open on the way home.’

Outside, it became clear that the heatwave was now on the wane, and I noticed that Fiona was even shivering slightly as we walked back to our mansion block. We stopped at a late-night newsagent’s, where I bought an Aero and a white Toblerone: I offered her half of the Aero and was quite relieved when she didn’t take it. There was a light mist in the air as we turned off Battersea Bridge Road and began cutting up some side streets. This was a quiet, poorly lit area, the houses squat and mournful, the front gardens neglected, with few signs of life at this time of night except for the occasional cat bolting across the road at our approach. No doubt it was the effect of the alcohol and my excitement at the success, as I saw it, of the whole evening, but the atmosphere suddenly felt heady, pregnant with the certainty of similar, even better times to come, and I was filled with a wild optimism which had to be given voice, however obliquely.

‘I hope we can do this again soon,’ I stammered. ‘I haven’t enjoyed myself this much since … well, within living memory, let’s say.’

‘Yes, it’s been nice. Very nice.’ But there was something tentative about Fiona’s agreement, and it didn’t surprise me to hear a qualifying note enter her voice. ‘Only, I don’t want you to think … Look, I don’t really know how to put this.’

‘Go on,’ I said, when she faltered.

‘Well, I’m just not in the business of rescuing people any more. That’s all. I just want you to understand that.’

We walked on in silence. After a while she added: ‘Not that I really think you need rescuing. Maybe shaking up a little.’

‘That’s fair enough,’ I said, and then asked an obvious question: ‘Are you in the business of shaking people up?’

She smiled at that. ‘Possibly. Just possibly.’

I could sense the imminence of one of those critical, life-changing moments: one of those turning points where you must either seize the fleeting opportunity presented to you or watch helplessly as it slips from your grasp and recedes into invisibility. So I knew, apart from anything else, that I had to keep talking, even though I had nothing much left to say.

‘You know, I’ve always thought of luck as a negative thing; I’ve always felt that if luck has any kind of part in shaping our lives then everything must be somehow arbitrary and senseless. It never really occurred to me that luck can also bring happiness. I mean it’s only because of luck that I met you in the first place, it’s only because of luck that we live in the same building, and now here we are, two people —’

Fiona stopped, and brought me to a halt with her arm. Very gently she laid a finger to my lips and said, ‘Ssh.’ I was astonished by the intimacy of the gesture. Then she slid her hand into mine so that our fingers locked, and we walked on. Her body leaned into me. After only a few paces, she leaned even closer, until I could feel the brush of her lips against my ear. I steeled myself deliciously for her words.

‘I think we’re being followed,’ she whispered. ‘Listen.’

Stunned into silence, I let her hand drop and strained to catch a hint of anything untoward above the noise of our own irregular footsteps. And yes, there was something: a pursuing echo, some way behind us. Furthermore, when we stopped, it continued for a second or two and then paused abruptly; when we started again, it followed. Our movements were being shadowed with some accuracy.

‘I think you’re right,’ I said. It was one of my less helpful remarks.

‘Of course I’m right. Women develop a sense for it. You have to.’

‘Keep walking,’ I said. ‘I’m going to turn round and have a look.’

But by now the mist was thickening, and I couldn’t see more than about twenty yards back. It was impossible to be sure whether there was any movement behind the grey curtain of shifting fog. The footsteps were still with us, though, as audible as ever, and I started to propel Fiona forward by the elbow until our pace had almost doubled. We were not far from home, and I hit upon the idea of taking a few sudden detours in order to throw the stalker off our trail.

‘What are you doing?’ she hissed, after I had guided her into an unexpected right turn.

‘Keep walking and stick close to me,’ I said. ‘We’ll soon have him confused.’

I took another right and then a left and then doubled back down a footpath which led between a row of three-storey terraces. Then we crossed the road a couple of times and cut through a small alleyway which brought us out nearly at the edge of Battersea Park. We stopped and listened. There was the usual traffic noise, and the distant sounds of a party just beginning to warm up a few streets away. But no more footsteps. We sighed with relief and Fiona let go of my hand, as if only just realizing that she had been clasping it for the last ten minutes.

‘I think we’ve lost him,’ she said.

‘If there was anyone.’

‘There was. I know there was.’

We walked the rest of the way down the main road, a small unfamiliar distance having opened up between us. There was a short pathway leading up to our entrance porch, lined raggedly with laurel bushes, and it was here, just before unlocking the door, that I had been hoping to offer Fiona a first tentative kiss. But the mood was no longer right. She was still looking tense, her handbag held tightly to her chest within folded arms, and I was so flustered that I worked stupidly at the lock for what seemed like an age before noticing that I had taken out the wrong key. Then, when I had finally got the door open and was about to step inside, Fiona let out a sudden cry — somewhere between a gasp and a scream — and leapt in before me, grabbing my arm so as to drag me with her and slamming the door which she then stood against, breathing heavily.

‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

‘He was out there — I could see him. His face in the bushes.’

‘Who?’

‘For God’s sake, I don’t know who. He was crouched there, peering at us.’

I made for the door handle.

‘This is ridiculous. I’m going to take a look.’

‘No — Michael. Please, no.’ She stopped me with a cautioning hand. ‘I saw his face quite clearly, and … and I recognized him.’

‘Recognized him? — Well who is it?’

‘I’m not sure. I didn’t actually recognize him, but … I’ve seen his face before. I’m sure I have. Michael, I don’t think it’s you he’s following. I think it must be me.’

I shook myself free and said, ‘Well, we can soon settle this.’ I opened the door and slipped outside; Fiona followed as far as the step.

It was cold by now and very quiet. Thin lines of mist hung in the air and coiled strangely around the white glow of the street lamps. I walked up and down the pathway, across the lawns, and looked both ways along the street. Nothing. Then I checked the bushes, pushing my face between branches, cracking twigs and making sudden thrusts into every leafy opening. Again, nothing.

Except that …

‘Fiona, come here a minute.’

‘Not on your life.’

‘Look, there’s nobody here. I just want to see if you notice anything.’

She squatted down beside me.

‘Is this the bush where you saw him?’

‘I think so.’

‘Breathe in deeply.’

We inhaled together: two long, exploratory sniffs.

‘That’s odd,’ she said, after a moment’s thought; and I knew what was coming next. ‘There’s no jasmine round here, is there?’

2

Fiona and I watched Orphée together one evening, two or three days after our dinner at the Mandarin. She had recovered from her fright soon enough, and now I was the one who was having trouble sleeping. The last few hours before dawn would find me wide awake, listening tiredly to the fitful lull which, in London anyway, is the closest you ever get to silence.

… La silence va plus vite à reculons. Trots fois …

My thoughts would be dizzy and incoherent, a pointless rehearsal of half-remembered conversations, unpleasant memories and wasteful anxieties. Once your mind is locked into such a pattern, it soon becomes obvious that the only way to break free is by getting out of bed: and yet this is the very last thing you feel capable of doing. It was only when the dry, acid tang in my mouth became too strong to bear that I would find the impetus to go out into the kitchen for a glass of water; after that, I might be assured of some sleep at last, because the circle would have been broken.

… Un seul verre d’eau éclair le monde. Deux fois …

I had an alarm clock which was set for nine o’clock, but invariably I would wake before then. Struggling for consciousness, the first noise I recognized would not be the rumble of traffic or the passing aeroplanes, but the song of a persevering robin as he greeted the feeble daylight from the treetops beneath my bedroom window.

… L’oiseau chante avec ses doigts. Une fois …

Then I would lie in bed, half-asleep, half-awake, listening for the postman’s footsteps on the staircase. For some reason I have never lost faith, not since I was a young child, in the power of letters to transform my existence. The mere sight of an envelope lying on my doormat can still flood me with anticipation, however transitory. Brown envelopes rarely do this, it has to be said; window envelopes, never. But then there is the white, handwritten envelope, that glorious rectangle of pure possibility which has even shown itself, on some occasions, to be nothing less than the threshold of a new world. And this morning, while I gazed with heavy, expectant eyes into the hallway through the half-open door of my bedroom, just such an envelope slid noiselessly into my flat, carrying with it the potential to transport me, not only onward into an unsuspected future but at the same time backward, back to a moment in my childhood more than thirty years ago, when letters first started to play an important part in my life.

Once upon a time, a short walk from my parents’ house along quiet roads would bring you to the edge of a wood. We lived at the point where Birmingham’s outermost suburbs began to shade into countryside, in a placid, respectable backwater, slightly grander and more gentrified than my father could really afford, and every weekend, usually on a Sunday afternoon, the three of us would set off for this wood on one of those long, mildly resented walks which have since become the nucleus of my earliest and happiest memories. There were various routes available, each given its own functional (but at the time intensely romantic and evocative) designation: ‘the glade’; ‘the ponds’; ‘the dangerous way’. But I had a personal favourite which, though we must have taken it more often than any other, never failed to exert its pull of (even then) nostalgic glamour. This was known simply as ‘the farm’.

You came upon it suddenly. The walk took you around the periphery of the wood, along a path which was broad and well-established but never seemed to be much used: in my memory’s version of events, at any rate, this vision of heaven was always offered to us in utter seclusion and privacy. For heaven it was: looming into view just when you least expected it, after a series of turns, dips and rises which seemed to be leading you ever deeper into the dark heart of the forest, a nest of redbricked barns and outhouses and, at their centre, an ivy-covered farmhouse of impossible charm. An orchard flanked one side of the house, its trees dappled with yellowing fruit, and we would later discover that behind it, screened from view, was a tiny walled garden, divided up into orderly chessboard squares by gravelled paths and miniature box hedgerows. Best of all, near to the wire fence which marked the boundary between public land and property, there was a little muddied pool where ducks swam and the occasional waddling goose came to drink. On subsequent visits we never failed to bring a brown paper bag filled with stale bread which I would throw at the water or sometimes, in a fit of daring, dangle through the wire until the geese approached and snapped it from my outstretched fingers.

‘This must be the farm you can see from the road,’ said my father, the first time we chanced upon it. ‘The one I go past when I’m driving to work.’

‘I wonder if they have a shop,’ said my mother. ‘I bet it would be cheaper than in the village.’

After that she started using the farm to buy all her eggs and vegetables, and before long this arrangement began to take on a social as well as practical aspect. Showing once again her aptitude for striking up friendships with relative strangers, my mother lost no time in gaining the confidence of Mrs Nuttall, the farmer’s wife, whose lengthy, colourful monologues on the pains and pleasures of the bucolic life meant that a good half hour had to be set aside even for something as seemingly uncomplicated as the purchase of a few potatoes. To offset my boredom on these occasions I was introduced to a farmhand called Harry, who would let me follow him around as he went about his duties, sometimes even allowing me to feed the pigs, or to sit aloft on the driver’s seat of a combine harvester. And over the next few months Harry’s guided tours seemed to get longer, more frequent and more elaborate, until I became a familiar figure on the farm, well known to everyone who worked there including Mr Nuttall himself. It was round about this time, too, that my parents decided I was old enough to ride my bicycle unaccompanied along the local roads, and after that I became an even more regular visitor. Sometimes my mother would make me up packets of sandwiches, and I would eat them sitting in the orchard, or by the duckpond, before setting off to explore the buildings by myself; always remembering to take a look at the calves — my favourites among the animals — and to climb the bales of hay stacked at the back of the largest barn, where there was usually any number of lean, sleepy tabby cats to be found. I would lie on the hay beside them, puzzling over the deep mystery of their purr, hypnotized by the impenetrable half-smile which always made me envy them their dreams.

I was in love, at this time, with a girl called Susan Clement, who had the desk next to me at school. Her hair was long and blonde, her eyes were pale blue and I think, in retrospect, that she was fond of me too, but I was never to know for sure because although I passed many weeks, perhaps even months, consumed with longing for her, it would have been easier for me to fly to the moon than to find the right words in which to express my feelings. But I remember vividly the night I woke up to find that she was in bed beside me. The sensation at first was not entirely unfamiliar, for I had shared a bed with Joan earlier that year, when our families went on a camping holiday together: but I had never wanted to touch or be touched by her; had shrunk from the idea, in fact. And yet with Susan, the first thing I knew — almost fainting with the joy of it, the amazing, palpable reality — was that she was touching me, that I was touching her, that we were dovetailed, entangled, coiled like dreamy snakes. It seemed that every part of my body was being touched by every part of her body, that from now on the entire world was to be apprehended only through touch, so that in the musty warmth of my bed, the curtained darkness of my bedroom, we could not but find ourselves starting to writhe gently, every movement, every tiny adjustment creating new waves of pleasure, until finally we were rocking back and forth, cradle-like, and then I couldn’t stand it any longer and had to stop. And no sooner had I stopped than I awoke, alone and desolate.

This is my earliest memory of sex and one of only three dreams from my childhood that I can now recall with any accuracy.

Joan lived a few doors down the road from us. It was when our respective mothers had been pregnant that they first became friendly with one another, so we could truly claim to have grown up together. We went to the same school, and even at this age had the reputation of being slightly on the intellectual side, which was another factor in determining the closeness of our relationship. By now not only had I made up my mind, somehow or other, that I was destined to be a writer, but my first book had already appeared, in a limited edition of one — designed, illustrated and handwritten by myself. In a narrative peppered with cheerful anachronisms, it told of several episodes from the casebook of a Victorian detective; my hero being modelled, without much regard for the restrictions laid down by copyright law, on a character from one of the many comics which formed the backbone of my reading matter during this period. Joan had literary aspirations as well: she wrote historical romances, usually concerning one or other of the wives of Henry VIII. But in my opinion — not that I would ever have been so blunt as to tell her this — her work was immature. The characterizations were thin, compared with my own, and her spelling wasn’t up to much. None the less, we enjoyed showing each other our stories.

Joan and I would often ride out to Mr Nuttall’s farm together. It was a short ride, not much more than ten minutes, and contained a fabulous stretch of road — downhill but not too steep, just enough to get a bit of speed up, take your feet off the pedals and coast forward with the wind skimming your face and rushing through your ears, sweet tears of excitement welling at the corner of each eye. Of course, riding back was a different matter. We usually had to get off and push. Being conscientious children — unnaturally so, I would think now — we knew that our parents would begin to worry about us if we were gone for more than a couple of hours, which meant that our visits at first tended to be breathless, episodic affairs. We’d take books and pens and paper and things to eat, but usually, through lack of industry, would end up spending most of our time with Harry and the animals. That’s my recollection, anyway, of how things were in the spring and early summer of 1960: before Joan and I took the momentous step of setting up house together.

A word of explanation, at this point. For some weeks now I had been keeping my eye on a cowshed which stood empty in one of the outbuildings and which was, as far as I could see, going begging. I nagged my mother about this with some persistence, until finally she caved in and made a polite inquiry as to whether it would be possible for me to use it. ‘He’s writing a book,’ she explained with reluctant pride, ‘and needs somewhere where he can get peace and quiet.’ Clearly Mrs Nuttall was quick to pass this information on to her husband, who was so impressed that he took personal responsibility for the matter: and when I next rode down to the farm and opened the heavy, rust-hinged door on to the cowshed’s dark interior, I found that my new retreat had been supplied with a desk (actually, I think, an obsolete workbench) and a little wooden chair, and that the naked bulb which hung by a wire from the roofbeams was now tastefully veiled with a faded green lampshade. And that was just the start. As the summer went on I moved all my favourite books and ornaments out of my bedroom and into this gloomy haven; Mrs Nuttall provided me with two vases and a regular supply of irises and chrysanthemums; and Harry even managed to fix up a makeshift hammock, attached to the wall in a corner of the shed by two sturdy nails which were presumed (rather cavalierly, if you ask me) to be capable of bearing the weight of my recumbent body. I had, in short, acquired a new home, and it seemed to me that no happiness could be more complete.

But I was soon to find out that it could. One morning, early in the school holidays, I arrived at the shed to discover that a white envelope had been pushed underneath the door. It was addressed to me, in my father’s handwriting. It was my first letter.

The next dream that I remember is the briefest of the three, but was so vivid and frightening that it had me screaming at the top of my voice until my father came running from his bedroom to quieten me. When he asked me what was wrong, all I could say was that I’d had a nightmare, in which a man had been bending over my bed, staring into my face so intently that I was sure he was going to kill me. My father sat down beside me and stroked my hair. After a while I must have fallen asleep again.

There was one other thing I might have told him — except that I didn’t really grasp it myself at the time — to explain why the dream had been so terrifying. The truth is that I had recognized the man bending over the bed. I had recognized him because it was me. It was me, as an older man, staring back at my own young self, and my face was now ravaged with age and grooved like an ancient carving with the traces of pain.

Photography was one of my father’s hobbies. He had a little, leather-cased box camera and a home-made flash unit, and in lieu of a darkroom he would cover up the bathroom windows with black paper and fill the bath with developing fluid until one day he miscalculated and burned off all the enamel and my mother forbade him to use it ever again. Before that happened, though, he came down to Mr Nuttall’s farm to make a photographic record of Joan and me at the height of our domestic bliss.

Yes, we were now living together. Or at least, writing together — for I had warily agreed to embark upon a collaboration, in which my Victorian detective was to be transported back to the Tudor period in order to solve a murder mystery at the behest of Henry VIII himself. (This whole scenario, I seem to recall, was largely inspired by The Time Machine, which my father had been reading aloud to me at bedtime.) For this purpose another chair had been obtained from Mrs Nuttall, and we now sat opposite each other, writing alternate chapters and passing them back and forth along the workbench, in between breaks for refreshment and inspirational walks around the miniature garden. Needless to say, the venture was not a success: we never finished our story, and when we found ourselves reminiscing about it more than twenty years later, neither of us could remember what had become of the manuscript.

None the less, it was during our brief period of creative partnership that my father took his photograph. It caught us in characteristic poses: Joan sitting eager and upright, a trusting, toothy grin lighting up her face, while I half turned away from the camera, a pencil held to my lips, my head inclined at an introspective angle. My father made two prints from the negative, and gave us one each. For many years, she told me, Joan kept her copy in a secret drawer, where it occupied a special place even among her most prized possessions. But I chose to have it on show in my bedroom; and before very long, as so often happens with these childish treasures, it was lost.

There is one other dream that I can remember clearly, and it dates from several years later, when I was fifteen. On Wednesday March 27th 1968, in the early hours of the morning, I dreamed that I was flying in a small jet plane which suddenly and for no apparent reason began to plummet to the earth. I can still hear the quiet hum of the engine turned to a throaty splutter, and see the wall of dense grey cloud appear out of nowhere. The window shatters loudly and in an instant there are shards of glass hurling themselves at me, spearing my arms and shoulders, and now there is a mighty rush of air, throwing me backwards into bruising collision with the fuselage, and now we plunge, hurtling downwards at unthinkable speed, and I am hollow, my body is an empty shell, my mouth is open and everything that was inside me has been left way behind, way up in the sky, and the noise is deafening, the terrible whine of engine and airstream, and yet above it all I can still hear myself talking, for I am repeating a phrase, either to myself or to some absent listener, evenly and without emphasis, I repeat the words: ‘I’m going down. I’m going down. I’m going down.’ And then there is the final scream of metal, the piercing laceration as sections of the fuselage start to tear themselves apart, until at once the whole plane breaks up and shoots off in a million different directions, and I am in freefall, diving, unshackled, nothing but blue sky between me and the earth which I can see clearly now, rising up to meet me, the coasts of continents, islands, big rivers, big surfaces of water. I am no longer in pain, I am no longer afraid, I have already forgotten what it means to feel these things: I merely notice that the shadow of the earth has begun to swallow the delicate blue of the sky, and this transition from the blue to the black is very gradual and lovely.

Then I wake up, not shaking or sweating or shouting for my father, but registering, with a sense of anti-climax, even regret, the fact of my familiar shadowed bedroom and the unresponding night outside. I turn over and lie awake for a few minutes before falling again, this time into a dreamless and pellucid sleep.

It was two days later, over breakfast on the Friday morning, that my father passed me his copy of The Times and I learned that Yuri Gagarin was dead, and his co-pilot too, their two-seat jet trainer having crashed at Kirzhatsk just as I was having my dream. The last that anyone had heard from Yuri was the calm announcement ‘I’m going down’ as he tried to steer his aircraft away from a populated area. I didn’t believe it at first, not until I saw a photograph in the next day’s paper which showed the building where his ashes had been put on display, the Central House of the Soviet Army; and coiled around it, threading through the blackened streets, a queue of mourners six deep and three miles long.

… Si vous dormez, si vous rêvez, acceptez vos rêves. C’est le rôle du dormeur …

The envelope dropped to the floor. Immediately, roused by its arrival as nothing else could have roused me, I swung my legs out of bed and rushed into the hallway to retrieve it. It bore a first-class stamp and was addressed to ‘M Owen, Esq’ in elegant, spidery handwriting. Too impatient to go into the kitchen for a knife, I opened it roughly with my thumb, then took it into the sitting room and began to read the following communication, my astonishment mounting with every sentence:

1

Phoebe stood in a corner of the gallery, where she had been standing for the last quarter of an hour. Her wineglass was sticky in her hand, the wine itself warm and no longer palatable. So far not one person had stopped to talk to her, or even acknowledged her presence. She felt invisible.

Three of the guests were known to her, nevertheless. She recognized Michael, for one, even though they had only met once, more than eight years ago, when he was just about to start work on his Winshaw biography. How grey his hair was looking now. He probably didn’t remember her, and besides, he seemed to be deep in conversation with a white-haired and very loquacious pensioner who had done nothing but make rude comments about the paintings ever since he arrived. And then there was Hilary: well, that was all right. They had nothing to say to each other anyway.

But finally, of course, there was Roddy himself. She had caught his guilty eye more than once and seen him turn away in panic, so he clearly had no intention of making his peace. That was hardly surprising: her only real reason for coming to the opening in the first place was to cause him embarrassment. But it had been naïve of her to think that it would work. She was the one who felt embarrassed, by now, as she watched him moving easily among his friends and colleagues, chatting, gossiping. All of them, she was sure, would know exactly who she was, and be fully informed as to the nature of her distant, presumptuous connection with the gallery. Her cheeks started to burn at the very thought. But she would hang on. She would cope. She would just grip her glass more tightly, and stand firm.

This evening, after all, could threaten nothing to compare with the tidal waves of humiliation which had crashed over her when she had first walked through these doors, more than a year ago.

Phoebe had always painted, ever since she could remember, and her talent had been obvious from an early age to everyone but herself. With every school report, her art teacher’s praises had scaled new heights of rapture; but they had rarely been echoed by his colleagues, who found her academic performances on the whole disappointing. When she left school she didn’t have the nerve to apply to art college, and had begun to train as a nurse instead. A few years later her friends managed to persuade her that this had been a mistake, and she went on to study for three years at Sheffield, where her style underwent some rapid changes. All at once, an infinity of unsuspected freedoms had been laid before her: in the space of a few hungry, incredulous weeks she discovered fauvism and cubism, the futurists and the abstract expressionists. Already skilled in landscape and portraiture, she began to produce dense, cluttered canvases, packed with incongruous detail and imbued with a fascination for physical minutiae which drew her towards unlikely sources, including medical textbooks and books of zoological and entomological drawings. She was also starting to read widely for the first time, and in a Penguin edition of Ovid she found the inspiration for her first series of major paintings, all dealing with themes of flux, instability and the continuity of the human and animal worlds. Without realizing it — for she allowed nothing to complicate her exhilaration during this period — she was edging on to dangerous territory: she was heading for that unfashionable cusp between the abstract and the figurative; between decoration and accessibility. She was about to become unsellable.

But even before she was in a position to make this discovery, there were setbacks: a crisis of confidence, the abandonment of her course at the end of its second year, a return to full-time nursing. She didn’t paint for several years. When she took it up again, it was with renewed passion and urgency. She rented a shared studio in Leeds (where she now lived) and spent every spare waking moment there. Small exhibitions followed, in libraries and adult education centres, and there were occasional commissions, none of them very challenging or imaginative. But locally, at least, she had begun to acquire a sort of reputation.

One of her old tutors at Sheffield, with whom she kept sporadically in touch, invited her out for a drink and suggested that it was time to start showing her work to some London galleries. To make the process simpler, he offered her a personal introduction: she had his permission to approach the Narcissus Gallery in Cork Street, and to mention his name. Phoebe thanked him cautiously, for she was a little doubtful about this proposal. Her tutor’s much-vaunted influence with Roderick Winshaw had been something of a standing joke among her fellow students, who had never been able to find much evidence for it. He and Roddy had been at school together, it was true, but there was nothing to suggest that they had ever been close, or that the great art dealer had done anything to keep up the friendship in the intervening years. (When once invited, for instance, to give a guest lecture at the college, he forgot all about it and never showed up.) None the less, this was a real opportunity, and kindly offered, and it was not to be turned down lightly. Phoebe phoned the gallery next morning, spoke to a cheery and helpful receptionist, and made an appointment to come down the following week. She spent the next few days preparing her slides.

When she closed the glass door of the gallery behind her, Phoebe found that London’s demented clamour was silenced in an instant, and she had entered a haven: hushed, clinical and exclusive. She proceeded on tiptoe. It was a simple, rectangular space, with a desk at the far end, occupied by a blonde and stunningly beautiful woman who looked about five years younger than Phoebe and who smiled Hello in a distinctly threatening manner as soon as she came in. Phoebe mumbled some sort of reply and then for a few seconds, too scared to advance any further, lingered to look at the paintings on the walls. This was encouraging: they were dreadful. But something occurred to her, all the same, as she took a deep breath and dragged her resisting feet towards the desk under the receptionist’s insolent scrutiny. This morning, right up until the moment she had to leave for her train, she had been busy rearranging her selection of slides: but she now realized that this time could have been spent much more usefully. She should have been deciding what to wear.

‘Can I help you?’ said the woman.

‘My name’s Phoebe Barton. I’ve come to show you some of my work. I think you were expecting me.’

Phoebe sat down, although she hadn’t actually been invited to do so.

‘You mean you have an appointment?’ said the woman, glancing through the blank pages of her desk diary.

‘Yes.’

‘When did you make it?’

‘Last week.’

She tutted. ‘I was away last week. You would have spoken to Marcia, our temp. She doesn’t actually have the authority to make appointments.’

‘But we fixed up a time and everything.’

‘I’m sorry, but there’s no record of it here. You haven’t come far, have you? I mean, I’d hate to think you’d dragged yourself in from miles away, like Chiswick or somewhere.’

‘I’ve come down from Leeds,’ said Phoebe.

‘Ah.’ The woman nodded. ‘Yes, of course. That accent.’ She closed the diary and sighed heavily. ‘Oh, well, I suppose now that you’ve come all this way … You’ve brought some slides, I take it?’

Phoebe took out the viewing sheet and was on the point of handing it over, when she said: ‘I was supposed to be showing these to Mr Winshaw, you see. He’s a friend of my old tutor, and I was told that—’

‘Roddy’s in a meeting at the moment,’ said the woman. She took the slides, held them up to the light, and glanced over them for perhaps half a minute. ‘No, these won’t be any good to us, I’m afraid.’

She handed them back.

Phoebe could feel herself shrivelling. Already she despised this woman, but she knew her own utter powerlessness.

‘But you’ve hardly seen them.’

‘I’m sorry. They’re not what we’re looking for at all at the moment.’

‘Well, what are you looking for?’

‘Perhaps you might care to try some of the smaller galleries,’ she said, dodging this question with an icy smile. ‘Some of them do rent out space to amateur painters. I don’t know what sort of prices they charge.’

Just then a tall, well-built man in his late thirties emerged from an open doorway at the back of the gallery and strolled over.

‘Everything all right here, Lucinda?’ he said. He affected to ignore Phoebe, but she could tell that she was being quietly examined and evaluated.

‘There’s been a small misunderstanding, I think. This lady, Miss Barker, was under the impression that she’d made an appointment to see you, and she’s brought along some of her sketches.’

‘That’s quite all right. I was expecting Miss Barton,’ he said, and held out his hand, which Phoebe shook. ‘Roderick Winshaw. Now why don’t you bring those things through here, and I can have a proper look at them.’ He turned to the receptionist. ‘That’ll be all, Lucy. You can go to lunch.’

Inside his office, Roddy gave the transparencies an even more cursory inspection. He had already decided what he wanted from this tantalizing new arrival.

‘Harry’s told me about your work,’ he lied, after a brief struggle to remember the first name of the old acquaintance he had done everything in his power to avoid for the last twenty years. ‘But I’m glad to have the opportunity to meet you in person. Establishing a rapport is very important.’

As part of the process of establishing this rapport, he invited Phoebe out to lunch. She did her best to pretend that she knew her way around the menu, and managed to refrain from commenting on the prices, which at first she thought were misprinted. He was paying, after all.

‘In today’s market, you see,’ said Roddy, his mouth full of smoked salmon blinis, ‘it’s naïve to suppose that you can promote an artist’s work in isolation from his personality. There has to be an image, something you can market through the newspapers and magazines. It doesn’t matter how wonderful the pictures are: if you’ve got nothing interesting to say about yourself when the woman from the Independent comes round for an interview, then you’re in trouble.’

Phoebe listened in silence. For all his avowed interest in her personality, this seemed to be what he wanted.

‘It’s also important, of course, that you photograph well.’ He smirked. ‘I can’t imagine that you’d have any problems in that department.’

Roddy seemed strangely restless. Although he was obviously trying to impress Phoebe with his charm and attentiveness, the restaurant appeared to be full of people he knew, and he spent much of the time looking over her shoulder to make sure that he made eye contact with the more important diners. Whenever she raised the subject of painting, which she assumed was at least one interest that they had in common, he would immediately start talking about something completely different.

Roddy called for the bill after about forty minutes, before they’d had time for either dessert or coffee. He had another appointment at two o’clock.

‘Bloody nuisance, really. Some journalist doing a feature on promising young artists: wants me to give him a few names, I suppose. I wouldn’t bother, only you have to cooperate with these people or the gallery never gets good write-ups. You can’t think of anybody, can you?’

Phoebe shook her head.

‘Look, I’m sorry this has been such a rush,’ said Roddy, lowering his gaze and modulating his tone to one of bashful sincerity. ‘I feel that I’ve hardly got to know you.’

She thought this a ridiculous remark, given that they had run out of things to say to each other after about five minutes, but found herself saying, ‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘Where are you staying in London?’ he asked.

‘I’m going home tonight,’ said Phoebe.

‘Is that really necessary? I was just thinking that you could stay at my flat if you liked. There’s plenty of room.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Phoebe, immediately suspicious. ‘But I have to be at work tomorrow.’

‘Of course. But look, we must meet again soon. I want to have a really good look at these pictures of yours. You must talk me through them.’

‘Well, I don’t come down very often, what with work, and the train fare …’

‘Yes, I can see, it must be very difficult for you. But I do find myself in Leeds occasionally. My family have got a place up in that part of the world.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Damn this meeting. I’ll tell you what, though — why don’t you pop round to my flat now? It’s only just round the corner, and I could come and join you in about an hour or so. We could — sort of, pick up where we left off, and there’d be plenty of time for you to catch a train this evening.’

Phoebe stood up. ‘Nice try. If rather lacking in subtlety.’ She put her bag over her shoulder and said: ‘If I’d known that was the sort of rapport you had in mind, I could have saved you the cost of an expensive meal. Could I have my slides back now, please?’

‘I’ll put them in the post, if you really want me to,’ said Roddy, and he watched, fascinated, as she turned on her heel and marched wordlessly out of the restaurant. This was going to be more fun than he’d thought.

‘He was a creep,’ Phoebe told her flatmate, Kim, over a disconsolate cup of coffee in their kitchen that evening.

‘Aren’t they all,’ said Kim. ‘The question is, was he a good-looking creep?’

‘That’s hardly relevant,’ said Phoebe. (To her own annoyance, she had found him rather handsome, although much too aware of it for his own good.)

She thought no more about Roddy until the weekend, when there was an excited phone call from her father, who asked if she’d seen Saturday’s Times. Phoebe went out and bought it, and found that she was mentioned as one of a handful of young painters whose careers looked likely to blossom in the coming decade.

‘I’m very wary of making prophecies: history can so easily prove you wrong,’ says top London dealer Roderick Winshaw, ‘but of all the new artists I’ve seen recently, I’ve been most impressed by Phoebe Barton, a young woman from Leeds who promises great things for the future.’

Kim thought that she should telephone Roddy and thank him, but Phoebe, who was trying hard to conceal her pleasure, didn’t bother, even though the first thing she said to him when he phoned a few nights later was, ‘I saw what you said in the paper. It was very nice of you.’

‘Oh, that thing,’ said Roddy dismissively. ‘I wouldn’t set too much store by that. I’ve had a few inquiries about you since it came out, but it’s early days yet.’

Phoebe’s heart was racing. ‘Inquiries?’ she said.

‘The reason I was phoning,’ said Roddy, ‘was to find out if you were doing anything this weekend. I’m going up to the old family seat and I wondered if you might care to join me: then we could have a good look at your work. I thought I might pick you up in Leeds on the Saturday afternoon, and we’d drive up from there.’

Phoebe thought about this. A whole weekend alone with Roderick Winshaw? Just having lunch with him had been bad enough. It was a terrible idea.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘That would be lovely.’

2

Roddy took one look at the council estate and decided there was no way he was going to park the Mercedes Sports on it. He didn’t much like leaving it parked on the hillside, either, outside what seemed to be some sort of school or community centre: the two young thugs who watched him getting out and locking the doors looked as though they’d cheerfully smash the windows or let the tyres down the minute his back was turned. He hoped Phoebe would be ready and he wouldn’t have to hang around in this godforsaken spot a minute longer than necessary.

Outside the front door of her tower block he pressed a button and announced himself over the intercom system. There was no reply, only the abrupt sound of the door buzzing open. Roddy took a last look at the estate — kids playing noisily in a sunbaked recreation area, young mothers pushing prams up the hill from the centre of town, weighed down by bags of shopping — and then stepped into the hallway. It was damp and evil-smelling, and the lift looked especially gruesome; but walking all the way up to the eleventh floor would have meant arriving bedraggled and out of breath, and he was determined to make the best possible impression. So he gritted his teeth, blocked his nose and was relieved to find the ride relatively quick and painless. Next he had to negotiate a gloomy corridor, lit only by a series of feeble 40-watt bulbs which gave no hint of the brilliant Saturday afternoon sunshine he had left behind; but just as he was on the point of getting lost, the door to one of the flats opened and Phoebe herself appeared, beckoning. At once his spirits rose: against these surroundings she looked more ravishing than ever, and the doubts he had been entertaining all day on the drive up from London evaporated in a haze of desire.

‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘I’m almost ready. Kim’s just made a pot of tea.’

Roddy followed her inside and was surprised to find himself being led into a light and spacious sitting room. A young man in T-shirt and frayed jeans was slumped on the sofa watching television, flicking channels between Grandstand and a black-and-white comedy film on BBC2. He didn’t look up.

‘This is Darren,’ said Phoebe. ‘Darren, this is Roderick Winshaw.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Roddy.

Darren grunted.

‘He’s driven all the way up from London,’ said Phoebe, reaching for the off button on the television. ‘I’m sure he’d like to relax.’

‘Oy, I’m watching that!’

The television stayed on, and Phoebe retreated to her room to finish packing. Roddy drifted into the kitchen, where a tidy, sandy-haired woman was pouring out four cups of tea.

‘You must be Roddy,’ she said, and handed him a cup. ‘I’m Kim. Phoebe and I share this flat together. For our sins.’ She giggled. ‘Do you take sugar?’

Roddy shook his head.

‘We’re all so excited that she’s finally got someone important on her side,’ said Kim, helping herself to three spoonfuls. ‘It’s just the break she needs.’

‘Well, I certainly intend to … do whatever I can,’ said Roddy, thrown off balance.

Phoebe reappeared from her bedroom, carrying a large folio under her arm. ‘Will there be room for this in the car?’

Roddy drew in his breath. ‘Might be a bit of a squash.’

‘Well …’ Phoebe looked doubtful. ‘You did say you wanted to see them. That’s why you came, isn’t it?’

‘I thought they were all on slides.’

‘Not all of them.’ She brightened. ‘We could look at them now, if you like. It would only take an hour or two.’

This, of course, was the last thing he wanted.

‘Actually I’m sure it’ll fit in. We’ll just have to put the seats forward a bit.’

‘Thanks.’ Phoebe flashed him a smile. ‘I’ll get my bag.’

Darren shuffled in from the sitting room. ‘Where’s my tea?’

‘I thought you were going to Sainsbury’s,’ said Kim, spooning sugar into his cup.

‘It doesn’t close till six.’

‘Yes, but there won’t be any stuff left by then.’

‘The rugby starts in a minute.’

‘Darren, what are your weights doing in my room?’ Phoebe was standing in the hallway, ready to leave.

‘There’s more space for them there. Why, are they in the way?’

‘Of course they’re in the bloody way. I want them out when I get back, OK?’

‘Fine, if you want to make a big deal out of it.’

‘Well, thanks for the tea,’ said Roddy, who hadn’t drunk any. ‘We seem to be off.’

‘Nice jacket,’ said Darren, as Roddy brushed past him in the kitchen doorway. ‘Looks like it’s from Next or somewhere, is it?’

The jacket in question, a sporty, cream linen number, had been tailor-made and had cost more than five hundred pounds.

‘It’s from Charles of Jermyn Street,’ said Roddy.

‘Oh. Yes, I thought so. I thought it was probably one of those places.’

Phoebe blew him a contemptuous kiss, and said: ‘Goodbye, Kim. I’ll give you a call when I’m coming back.’

‘All right, take care. Have a good time, and don’t do anything … don’t do anything you’ll regret.’

Roddy, fortunately, was out of earshot.

‘He’s an idiot, that guy,’ said Phoebe, as they drove up the A1 towards Thirsk. ‘And he’s round at the flat all the time nowadays. It’s really beginning to depress me.’

‘Your flatmate seemed very nice.’

‘Don’t you think it’s upsetting, though, when your friends choose totally unsuitable partners?’

Roddy accelerated to within ten feet of the car in front and flashed his headlights impatiently. So far he had been averaging about ninety-five miles an hour.

‘I know what you mean, actually,’ he said. ‘Take this friend of mine. He was engaged to this woman for two years — cousin of the Duchess of —, as it happens. Not much of a looker but she had the most fabulous contacts. He was hoping to get into opera, you see. Anyway, suddenly, without a word of warning, he breaks the whole thing off and shacks up with this complete stranger: a primary school teacher, if you please. Nobody, but nobody had ever heard of her. Next thing you know, they’re married. Come to think of it they seem very happy, but I still think he should have bitten the bullet and stuck with Mariella. Probably be running the ENO by now. D’you get my point?’

‘I don’t think we’re talking about quite the same thing,’ said Phoebe.

They drove in silence for several minutes.

‘Seems pretty similar to me,’ said Roddy.

It was getting on for six o’clock when they drove through Helmsley and then struck out in the direction of the North York Moors. The sunshine was still bright and Phoebe found that the moors themselves, which she had visited many times before and had always considered overpoweringly bleak, today seemed cheery and welcoming.

‘You’re so lucky,’ she said, ‘having a home out here. It must have been a wonderful place to grow up.’

‘Oh, I didn’t spend much time here when I was a kid. Thank God. This is the dreariest place on earth, if you ask me. Never come here now if I can avoid it.’

‘So who lives in the house at the moment?’

‘No one, really. There’s a minimal staff — a couple of cooks and gardeners, and this old butler who’s been with the family for about five hundred years, and that’s about it. So the place is pretty much empty.’ He took out another cigarette for himself and gave it Phoebe to light. ‘Oh, apart from my father, of course.’

‘I didn’t realize he was still alive.’

Roddy smiled. ‘Well, as far as anyone can tell.’

Not knowing quite what to make of this, Phoebe said: ‘Do you know that John Bellany portrait of his father? I love that painting: it’s so rich and detailed — it tells you so much about the man, and at the same time it’s done with such warmth and affection. It positively glows.’

‘I know his work, yes. I’m not sure I’d recommend it to anyone as an investment these days. Look,’ he said, fixing Phoebe with a half-humorous, half-admonitory stare, ‘I hope you’re not going to want to talk about painting all weekend. I get enough of that down in London.’

‘What else are we here to talk about?’

‘Anything.’

‘ “I live and breathe art”,’ said Phoebe. ‘ “What other people refer to as ‘the real world’ has always seemed pale and insipid by comparison”.’

‘Well, that’s as may be. Personally I find that sort of attitude rather affected.’

‘Yes, but I didn’t say it: you did. Observer magazine, April 1987.’

‘Ah. Well, that’s the sort of thing you’re expected to say to journalists, in my line of business. You’re supposed to take it with a pinch of salt.’ Still puffing away on his cigarette, an edgier, more dangerous tone entering his voice, he said: ‘Do you know what I’d planned to be doing this evening? I’d been invited to dinner with the Marquis of —, at his flat in Knightsbridge. Also on the guest list were one of the most powerful theatrical producers in London, a member of the royal family, and an incredibly beautiful American actress, currently starring in a film being screened all over the country, who was flying over from Hollywood especially for the occasion.’

‘And what am I supposed to say to that? You must obviously be bored with these people, if you’d rather spend the time up here with me, in the back of beyond.’

‘Not necessarily. I look on this as a working weekend. After all, my livelihood depends on the cultivation of talented young people: and I do regard you as talented.’ The compliment, he thought, was well calculated, and gave him the courage to add: ‘What I’m saying, my dear, is that I’m expecting something a little more exciting from this weekend than a few hours in the drawing room discussing the influence of Velazquez on Francis Bacon.’ And then, before Phoebe could reply, he caught sight of something on the distant horizon. ‘Hello, there it is. The beloved homestead.’

Phoebe’s first impression of Winshaw Towers was not encouraging. Perched almost on the crest of a vast, forbidding ridge, it cast deep dark shadows over the grounds beneath it. The gardens were not yet visible; but she could already make out a dense area of woodland which screened off the approach to the house, and at the foot of the hill lay a large expanse of dismal and featureless water. As for the mad conglomeration of gothic, neo-gothic, sub-gothic and pseudo-gothic towers which gave the house its name, they resembled nothing so much as a giant black hand, gnarled and deformed: its fingers clawed at the heavens, as if to snatch down the setting sun which shone like a burnished penny and would soon, it seemed, have descended inexorably into its grasp.

‘Not exactly a holiday camp, is it?’ said Roddy.

‘Aren’t there any other houses around here?’

‘There’s a little village about five miles away, on the other side of the hill. That’s about it.’

‘Why would anyone want to live in such a lonely spot?’

‘God knows. The main body of the house was built in 1625, so they say. It didn’t come into my family for another fifty years or so. One of my ancestors, Alexander, bought it up — for reasons best known to himself — and then started adding to it, which is why there’s hardly any of the original brickwork left. Now this trumped-up duckpond’—he gestured out of the window, for the road was now running parallel to the water’s edge—‘goes by the name of Cavendish Tarn. It isn’t really a tarn, of course, because it’s man-made. Cavendish Winshaw was my great-great-uncle, and he had the whole thing dug out and filled with water about a hundred and twenty years ago. I think he must have envisaged hours of happy pleasure-boating and trout-fishing. Well, just look at it! You’d catch your death of pneumonia if you tried to stay out there for more than five minutes. I’ve always suspected that Cavendish — and Alexander too, if it comes to that — must have belonged to the … well, the eccentric side of the family.’

‘And what does that mean, exactly?’

‘Oh, didn’t you know? The Winshaws have a long and honourable history of insanity. It continues right up to the present day, as a matter of fact.’

‘How fascinating,’ said Phoebe. ‘Somebody should write a book about you all.’ There was a knowing, mischievous undertone to this remark which a more alert listener than Roddy might have registered.

‘Somebody was writing a book about us, now you come to mention it,’ he said blithely. ‘I even met up with him once: gave him an interview a few years ago. Inquisitive sort, I must say. Anyway, all that’s gone very quiet. Good job too.’

They had arrived at the main driveway. He swung the car in and they were at once plunged into a dark tunnel of foliage. In days long past, perhaps, it might have been broad enough to admit a fair-sized vehicle, but now their windscreen and roof were under constant attack from vines, ivy, creepers and overhanging branches of every description. And when they finally emerged into what was left of the daylight, the same neglect was evident on every side: the lawns were overgrown and choked with weeds, the location of paths and flowerbeds could only be guessed at, and most of the outbuildings seemed in a state of near-collapse, with cracked windows, crumbling masonry and doors hanging off rusty hinges. Roddy seemed impervious to all of this: he drove with inscrutable single-mindedness right up to the front door, and the car pulled to a halt on the pebbled forecourt.

They got out of the car and Phoebe looked around her, silenced by awe but also by a strange, unaccustomed apprehension. She realized, now, that Roddy had managed to lure her into a situation of peculiar loneliness and vulnerability, and she began to shiver. And then, while he was taking their cases out of the boot, she glanced up at the second storey and a movement behind one of the mullioned windows caught her eye. She saw it for only a brief moment: a pale, drawn and crooked face, surmounted by a wild tangle of grey hair, staring down at the new arrivals with a look of lunatic malevolence which was enough to freeze the blood.

Roddy sank down on to the bed and dabbed with a silk handkerchief at his now beetroot-coloured face.

‘Phew. I wasn’t expecting that, I must say.’

‘Well, I did offer to carry them for you,’ said Phoebe, walking over to the bay window.

A prolonged bout of bell-ringing and hammering on the front door had failed to produce any response, so Roddy had been obliged to use his own keys, and had then insisted on taking both their cases upstairs himself, with Phoebe’s folio wedged precariously beneath his arm. She had followed him in silence, amazed at the atmosphere of gloom and decay which permeated the whole house. The tapestries which hung from the walls were threadbare and tattered; the heavy velvet curtains on the landings were already drawn, admitting nothing of the dying sunlight; two suits of armour, standing precariously to attention in opposite alcoves, seemed about to fall apart from rust; and even the heads of the various unfortunate species of wildlife which had ended their days adorning the walls wore expressions of the utmost despondency.

‘Pyles is around, but he’s sure to be dead drunk by now,’ Roddy explained, between gasps for breath. ‘Here, let’s see if this does the trick.’

He took hold of a bell-rope hanging above the bed and pulled on it violently six or seven times. From the distant bowels of the house they could hear a far-off ringing. ‘That ought to do it,’ he said, panting heavily and lying flat out on the bed, and after about five minutes the approach of footsteps along the corridor could be heard: their tread irregular and unbelievably slow, with one step much heavier than the other. As they came closer, they were accompanied by a dreadful wheezing. Then the footsteps came to an abrupt stop outside their door, the wheezing continued, and a few seconds later there was a loud knock.

‘Come in!’ said Roddy, and the door creaked open to reveal a shabby, cadaverous figure whose eyes, set off by thick, beetling brows, flickered suspiciously about the room before coming to rest on Phoebe, seated at the bay window, who stared back in astonishment. The smell of alcohol overwhelmed her: she thought she would get drunk just by breathing.

‘Young Master Winshaw,’ the butler rasped, his voice hoarse and expressionless, his gaze still fixed on the female visitor. ‘What a pleasure to have you with us again.’

‘You got my message, I take it.’

‘I did, sir. Your room was prepared this morning. However, I was not aware — that is, I do not recall being informed — that you would be bringing a …’ (he coughed a dry cough, and moistened his lips) ‘… companion.’

Roddy sat up. ‘This is Miss Barton, Pyles, a young artist who I hope to be representing in a professional capacity in the very near future. She’ll be staying a day or two. I thought this room might be the most comfortable for her.’

‘As you wish, sir. I’ll go down and tell Cook that we shall be four for dinner.’

‘Four? Why, who else is coming?’

‘I received a telephone call earlier this afternoon, sir, from Miss Hilary. She’s flying up this evening, it seems, and she also intends to bring a …’ (clearing his throat once again, and licking the cracked corners of his mouth) ‘… companion.’

‘I see.’ Roddy seemed none too pleased with this information. ‘Well in that case surely we shall be five for dinner? I assume my father will be eating with us.’

‘I’m afraid not, sir. Your father suffered a slight misfortune this afternoon, and has already retired. The doctor has advised him not to exert himself any further today.’

‘Misfortune? What sort of misfortune?’

‘A most regrettable accident, sir. My fault entirely. I was taking him out for his afternoon constitutional, when I — most carelessly — lost control of his chair, and sent it hurtling down a slope, where it crashed. Crashed into the hen coop.’

‘My God — was there … was there any injury?’

‘A chicken was decapitated, sir.’

Roddy eyed him narrowly, as if trying to decide whether this was a joke. ‘All right, Pyles,’ he said at last. ‘I’m sure Miss Barton would like to freshen up after her journey. You may tell Cook that we shall be four for dinner.’

‘Very good, sir,’ he said, shambling towards the door.

‘What are we having, anyway?’

‘Chicken,’ said Pyles, without turning round.

Phoebe and Roddy were alone again. There was a difficult pause, and then Roddy said, with an awkward laugh: ‘He should really be put out to grass. Mind you, I don’t know who else they could find to look after a place like this.’

‘Should I go and see your father, do you think? There might be something I could do.’

‘No, no, the doctor will have seen to all that. Best not to get involved.’

‘Your butler seems to have a dreadful limp.’

‘Yes, poor soul.’ He got up from the bed and began to pace the room aimlessly. ‘That goes back about ten or fifteen years, when my uncle, Lawrence, still lived here. They were having a lot of trouble with poachers at the time and some man traps were put down. Seems that old Pyles got caught in one — late in the evening, as I understand it. Poor devil, they didn’t find him till the morning. The pain must have been shocking. That’s when he turned to drink, apparently. They even say that it … you know, turned his head a bit. Made him a bit strange — mentally, I mean.’

Phoebe said nothing.

‘Well, I did warn you what this place was like.’

‘Am I expected to dress for dinner?’ she asked.

‘Good Lord, no. Not on my account: and certainly not on account of my dear sister and her so-called companion. Which reminds me, I’d better go down and put the landing lights on for them. Pyles is bound to forget. Why don’t I come back up for you in about ten minutes or so, and we could perhaps do a quick guided tour before it gets dark?’

‘What about your father?’

Roddy’s smile was a perfect blank.

‘What about him?’

It was dusk. Roddy and Phoebe stood on the terrace overlooking Cavendish Tarn, drinking a Château-Lafite 1970, newly brought up from the cellar. They had been on a cursory tour of the house, during which Roddy had proved himself wearily knowledgeable on the subject of Ionic columns and basket arches, and Phoebe had done her dutiful best to admire the brick diapers and the flush quoins and the close carving on the spandrels. Now it appeared that Roddy had other things on his mind. While Phoebe stared out at the two parallel rows of landing lights which stretched across the lake and seemed to converge only at its furthest shore, Roddy’s eyes were turned intently on her profile. She knew that he was about to say something unwelcome, and steeled herself for it.

‘You’re very beautiful,’ he said at last.

‘I don’t really see,’ she answered — slowly, and not without a smile—‘what that’s got to do with anything.’

‘It’s why you’re here, and we both know it,’ said Roddy. He shifted a few inches closer. ‘There’s a cousin of mine called Thomas. A fair bit older than me — getting on for seventy, now, I should think. He’s quite big in the city. When he was younger — back in the late fifties, early sixties — he lent money to some film companies and got to know a few people in the business. Used to hang around the studios, and so on.’

‘Is there a point to all this?’

‘Hang on, I’m just coming to it. You see, I was only about eight or nine at the time, and Thomas — well, Thomas was, you know … a bit of a lad. A bit of an old rake. He used to bring me these photographs.’

‘Photographs?’

‘Pretty run of the mill stuff, most of them. Scenes from nudist films that he’d been involved with, that sort of thing. But there was one photograph — just an ordinary portrait shot, head and shoulders — of an actress: she was called Shirley Eaton. And I was really smitten with it for a while. Used to sleep with it under my pillow, if you can believe that. Of course, I was very young. But the funny thing is—’

‘—that I look exactly like her?’

‘Well, you do, actually.’ He frowned. ‘Why, has somebody told you that before?’

‘No, but I could see it coming. And now I’m to have the honour of helping you to live out your childhood fantasies, I suppose.’ Roddy didn’t answer that, and she continued to stare ahead, relishing the silence, until she noticed a red light winking in the night sky. ‘Look, there’s something up there.’

‘Sister dearest, I expect.’ He left his wineglass on the balustrade, and said: ‘Come on, let’s get down to the jetty and give her a proper welcome.’

The descent to the lake involved crossing three more lawns — all of them thick with wild, unkempt grass — linked steeply by walkways which had to be negotiated with care, for many of the slabs were loose, or concealed cracks which were big enough to trap the unwary foot. Finally, a set of rotting wooden steps led down to the water itself. They arrived just in time to see the plane skim down on to the tarn’s moonlit surface, and then taxi towards them, sending out shockwaves of foam as it came to a graceful if noisy halt at the edge of the jetty. Seconds later a door opened and the ash-blonde tresses of Britain’s most highly paid columnist popped into view.

‘Roddy?’ she said, peering out into the semi-dark. ‘You couldn’t be a love and take this case for me, could you?’

She handed him her case and squeezed herself through the doorway, to be followed by a square-shouldered, chisel-jawed, very bronzed and muscular figure who leapt out behind her and swung the door shut in one lithe, athletic movement.

‘Have you met Conrad, my pilot?’

‘A pleasure,’ said Roddy, shaking his hand and almost getting his fingers broken in the process.

‘And I don’t believe …’ Hilary prompted, having glimpsed Phoebe lurking in the shadows.

‘Phoebe Barton,’ said Roddy, as she stepped forward shyly. ‘Phoebe is my guest this weekend. She’s a most gifted young painter.’

‘Of course.’ Hilary appraised her coolly. ‘They always are. Is this your first time at the house of horrors, my dear?’

Phoebe had the sense that a clever answer was expected of her; but all she could manage was: ‘Yes.’

‘In that case, welcome,’ said Hilary, leading the way up the steps, ‘to Baskerville Hall. Come on, everybody, I’m famished. We had the most loathsome flight.’

3

The dining table could comfortably have seated twenty. The four of them huddled together at one end, and beneath the arches of that cavernous, overblown chamber, their voices sounded puny and faint. Not that Phoebe and Conrad had much to say in any case: for the first twenty minutes or so, brother and sister conducted an exclusive and (despite all the disparaging remarks Roddy had been making about Hilary before her arrival) affectionate conversation which consisted entirely of salacious gossip about mutual friends. Phoebe occasionally read the review pages of the national papers and watched arts programmes on the television, so she recognized most of the names as belonging to that small, self-elected and mutually supporting circle which seemed — for better or worse — to be at the heart of what passed for cultural life down in London. What she couldn’t quite understand was the odd, persistent note of reverence which underpinned even the sleaziest or most trivial of the anecdotes: the sense that Roddy and Hilary did, in fact, ascribe real importance to everything said and done by these people; that they did believe them, at heart, to be something like colossi bestriding the national stage, even though Phoebe could easily have gone through the entire roster of her friends, colleagues, neighbours and patients and not found a single person in whom their names would have produced even the dimmest flicker of recognition. None the less, the flow of private jokes and inside stories showed no sign of abating until Roddy moved things on to an altogether more personal level, by asking after the health of his brother-in-law.

‘Oh, Peter’s on some freebie in Barbados. Won’t be back until Tuesday.’

‘Didn’t you want to go with him?’

‘I wasn’t asked, dear. He’s gone with that bitch of a Features Editor.’

Roddy smiled. ‘Well, you always said you wanted an open marriage.’

‘Interesting little phrase, isn’t it, though: “open” marriage? Makes it sound like a drain, or a sewer. Quite appropriate in our case, really.’ Absently, she wiped the lipstick traces from the rim of her wineglass. ‘Actually he’s not such a bad old sod. He got me that Matisse for my birthday.’

Phoebe could not contain her astonishment. ‘You own a Matisse?’

Hilary looked up sharply, and said, ‘Good God, she talks.’ Then, turning back to her brother: ‘The trouble is that it clashes horribly with the green in the music room. We’re going to have to redecorate the whole bloody thing again.’

‘On the subject of presents,’ said Roddy, ‘you realize it was father’s birthday two weeks ago?’

‘Oh, shit. I forgot all about it. How about you?’

‘Slipped my mind completely.’

‘Why isn’t he eating with us, anyway?’

‘Had a bit of an accident this afternoon, it seems. His wheelchair got out of control.’

‘Pyles again?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Oh well.’ She giggled. ‘Perhaps we should slip him a few quid and make sure he does the job properly next time. I suppose I’d better go up and see the old misery at some point tomorrow.’ She pushed aside her plate of half-eaten food and noticed that Conrad was still struggling with his. ‘You don’t have to finish it, darling. We won’t be offended.’

‘It’s delicious,’ said Conrad.

‘No, it isn’t delicious,’ she said, like a grown-up talking to a retarded child. ‘It’s shit.’

‘Oh.’ He put down his fork. ‘I don’t know much about food,’ he confessed, to the company in general.

‘Conrad’s American,’ said Hilary, as if this explained everything.

‘Do you own many famous paintings?’ Phoebe asked.

‘She has something of a one-track mind, doesn’t she?’ Hilary aimed this remark at no one in particular, and then put a finger to her chin, affecting an attempt at recollection. ‘Well, let me see … There’s that Klee, and one or two Picassos, and some Turner drawings … Plus a few hideous eyesores by protégés of my brother …’

‘Why did you buy them,’ Phoebe asked, ‘if you think they’re hideous?’

‘Well, I’m an innocent in these matters, you see. Roddy tells me that they’re good, and I believe him. We’re all at his mercy.’ She thought about this for a moment and leaned forward. ‘Except for you, of course. After all, you’re a professional. You must have an opinion about the artists he represents.’

‘All I know is what I saw in the gallery last week.’

‘And?’

‘And …’ Phoebe glanced at Roddy, then plunged on. ‘I thought it was dreadful. Elementary stuff that wouldn’t even have been given a pass at any decent art school. Wispy pastels and those terrible would-be naïve landscapes — except that they weren’t even … clean enough to be called naïve — which looked as though they’d been knocked off by some pampered socialite’s daughter to pass the time between garden parties. The photographs of the artist were nice, though. I’m sure she went down a storm at the private view.’

‘Hermione happens to be very talented,’ said Roddy indignantly. ‘And yes, it’s true that I did know her brother at Trinity, but not everybody that I represent comes from that kind of background, or has to be introduced to me personally. I do go round all the art schools, you know, looking for new work. I’ve just taken this chap on, and he lives in Brixton. Thoroughly working class. It’s pretty dangerous stuff, too: pretty groundbreaking. He takes these enormous canvases and holds them at a sort of angle and then he tips these big cans of paint over them so that it all runs—’

Phoebe tutted impatiently. ‘That sort of stunt was interesting for about five minutes in the sixties. You’re so easily taken in, you people.’

‘Forthright little thing, isn’t she?’ said Hilary.

‘Well, it matters, you see. Because this is how reputations get inflated and mediocre work gets promoted, and then even when a good painter does manage to slip through the net you’ve already pushed the prices up so high that the smaller galleries can’t afford to buy them and it all ends up going into private collections. So what you’re doing, in effect, is robbing the country of its own culture. It’s as simple as that.’ She sipped her wine, somewhat abashed.

‘I wonder how long she’s been working on that little speech?’ Hilary asked.

‘Well, it’s a point of view,’ said Roddy, ‘and she’s entitled to it.’ He turned to Conrad, hoping to lighten the atmosphere. ‘What do you make of all this?’

‘I don’t know much about art.’

‘Have another drink, dear,’ said Hilary, refilling his glass. ‘You’re doing just fine.’

‘I’m not trying to start an argument, or anything,’ said Phoebe, who was growing more wary of Hilary by the minute, ‘but I always had the impression that you agreed with me on this. I thought you dismissed the whole business of collecting modern art as so much snobbery.’

Hilary’s eyes widened, and for several seconds she didn’t answer. Her left hand groped towards a bowl of fruit between the two silver candelabra, and she broke off a small cluster of grapes, one of which she then began to peel slowly, sliding her long fingernail between the skin and the purple flesh.

‘Have we met before?’ she asked suddenly.

‘No,’ said Phoebe. ‘No, I don’t think so. Why?’

‘I’d just like to know,’ she said, finishing one grape and starting on another, ‘what makes you think you have any kind of insight into my personal opinions.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Roddy, keeping a close watch on his sister’s fingers. ‘Why don’t we all go into the smoking room and make ourselves comfortable, if we’re going to chat away like this?’

‘I’m only going by what I read in your column once,’ said Phoebe. ‘I remember when somebody — some businessman or other — had just paid hundreds and thousands of pounds for a Rothko to go in his private collection, and you went on about what a waste of money it was and how it could all have gone into building schools and hospitals.’

There was a pause, before Hilary said, ‘She really does come out with the most remarkable things,’ in a slightly strangled voice. Then, turning back to Phoebe: ‘It’s only a bit of junk for the newspapers, you know. I don’t write it on tablets of stone. Besides, that column has literally millions of readers. You don’t think I’d share my beliefs—anything that was actually mine—with all those people, do you?’

‘I thought that was the whole point.’

‘There’s this thing called the real world,’ said Hilary. ‘Have you heard of it?’ She didn’t wait for the answer. ‘You see, we can’t all decide that we want to be artists, sitting up in some lofty enclosure, knocking off the occasional painting whenever the fancy takes us. Some of us have to work to order, and meet deadlines, and little, unimportant things like that. Perhaps what you really need is a lesson in how it feels to be stuck in front of a keyboard with five hundred words to write and the subs expecting it in thirty minutes.’

‘I don’t paint for a living,’ said Phoebe. ‘I’m a health visitor. Ask anyone who works in my profession and you’ll find that they know all about pressure.’

‘I’ll give you an example of pressure.’ Hilary was on to her fourth grape by now. ‘Pressure is being holed up in some hotel in the middle of Kent with three colleagues and a fax machine, knowing that you’ve got to put together an autumn schedule by Thursday morning.’

‘Possibly,’ said Phoebe. ‘But you might just as well say that pressure is having twenty pounds in your purse and wondering how you’re going to make it last until the end of the week. Or finding that you’re pregnant again two days after your husband has lost his job. That’s the sort of problem I come across most days, and these people don’t even have the consolation of feeling that the decisions they have to make are in any way glamorous, or make any kind of difference to people’s lives other than their own.’

A smile spread itself across Hilary’s face, and she turned to her brother. ‘Oh, darling, she’s priceless. I really must congratulate you. How did you find her? You realize what you’ve got here, don’t you? I do believe you’ve managed to track down a bona fide, old-fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool, head-in-the-clouds socialist. They’re terribly rare, you know. And now, clever old you, you’ve managed to catch this creature and transport her all the way up here. I mean, whatever next? Are you hoping that she’ll mate in captivity?’

Roddy jumped to his feet.

‘All right, Hilary: that’s enough. Just leave her alone.’

‘It’s a bit late to come over all chivalrous, isn’t it?’

‘You’re being offensive.’

‘She won’t go to bed with you, you know. I would have thought that was pretty obvious.’

Roddy turned to their guests. ‘I must apologize for my sister. She’s clearly had a very hard week. All the same, that doesn’t excuse her manners. I think you’ll agree they’ve been appalling.’

‘I don’t know much about manners,’ said Conrad.

Hilary put her arm around him and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Conrad doesn’t know much about anything,’ she said, ‘except for flying, and fucking.’ She got up, and, taking his hand, pulled him gently with her. ‘I think it’s about time I put his second area of expertise to the test. Good-night to you both.’ And to Phoebe she added: ‘It’s been an education, my dear. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

Once they had left, Roddy and Phoebe sat in silence for some time.

‘That was nice of you,’ she said finally. ‘Thanks.’

He glanced at her: perhaps on the look-out for irony.

‘Pardon?’

‘Sticking up for me. You didn’t have to do that.’

‘Well, you know … She was way out of line.’

‘She doesn’t seem to have a very high opinion of your motives for bringing me here.’

Roddy gave an apologetic shrug, and said: ‘Perhaps she’s right.’

‘So what’s the deal?’

‘The deal?’

‘I sleep with you, and I get — what? A mixed show? A show of my own? Written about in the newspapers? Introduced to lots of wealthy and influential people?’

‘I think you’re jumping the gun a bit.’

‘And do we do it just the once, or is this going to be a regular thing?’

Roddy walked over to the fireplace, where the two bars of an electric fire were doing their feeble best to make an impact on the room’s deathly chill. He seemed about to embark upon a speech.

‘You’re quite right, of course.’ The words came with some difficulty. ‘Clearly I wanted to sleep with you — I mean, what man in his right mind wouldn’t? — and I knew that the only way I was going to … persuade you, was by offering to help with your career. Which I’m certainly in a position to do. But the thing is’—he laughed awkwardly, running a hand through his hair—‘I mean, it galls me to admit that anything my sister might say could have any influence, but — hearing her ranting on like that, it has made me realize that my assumptions, my presumptions, even, have been decidedly … Well, the whole business suddenly seems dreadfully cheap. And I feel that I owe you an apology. I really am very sorry: for bringing you here under … false pretences.’

‘You must think I’m very innocent,’ said Phoebe, joining him at the fireplace, ‘if you expected me to come up here without suspecting anything.’

‘So why did you come?’

‘Well, that’s a good question. Let me tell you two things.’ She leaned back against the mantelpiece, only occasionally turning to meet his eye. ‘First of all, although I do genuinely believe that you know hardly anything about art, that the power you wield is unhealthy, and that your business practices probably stink to high heaven, I don’t find you totally unattractive.’

Roddy snorted. ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose.’

‘Secondly.’ Phoebe hesitated, her eyes closed, and then took a breath. ‘I’ve never really been brave enough to say this to anyone before, but — You see, over the years, I have, with great difficulty, built up a certain … faith in myself. In my painting, I mean. In fact, it’s got to the point where I think it’s probably quite good.’ She smiled. ‘That must sound very arrogant.’

‘Not at all.’

‘It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I didn’t have any faith in myself at all. It’s quite … painful to talk about, but — well, it happened when I was a student. I’d given up nursing for a while to go to art college, and I was living with some people in this house — we were sharing it — when someone came and stayed with us for a few days. A visitor. And one day I was out shopping, and I came back to find that he was in my room, looking at this painting that was only half-finished. Less than half-finished, really. And it was as if … as if he’d seen me naked, I suppose. And not just that, but he started trying to talk about the painting, and it was obvious that it meant something completely different to him, that I was completely failing to communicate anything through it, in fact, and I … It was very strange. A few days later he left without saying anything. Didn’t say goodbye to any of us. He left us all feeling … empty, somehow, and I couldn’t bear the thought of looking at those paintings again — of anyone looking at them. The upshot was that I asked the landlady if we could have a bonfire in the back yard, and I burnt everything I’d done. Every painting, every drawing. I dropped out of college and went back into nursing full time. And that was that for a while. I didn’t paint at all. Not that I wasn’t thinking about it. I still used to visit galleries, and read all the magazines and everything. There was this sort of — empty space, inside me, where I used to paint, and I was looking for something to fill it: someone, I should say, because I was longing just to find a picture — any picture — which would leap out at me and suddenly … connect. Do you know that feeling? You must do: coming across an artist whose work speaks to you so directly, it’s as if you both understand the same private language — somehow confirming everything you’ve ever thought and at the same time saying something completely new.’ Roddy was mute, incomprehending. ‘You don’t, do you? Well, anyway. It never happened, needless to say. But what did happen was that a couple of years later I got a parcel in the post, from one of my old lecturers at the college. They’d been having some sort of clear-out, and they’d found some sketches of mine, apparently, which they wanted to return. So I unpacked these things and started looking at them again. Funnily enough, there was an early version of the painting which had caused so much trouble in the first place, the one this man had completely misunderstood. And seeing it again — seeing all of them again, really — I realized how wrong he’d been: how wrong I’d been, to over-react like that. Because I knew, as soon as I saw them after all this time I knew that they were good. I knew that I’d been on to something. I knew that there was no one else around who was — I won’t say better than me, I don’t have that much of an ego — but who was really working in the same field, or attempting anything at all similar … It just gave me my confidence back, somehow, made me feel that I’d actually been doing something at least as worthwhile as all the other painters who were getting bought and sold and commissioned and exhibited. And I’ve never really lost that feeling. I do feel that I … that I deserve. So what you should know, I suppose, is that I’m pretty determined. I don’t think there’s anything, now, anything in the world that matters to me as much as finding some kind of audience for my work.’

She took a few sips from her glass and brushed a strand of hair back from her brow. Roddy didn’t speak for some time.

‘What we should probably do,’ he said at last, ‘is take a look through the pictures tomorrow and see what we can arrange.’ Phoebe nodded. ‘Right now, I think we’d better go to bed.’ She looked up, questioning. ‘Separately,’ he explained.

‘All right.’

Together they climbed the Great Staircase, and at the entrance to the East Corridor, they kissed a formal good-night.

4

Phoebe felt tiny in the four-poster. Her mattress was soft and full of lumps, and although she had intended to lie to the side of the bed nearest the window, she found herself rolled by the weight of her own body into a deep valley at the centre. The bed creaked whenever she moved: but then the whole house seemed to be forever creaking, or groaning, or whispering, or rustling, as if never for a moment at ease with itself, and in an effort to close her ears to this disquieting soundtrack, she tried to focus her mind on the day’s strange events. She was pleased, on the whole, with the way things had worked out with Roddy. Even before arriving at Winshaw Towers, she had taken the reluctant decision to sleep with him if he made this his absolute precondition for promoting her work, but she was glad that she hadn’t been obliged to go through with it. Instead, something much better, and much more unexpected, was starting to emerge from their weekend together: a sense of mutual understanding. She even realized — very much to her own surprise — that she was beginning to trust him. And in the warm glow of this realization, she permitted herself a fantasy: the same fantasy to which all artists, however good their intentions, however unflinching their principles, have recourse from time to time. It was a fantasy of success; of recognition, and acclaim. Phoebe’s ambitions were too modest to encompass worldwide celebrity, or serious wealth, but she did dream — as she often had before — of having her work seen and appreciated by other painters; of touching the lives and colouring the perceptions of a few members of the public; of being exhibited, perhaps, in her home town, so that she might give something back to the people with whom she had grown up, repay her parents for the faith and patience which they had vouched her and which had been so valuable during her worst moments of self-doubt. At the thought that some — or even all — of this might now, possibly, miraculously, be about to happen, she stretched her legs beneath the grey, musty sheets and added a whole new chorus of delicious creaks to the furtive stirrings of the house itself.

But all at once she was aware of another noise, too. It was coming from the direction of the door, which she had taken the precaution of locking before getting into bed. She sat up cautiously and reached out for the table lamp, which cast a murky, ineffectual glow over the room. She looked towards the door. Suddenly feeling like the leading lady in some low-budget and none too original horror film, she realized that the handle was turning. There was someone out in the corridor, trying to get in.

Phoebe swung her legs out of bed and tiptoed towards the door. She was wearing a thick, striped cotton nightshirt which buttoned up at the front and reached down almost to her knees.

‘Who is it?’ she asked, in a brave, slightly quavering voice, after the handle had been tried a few more times.

‘Phoebe? Are you awake?’ It was Roddy’s voice: a loud whisper.

She sighed with exasperation. ‘Well of course I’m awake,’ she said, unlocking the door and holding it ajar. ‘If I wasn’t before I certainly am now.’

‘Can I come in?’

‘I suppose so.’

She opened the door and Roddy, who was wearing a satin kimono, slid inside and sat down on the bed.

‘What is it?’

‘Come and sit down a minute.’

She sat beside him.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said.

No further explanation seemed to be forthcoming.

‘So?’

‘So I thought I’d come and see how you were.’

‘Well, I’m fine. I mean, I haven’t contracted any life-threatening diseases in the last half hour or anything.’

‘No, but I mean — I came to check that you weren’t too upset.’

‘Upset?’

‘By my sister, and … oh, I don’t know, by everything. I thought it might all have been a bit much for you.’

‘That’s very nice of you, but I’m fine. Really. I’m quite a tough little cookie, you know.’ She smiled. ‘Are you sure that’s the reason you came?’

‘Of course it is. Well, pretty much.’ He sidled closer towards her. ‘I was lying in bed, if you must know, thinking about that story you told me. About you burning all your paintings. I was thinking that — well, correct me if I’m wrong here — but that’s not the sort of story you would have told to just anybody. It occurred to me that possibly’ (he put his arm around her shoulder) ‘you must have begun to like me a little bit.’

‘Possibly,’ said Phoebe, pulling fractionally away from him.

‘There’s a feeling between us, isn’t there?’ said Roddy. ‘I’m not just imagining it. We started something down there.’

‘Possibly,’ Phoebe repeated. Her voice was toneless. She had begun to feel strangely removed from the situation, and hardly noticed, at first, when Roddy kissed her softly on the mouth. She noticed the second kiss, though: the feel of his tongue slipping between her moist lips. She pushed him away gently and said: ‘Look, I’m not sure this is such a good idea.’

‘No? I’ll tell you what is a good idea, though. November the 13th.’

‘November the 13th?’ she said, dimly aware that he was starting to unbutton her nightshirt. ‘What about it?’

‘The opening night of your show, of course.’ He undid the last three buttons.

Phoebe laughed. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Of course I am.’ He pulled the nightshirt back over her shoulders. Her skin, in the weak glow of the table lamp, was golden and flawless: ochre, almost. ‘I’ve been looking in my diary. It’s the earliest we can manage.’

‘But you haven’t even seen the pictures yet,’ said Phoebe, as his finger began to trace a line from her neck across her collarbone and beyond.

‘It’ll mean a bit of reshuffling,’ said Roddy, kissing her again on her lips, which were wide with astonishment. ‘But who cares.’ He drew her nightshirt further open and brushed his hand across her breast.

Phoebe felt herself being pushed back on to the pillows. There were fingers stroking the inside of her thigh. Her head was swimming. November the 13th was only six weeks away. Did she have enough pictures for a major exhibition? Ones that she was really happy with? Was there time to finish the two large canvases which stood half-completed in her studio? The rush of excitement made her weak and dizzy. Her mind was so busy racing over the possibilities that it seemed the easiest thing in the world to let Roddy lie on top of her, his kimono thrown aside to reveal strong forearms and a hairless chest, his knees pushing their way between her legs, his tongue working assiduously at her nipple, until the impulse to resist asserted itself again and her whole body tautened.

‘Look, Roddy — we have to talk about this.’

‘I know. There are hundreds of things we have to talk about. Prices, for instance.’

In spite of herself she responded to the movement of his hand, and stretched her legs even further apart. ‘… Prices?’ she said, with an effort.

‘We’ve got to get them as high as possible. I’ve got Japanese clients who’ll pay thirty or forty thousand for a big canvas. Seven by nine, something like that. Abstracts, landscapes, minimalism, anything: they don’t care. Does that feel nice, by the way?’

‘Thirty or forty …? But I’ve never painted anything that … Yes, yes it does, it feels very nice.’

‘Stay there a minute.’

He rolled off and took something from a drawer in the bedside table. Phoebe could hear the sound of a packet being opened and rubber being unfurled.

‘We’ll have to take the show to New York, of course,’ said Roddy, sitting with his back towards her, his fingers working with a dexterity born of long practice, ‘after it’s been in London a few weeks. I’ve got a sort of twinning arrangement with a gallery over there, so I don’t anticipate any problems.’ He replaced the packet and lay on his back. ‘Well, what do you think?’

‘I think you’re mad,’ said Phoebe, giggling joyfully. Accepting the invitation in his eyes, she raised herself and knelt over him, her hair brushing his face. ‘And I don’t think I should be doing this.’

But she did.

Roddy fell asleep soon afterwards. He slept on his side, facing the wall, taking up three quarters of the bed. Phoebe dozed more fitfully, her mind still dancing to the tune of his promises, awash with visions of the glories soon to come. At one point she was awoken by voices coming from the grounds outside her window. Pulling back the curtains she saw two figures wielding mallets and chasing each other across the floodlit lawn. Hilary’s piercing cackle merged with the more apologetic laughter of Conrad as he explained that ‘I don’t know much about croquet’. They both appeared to be naked.

Phoebe returned to bed, tried to get Roddy to move, failed, and then had little option other than to lie up against his back. For a while she tried putting her arm across his shoulder: but she might as well have been hugging a block of marble.

She woke to the sound of loud groans coming from a distant room. She was alone in the bed, and the weather was grey and drizzly. She guessed it was between nine and ten in the morning. Hastily pulling a blouse and trousers over her nightshirt, and slipping shoes on to her bare feet, Phoebe went out into the corridor to investigate. Pyles was limping by, carrying a tray which contained the congealed remains of an uneaten breakfast.

‘Good morning, Miss Barton,’ he said coldly.

‘Is anything the matter?’ she asked. ‘It sounds as though somebody might be in pain.’

‘Mr Winshaw, I fear, is suffering the consequences of my carelessness yesterday. The bruising is worse than we thought.’

‘Has someone sent for the doctor?’

‘The doctor, as I understand it, prefers not to be disturbed on a Sunday.’

‘Then I’ll attend to him.’

This suggestion met with stunned silence.

‘I am a qualified nurse, you know.’

‘I scarcely think that would be appropriate,’ the butler murmured.

‘Too bad.’

She hurried off down the corridor, paused outside the room from which the groans were issuing, then knocked and walked briskly in. Mortimer Winshaw — whose pale and crooked face she had glimpsed behind his bedroom window when she arrived yesterday — was sitting up in bed, his hands clutching the blankets and his teeth clenched in pain. He opened his eyes when Phoebe came in, gasped, and pulled the bedclothes up to his chin, as if modesty demanded the concealment of his egg-stained pyjamas.

‘Who are you?’ he said.

‘My name’s Phoebe,’ she answered. ‘I’m a friend of your son’s.’ Mortimer gave a snort of indignation. ‘I’m also a nurse. I could hear you from my room and thought I might be able to do something to help. You must be very uncomfortable.’

‘How do I know you’re a real nurse?’ he said, after a pause.

‘Well, you’ll just have to trust me.’

She met his gaze.

‘Where does it hurt?’

‘All down here.’ Mortimer drew the bedclothes back and pulled down his pyjama bottoms. His right thigh was severely bruised and swollen. ‘That clumsy oaf of a butler. He was probably trying to kill me.’

Phoebe inspected the bruise, then pulled off his pyjama bottoms altogether.

‘Let me know if this hurts.’

She raised his leg and tested the range of movement of the hip.

‘Of course it damn well hurts,’ said Mortimer.

‘Well, there’s nothing broken, anyway. You could probably do with some painkillers.’

‘There are pills in the chest over there. Hundreds of ’em.’

She made him take two Coproxamol, with a glass of water.

‘We’ll make up an ice pack in a minute. That should help it go down. Do you mind if I take this dressing off?’

His shin was loosely bound with a yellowing bandage which should clearly have been changed some time ago. Underneath was a nasty leg ulcer.

‘What’s my treacherous little runt of a son doing bringing nurses up here, anyway?’ he said, as she unwound the dressing.

‘I paint as well,’ Phoebe explained.

‘Ah. Any good at it?’

‘That’s not really for me to say.’

She fetched cotton wool from the chest, water from the basin in an adjoining washroom, and began to clean up the ulcer.

‘You have a delicate touch,’ said Mortimer. ‘Painting and nursing. Well, well. Both of them rather demanding vocations, I would have thought. Do you have your own studio?’

‘Not my own, no. I share with another woman.’

‘Doesn’t sound very satisfactory.’

‘I manage.’ She took a strip of clean bandage and began to wind it around the scrawny, brittle shin. ‘When was this dressing last changed?’

‘Doctor comes about twice a week.’

‘It should be changed daily. How long have you been in the wheelchair?’

‘A year or so. It started with osteoarthritis: then these ulcers.’ He watched her working for a few minutes, and said: ‘Pretty, aren’t you?’ Phoebe smiled. ‘Makes a change to see a young woman about the place.’

‘Apart from your daughter, you mean.’

‘What, Hilary? Don’t tell me she’s here as well.’

‘You didn’t know?’

Mortimer went tight-lipped. ‘Let me give you a warning about my family,’ he said eventually, ‘in case you hadn’t worked it out already. They’re the meanest, greediest, cruellest bunch of back-stabbing penny-pinching bastards who ever crawled across the face of the earth. And I include my own offspring in that statement.’

Phoebe, who was on the point of tying up the bandage, stopped to look at him in surprise.

‘There’s only ever been two nice members of my family: Godfrey, my brother, who died in the war, and my sister Tabitha, who they’ve managed to shut up in a loony bin for the last half a century.’

For some reason she very much didn’t want to hear this. ‘I’ll go and get that ice pack,’ she said, standing.

‘Before you go,’ said Mortimer, as she made for the door, ‘how much do they pay you?’

‘Pardon?’

‘At the hospital, or wherever it is you work.’

‘Oh. Not much. Not much at all, really.’

‘Come and work for me,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a proper wage.’ He thought for a moment, and named a five-figure sum. ‘They don’t look after me here. There’s no one to talk to. And you could paint. Nobody uses half of these rooms. You could have your own studio: a really big one.’

Phoebe laughed. ‘That’s very sweet of you,’ she said. ‘And the funny thing is that if you’d asked me yesterday I probably would have accepted. But it looks as though I’m going to be giving up nursing for good.’

Mortimer chuckled and said unkindly: ‘I wouldn’t bank on it.’ But she had gone by then.

Her ministrations complete, Phoebe washed, dressed and arrived in the dining room just in time to see Pyles clearing away the plates and tureens.

‘I was hoping for some breakfast,’ she said.

‘Breakfast has been served,’ he answered, without looking up. ‘You’re too late.’

‘I could do myself some toast: if there’s a toaster somewhere I could use.’

He stared at her as if she were a madwoman.

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ he said. ‘There are cold kidneys left. That’s all. And some sweetbreads.’

‘Never mind. Do you happen to know where Roddy is at the moment?’

‘Young Master Winshaw, so far as I am aware, is in the library annexe. Miss Hilary likewise.’

He gave Phoebe a series of elaborate directions which, followed to the letter, eventually brought her out in some sort of laundry in the basement. Undaunted, she went back upstairs and wandered the corridors for about ten minutes until she heard the laughing voices of brother and sister behind a half-closed door. Pushing it open, she found herself in a wide room which seemed both chilly and airless. Roddy and Hilary had her folio open on a table and were flicking rapidly through it, barely glancing at one picture before taking up the next. Hilary looked up and stopped in mid-cackle when she saw Phoebe standing in the doorway.

‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘It’s Florence Nightingale herself. Pyles has been telling us about your little mission of mercy.’

‘Do you want me to talk you through any of those?’ Phoebe asked, ignoring her and walking straight up to Roddy.

‘Perhaps I should leave you two lovebirds to plan your glittering future together,’ said Hilary. ‘Cocktails on the terrace in half an hour, anyone?’

‘Make it a quarter,’ said Roddy. ‘This won’t take long.’

Hilary closed the door behind her and he resumed his desultory browsing. Watching him, Phoebe began to quiver with anxiety. She didn’t know which was more worrying — his silence on the subject of the paintings or his failure, so far at least, to make the smallest acknowledgement of anything that had happened between them during the night. She stood beside him and briefly laid a hand on his arm but he was unresponsive. After that Phoebe went and stood over by the window. About three minutes later he snapped the folio shut. One picture — a simple watercolour of snow-covered rooftops, part of a commission which she had reluctantly accepted to design Christmas cards for a local firm — lay on the table. Roddy picked it up, carried it over to the wall and tried holding it at different heights. Then he put it back on the table.

‘Fifty for that one,’ he said.

Phoebe didn’t understand.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Frankly, that’s more than it’s worth. But I’m feeling generous this morning. You can take it or leave it.’

‘You’re offering to buy that painting … for fifty pounds?’

‘Yes. It would cover that damp patch rather well, don’t you think?’

‘But what about the others?’

‘The others? Well, to be honest, I was hoping to find something a little more exciting. I don’t really see anything here that would justify an investment.’

Phoebe thought about this for a moment.

‘You bastard,’ she said.

‘There’s no need to take it personally,’ said Roddy. ‘Tastes differ, the world over. It’s all subjective in the long run.’

‘After everything you said last night.’

‘But I’d hardly seen any of your work last night. As you were at pains to point out yourself.’

She frowned and said hollowly: ‘Is this some sort of joke?’

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘the Narcissus Gallery has an international reputation. I think you’re the one who must be joking, if you suppose that any of these … studenty daubs are ever likely to find a place in it.’

‘I see.’ She looked out of the window, which was thick with dust. ‘Wasn’t it rather a lot of trouble to go to, just for a quick fuck? I mean, I don’t know what your standards are, in this area, but I didn’t think it was anything special.’

‘Well, of course, I’ve also had the pleasure of your company for the weekend. That’s not to be discounted. You’ll stay for some lunch, I hope?’

Phoebe drew in her breath sharply and advanced towards him. ‘You slimy little piece of shit. Phone for a taxi. Now.’

‘As you wish. I’ll tell him to wait at the bottom of the drive, shall I?’

Those were the last words he spoke to her. He closed the door behind him and left her alone, dumbfounded, dwarfed by the dimensions of the enormous room. But for the next few hours she managed to bottle up her rage and remained steel-eyed and silent. She said nothing to the driver who took her all the way to York station, keeping up an unbroken stream of small talk which to her racing mind was so much meaningless noise, like radio static. She said nothing to the other passengers on the train, or on the bus which took her back to the flat. It wasn’t until she returned to her bedroom and found, not only that it was still cluttered with Darren’s bodybuilding equipment but that there had been an accident with one of his dumb-bells, smashing the glass on her prized Kandinsky print, that she collapsed heavily on to the bed and gave herself over to tears: tears which were brief, cleansing and salty with hate.

Later that week, she phoned Mortimer and told him that she’d reconsidered his offer. He was so pleased that he raised her salary another two thousand on the spot.

Now, more than a year later, standing in a corner of the gallery, her wineglass sticky in her hand, the wine itself warm and no longer palatable, she saw no reason to regret her decision. She was glad to have escaped the increasingly difficult atmosphere in the flat; and although Mortimer had turned out to be a demanding patient (prone to exaggerate his ailments wildly) and a disagreeable companion (incapable of concentrating for long on any subject other than his obsessive, almost murderous hatred for his family), she only had to be with him for a few hours every day. The rest of the time she was free to do her own work, and had been given a large, well-lit room on the second floor to use as a studio. It was a solitary existence, but she was allowed to have friends to stay, and to take the occasional weekend off. She missed the self-respect and the sense of usefulness she had felt as a health visitor, but consoled herself with the thought that it would not be long before she went back to it. Not that she had any intention of deserting Mortimer, who had come to depend on her more and more. But it was obvious, now, that his next serious illness would be his last.

So far as she knew, Roddy himself had no idea that she had taken this job: he hadn’t been up to Winshaw Towers once since their weekend together. When Mortimer’s birthday came round again, Roddy had discharged his filial duty by sending him a card and an invitation to the gallery’s latest private view, in the full knowledge that his wheelchair-bound father would not be able to attend. Mortimer had passed the invitation over to Phoebe with a grim smile, and given her permission to attend if she wanted to. And so here she was.

Now, sick of being ignored by the other guests, she was on the point of going over and reintroducing herself to Michael when she saw that he ind his companion were putting on their coats and preparing to go. Leaving her half-empty glass on a table top, she pushed through the crowd and followed them outside. They were already halfway down the street, deep in conversation; there was no point running after them. She watched as they disappeared round a corner, then shivered and buttoned up her jacket. November was beginning to bite. She looked at her watch and saw that she still had time to catch the last train to York.

1

The word existed, I knew. I just couldn’t think of it.

… panache … polish … style …

My aim was to catch the 3.35 train, but this review had taken longer than expected, and now I was running late. Clumsily I stuffed five days’ worth of clothes into a holdall, along with a couple of books and my writing pad. I’d been hoping to phone the copy through to the newspaper before I left, but there wasn’t time now. It would have to be done when I got to Sheffield. It was always the same: always those last couple of sentences, the even-handed summation, the ironic parting shot, which took such a disproportionate toll on one’s time and effort.

I scribbled a note to my flatmate, locked all the doors, and then, bag in hand, climbed the wrought-iron stairs which led up to street level. It was a hot, windless summer day, but because I hadn’t stepped out of the flat for more than forty-eight hours — the time it had taken to read the book and formulate my responses to it — the sunlight and the fresh air seemed immediately invigorating. Our basement flat was in a side street not far from the Earl’s Court Road, just a few minutes’ walk from the tube station. It was a lively area, a little overcrowded, a little seedy; its restless bustle and activity could sometimes be overwhelming, but this afternoon it really lifted my spirits. Suddenly I began to feel, for the very first time, that I might be setting out on a great adventure.

Getting from Earl’s Court to St Pancras required a tedious journey of twenty minutes on the Piccadilly Line. As usual I had a book open in my hands, but I couldn’t concentrate on it. Currents of anxiety and anticipation shivered through me. It would be strange to see Joan again: at least, not just to see her (I did that nearly every Christmas, when we both went home to visit our parents) but to spend time with her, to become reacquainted. On the telephone she had sounded friendly, confident, authoritative. The invitation to come and visit had been thrown off easily, almost as an afterthought, and it occurred to me now that she probably saw nothing very significant in it — just another house guest to be fleetingly accommodated within what sounded like a busy working schedule — whereas for me it was a development of enormous import and promise: a chance to rediscover the youthful and optimistic self which I had somehow mislaid during that absurd marriage, and to which Joan was now, in effect, the only surviving witness.

These were my thoughts as I travelled towards King’s Cross; or some of them, anyway. Much of the journey, to be honest, was spent looking at the women in my carriage. Not only had I been divorced for eight years, but I hadn’t made love to a woman for more than nine, and I had in the meantime become an inveterate starer, appraiser, sizer-up of possibilities, my every glance heavy with that furtive intensity which is the hallmark of the truly desperate (and dangerous) male. It quickly became obvious that there were only two serious objects of interest on this occasion. There was one sitting further down my row of seats, next to the doors — small, composed, expensively dressed: the classic, Grace Kelly-style icy blonde. She’d got on at Knightsbridge. And then down at the other end of the carriage was a taller and more ascetic-looking brunette: I’d noticed her on the platform at Earl’s Court, but then, as now, it was hard to make out her features behind the curtain of fine dark hair and the newspaper in which she was clearly absorbed. I looked at the blonde again, a risky, sidelong gaze which — unless I was imagining it — she caught and held for a fragile moment, her eyes responding without encouragement but also without rebuke. At once I launched into a fantasy, my favourite fantasy: the one in which it turned out, miraculously, that she was getting out at the same stop, continuing on to the same station, catching the same train, travelling to the same town — a series of coincidences which would bring us together while usefully absolving me from the need to take events into my own hands. And so the closer we came to King’s Cross, the more I willed her to stay on the train. At every stop I felt the onset of a hollow, tightening dread, and the prospect of falling into conversation with her started to seem more and more desirable, just as her face and figure appeared to take on an extra degree of almost-perfection. Leicester Square. Covent Garden. Holborn. I was sure she was going to get out at Holborn, but no, if anything she seemed to be settling even more comfortably into her seat, her very posture now assuming an air of seductive languor (we were the only passengers left in our half of the carriage and I was getting thoroughly carried away by this stage). Just two more stops. If only … If only … And then we were pulling into King’s Cross, and as I looked at her, unashamedly now, it was suddenly obvious that she had no intention of getting out even here: I was the one who was about to shatter the fantasy, and to make matters worse I stole a final glance, just before the doors opened, and she looked back with a light of lazy inquiry in her eye, unmistakable and transfixing. As I stepped down on to the platform my limbs were leaden; cords of feeling bound me to the train, prohibiting, elastic. It pulled away; I turned, failed to glimpse her; and for the next few minutes, as I made my way to St Pancras, bought my ticket and killed time at the newsagent’s kiosk, there was a deadness in my stomach, the bruised sense of having somehow survived yet another in a sequence of tiny tragedies which threatened endless, daily repetition.

Sitting in a carriage of the Sheffield train, waiting for it to shift into motion, I brooded on this humiliating incident and cursed the ill-luck — if that’s what it was — which had stamped me for ever as a man of imagination rather than action: condemned, like Orpheus, to roam an underworld of fantasies, when my hero Yuri would not have hesitated to plunge boldly towards the stars. A few well-chosen words, that was all it need have taken, and yet I couldn’t even think of them: me, a published writer, for God’s sake. Instead I was stuck here dreaming up scenarios of ever-spiralling ridiculousness: the latest of which involved the object of my attraction suddenly realizing that she had missed her stop, leaping out at Caledonian Road, hailing a taxi and arriving just in time to jump on my train as it pulled away from the platform. Pathetic. I closed my eyes and tried to think of something else. Something useful, for once. The word: that was what I should be concentrating on, the elusive word … It was vital that I should have that final sentence sorted out before arriving in Sheffield.

… the necessary grace … necessary zest… esprit …

This stratagem proved surprisingly successful. I became so preoccupied that I never heard the guard’s whistle blow; barely noticed the train starting to move; was only dimly aware of the door to my carriage sliding open to admit a breathless, flustered figure who collapsed into a seat just a few rows away from me. It wasn’t until we were speeding through the outskirts of London that I registered her presence, looked up, and recognized her as the dark-haired woman from my tube journey. The inevitable thrill of excitement lasted only a fraction of an instant. It was superseded by something much more powerful: a fantastic emotional shockwave, compounded of delight, confusion and, at first, stubborn disbelief. For how could it possibly be true that she appeared to be reading — no, not her newspaper, but a slim, hardback novel with my photograph on the cover?

It’s every author’s dream, I suppose. And since it happens rarely enough even in the life of the literary celebrity, imagine how much more precious it would seem to the young, unknown writer like myself, hungry for any kind of evidence that his work has impinged on the consciousness of the public. The brief, respectful reviews I’d received in the papers and the literary journals — which I’d learned, in some cases, almost off by heart — paled into insignificance in the face of this sudden hint that the wider world might be hiding something else altogether, something unsuspected, alive and arbitrary: a readership. That was my first feeling. And then, of course, came the realization that I had finally been presented with the longed-for opportunity, the foolproof excuse, the perfect doorway into conversation: for it would surely be impolite not to introduce myself in these circumstances. The only question was how, and when, to make my move.

I was determined to be subtle about it. It wouldn’t do simply to blunder up, sit down opposite her and say something crass like ‘I see you’re reading one of my books’—or, even worse, ‘I admire a woman with good taste in literature’. Far better to arrange it so that she made the discovery. Well, that shouldn’t be difficult. After a few minutes’ hesitation I got up and moved to a seat just across the central aisle from hers, taking my luggage with me. This in itself was enough to make her look up and watch me with surprise; perhaps even annoyance. I said, ‘Just trying to get out of the sunlight’—a meaningless remark, given that my new seat was just as much in the sunlight as the old one. She said nothing; just smiled half-heartedly and returned to the book. I could see that she was on about page fifty, roughly a quarter of the way through: only a few pages from what was (or so I had thought when writing it) the most riotously funny scene in the whole novel. I sat back and kept a discreet watch on her from the corner of my eye; taking care, at the same time, to ensure that she had a good view — should she care to glance up — of my profile, seen from much the same angle as had been chosen by the studio photographer whose services I had myself engaged at considerable personal expense. Ten or twelve pages went by, in as many minutes, without producing anything in the way of visible amusement: not even the distant echo of a smile, let alone those helpless spasms of laughter I had fondly imagined the passage provoking in its readers. What on earth was the matter with her? In hardback, my novels sold a pitiful number of copies — five or six hundred, or something — so how had this one managed to fall into the hands of someone so obviously unattuned to its tone and methods? Looking closely at her face for the first time, I noticed the lack of humour in her eyes and the line of her mouth, and the traces of a solemn pucker which had creased her brow into a permanent frown. She read on. I waited another five minutes or more, with growing impatience. I shifted ostentatiously in my seat, even got up twice to take unnecessary items out of my holdall in the luggage rack above me; and finally I was reduced to the expedient of feigning a loud coughing fit, which went on until she looked across at me with wary expectancy, and said:

‘I’m sorry, are you trying to attract my attention?’

‘No, no, not at all,’ I said, conscious of a furious blush starting to inflame my cheek.

‘Would you like a cough sweet?’

‘No, I’m fine. Really.’

She returned to the book without another word, and I sank back into baffled silence, scarcely able to credit how difficult this was proving. The situation had gone beyond embarrassment into the realm of helpless stupidity. My only remaining option was to say: ‘Actually, I was trying to get your attention.’

She looked up and waited for me to explain.

‘It’s just … that book you’re reading.’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, don’t you notice anything about the photograph on the back?’

She turned it over. ‘No, I don’t see …’ And then, looking from me to the photograph, from the photograph to me, she broke into an incredulous smile. ‘Well, I’ll be …’ It lit up her whole face, this smile; changed everything at once, so that she was suddenly welcoming and radiant. Then it turned to laughter. ‘And you just sitting there … I mean, this is incredible. I’m a huge fan of yours, you know. I’ve read all your books.’

‘Both of them,’ I corrected.

‘Both of them, absolutely. Well, I mean, I’ve read the first one, and now I’m reading this. And enjoying it hugely.’

‘Do you mind if …?’ I gestured at the seat opposite her.

‘Do I mind? How could I possibly … I mean, this is so extraordinary. It’s — well, it’s every reader’s dream, really, isn’t it?’

‘And every writer’s,’ I said, moving across to her table.

For a while we just smiled at each other, shyly, uncertain how to start.

‘I was watching you, just now,’ I said. ‘You were reading that big scene, weren’t you — at the wedding?’

‘The wedding, yes, absolutely. It’s such a marvellous chapter, too — so moving.’

‘Mm: do you think so? I was really hoping that it would be funny, you see.’

‘Oh, but it is. I mean, it’s, er, moving … and funny. That’s what’s so terribly clever about it.’

‘You didn’t seem to be laughing much, that’s all.’

‘No, I was; I was laughing on the inside, really. I never laugh aloud at books. It’s just a thing with me.’

‘Well, you’ve made my day, anyway.’ That smile again; and a captivating lightness when she tossed back her hair. ‘I’d introduce myself, of course, except that you already know who I am.’

She took the hint. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I should have told you before. My name’s Alice. Alice Hastings.’

The train was approaching Bedford. Alice and I had been talking for perhaps half an hour; I’d been up to the buffet car and treated her to a sandwich and a cup of coffee; we’d exchanged views on the Falklands War and the merits of various contemporary authors, finding ourselves in agreement in both instances. She had a lovely, rather equine face, a long, graceful neck and her voice was full, fruity, deep. It felt wonderful to be enjoying female company again. The last few years had been so desolate in that respect: that hopeless marriage to Verity, then the decision to go to university in the mid 1970s, where I found, despite my official designation as a ‘mature’ student, that my fellow undergraduates all seemed to have such a gift for slipping in and out of physical relationships that I, by comparison, ended up feeling like a gawky adolescent. Perhaps that’s why the writer’s life had always seemed so attractive: the refuge it offered for the socially backward, the gleaming legitimacy it conferred upon solitude. Patrick had hinted as much when he made that crack about there being no ‘sexual dimension’ to my work; but I pushed that recollection aside. I still burned from that conversation, couldn’t imagine when I would next feel equal to the task of facing him again.

‘So, where are you heading for, anyway?’ Alice asked; and when I told her, ‘Do you have family there?’

‘No, I’m going to see a friend. She’s been living there a few years now. She’s a social worker.’

‘I see. This is — this is a girlfriend, then, is it?’

‘No, no, not at all. Absolutely not. No, Joan and I go … way back. I mean—’ It suddenly occurred to me that there was a quick and easy way of filling her in on the situation. ‘Did you see that feature on me a couple of months ago, in one of the Sunday supplements: “The First Story I Ever Wrote”?’

‘Yes, I did. I adored it, too: that terribly funny spoof you wrote on detective stories when you were twelve or something. You must have been such a precocious little thing.’

‘I was eight,’ I said gravely. ‘And it was meant to be perfectly serious. Anyway, Joan was — well, I suppose my best friend in those days. She lived almost next door, and we used to go and play together on this farm: and that photograph which they used in the magazine, the one of me sitting at a desk and looking very serious and intellectual, that was taken in this cowshed where we had a sort of den. I knew it would be the perfect one for them to use — you know, they’d just have to cut it in half so she wasn’t actually in it — but I lost my copy years and years ago. I phoned up my parents and they had no idea where it was, either, so in the end I phoned Joan on the off chance that she might still have one. Which she did, much to my amazement: seems that she’s hung on to it all this time. And so she sent it down, and — well, it was sort of nice to have made contact again, because we hadn’t really had much to say to each other since … I don’t know, since my rather short-lived marriage, I suppose, and after that we had a few more phone calls and then she asked me if I wanted to come up and stay for a few days and I thought — well, why not? So here I am.’

Alice smiled. ‘Sounds like she’s a bit stuck on you.’

‘Who, Joan? No. We hardly know each other, really. We were just kids.’

‘I don’t know, though: keeping your photograph all those years. And now that you’ve had books published and everything you might seem very glamorous to her.’

‘No, I mean, all this is really just for … you know, old times’ sake.’

Despite all that I was doing to play things down, I could see that the subject of Joan was starting to make Alice uncomfortable. A twinge of incipient jealousy, perhaps? Already? That was how I chose to interpret it, at any rate, in my treacherous exhilaration, and my suspicion was merely confirmed when she glanced at her watch and changed the subject with shameless abruptness.

‘Do you make much money from writing, Michael?’

This might well have been an impertinent question; but if Alice had taken a risk, it was a well-judged one: I would have told her anything by now.

‘Not a lot, no. That’s not why you do it, really.’

‘No, of course not. I only asked because — well, I’m in the publishing business myself, and I know the kind of sums involved. I know it can’t be easy for you.’

‘You work in publishing? Who for?’

‘Oh, you wouldn’t have heard of them. I’m afraid I work at the most disreputable end of the spectrum. Those two deadly words — I can hardly bring myself to utter them.’ She leaned forward, and her voice sank to a dramatic whisper: ‘Vanity publishing.’

I smiled indulgently. ‘Well, most publishing is vanity publishing, when you think about it. I certainly don’t earn a living wage, and my writing takes up a lot of time which I suppose I could be spending on other sorts of jobs, so you could say that I was paying for the privilege, in a way.’

‘Yes, but we publish the most dreadful kind of rubbish. Terrible novels and boring autobiographies … Stuff that’ll never get within five miles of a halfway decent bookshop.’

‘You’re an editor for these people, are you?’

‘Yes, I have to deal with all these mad authors on the telephone and reassure them that their books are worthwhile, which of course they aren’t. And sometimes I have to find writers, which is slightly more tricky: you know, somebody wants a book written — a history of their family, or something — and we have to find a writer who’ll take it on. That’s what I’m trying to do at the moment, as a matter of fact.’

‘The arrogance of these people, though: to assume their family histories are worth writing about.’

‘Well, they do happen to be quite famous, actually. You’ve heard of the Winshaws, have you?’

‘As in Henry Winshaw, you mean — that maniac who’s never off the television?’

She laughed. ‘That’s right. Well, Henry’s … aunt, I think it is, wants to have a book written about them all. Only she wants it to be done by — you know, a proper writer. Not just any old hack.’

‘God, you’d have to be a glutton for punishment to sign up for that, though, wouldn’t you?’

‘I suppose you would. All the same, they’re absolutely loaded, you know, the lot of them, and it seems she’s willing to pay the most absurd amount of money.’

I stroked my chin thoughtfully, beginning to pick up a hint of where this conversation was heading. ‘You know, it almost sounds … it almost sounds as if you’re trying to sell this idea to me.’

Alice laughed: she seemed truly shocked by this suggestion. ‘To you? Goodness, no. I mean, you’re a real writer, you’re famous, I’d never in my wildest dreams expect that—’

‘But you’d never in your wildest dreams have thought you’d meet me on a train, would you?’

‘No, but … Oh, I mean, this is ridiculous, it’s not even worth talking about. You must have so much to do, so many ideas for new novels …’

‘As it happens I don’t have any ideas for new novels at the moment. I was talking to my editor only a few weeks ago and we reached something of an impasse.’

‘But — look, you’re not telling me you’d be seriously interested in this, are you?’

‘Well, you haven’t told me what the deal is yet.’

When she did tell me, I tried to stop my eyes from widening and my jaw from dropping, but it wasn’t easy. I tried to look cool and confident in the few seconds it took to work some things out: how I could afford to move out of the flat in Earl’s Court, for instance, and buy my own place; how I would be able to live quite comfortably off the sort of sum she was talking about for several years. But there was something else I needed to know, something even more important, before I let myself be taken any further down this dangerous path.

‘And this book,’ I said: ‘this is your project, is it? Your baby.’

‘Oh yes, very much so. We’d … well, I imagine we’d be working together on it.’

The guard’s voice came over the speaker system, announcing that the train was about to arrive in Kettering. Alice stood up.

‘Well look, this is where I have to get off. It’s been really nice meeting you, and … Listen, you don’t have to be polite. You wouldn’t really be interested in taking this on, would you?’

‘It’s not out of the question, actually. Not by any means.’

She started laughing again. ‘I can’t believe this is really happening. Honestly, I can’t. Look, I’ve got a card in here somewhere …’ She fumbled inside her handbag. ‘Take this, and give me a call when you’ve had time to think about it a bit.’

I took the card and glanced at it. The name of the firm, ‘The Peacock Press’, stood out in red lettering, and beneath it came the legend, ‘Hortensia Tonks, Senior Editor’.

‘Who’s this?’ I asked, pointing at the name.

‘Oh, that’s … my boss, I suppose. They haven’t given me my own card, yet: I’m a relative newcomer. But who knows,’ and here — I can remember this clearly — she touched me lightly on the shoulder, ‘you could well turn out to be my passport to promotion. Just wait till I tell them that I’ve got Michael Owen interested in doing the Winshaw book. Just wait.’ She crossed out the unfamiliar name and wrote her own, in large, angular handwriting. Then she was taking my hand and pressing it in a formal farewell: ‘Well. Bye for now.’

The train was on the point of stopping. Just before she got to the door of the carriage, I said: ‘How long did you say you were staying with your sister?’

She turned, still smiling. ‘A couple of days. Why?’

‘Travelling rather light, aren’t you?’

I had suddenly noticed that she had no luggage; just a small black handbag.

‘Oh — she keeps a set of things for me. It’s lovely — almost like a second home.’

She pushed open the carriage door and left me with a final image of her delighted grin, her waving hand: an image which was to fade slowly into blankness over the eight long years which passed before my next, and final, glimpse of Alice Hastings.

2

… necessary brilliance … necessary bravado …

Almost. Very close, now. Very close.

My spirits continued to rise as the journey progressed. The books I’d brought with me lay unopened on the table, and I abandoned myself instead to dreamy contemplation of the scenery. As we left Derby, the redbricked factories and warehouses backing on to the railway line gave way to rich green countryside: Friesians grazed on hilly pasturelands dotted only with handsome sandstone farmhouses or the occasional village, a few rows of grey slate terraces nestled warmly in a valley. Later, immense heaps of coal began to appear beside the track as Chesterfield announced the beginning of mining country, its skyline dominated at first by cranes and pit shafts and then, incongruously, a crooked church spire which jerked me into nostalgia, taking me back fifteen years or more to the opening credits of a silly comedy series about clergymen which I had enjoyed on television as a teenager. I was sunk deep in the memory of this as we passed through tunnels and long rocky cuttings. The line was planted so thickly with trees that Sheffield itself took me completely by surprise, my first sight of it being a row of terraced houses silhouetted against a sky of Mediterranean blue, and perched on the edge of a ridge, impossibly high: on a clifftop, almost. All at once a spectacular townscape lay before me: the steelworks and factory chimneys beside the railway line were shrunk to insignificance beside the sheerness of the hillsides on which the city had been boldly raised, with phalanxes of tower blocks climbing steeply to their summit. Nothing had prepared me for such sudden, austere beauty.

‘Austere beauty’: why did I use that phrase, though? Was it really the city I was describing, or was it the face of Alice which imposed itself on the sombre dignity of these buildings and made them glamorous to my moonstruck eyes? Certainly it was Alice I was thinking of when Joan loomed out of the waiting crowd at the station, her welcoming smile and eager, waving arms striking despondency into my heart in an instant. She had put on weight, and she was not wearing make-up, and she looked very plain and ungainly. (These were not praiseworthy observations, I know: but I might as well be honest about them.) She gave me a bruising hug and a wet kiss on the cheek, and then led me to the car park.

‘Let’s not go home right away,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you a bit of the city first.’

I’m a Midlander by birth and a Southerner by adoption. Never having lived in the North of England, I’ve always regarded it from a distance, with a mixture of fear and fascination. It seemed extraordinary, for instance, that I could have been on a train for less than two and a half hours, and disembarked to find myself in a city which felt so palpably and bracingly different from London. I’m not sure whether this difference lay in the architecture, or in the faces of the people surrounding me, or the clothes which they wore, or even in the knowledge that only a few miles away stretched vast and lovely tracts of moorland: but perhaps it went deeper than any of these things, and derived from something fundamental in the very spirit of the place. Joan told me Sheffield’s nickname—‘the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire’—and sang the praises of David Blunkett who at this time led the city’s Labour Council. Coming from London, where opposition to Mrs Thatcher was virulent but fatally dispersed and fragmented, I was immediately filled with envy at the thought of a community which could so closely unite itself around a common cause.

‘It’s nothing like that in the South,’ I said. ‘Half the socialists I know have defected to the SDP.’

Joan laughed. ‘They were routed in the local elections here last month. Even the Liberals only picked up a few seats.’ A few minutes later we were driving past the cathedral, and she said: ‘I went to a memorial service in there recently, for the people who died on HMS Sheffield.’

‘They were all from around here, were they?’

‘No, not at all. But the local sea cadets were affiliated to the ship, and the crew were always coming to visit children’s centres and things like that. We were all devastated when it went down. The “Shiny Sheff”, people used to call it. The service was packed: they were turning hundreds away at the door. There was a queue stretching down to York Street.’

‘I suppose there must be a lot of anger about the war.’

‘Not everybody’s angry,’ said Joan. ‘Not everybody even opposes it. But that wasn’t the point. I don’t know how to describe it, really, but … it was as if we’d all lost relatives on that ship.’ She smiled at me. ‘This is a very warm city, you see. You can’t help but love it, for that very reason.’

Already I felt like a stranger in a foreign land.

Joan lived in a small, dark-bricked terraced house not far from the university. There were three bedrooms, two of which she rented out to students in order to help with her mortgage payments. This came as a surprise to me: I’d been expecting that she and I would be alone together for the length of my stay, but it turned out that she was proposing to sleep downstairs while I took over her bedroom. Of course I couldn’t allow that to happen, so I found myself facing the prospect of five nights spent on a settee in the living room, to be rudely awoken every morning by the arrival of Joan and her lodgers as they passed through into the kitchen to get their breakfasts.

Both of these lodgers, in fact, were from the polytechnic rather than the university. There was Graham, who was on some sort of film-making course, and a very shy and uncommunicative art student called Phoebe. It soon became obvious that they would not be easy to avoid: Joan presided over a regimented household, and there was a large notice pinned up in the kitchen which set out, in three different coloured inks, the rotas for shopping, washing up and cooking the evening meal. It seemed that I was to be the guest of something closely approximating to a family unit — and, to make matters worse, that there had been much advance discussion of my visit. I had the sense that Joan had been giving me a huge build-up, that by singing the praises of this exotic envoy from literary London she had been trying to stir the others into a state of enthusiasm which they seemed oddly reluctant to share.

These things started to become clear as the four of us sat down to supper together on that first Tuesday evening. It was Joan’s turn to cook. We had stuffed avocado with puréed carrot and brown rice, followed by rhubarb crumble. The dining room was small and could almost have been cosy if a little more effort had been made in that direction: instead we ate in the glare of a naked bulb, and beneath the reproachful scrutiny of a number of posters — all of them Graham’s, I was to discover — advertising political causes and foreign-language films (of which Godard’s Tout Va Bien was the only one I recognized). For a while I was more or less excluded from the conversation, which centred on topics of shared interest such as Joan’s latest cases and the impending end-of-year assessments at the college. I had to content myself, if that’s the word, with munching away at Joan’s wholesome food and refilling the wineglasses.

‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ said Joan finally. ‘A lot of this won’t mean anything to you. I was thinking perhaps you’d like to come with me on some of my calls tomorrow, and get a sense of what I do. It might be useful to you one day: give you something to write about.’

‘Sure,’ I said, trying to sound eager and making a poor job of it.

‘Then again,’ she said, clearly dampened by my response, ‘you’ve probably got some work you want to do. I’d hate to come between you and your Muse.’

‘What’s this then — another book?’ asked Graham, helping himself to more rice.

‘Sort of.’

‘Graham’s been reading your first,’ said Joan. ‘Haven’t you?’

‘I started it.’ He took an enormous mouthful and swilled it down with some wine. ‘Couldn’t get beyond the first couple of chapters, though.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said; but pride wouldn’t allow me to leave it at that. ‘Do you mind if I ask why?’

‘Well, I don’t really understand why people write novels any more, to be honest. I mean it’s a total irrelevance, the whole thing. Has been ever since the cinema was invented. Oh sure, there are a few people who are still doing interesting things with the form — Robbe-Grillet and the nouveau roman crowd — but any serious modern artist who wants to use narrative ought to be working in film. That’s my general objection. And more specifically, the problem with the English novel is that there’s no tradition of political engagement. I mean, it’s all just a lot of pissing about within the limits set down by bourgeois morality, as far as I can see. There’s no radicalism. So there’s really only one or two novelists in this country that I’ve got any time for, these days. And I’m afraid you don’t seem to be one of them.’

There was a shocked silence. At least, Joan was visibly shocked, and Phoebe was certainly silent. As for myself, I had heard too many speeches like this in my student days to be much put out by it.

‘Who would they be, then?’ I asked.

‘Well, for instance …’

Graham mentioned a name, and I smiled: a pleased, private little smile, because it was exactly the name I had been expecting. The ball was very much back in my court now, for this was the same writer whose latest work had fallen into my hands for review. And yes, I had found the word. The word which I had known was out there, all along, just waiting to be matched to its subject.

This was a writer, I should explain, some ten years older than myself, whose three slender novels had been ludicrously overpraised in the national press. Because he made his characters talk in crudely notated dialects and live in conditions of unconvincing squalor, he was hailed as a social realist; because he sometimes played elementary tricks with narrative, in feeble imitation of Sterne and Diderot, he was hailed as an experimental pioneer; and because he made a regular habit of writing letters to the newspapers, criticizing government policy in terms which had always struck me as suggesting a rather timid Leftism, he was hailed as a political radical. More annoying than any of this, however, was his reputation for humour. He had been repeatedly credited with a playful irony, a satiric lightness of touch, which seemed to me to be entirely lacking from his work, characterized as it was by lumbering sarcasm and the occasional abject attempt to jog the reader’s elbow with well-signposted jokes. It was this aspect of his style for which I had reserved my final scorn. ‘It has become a matter of routine,’ I had written, ‘to praise Mr — for his deft combination of wit and political commitment; and even to suggest that here, at last, we have a moral ironist worthy of these ruthless times. We stand badly in need of novels, after all, which show an understanding of the ideological hijack which has taken place so recently in this country, which can see its consequences in human terms and show that the appropriate response lies not merely in sorrow and anger but in mad, incredulous laughter. For many people, it seems, it is only a matter of time before---writes just such a novel: but this reader remains unconvinced. Whatever his other qualifications for the task, I suspect, finally, that he lacks the necessary—’

And this was where my invention had failed me for so long. What was it that he lacked, exactly? The word that I was looking for had something to do with style, something to do with tone. It wasn’t that he lacked compassion, or intelligence, or technique, or ambition: what he lacked was … it was an instinct, somehow, for putting these things together, but in a nimble, a fleet-footed way. It was a sort of daring, but there also had to be an element of diffidence, because this quality, whatever it was, would only appear truly natural and spontaneous if it was entirely without self-regard. The word was there, and I was only inches away from it. He lacked the necessary brilliance, the necessary bravado, the necessary …

… brio.

Yes, that was it. Brio. Precisely. It seemed so obvious, already, that I couldn’t understand why it had taken me so long to get there. At once an almost mystical sense of its rightness flooded over me: not only was I sure that it put a perfect end to the review, but I also knew, as if by some telepathic process, that it described the single quality which he, in his most secret heart of hearts, would yearn to be credited with. I had invaded, penetrated, wormed my way inside him: when the review appeared, on Friday morning, I would wound him; wound him deeply. I had a vision of hallucinogenic intensity, born half from imagination and half from the distant memory of a nameless, black and white, probably American film: a man in a busy, windswept city in the early morning, buying a newspaper from a street-corner vendor, taking it to a coffee bar and thumbing impatiently to a particular page; devouring a sandwich at the counter, and then the movement of his jaws getting slower and slower as he reads, until he screws the newspaper up in disgust, throws it into a bin and storms out of the bar, the anger and disappointment drawn lividly on his face. I knew — as soon as I’d thought of the word, I knew it for a certainty — that this was the scene, in exaggerated form, which would be played out on Friday morning, when he went out to buy the newspaper, or picked it up off his doormat, or as soon as his agent telephoned him with news of my crushing performance. It shames me, now, to think how happy the knowledge made me; or rather, to think how ready I was to mistake for happiness the poisoned stream of satisfaction which welled up inside me.

All I said to Graham was: ‘I thought it might be him.’

‘Not your cup of tea, I suppose,’ he said; and managed to make even this sound like another in my litany of inadequacies.

‘He has his moments,’ I conceded, and then added casually: ‘I’ve just reviewed his latest, in fact.’ I turned to Joan. ‘That phone call I had to make just before dinner. I was dictating it to one of the copy-takers.’

Joan blushed with pride, and said to her lodgers: ‘Just think — someone makes a phone call from my little sitting room, the words travel all the way down the lines to London, and a few days later, it’s in all the papers.’

‘The wonders of modern science,’ said Graham, and began stacking the plates.

The next day, a wet and misty Wednesday, was not a great success. I decided to take Joan up on her invitation and accompany her on some of her visits, but it was a dispiriting experience. The bulk of her work appeared to involve turning up uninvited at family homes in order to conduct furtive interviews with the children while their parents stared on balefully, or beat ungracious retreats to the kitchen to make cups of tea which never got drunk. At first I actually went with her to sit in on these encounters, but my presence was so obviously unwelcome that I gave up on that after the first couple of visits and spent the rest of the day sitting in Joan’s car, reading through the pile of old magazines and newspapers which cluttered her back seat and waiting tiredly for her to emerge from the doorway of some council house or tower block.

For lunch we went to a pub in the centre of town. Joan had a vegetable pasty and I had steak and kidney pie, which caused her to tut reprovingly. That evening, it was Graham’s turn to cook. The dish he prepared for us may or may not have had a name: it seemed to consist mainly of lentils and walnuts burned down to a black crust, scraped off the bottom of a large saucepan, and served with a dollop of wholemeal pasta ribbons which had the texture of rubber bands. We ate, for the most part, in absorbed silence.

‘You ought to show Michael some of your work, tomorrow,’ said Joan to Graham at one point. ‘He might have some interesting comments to make.’

‘I should like that,’ I said.

Graham sat me down on his bed and switched on the large, unwieldy television which dominated one corner of his bedroom. It took nearly a minute to warm up.

‘1970s vintage,’ he explained. ‘Pretty much on its last legs.’

Yesterday’s mist had cleared and the morning was turning out bright but muggy. Not that much of the sunshine would come our way: Graham’s room was permanently in shadow, with a tiny, lace-curtained window which looked out over Joan’s back yard and the back yards of other houses in the next street. We were alone in the house, it was half past ten and we were both on to our second cups of strong, sugary tea.

‘Have you got one of these yourself?’ Graham asked, kneeling down to slot a VHS tape into the video machine.

‘Can’t afford it on what I earn,’ I said. ‘I’m waiting for the prices to come down. They say they’re going to tumble.’

‘You don’t think I own this, do you? Nobody’s buying the things — you do it on the rental. Ten quid a month is all this costs me, down at Rumbelows.’

I sipped my tea and said spitefully: ‘When I was a student we used to spend our money on books.’

‘Don’t give me that.’ Graham gestured at the rows of tapes which lined his dresser and window-sill. ‘These are my books. This is the medium of the future, as far as film-making’s concerned. Nearly all our work at college is done on video now. Three hours of tape, there is, on one of these little beauties. Do you know how much three hours’ worth of sixteen mill would cost you?’

‘I see your point.’

‘Not too hot on the practicalities, you literary types, are you? It’s all ivory tower with you.’

I ignored this.

‘Does it have a freeze frame, your video?’

‘Sure. It’s a bit shaky, but it does the job. Why, what do you want one of those for?’

‘Oh, you know — It’s nice to have … all the gadgets.’

The screen flickered into action just as Graham finished closing the curtains and seating himself beside me on the bed.

‘Here we go, then. This is my end-of-year assignment. See what you think.’

It was a less painful experience than I had anticipated. Graham’s film was only about ten minutes long, and proved to be an efficient if unsubtle piece of polemic about the Falklands conflict, called ‘Mrs Thatcher’s War’. The title was double-edged, because he had somehow managed to find a pensioner called Mrs Thatcher who lived in Sheffield, and shots of warships steaming into battle and extracts from the Prime Minister’s speeches were juxtaposed with scenes from the life of her less eminent namesake: making trips to the shops, preparing frugal meals, watching news bulletins on the television and so on. In a disjointed voice-over commentary, the old woman spoke of the difficulties of getting by on her pension and wondered what had become of all the money she had paid in taxes throughout her working life: this was usually the cue for a rapid cut to some brutal and expensive-looking piece of military hardware. The film ended with the Prime Minister’s famous speech to the Scottish Conservative Party, in which she described the war as a battle between good and evil and declared that ‘It must be finished’, followed by a lingering shot of the other Mrs Thatcher carrying a heavy bag of groceries up a steep, forbidding street. Then the screen faded to black and two captions appeared: ‘Mrs Emily Thatcher supports herself on a weekly income of £43.37’; ‘The cost of the Falklands War has already been estimated at £700,000,000.’

Graham turned off the tape.

‘So — what did you think? Come on, your honest opinion.’

‘I liked it. It was good.’

‘Look, just try to forget that Southern middle-class politeness kick for a minute. Give it to me straight.’

‘I told you, it was good. Powerful, and direct, and … truthful. It tells the truth about something.’

‘Ah, but does it, though? You see, film’s such a tightly structured medium, that even in a short piece of work like this, all sorts of decisions have to be made. How long a shot’s going to last, how a shot’s going to be framed, which shots are going to come before it, which ones are going to come after. Now doesn’t that whole process become suspect when you’re dealing with something that advertises itself explicitly as a political film? Doesn’t it make the role of the film-maker himself intensely problematic, prompting the question — not “Is this the truth?” but “Whose truth is it anyway?” ’

‘You’re absolutely right, of course. Do you think you could show me how this freeze frame business works?’

‘Sure.’ Graham picked up the remote control, rewound the tape a few minutes and then pressed Play. ‘So my point is that the whole thing is deeply manipulative, not just of the audience, but of its subject. Mrs Thatcher invaded the Falklands and I invaded this woman’s life — both of us on the same pretext, that we had their best interests at heart.’ He pressed Pause and the old woman froze into jittery stillness, in the act of opening a can of soup. ‘In a way the only really honest thing for me to do would be to expose the mechanics of my involvement: to have the camera pan round and suddenly rest on me, the director, sitting in the room with her. Perhaps that’s what Godard would have done.’

‘Can’t you get rid of those lines across the screen?’ I asked.

‘Sometimes you can. You just have to keep pressing the button and eventually they go away.’

He pressed the pause button some more times.

‘It’s a bit blurred, isn’t it?’

‘The technology’ll improve. Anyway, would it have been anything more than an empty self-referential gesture, that’s what I have to ask myself. Because I know exactly what you’re going to say next: you’re going to say that any attempt to foreground issues of authorship would just be a throwback to formalism, a futile strategy to shift emphasis from the signified to the signifier which can’t do anything to alter the basic fact that, at the end of the day, all truth is ideological.’

‘Do all the machines have this feature,’ I asked, ‘or do you have to go to the more expensive end of the market?’

‘They’ve all got them,’ he said. ‘It’s their main selling point. Quite a radical development, when you think about it: for the first time in history, control over cinematic time is being given to the audience and taken out of the film-maker’s hands. You could argue that it’s the first real move towards the democratization of the viewing process. Though of course’—he switched off the tape and stood up to draw the curtains—‘it’d be naïve to suggest that that’s why people were buying them. At college we call it the WP button.’

‘WP?’

‘Wankers’ paradise. All your favourite movie stars in the buff, you see. No more of those tantalizing scenes when some gorgeous actress drops them for a couple of seconds and then disappears out of the frame: now you can stare at her for as long as you like. For an eternity, in theory. Or at least until the tape wears out.’

I looked past him, gazing sightlessly at the window. ‘That would certainly … have its uses,’ I said.

‘Anyway, it’s been nice having this chat,’ said Graham. ‘It’s always helpful, getting a bit of objective criticism from someone.’

There was a short pause and then I snapped out of my reverie, suddenly hearing him again. ‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘I found it very interesting.’

‘Well look, I’m just going into town. Can I get you anything?’

I was alone in the house for the first time. There is a sort of quietness I associate with such moments: more than absolute, it insinuates, takes root, and keeps watch. The opposite of a dead silence, it quivers with possibility. It is alive with the sound of nothing happening. You don’t get silence like this in London: not silence that you can listen to, savour, swathe yourself in. I found that I was walking around the house on tiptoe, and that the occasional noises of footsteps outside in the street or cars chugging past seemed highly intrusive. I tried to settle down and read the newspaper but could only manage it for a minute or two. With Graham’s departure the house had changed its character completely — had taken on a magical aspect, like a forbidden temple which I had somehow managed to infiltrate, and I was seized with the impulse to explore.

I made my way up the staircase, turned right on the landing, and stepped into Joan’s bedroom. It was a bright, cheerful room which faced on to the main road. There was a double bed, neatly made, with a pink duvet and several pale blue cushions arranged against the pillows. In the middle of these sat a figure I recognized from one of memory’s most distant corners: a battered yellow teddy bear called Barnabas, her bedtime companion since infancy. I noticed that his eyes didn’t match any more: one was black and the other was blue. It must have come off quite recently, and a brief, affecting image flickered across my mind — Joan sitting at the end of the bed, a needle and thread in her hand, sewing the button on, patiently restoring eyesight to this worn childhood relic. I didn’t touch him. I glanced at the neatly stacked bookshelves, the family photographs, the desk with its gift stationery and Liberty print lamp. In the corner there were more functional-looking ring binders and a cardboard box full of notes and papers. Nothing on her bedside table besides a half-empty glass of water, a box of tissues and a magazine, the cover of which boasted a picture of two green bomber jets in mid-flight, with the caption ‘The Mark I Hurricane — Britain’s wartime triumph’. I smiled and picked it up. This was the Sunday newspaper magazine published a couple of months ago with my juvenile story in it. I wondered whether Joan had simply never got around to putting it away, or if it was there for a reason, to be marvelled at and pored over every night before going to sleep. I wouldn’t have been surprised.

If this was the case, anyway, who was I to make fun of her: I had read and re-read the thing often enough myself, and even now I couldn’t resist sitting down on the bed, opening the magazine at the familiar page and immersing myself once again in the warm waters of that shallow glory.

Michael Owen [read the introduction] was born in Birmingham in 1952 and has recently received great acclaim for his novels Accidents Will Happen and The Loving Touch.

Michael was only eight years old when he created his first fictional character, a Victorian detective who went by the exotic name of Jason Rudd. He was the subject of numerous adventures, the longest and most exciting being The Castle of Mystery, of which we present the opening pages here. Sadly this is not the first in the series — an earlier case, involving a character called Thomas Watson mentioned in this extract, has been lost — but Michael assures us that it provides a good introduction to the world of Rudd and his assistant Richard Marple, which he describes as ‘Holmes and Watson revisited, with a healthy dash of surrealism’.

I closed the magazine, after taking a last look at that silly photograph of me looking precocious and introspective in Mr Nuttall’s cowshed, and put it back on Joan’s bedside table. It was strange reading that story again; like hearing an unfamiliar voice on a tape recorder and steadfastly refusing to believe that it could be your own. The temptation was to think of it as another potential bridge to the past: a way of retracing my steps until I would be brought face to face with the eight-year-old innocent who had written it, and who now seemed such a perfect stranger. But it was obvious enough, even to me, that it actually said less about the kind of child I had been than about the books I was reading at the time: stories of nice middle-class children spending holidays together in rambling country houses which would turn out to be crammed with trapdoors and secret passages; stories of Gothic adventure unfolding in lurid comic strips, their detail hovering just this side of parental acceptability; stories of remote and enviable American teenagers who formed themselves into detective clubs, and seemed to live in unlikely proximity to any number of haunted castles, ghostly mansions and mysterious islands. It was years since I’d read one of these books. Most of my copies had been given away to church jumble sales by my mother. But it was a safe bet, I thought, that there would be a few such items still to be found on Joan’s bookshelf: and I was absolutely right. I plucked at a colourful spine and found myself staring at a cover illustration which instantly gave off the dusty odour of past pleasures. It was tempting to take the book downstairs and start reading it there and then, but some puritanical impulse stopped me, insisting that I had better things to do than to wallow in this sort of nostalgia. So I put it back on the shelf, tiptoed out on to the landing and, resuming my earlier (and certainly no more noble) programme of exploration, pushed open the door to Phoebe’s room.

It was the largest of the three bedrooms; also the most cluttered, because it clearly served as both living quarters and studio space. A variety of paint pots, brushes soaking in cleaning fluid, old newspapers scattered over the floor and rags streaked with multicoloured oils all testified to the nature of her work; and in front of the window, catching the best of the sunlight, there was an easel supporting a large canvas, hidden from view by an off-white sheet. I must admit that I hadn’t been much prey to curiosity regarding Phoebe up until this point: I had noticed, in a superficial way, that she was very attractive (oddly enough she reminded me of Shirley Eaton, whose image had for so long provided my ideal of feminine beauty), but this would probably have had more effect if I hadn’t still been under the spell cast by Alice during our short meeting; and to me, at any rate, she had said scarcely anything of interest — had said scarcely anything at all, if it came to that — since my arrival. And yet there was something irresistible about the idea of spying on her work in progress; something wickedly analogous, I suppose, to the thought of glimpsing her in a state of undress. I took hold of a corner of the sheet and lifted it two or three inches. A tantalizing area of thick, grey-green paint came into view. I raised the sheet some more, until I could just about see a provocative little band of coppery red, placed teasingly on the edge of the canvas. It was more than I could bear, and in one sudden, ruthless movement I whipped the sheet away, so that the entire picture stood exposed to me in all its unfinished glory.

I looked at it for several minutes before it started to make any sense. All I could see at first was this random patchwork of colour, striking enough in itself, but oppressive and disorientating. Then gradually, as I began to make out certain curves and boundaries, it came to seem less like a patchwork and more like a vortex, and I felt myself caught up in a giddying swirl of movement and energy. Finally, some shapes started to emerge, and I began the treacherous business of trying to put a name to them: that globe, which dominated the left-hand side of the painting, and what seemed to be some sort of netted implement … Could it be anything as mundane as a clogged and muddled still life? A roughly sketched scrub of waste land — in the corner of Joan’s back yard, say — with a football and an old tennis racket in it? It seemed increasingly likely, and I felt my excitement begin to subside, when …

‘Please don’t look at that.’

Phoebe stood in the doorway, clutching a paper bag to her chest.

There was nothing I could say, except, ‘I’m sorry, I–I was just curious.’

She carried the paper bag to her desk and took out a drawing pad and some pencils.

‘I don’t mind you coming in here,’ she said. ‘But I don’t like people looking at my work.’

‘I’m sorry, I should have just … asked you or something—’

‘It isn’t that.’ She pulled the sheet back over the canvas and started to rearrange the bunch of wilting gyp which stood in a jam jar on her window-sill.

‘It’s very good,’ I said. I could feel her grow suddenly tense, but persisted in blundering on: ‘I mean, to fill a picture with so much drama and power, when you’re dealing with a couple of everyday objects like that; it’s remarkable. I mean, a football and a tennis racket — who would have thought it …?’

Phoebe turned to face me, but her eyes remained lowered and her voice muted. ‘I don’t have much confidence in my abilities as a painter.’

‘Well you should.’

‘It’s the last in a series of six pictures inspired by the Orpheus legend.’

‘And if the others are as good as th—’ I stared at her in surprise. ‘Pardon?’

‘It shows his lyre and his disembodied head being carried along by the waters of the Hebrus.’

I sat down on the bed. ‘Ah.’

‘Now you see why I don’t like to show people my work.’

There was little prospect of an end to the ensuing silence. I looked blankly into the middle distance, too flustered to manage anything in the way of an apology, while Phoebe sat down at her desk and started to sharpen one of the pencils. I had almost come to the conclusion that it would be best if I got up and left without another word, when she said abruptly: ‘Has she changed much?’

This threw me at first.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Joan. Has she changed much, since you knew her?’

‘Oh. No, not really.’ Then I thought about it. ‘Well to be honest, I can’t really say. I mean, I’ve never really known her as an adult, only as a child. It’s been a bit like meeting her for the first time.’

‘Yes, I’d noticed. You’re almost like strangers.’

I shrugged: but in a rueful rather than a nonchalant way. ‘Perhaps it was a bad idea for me to come.’

‘No, I don’t think so. She’s been looking forward to this for weeks. And she loves having you here, I can tell. She’s very different with you around. Graham thinks so too.’

‘In what way different?’

‘Less … desperate, I suppose.’

I didn’t like the sound of that.

‘I think she gets lonely up here, you see. And her work can be very demanding. We both do our best to jolly her along. I know she’s dreading the summer, when we’re not going to be here to keep her company. Not that we find it a strain, or anything,’ she added earnestly. ‘We both get on with her all right, and there are really only one or two things which seem — well, beyond the call of duty … Like when we have to play games.’

‘Games?’

‘Quite often, after dinner, she wants us to play board games. Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders, things like that.’

I said nothing; just shuddered, for some reason.

‘Anyway, that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about. She won’t be doing it while you’re here, that’s for sure. Doesn’t have to.’

‘Now — who’s for a quick game of Scrabble?’

Joan beamed expectantly around the table, and all three of us did our best to avoid meeting her eye. Graham resorted to his trick of stacking the plates again, Phoebe concentrated on slowly draining what was left in her wineglass, and I developed a sudden interest in translating the Polish Trade Union poster which had been staring me in the face for the last three evenings. But then, after a few seconds, I began to sense that the other two were relying on me to come to the rescue, so I said: ‘Actually I could do with an hour or two alone with my notebook, if that’s all right. The ideas have been coming thick and fast today.’

Brazen falsehood though it was, it was the only excuse Joan was likely to accept. ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘I’d hate to come between you and your Muse. But if this is a new book you’re working on, you must make me a promise.’

‘What’s that?’

‘That I can be the first person to read it when you’ve finished, of course.’

I smiled awkwardly. ‘Well, this is something of a long-term project: I doubt if it’ll see the light of day for years. In the meantime I’ve got something else to be thinking about. I’m contemplating a move into non-fiction.’ It was hard to tell, from her expression, whether Joan was impressed or baffled by this revelation. ‘I’ve been offered the job of writing the history of a certain eminent family. It’s quite a distinction, if you must know.’

‘Oh — and who might they be?’

I told her, and Graham snorted with incredulous laughter.

‘That bunch of vampires? Well, you must be on your uppers, that’s all I can say.’ He disappeared into the kitchen, carrying our plates and the remains of Phoebe’s excellent parmigiana. As he left he could still be heard muttering, ‘The Winshaws, eh? That’s a good one.’

Joan stared after him, her eyes wide with incomprehension.

‘Well I don’t understand what he meant by that. What’s so special about the Winshaws?’ She turned to me for enlightenment, but Graham’s reaction had stung me into sulky silence. ‘Do you know what he was talking about?’ she asked Phoebe. ‘Have you heard of the Winshaws?’

Phoebe nodded. ‘I’ve heard of Roderick Winshaw. He’s an art dealer. He was meant to come and give a talk to us a few weeks ago, actually, about survival in the marketplace, but he never showed up.’

‘Well, Michael,’ said Joan, ‘you certainly are a dark horse. I want to hear all about it. I insist.’

‘Oh, it’s all quite—’

‘Not now, not now.’ She held up a restraining hand. ‘You’ve got work to do, I realize that. No, we’ll have plenty of time to hear the whole story tomorrow. We’ll have all day, in fact.’

That sounded ominous. ‘We will?’

‘Did I not tell you? I’ve managed to get the day off, so we can go out to the dales for a picnic, the two of us.’

‘Mm. Sounds lovely.’

‘And rather than take the boring old car, I thought we’d cycle.’

‘Cycle?’

‘Yes. Graham’s said that you can borrow his bike. Isn’t that nice of him?’

Graham, returning to the table to collect the cutlery, flashed me a malicious grin.

‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘Very nice indeed. Is the weather going to be good enough?’

‘Well, it’s funny you should mention that,’ said Joan, ‘because there are storms forecast for the end of the day. But we should be fine if we set off in plenty of time. I thought if we got up at, say … six o’clock?’

The will to resist had deserted me. ‘Why not?’ I said, and handed Graham my fork and empty glass.

That night I found it impossible to get to sleep. I don’t know what it was: maybe the thick summer heat, or perhaps simply the knowledge that I had to get up early the next morning, but I lay on that sofa for more than an hour, each position more uncomfortable than the last, until there was nothing for it but to try and find something to read; something to clear my mind of the tired spiral of thoughts which seemed to be clogging it up. But there were no books downstairs: only the ones I had brought with me, and three or four vegetarian cookbooks in the kitchen. That wasn’t what I needed at all. I needed something undemanding but compulsive, and immediately I found myself thinking of the children’s mystery story I’d rediscovered in Joan’s room today. If only I’d brought it down with me while I had the chance.

Ten minutes later, I knew that the only solution was to steal up to her room and fetch it.

I was in luck. Her door had been left a couple of inches ajar, and I could tell that her curtains were open, letting in a good deal of light from the street lamps. Since the bookshelf was right next to the door, there should be no problem slipping in there without waking her up. I paused on the landing for just a second or two, listening, then eased the door gently open and stepped inside. It was about half past one in the morning.

Joan was lying on her back, her skin grey and luminescent in the silver lamplight. She was not wearing any nightclothes, and had thrown off most of the duvet in her sleep. It was eight years since I’d seen a naked female body, in the flesh, as it were; and I think it’s true to say that I had never seen one as beautiful as this. Verity had been slender, strong-boned and small-breasted; by comparison Joan, basking without shame in the fullness of my hot gaze, seemed almost immorally ample and voluptuous. The word ‘generous’ came to mind: it was a generous body, both in the heavy grace of its proportions and in the uncomplicated readiness with which it submitted to my scrutiny. I stood there, transfixed, and it seems to me now that those few guilty moments were among the most glorious, the most unlooked-for, the most thrilling of my life. And yet it was all over so quickly. In no time at all, Joan had stirred, turned towards me, and I backed out of the door without making a sound.

3

‘Look at these arms,’ she said, squinting at them irritably and pinching the pale flesh until it blushed pink. ‘Like an Italian peasant woman. I just tell myself it’s in the genes and there’s no point in fretting.’ She spread raspberry jam thickly on to a slice of granary loaf and bit into it, then wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. ‘Do you think I’m overweight?’

‘Of course you aren’t. You know, your body is something you should feel comfortable about. It doesn’t have to be a particular shape.’

The shape of Joan’s body was very much on my mind that day, I have to admit. It was another hot summer morning and it had taken us nearly two hours to cycle out into open country. As soon as we reached what Joan deemed to be a suitable location we threw ourselves down upon the ground, and for the next few minutes, in spite of my fatigue, I was acutely conscious of the lazy pleasure with which she was stretching her limbs, the movement of her breasts as her breathing rose and fell, the thinness of the pink and blue blouse which she had untucked from her jeans and rolled up at the sleeve. For my part, I was bathed in sweat and panting noisily. For the first part of the ride I hadn’t been sure that I was going to make it. Joan had led me on a steady climb, choosing the steeper road every time we came to a junction: sometimes the incline had been so fierce that I nearly keeled over, it was so hard to keep moving. (Graham’s bicycle, I need hardly mention, was not equipped with gears.) But then I found myself getting more confident and the going became easier. Soon the terrain had levelled out, and at one point we hit upon a fabulous stretch of road — downhill but not too steep, just enough to get a bit of speed up, take your feet off the pedals and coast forward with the wind skimming your face and rushing through your ears, sweet tears of excitement welling at the corner of each eye. For a brief instant I felt the years slipping away, like a heavy burden which had been breaking my back, and we were children again, Joan and I, riding down the lane towards Mr Nuttall’s farm. She told me afterwards that I had let out a whoop of joy. I wasn’t aware of it at the time.

‘So,’ she said, ‘are you going to tell me about this mysterious new project of yours?’

‘It’s not definite yet,’ I insisted, and then gave her a full account of my extraordinary meeting on the train.

Joan gasped when I got to the part about sharing a carriage with somebody who was reading one of my books. ‘How amazing!’ she said. As soon as I had finished, she wanted to know, ‘I suppose she was pretty, was she, this Alice woman?’

‘No, not especially.’ It was surprisingly difficult to say this. The mere act of telling the story had brought Alice’s beauty vividly back to mind, and Joan at once seemed as plain and ungainly as when I had first caught sight of her on the station platform. I fought hard against this realization but there was no stopping it: I felt a shiver of desire pass through me as soon as I remembered the laughter and the teasing invitation I had glimpsed in Alice’s eyes.

‘Cold?’ said Joan. ‘Surely not.’

We talked a little more about the Winshaws and my writing and this somehow got us on to the subject of the stories we used to make up when we were children.

‘I suppose it’s rather exciting,’ Joan said, ‘to think that I once collaborated with a famous author.’

I laughed. ‘Jason Rudd and the Hampton Court Murders. I wonder what happened to that little masterpiece. I don’t suppose you kept it, did you?’

‘You know very well that you had the only copy. And you probably threw it away. You were always ruthless about things like that. I mean, fancy having to come to me for that photograph.’

‘I didn’t throw that picture away, I lost it. I told you that.’

‘I don’t see how it could have just got lost, I really don’t. Anyway, I remember you throwing all your Jason Rudd stories away when you started on your science fiction phase.’

‘Science fiction? Me?’

‘You know, when you wouldn’t write or talk about anything except Yuri Gagarin, and you tried to make me read that long story about him flying to Venus or something and I wasn’t interested.’

The shapeless memory of some ancient but wounding disagreement arose before me and prompted a smile. For the first time I realized how nice it was to be with Joan again; to be able to feel that life did in fact have a sort of continuity, that the past was not an ignoble secret to be locked away but something to be shared and wondered at. It was a warm, uncomplicated feeling. But then Joan, having finished her meal, turned over and lay at my feet, resting on her elbows, cupping her chin in her hands and affording me a panoramic view of her cleavage; and suddenly I was caught again in a tangle of different impulses, urging me to look and not to look. Of course I turned away, and pretended to be admiring the scenery, so that a difficult silence descended until Joan gave up and asked the inevitable question: ‘What are you thinking?’

‘I was thinking about my review. He’ll have read it by now. I wonder how he’s taking it.’

Joan rolled on to her back, plucked a long blade of grass and began chewing it. ‘Do you really suppose people care what you say about them?’

‘In this case,’ I said, my eyes still fixed on the horizon: ‘Yes, I do.’

Storm clouds gathered. There was a black bank of them, ranged so threateningly in the western sky that by four o’clock in the afternoon we both decided it would be sensible to head for home. Besides, it was Joan’s turn on the cooking rota again. ‘It wouldn’t do to let them down,’ she said. ‘They’ll be counting on me.’

When we got back to the house she went straight into the kitchen and started chopping vegetables. I was so tired by this stage that my legs would barely support me. I asked if she would mind me lying down on her bed for a little while and she said no, of course not, fixing me at the same time with a look of such concern that I felt obliged to say: ‘It’s been a great day, though. I really enjoyed it.’

‘It has, hasn’t it?’ She went back to her chopping board and added, half to herself, ‘I’m so glad I’ve got you till Sunday. Two more lovely days.’

On my way through the sitting room I passed Graham, who was busy reading the film reviews in the paper.

‘Have a good trip, did you?’ he asked, without looking up.

‘Very nice, thank you.’

‘You got back just in time, I reckon. It’s going to piss down in a minute.’

‘Looks like it.’

‘I’ve just been reading your piece.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Very enigmatic.’

I lay on Joan’s bed for about twenty minutes wondering what on earth he could have meant by that remark. Enigmatic? There was nothing enigmatic about what I’d written. I’d gone out of my way to make my feelings plain, in fact. If anything it was Graham who was being enigmatic. I knew the piece off by heart and went through it, sentence by sentence, to see if there was anything that might have thrown him. This drew a blank, and for a while I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind, but still his peculiar phrase nagged away at me. Finally I knew that it wouldn’t give me any more rest, so I went back downstairs to see if there was an explanation.

Graham was watching a local news programme on Joan’s television. I picked up his discarded paper and glanced at my review, pleased to see that it had been laid out prominently at the top of the page.

‘I don’t see what’s so enigmatic about this,’ I said, reading the first paragraph to myself and admiring the quietly sarcastic note I had managed to inject into a simple plot summary.

‘Look, it’s no big deal,’ said Graham. ‘It’s only a bloody review, after all. I just couldn’t see what you were getting at.’

‘Seems fairly clear to me.’ I was on to the second paragraph, where the tone began to get more explicitly frosty. I could imagine my subject starting to bristle with apprehension at this point.

‘Look, there’s obviously some clever metaphor or figure of speech that I’ve missed out on,’ said Graham. ‘I’m sure your metropolitan friends will understand it.’

‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said. I couldn’t help smiling at some of the digs in the third paragraph; they looked even more pitiless in print.

‘I mean, what are you trying to say, exactly?’ said Graham. ‘That this bloke is never going to write a really good novel, because he doesn’t own a pen?’

I looked up sharply. ‘What?’

‘The last sentence. What does it mean?’

‘Look, it’s simple. He obviously wants to write this fantastic, funny, angry, satirical book, but he’s never going to do it, because he hasn’t got the necessary—’ I was about to read the word aloud for confirmation, when suddenly I saw what they had printed. I froze in amazement: it was one of those moments when the reality is, literally, so horrific that it staggers belief. Then I screwed up the newspaper and threw it across the room in an involuntary fury. ‘The bastards!’

Graham stared at me. ‘What’s the matter?’

I couldn’t answer at first; just sat there and chewed my nails. Then I said: ‘Brio, is what I wrote. He doesn’t have the necessary brio.’

He retrieved the newspaper and examined the sentence again. A smile began to dawn on his face.

‘Oh, brio...’ Then the smile became a chuckle, the chuckle became a laugh, and the laugh became a helpless, deafening, maniacal roar which brought Joan, ever anxious to be in on the joke, running from the kitchen.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Look at this,’ said Graham, handing her the paper and struggling to speak through his choking laughter. ‘Take a look at Michael’s review.’

‘What about it?’ she said, scanning it with a frown which struggled for precedence with her anticipatory smile.

‘The last word,’ said Graham, by now gasping for breath. ‘Look at the last word.’

Joan looked at the last word, but still she couldn’t fathom the mystery. She looked from me to Graham, from Graham to me, more puzzled than ever by our different reactions. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said at last, after reading the sentence one more time. ‘I mean, what’s so funny about a biro?’

It was another subdued meal. We had red kidney bean stew followed by pineapple jelly; the noise of us all eating seemed louder than usual, interrupted as it was only by Joan’s occasional abortive attempts to get a conversation started, and Graham’s sporadic fits of laughter, which he seemed to be containing only with the greatest difficulty.

‘Well I still don’t think it’s very funny,’ said Joan, after his fourth or fifth eruption. ‘You’d think they’d have proper proof readers or something, on a national newspaper like that. If I were you, Michael, I’d have a jolly good go at them on Monday.’

‘Oh, what’s the use,’ I said, pushing a bean idly around my plate.

The lashing of rain against the windowpane intensified, and as Joan served us a second helping of jelly there was a flash of lightning, followed by a terrific thunderclap.

‘I love storms,’ she said. ‘They’re so atmospheric.’ When it became clear that nobody had anything to add to this observation, she asked brightly: ‘Do you know what I always feel like doing when there’s a storm?’

I tried not to speculate; but the answer turned out, in any case, to be fairly innocuous.

‘I like a good game of Cluedo. There’s nothing to beat it.’

And this time, for some reason, our opposition was ineffectual, so that after the plates had been cleared away we found ourselves setting out the board on the dining-room table and squabbling over who should be assigned which character. In the end Phoebe was Miss Scarlet, Joan Mrs Peacock, Graham the Reverend Green, and I was Professor Plum.

‘Now, you’ve got to imagine that we’re all stuck in this big old house in the country,’ said Joan. ‘Just like in that film, Michael, that you were always telling me about.’ She turned to the others and explained: ‘When Michael was little, he saw this film about a family who all got killed one stormy night in this rambling old mansion. It made a big impression on him.’

‘Really?’ said Graham, pricking up his cinéaste’s ears. ‘What was it called?’

‘You wouldn’t have heard of it,’ I said. ‘It was in English, and it wasn’t made by Marxist intellectuals.’

‘Ooh, touchy.’

Joan fetched a couple of candlesticks, placing one on the table and another on the mantelpiece, and then turned out all the lights. We could hardly see what we were doing, but the effect, it had to be said, was suitably eerie.

‘Now, are we all set?’

We were ready to start, except that Joan, Graham and Phoebe were each provided with pens or pencils to tick off the suspects on their murder cards, and I wasn’t. Typically, it was Graham who noticed.

‘Hang on a minute,’ he said. ‘I think Michael lacks the necessary biro.’

Even Joan collapsed into giggles at that, and Phoebe permitted herself an apologetic smirk which soon, in the face of the others’ hilarity, turned into laughter too. I fetched myself one of the coloured pens from beneath the rota board in the kitchen, then sat down and waited composedly for the hysteria to subside. It took quite a while, and in the meantime I made a firm, silent resolve: from that day on, I would write no more reviews for the newspapers.

We played three games, each of them fairly long because there were some quite sophisticated bluffs and counter-bluffs going on, usually between Graham and Joan. As for Phoebe, I had the impression that her heart wasn’t really in it. Neither was mine, at first: I tried to treat it as no more than a mathematical puzzle, an exercise in probability and deduction, but then after a while — and I suppose this will seem childish — my imagination began to assert itself and I became thoroughly absorbed. Helped along by the cracks of thunder and flashes of lightning which would momentarily flood the room with garish contrasts of light and shadow, I had no difficulty in believing that this was a night on which terrible things might happen. In my mind, Professor Plum began to take on the characteristics of Kenneth Connor, and once again I had the sense (the sense which had never been far away, ever since my birthday visit to the cinema in Weston-super-Mare) that it was my destiny to act the part of a shy, awkward, vulnerable little man caught up in a sequence of nightmarish events over which he had absolutely no control. The posters on the wall came to resemble ancient family portraits, behind which a pair of watchful eyes was likely to appear at any moment, and Joan’s tiny house began to feel as vast and sinister as Blackshaw Towers itself.

Joan won the first game: it was Mrs White, in the study, with the lead piping. Then Graham decided to take a more rigorous approach and fetched himself a clipboard and a large sheet of blank paper, on which he carefully recorded the transactions which took place between every player. He won the second game this way (it was Colonel Mustard, in the billiard room, with the revolver) but was then unanimously disqualified from using similar tactics again. The third game was closely fought. It soon became obvious that the crime had taken place either in the lounge or the conservatory, and either with the dagger or the candlestick; but I was at a significant advantage when it came to naming the murderer, because I held three of the relevant cards in my hand. While the others were still floundering and firing off wildcat suggestions at each other, the solution slowly revealed itself to me: the culprit, of course, was none other than myself, Professor Plum.

As soon as I realized this, it struck me that the game was intrinsically flawed. It seemed wrong that by a simple process of elimination you could find yourself guilty of a crime, and yet still not know how or where you were supposed to have committed it. Surely there was no precedent for this situation in real life? I wondered what it would actually feel like, to be present at the unravelling of some terrible mystery and then to be suddenly confronted with the falseness of your own, complacent self-image as disinterested observer: to find, all at once, that you were thoroughly and messily bound up in the web of motives and suspicions which you had presumed to untangle with an outsider’s icy detachment. Needless to say, I could not imagine the circumstances in which such a thing might ever happen to me.

As it turned out, in any case, Graham was ahead of us all. On his next move he crossed over to the conservatory via the secret passage and pointed an accusing finger in my direction.

‘I suggest,’ he said, ‘that it was Professor Plum, in the conservatory, with the candlestick.’

He was right; and at this point we conceded defeat. Joan turned the lights on and made us all a mug of cocoa, and the mood would perhaps have been shattered if the storm had not continued outside, gathering in ferocity, if anything, as midnight approached.

This time I didn’t have the excuse of a book to fetch; nor was I feeling hot or uncomfortable. I could probably just have lain there, listening to the rain against the window, the occasional crash of thunder, and sooner or later I would have nodded off to sleep. But only half an hour after I was sure that everyone had gone to bed, I climbed out from beneath the blankets and padded up the stairs in my T-shirt and underpants. The door to Joan’s room, as before, was standing ajar. As before, her curtains were open, letting in a good deal of light from the street lamps. And as before, she was lying on her back, her skin grey and luminescent in the silver lamplight, flickering sometimes into blueness as gashes of lightning streaked across the night sky. Although she was more than half covered, tonight, by the pale duvet, it was still enough to root me to the spot, my beady, impotent eyes consuming her hungrily from the safety of the shadowed doorway.

I stood, and I watched; but soon, strangely enough, it was her face that I found myself watching — the face I had seen every day for the last four days, and not the body which had been magically offered up to me in these precious, illicit glimpses. Perhaps there is something more private, more secret to be found in a sleeping face than there is even in a naked body. At rest, her lips slightly parted, her closed eyelids seeming to suggest an act of intense concentration on some distant, inward object, Joan was shockingly beautiful. It was now impossible, shameful even, that I could ever have thought her plain.

I watched.

And then suddenly her eyes were open; she was looking back at me and smiling.

‘Are you just going to stand there,’ she said, ‘or are you coming in?’

How different my life might have been, how very different, if I had stepped into her room instead of slipping back into the darkness as quickly and as silently as a dream slips from the waking mind.

On Saturday morning I left the house before any of the others were awake, and returned to London. It was the last I saw of Joan for many years. Her parents retired to a village on the South coast, so we never met up again while visiting our families at Christmas. The only news I ever heard was when my mother told me (shortly before we stopped speaking) that she had moved back to Birmingham and married a local businessman.

On Monday morning, I telephoned the Peacock Press and accepted their commission to write a book about the Winshaws.

The same afternoon, I went out and bought my first video recorder.

1

I lose count of the number of times Fiona and I contrived to go to bed together over the next few weeks: although a purist, I suppose, might take issue with my precise interpretation of the phrase ‘go to bed’. The procedure was something like this. She would come home from work — exhausted, like as not — and get into bed almost at once. Meanwhile I, in my kitchen, would be preparing some tasty morsel: nothing too substantial, because she didn’t have much of an appetite; some scrambled eggs or fish fingers would usually be enough, or sometimes I would just warm up a can of soup and serve it with bread rolls. Then I would take the tray of food across the hallway into her flat, and place it across her legs as she sat propped up against a bank of pillows. I would sit down beside her — technically on the bed, you see, rather than in it — and we would eat our little supper together, side by side, for all the world like a couple who’d been married for thirty years or more. And to cap it all, just to make the illusion complete, we would always turn the television on, and sit watching it for hours at a time, barely speaking a word.

I have always associated television with sickness. Not sickness of the soul, as some commentators would have it, but sickness of the body. It probably goes back to the time my father was lying in hospital, following the heart attack which was to finish him off in a matter of two or three weeks at the age of only sixty-one. I’d come up from London as soon as I heard the news and for the first time in many years I was staying under my parents’ roof. It was a peculiar experience, to be back in that newly unfamiliar house, in that suburb which was half-town and half-country, and many mornings were spent sitting at the desk in my old bedroom, looking out at the view which had once marked the full extent of my experience and aspiration, while my mother remained downstairs, trying to find housework to occupy herself or solemnly filling in one of the numerous magazine or newspaper crosswords to which she was by then addicted. But for the afternoons we had developed a little ritual, a ritual designed, I suppose, to keep the dread and the grief at a tolerable distance: and this was where the television set came into its own.

Although my parents lived on the outskirts of Birmingham, their lives tended to revolve around a quiescent, reasonably pretty market town which lay some six or seven miles from their home. It boasted one small hospital, to which my father had been admitted on the day of his attack: visiting hours were from two-thirty to three-thirty in the afternoon, and from six-thirty to eight o’clock in the evening. This meant that the hours between our visits were the most tense and problematic of the day. We would emerge from the hospital into the visitors’ car park and the bright afternoon sunshine, and my mother, who had completely lost the capacity (although it had never before deserted her in the last twenty-five years) to plan her shopping more than a few hours in advance, would drive us both to the local supermarket to buy some packets of frozen food for our evening meal. While she was making this purchase I would get out of the car and wander down the almost deserted High Street — indeed, the only real shopping street — puzzled to think that I had once been unable to conceive of a metropolis more teeming or animated. I looked into the branch of Woolworth’s where I used to spend my long-saved pocket money on budget-priced records; into the newsagent’s where it was possible to buy — although I’d had no inkling of it at the time — only a fraction of the titles available in London; and into the town’s only bookshop, laid out on one thinly stocked floor about thirty feet square, which for years had seemed to me to resemble nothing less than a modern library of Alexandria. It was here, towards the end of my teens, that I used to linger for hours, staring at the covers of the latest paperbacks while Verity fumed and stamped her feet outside. The very sight of these books had never failed to fill me with wonder: they seemed to imply the existence of a distant world populated by beautiful, talented people and devoted to the most high-minded literary ideals (the same world, of course, into which chance would one day allow me to dip my own uncertain feet, only to find it as cold and unwelcoming as the pool which had numbed me into unassuageable tears on that fateful birthday).

After this, anyway, came the most important part of the ritual. We would get back to the house, make two cups of instant coffee, lay out a plate of digestive or Rich Tea biscuits and then, for half an hour, settle down in front of the television to watch a quiz show: a show of awesome frivolity and tameness which we none the less followed with idolatrous concentration, as though to miss even a few seconds of it were to render the whole experience meaningless.

There were two simple elements to this programme: a game involving numbers, where the contestants had to perform some basic mental arithmetic (I was quite good at this one, whereas my mother invariably got into a muddle and found herself beaten by the clock); and a lexical game, in which they vied with each other to see who could make the longer word out of nine randomly selected letters of the alphabet. My mother took it more seriously than I did, always making sure that she had pencil and paper to hand before sitting down to watch, and every so often she would actually beat the contestants: I can well remember her flush of triumph at making an eight-letter word, ‘wardrobe’, out of the letters R,E,B,G,A,R,W,O,D, when the best that the winner could manage was ‘badger’, for six points. She was euphoric for hours afterwards: it was the only time during those weeks that I saw the lines of care wiped smooth from her face. And I can only think it was for this reason that we used to make such strenuous efforts to get back to the television every day at four-thirty, even sometimes, when our shopping expedition had taken longer than expected, driving at fifty or sixty miles an hour through the suburban streets, fearful of missing the early stages of the game or the host’s foolish introduction, peppered with terrible puns and delivered with the beseeching smiles of an overgrown puppy. There was another reason, though, why my mother watched every afternoon, her eyes aglow with the faith of the true believer, and this was that she clung to the possibility that one day she might be granted a vision, a revelation of the Holy Grail after which all of the programme’s followers quested: a perfect nine-letter word to be formed out of those randomly selected letters. It would have made her the happiest woman in the world, I think, if only for a few instants; and the ironic thing is that it did happen once and she never knew it. The letters were O,Y,R,L,T,T,I,M and A, and I could see it straight away, but neither of the contestants got it and my mother was struggling, too — all that she found, in the end, was a feeble five-letter word, ‘trail’. At least, that’s what she said at the time, and it’s only now that I wonder if she saw it as well, the word ‘mortality’ spelled out by those nine random letters, but couldn’t bring herself to write down the truth of it on the back of her scribbled afternoon shopping list.

In any case, Fiona and I had more serious matters to occupy us, because the dramatic change which her illness wrought on our viewing habits happened to coincide with a period of political upheaval in both the domestic and the international spheres. Late in November, just a few days after she had been to see her doctor for the second time, the Tory party leadership crisis came to a head and Mrs Thatcher was forced to resign. It was a week of intense, if transient, media excitement, and we were able to gorge ourselves on a diet of end-to-end news programmes, special late-night panel discussions and extended bulletins. And then on the day she went for her outpatients’ appointment, we heard that Saddam Hussein had rejected Security Council Resolution 678, an ultimatum authorizing the use of ‘all necessary means’ if Iraq had failed to withdraw from Kuwait by January 15th, and soon he was on French television saying that he thought there was a 50–50 chance of armed conflict; and even though he now started releasing the hostages, so that they were all home a week or so before Christmas, it still felt as if the politicians and the army leaders were hell bent on dragging us into war. But the strange thing is that Fiona, who Was a peace-loving person and not very interested in politics, took a kind of comfort from all of this, and I began to suspect that, like my mother with her quiz show, she had chosen to use it as a way of shielding herself from the fear which was otherwise liable to swamp her.

This time the doctor had listened more carefully. He examined her neck when she told him about the growth, which was bigger than it used to be, she said, almost two inches across, and he wrote down everything she told him about it but still said there was probably nothing to worry about, that the fevers and night sweats might well derive from something else entirely, some aggressive but treatable infection. But there was no point in taking unnecessary risks, and she was booked in for this outpatients’ appointment in the last week of November. They took some blood tests and X-rays, apparently, and she was supposed to go back in three weeks’ time to get the results. Meanwhile she had a temperature chart to fill in, and so our evenings together would always conclude with me fetching the thermometer, and faithfully entering the relevant figure before putting out the light and returning to my flat with the tray and the dirty plates or soup bowls.

As I mentioned, there was a good deal of silence between us: on Fiona’s part because talking made her throat burn, on mine because I could never think of anything to say. But I do remember one conversation which took place in the dead half hour between the Nine O’Clock News and the News at Ten, and which began with her making an unexpected remark.

She said: ‘You don’t have to do this every evening, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘I mean, if there are other places you want to be, other people you want to be seeing …’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘It can’t be much fun for you, being stuck here with me all the time. It’s not as if—’

‘You’re good company. Really. I’ve told you that before.’ (And it was true.)

‘I know, but — When I’m better, when I’ve got this thing licked, I’ll be … a lot more fun. And then — you know, then we’ll really start something, will we? Really try to make a go of it.’

I nodded. ‘Yes. Of course.’

‘I’m impressed, in a way,’ she continued hesitantly. ‘I mean, it’s not every man — There aren’t many men I’d feel comfortable with, having them around here all the time and seeing me in bed and everything. I suppose I’m impressed that … you haven’t tried anything on.’

‘Well I’m not going to take advantage of you, am I? Not while you’re feeling like this.’

‘No, but we’ve known each other a couple of months now, and most people, in that time, would have … I mean circumstances don’t permit, in our case, but — you know. You must have given it some thought.’

And of course I had given it thought, sitting night after night on Fiona’s bed, sometimes with her wearing a jumper, sometimes just her nightgown; touching her bare arms, brushing crumbs from her body, feeling her neck for signs of swelling, taking the thermometer in and out of her mouth, giving her consoling hugs and good-night kisses on the cheek. How could all of that attention be innocent, how could it not contain its quota of furtive glances and suppressed excitement? Of course I had given it thought. There was, and we both knew this, a strong undercurrent of feeling between us which it was both difficult to ignore and folly not to acknowledge.

But I merely smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, making for the kitchen to get two cups of cocoa. ‘Sex has never been further from my mind.’

suspenders black bullwhip stockings bra unhook orgy grope panties erect handcuffs stretch unzip fishnet tights protruding take off suck cleavage juices rubber striptease Mazola smooth nipple stroking pink mount lick moist leather thighs parted probing tongue tender back arching moaning softly Oh God Yes please don’t stop Yes

I left the contents of the tray unwashed in the kitchen, then went back to my desk and read through this list again. It filled me with apprehension. Ever since my conversation with Patrick, I had been determined to show him that I could write about sex as well as anybody, that it wasn’t a subject I would shy away from in my book about the Winshaws. And the situation I’d chosen to describe had presented itself without much difficulty. When meeting Findlay at the Narcissus Gallery, I’d happened to overhear some gossip about how Roddy Winshaw had once seduced a young painter he’d invited up to Yorkshire for the weekend, and since I knew nothing of the circumstances, and had decided that, for the purposes of this book, the boundary between fiction and reality was no longer one which I was interested in observing, the incident seemed to form an ideal starting point. But I’d been working on it, now, for more than four nights, and it was perfectly obvious that I was getting nowhere.

To be honest, I had little experience in this area. My knowledge of sexually explicit books and films was small. Despite all those years of relying on the television for sexual stimuli, I retained, amazingly enough, a fundamental aversion to pornography (an aversion probably based on principle, if you cared to look back into the distant past). In even the tackiest of the films which I bought, rented or taped from the television, there was usually a vestige of artistic justification for the couplings and disrobings which would rapidly become my main focus of interest. And in fact I had only once been to the cinema to see a pornographic film. It was in the mid 1970s, during the final grisly stages of my marriage to Verity. For several months our sex life had been dying a slow, lingering death, and in our mutual panic we decided that a visit to a nearby cinema specializing in blue movies might provide something in the way of resuscitation. Sadly, we were out of luck. The film we’d chosen had attracted a certain amount of attention in our evening newspaper because, although made by a London production company, it had been shot entirely on location in Birmingham itself. As a result it was enormously popular with the locals, and the rest of the audience consisted mainly of middle-aged couples — some of whom had obviously seen it several times before — who would have an annoying tendency to interrupt, for example, a scene of back-seat oral sex with remarks like, ‘This is the bit where you can see our Tracy’s Morris Minor going past outside’, or ‘Doesn’t the chiropodist’s look better now they’ve given it a lick of paint?’ Verity and I left the cinema without feeling noticeably aroused and spent the rest of the evening, I seem to remember, rearranging the holiday snaps from our recent trip to the Scilly Isles.

Shaking this memory off, I returned to the blank sheets of paper in front of me and tried to bring my mind into focus. It was no easy task, for we were only five days away from Christmas, and tomorrow Fiona was supposed to be going back to the hospital for the results of her tests. I’d agreed to keep her company, and we were both apprehensive about it. On top of that, I’d had an alarming phone call earlier that day — from Mrs Tonks, of all people. It seemed there had been another break-in: not at the office, this time, but at Mr McGanny’s house in St John’s Wood. The burglar had managed to force entry into his safe and several private documents had been stolen. They included letters from Tabitha Winshaw and, for some reason, statements of the firm’s accounts for the tax year 1981/82. Even more bizarrely, a number of photographs had been removed from one of Mr McGanny’s family albums. She asked me if I could throw any light on this. Naturally I couldn’t, and so the only effects of our conversation were to leave the mystery more clouded than ever and to make it even harder for me to concentrate on my work.

After a few minutes I put my list of key words to one side: it had proved inhibiting rather than helpful, and the only way to break the deadlock, I decided, was to go for complete spontaneity. I should write down whatever came into my head, and worry about the details later. So I fetched a bottle of white wine from the kitchen, poured myself a tumbler-full and wrote my first sentence.

That was a good start. Nothing too complicated there. I took a sip of wine and rubbed my hands. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be as difficult as I’d thought. Now maybe just a couple of sentences to describe the bedroom, and then we would be getting somewhere.

It was a what, though? I didn’t want to go for anything elaborate at this stage, bogging the reader down in prolix descriptions. A single carefully chosen epithet ought to do the trick. How about—

No: much too boring. It was a sumptuous room? Too cliched. A charming room? Too twee. It was a large, charming, sumptuous room. It was charmingly sumptuous. It was largely charming. To be honest, I didn’t give a shit what kind of room it was. Neither would my readers, in all probability. Best to skip all that stuff and keep things moving.

That wouldn’t do. I didn’t want to make it sound like rape.

Too wimpish.

Perhaps this section was also best dispensed with. I could imagine exactly what Patrick’s criticism would be: I was dithering over these preliminary niceties so as to avoid getting down to the action.

What was she wearing?

Yes?

Go on, write it.

Like?

Anyway, she had these nipples. That was fairly obvious. What about him, though? I didn’t want to be accused of sexism: I was obliged, as far as I could see, to present the male as a sexual object too. And so, for instance:

Or better still—

I had to admit it, this wasn’t getting me anywhere. Besides, I could always come back later if I wanted to fine-tune these points of descriptive detail. If I didn’t get to the heart of the matter soon, the momentum would be gone.

No, too aggressive.

I threw down my pen and sat back in disgust. What was the matter with me tonight? Maybe it was the wine, or just the fact that I was thoroughly out of practice at this sort of thing, but nothing seemed to be working. I was making all the wrong moves, falling at every fence, fumbling and groping and communicating nothing but my own inexperience.

All right. Forget that. More wine. Now think carefully. Imagine these two young, attractive people, alone in a room with only their own bodies for amusement. Picture them in your mind.

Now choose your words with confidence, and precision. Be fearless.

Oh, to hell with it.

And it was at this climactic juncture, just as I had managed to work myself into a state of rather desperate excitement, that the telephone rang. I sat up in surprise and looked at the clock. It was two-thirty in the morning. Irrationally, I felt obliged to tidy up my desk and make sure that the sheets of paper were positioned face down before I went to answer. Then, when I picked up the receiver, I heard an unfamiliar voice.

‘Mr Owen?’ it said.

‘Speaking.’

‘I’m sorry to be disturbing you at this time of night. I hope I didn’t get you out of bed. Hanrahan’s the name. I’m ringing on behalf of one of my clients, a Mr Findlay Onyx, who claims to be an acquaintance of yours.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘I’m his lawyer, you see. Findlay sends his apologies for not being able to speak to you directly, but he’s being held at Hornsey police station, and isn’t allowed to make any more phone calls. He is, however, very anxious to meet with you personally at the earliest opportunity. He asked me to say that you should come round to the station first thing tomorrow morning, if it’s at all possible.’

‘Well, it’s … difficult,’ I said, thinking of Fiona and her outpatients’ appointment. ‘I suppose if it’s absolutely necessary … I mean, what’s going on? Is he in trouble?’

‘I’m afraid so. I really think it would be best if you could make the effort.’

I gave him a tentative assurance and he said, ‘Good. Findlay can count on you, then,’ and hung up. The whole conversation had taken place so quickly that I scarcely knew what had happened. For a start I hadn’t even managed to ask him why Findlay was being held by the police — unless, of course (and suddenly this seemed the obvious, the only solution), he was the one who had broken into Mr McGanny’s house and stolen the documents relating to my book. I went into the bedroom, lay down on the bed and pondered the likelihood of this. Could they have caught up with him already, if the burglary had only taken place last night? It was possible. He was old and infirm, and might well have left a trail of careless evidence. But if that was the case, why the sudden urgency? Surely he would be let out on bail, and our meeting could have been deferred until he was back in the privacy of his flat. There was no way of knowing, anyway, and I spent the rest of the night mulling over this new development in an uneasy half-sleep which was broken after only a few hours by the first shafts of wintry sunlight.

2

It seemed to take most of the morning to get to the police station by bus. Fiona wouldn’t have that problem, at any rate: I’d booked a minicab for her before setting out. I’d done this to salve my conscience as much as anything else, because she’d looked so suddenly vulnerable when I left her: she’d put on her smartest work clothes, the way people do when gripped by that strange sense of propriety which insists that, if they are to meet their doom, they should at least be properly dressed. (But then again, I suppose, it gives them a kind of strength.) Having me with her wouldn’t have made a lot of difference, anyway. That’s what I tried to believe as the bus stopped and started on its throttled course across London, carrying me ever closer towards the next stage in a mystery from which I was, to tell the truth, beginning to feel more and more detached. It was a good feeling, too, this detachment: quite a relief, after all those years of puzzlement and struggle. It never occurred to me that I would have lost it by the time the morning was out.

I was kept waiting for only a few minutes by the desk sergeant, and then taken to a bright but grubby cell on the ground floor. Findlay was sitting rigidly on a bench, his raincoat again draped over his shoulders, his white hair turned to a halo by beams of light from one small window high up in the wall.

‘Michael,’ he said, taking my outstretched hand. ‘You do me an honour. I could only wish our second meeting had not been fated to take place amid such squalor and uncleanness. The fault, I’m afraid, is entirely my own.’

‘Entirely?’

‘Well, you can probably guess what has brought me here.’

‘I have — let’s say an inkling.’

‘Of course you have, Michael. A man of your discernment, your intuition. You know the frailties an old man is subject to, when his resolve is weak but his desires — alas — remain strong. Strong as they ever were.’ He sighed. ‘I think that I mentioned, the last time we met … the bender?’

I nodded uncertainly. To be honest, I had lost his drift.

‘Well, I’m in breach of it. That’s the sad fact of the matter, and I have only myself to blame.’

Light began to dawn. ‘You mean your suspended sentence?’

‘Quite. Once again I find myself flattened by the demands of a reckless libido. Once again the power of flesh over the spirit—’

‘So it wasn’t you who broke into McGanny’s house the other night?’

He looked up sharply, hissed me into silence and shot a warning glance towards the door. ‘For Heaven’s sake, Michael. Do you want to make things even worse for me?’ And then, in a whisper: ‘Why do you think I brought you here, if not to discuss that very matter?’

I sat down on the bench beside him and waited for enlightenment. After a while I realized that he was sulking.

‘I’m sorry,’ I prompted.

‘Apart from anything else,’ he said, ‘you impugn my professional competence, if you think that I’m incapable of carrying out such a routine little assignment without getting caught. I slipped in and out of that house, Michael, with the grace and the lithe energy of a jungle cat. The great Raffles himself might have stood back and gasped in envy.’

‘So what went wrong?’

‘Sheer loss of control, Michael. Lack of will-power, and nothing else. I spent the whole of yesterday sifting through the documents which I had borrowed — borrowed, I repeat, for I have a scrupulous regard for property — and by the evening, I was quite satisfied that they provided everything I might have required to forge the missing links in the chain of this most perplexing investigation. Imagine my exhilaration, Michael. Imagine the surge of adrenalin and the rush of blood, coursing through my ancient veins in a torrent of pride and excitement. Suddenly I felt like a young man of thirty.’

‘And so?’

‘Naturally I went out to look for one. The pubs were shut, by now, but just a few streets away from my flat there is a public convenience which, thanks to an uncharacteristically enlightened decision on the part of our council leaders, provides a haven at all hours of the day and night for anyone seeking relief, in its various forms. I’d been trying to stay away from the place for weeks, ever since I was last hauled up in front of a judge and told that one more slip would land me behind bars — only for a couple of months, he said, but who knows what effect even a brief confinement might have on the constitution of a frail and feeble-hearted relic such as myself. Last night, however, the majesty of the law seemed to hold no terrors, and I found myself unable to resist an approach to this sink of delicious iniquity. I had been there for only a few seconds when a man (man! what am I saying! — an apparition, Michael, a perfectionist’s fantasy sprung to life: Adonis himself, in bomber jacket and sky-blue jeans) emerged from one of the cubicles.’ Findlay shook his head, rapture and regret seeming to vie for precedence in his thoughts. ‘Needless to say, he was to be my undoing. And vice versa.’

‘Vice versa?’

‘Precisely: I undid his shirt, I undid his trousers, I undid the buttons on his fly. I won’t offend your breeder’s sensibilities, Michael, with a detailed account — a blow-by-blow account, one might almost say — of the pleasantries which ensued. I ask you only to imagine my shock, my outrage, my sense of betrayal, when he suddenly introduced himself as a detective superintendent, no less, of the Metropolitan Police, clapped a pair of handcuffs on me, and whistled for the accomplice who had been waiting out by the doorway. It all happened so very quickly.’ He bowed his head and we both fell silent. I struggled for words of consolation but couldn’t find any; and when Findlay spoke at last, there was a new note of bitterness in his voice. ‘It’s the hypocrisy of these people I can’t stand, you know. The lies they tell themselves and the rest of the world. The little shit was enjoying himself every bit às much as I was.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Please, Michael,’ he said, with an indulgent glance. ‘Either that, or it was his truncheon I’d had between my teeth for the last ten minutes. Allow me some credit for my reading of the situation.’

Chastened, I waited a moment or two before asking: ‘So then what happened?’

‘I was brought back here, and now it appears they can have me banged up in a day or two. Which is why I wanted to see you as soon as possible.’

There were footsteps in the corridor outside. Findlay waited until they had gone by, then leaned towards me conspiratorially. ‘I have made,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘some startling discoveries. You will be pleased to hear — though not especially surprised, if you are at all acquainted with my rate of success in these matters — that my hunch has proved to be accurate.’

‘Which hunch is that?’

‘Cast your mind back, Michael, to that discussion we had the last time we met. At one point, I seem to recall, you made an assertion to the effect that you had merely “drifted in” to this business, and I ventured to suggest that it may have been a little more complicated than that. I was right.’ He left an impressive pause. ‘You were chosen.’

‘Chosen? Who by?’

‘By Tabitha Winshaw, of course. Now listen carefully. Hanrahan will give you a spare set of keys to my flat, and you will find all the relevant papers in the top drawer of my desk. You should go up there as soon as you can and take a good look at them. The first thing you’ll find is Tabitha’s letter to the Peacock Press, dated the twenty-first of May, 1982, putting forward the idea of a book about her family. Immediately, then, a question comes to mind: how had she found out about these particular publishers?

‘Answering this question turned out to be simple enough, and involved nothing more devious than some research into the chequered history of McGanny’s entrepreneurial career. I found documents suggesting that he had, over the last thirty years, been involved in the formation of no less than seventeen different companies, most of them having gone into receivership and several having been the subject of criminal proceedings under the tax laws. He had run night clubs, drug companies, dating agencies, insurance firms, correspondence courses and had set himself up, finally, as a literary agent: no doubt it was this which gave him the idea of establishing the Peacock Press — having learned that if there is one class of person, out of all of society’s most naive and defenceless members, who is simply crying out to be conned, it’s the aspiring but untalented writer. Now it seems that one of McGanny’s enterprises, in the mid 1970s, was a chain of bingo halls which ran foul of the authorities in Yorkshire, among other places: and who should have taken charge of his defence on that occasion but our old friend Proudfoot — solicitor to none other than Tabitha Winshaw herself — who continued to provide him with legal representation until meeting with an untimely end, so I gathered, in 1984. So there we have our connection. Tabitha approaches Proudfoot, asking him to locate a suitable publisher, and Proudfoot, miraculously, is able to produce just the man.

‘He would also have known that Tabitha’s proposal had a good chance of being accepted, because the state of the company finances at that time was fairly desperate. You will be able to see that yourself from the year’s accounts, which I took the precaution of including in my haul. Add financial insecurity, then, to McGanny’s proven willingness to engage in unscrupulous transactions, and you will see that he could hardly be expected to refuse Tabitha’s generous terms. And he would not even have baulked, as most men would have done, at her one extraordinary precondition.’ He looked up at me sharply. ‘You can guess what it was, of course?’

I shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

Findlay permitted himself a dry laugh. ‘Well, from her letter, it seems that she insisted—insisted, mind — that the book could only be written by you.’

This made no sense at all.

‘But that’s ridiculous. I haven’t even met Tabitha Winshaw. Back in 1982 we didn’t even … know of each other’s existence.’

‘Well, she obviously knew of yours.’

Findlay sat back against the wall, examining his fingernails and clearly relishing the confusion into which his information had thrown me. After a while — and, I suspect, more out of mischief than anything else — he speculated coolly: ‘Perhaps news of your literary reputation had reached her, Michael. She may have read a review of one of those widely admired novels of yours, and decided that here was a man whose services she could not afford to do without.’

But I scarcely heard this remark, because a number of new questions, distinctly uncomfortable ones, had just occurred to me.

‘Yes, but look, I told you how I came to be offered that job. There was this woman called Alice Hastings, and I met her on the train, quite by chance.’

‘Quite by arrangement, I think you’ll find.’ Findlay had produced a toothpick from somewhere and was now scraping out the dirt from beneath his thumbnail.

‘But I’d never seen her before in my life.’

‘And have you seen her since?’

‘Well no, I haven’t — not to speak to, anyway.’

‘That’s rather curious, isn’t it, in — what? — eight years of dealing with the firm.’

‘Actually,’ I said, on the defensive, ‘I caught a glimpse of her outside the office only a few months ago, getting out of a taxi.’

‘I seem to remember,’ said Findlay, now pointing at me with the toothpick, ‘that when you first told me this story, you furnished me with a brief description.’

‘That’s right: long dark hair, long thin neck —’

‘—and a face like a horse.’

‘I can’t believe those were my exact words.’

‘Equine, then. That was the detail that stuck in my mind. Or rather, that was the detail which came back to me when I broke into the house the other night and first saw a photograph of’ (bringing the toothpick even closer to my face) ‘McGanny himself.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Did you know that Hastings is the maiden name of McGanny’s wife?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘And that he has a daughter called Alice — an actress?’

‘Yes, I did, as a matter of fact.’

‘You knew her name was Alice?’

‘I knew she was an actress. She phoned him up the last time I was in there, a few months—’

I stopped short.

‘The same day,’ Findlay suggested, ‘that you thought you’d seen Miss Hastings getting out of a taxi?’

I didn’t reply to this; just got up and walked to the window.

‘If the name Alice McGanny,’ Findlay continued, ‘is not one which is widely known in theatrical circles, this is because the young lady’s career has, from what I was able to piece together of her CV, obstinately refused to take off. She’s understudied, she’s dressed, she’s ASM-ed, she’s had walk-on parts, one-line parts and no-line parts, and in between these triumphs she’s been in and out of a drug rehabilitation centre and posed naked for one of the sleaziest magazines in the business. (There was a copy in McGanny’s safe, which I was considerate enough to retrieve on your behalf: it did nothing for me, I’m afraid, but they tell me that this sort of thing can sometimes provide a small frisson to those who share your rather sad and routine inclinations.) And so it’s hardly surprising, given all of this, that she’s repeatedly been obliged to borrow large sums of money from her father; and I dare say that on this occasion she was willing enough to undertake a little role-playing on his behalf, if the price was right.’

I stayed over by the window. It was too high up in the wall for me to be able to see anything, but that didn’t matter: my mind’s eye was focused on our meeting in the railway carriage all those years ago. I replayed it again and again, fast-forwarding, rewinding. They must have found out my address somehow — from Patrick, maybe, or from my literary editor at the newspaper — and then she must have kept watch on the flat for hours, perhaps even a day or two, while I sat inside writing my precious review … Followed me to the tube station, followed me to King’s Cross, and then that stupid story about going to visit her sister in Kettering, and not needing her own suitcase. How could I have fallen for it: what, precisely, had been blinding me?

‘Well, you’re not the only man who would have walked into that trap, I’m sure,’ said Findlay, appearing to read my thoughts. ‘She is rather attractive, after all; even I can see that. Still, they were taking a bit of a gamble, when you think about it, if her looks were all they had to rely upon. I’m surprised they didn’t try to bait the hook with something else while they were about it.’

‘They did.’ I turned, but was still unable to look Findlay full in his questioning face. ‘She was reading one of my novels. It had never happened to me before. She didn’t have to approach me. I introduced myself.’

‘Ah.’ Findlay nodded wisely, but there was no mistaking the amusement in his eye. ‘Of course. The age-old appeal. And McGanny would know more about authorial vanity than most. After all, he had built a whole business on it.’

‘Quite.’ I paced the cell briskly now, anxious for the conversation to be over as quickly as possible. I waited for what seemed like an age for Findlay to break his silence, and then could contain my impatience no longer. ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘So what’s the missing link?’

‘Missing link?’

‘Between me and Tabitha. How had she found out about me, why did she choose me?’

‘I’ve already told you, Michael: unless your name had become a watchword, in those days, among Yorkshire’s many discerning readers of contemporary fiction, I haven’t the vaguest notion.’

‘But you’re a detective: I thought that’s what you were trying to find out.’

‘I have found out a great deal,’ said Findlay sharply, ‘much of it on your behalf and all of it at considerable personal risk. If some of my discoveries have upset you then perhaps there are lessons to be learned from your own conduct in this affair. Don’t blame the messenger.’

I sat down beside him and was about to apologize when the cell door opened. A constable popped his head round and said, ‘One more minute,’ and there was something about his manner as he did this — the sense of a token civility pared down to its absolute minimum — which, combined with the fearsome clang of the cell door when it slammed behind him, suddenly brought home all the injustice of Findlay’s predicament.

‘How can they do this to you?’ I stammered. ‘I mean, it’s crazy, putting you away like this. You’re an old man: what do they hope to achieve?’

Findlay shrugged. ‘I’ve had a lifetime of this sort of treatment, Michael. You stop asking questions. Thankfully I remain sound in mind and body, so I shall survive the ordeal, you can be sure of that. But talking of survival’ (and here his voice sank to a whisper again) ‘I hear on the grapevine that the members of a certain eminent family are steeling themselves for a tragic loss. Mortimer Winshaw is fading fast.’

‘That’s sad. He’s the only one who was ever nice to me.’

‘Well, I smell ructions, Michael. I smell upheaval. You know as well as I do the nature of Mortimer’s feelings towards his family. If he leaves a will there may be some nasty surprises for them in it; and of course, if there’s a funeral, Tabitha will be expected to attend, and it will be the first time she’s seen any of them for a very long time. You should keep your ear to the ground. It might make for an interesting chapter in your little chronicle.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I mean, thank you for all your help.’ There was a valedictory feeling in the air, suddenly, and I found myself trying to make a speech. ‘You’ve been to a lot of trouble. I — well, I hope you got something out of it, that’s all: you know, whatever it was you wanted …’

‘Professional satisfaction, Michael. This is all that the serious detective ever asks from his work. This business has been nagging away at me for more than thirty years: but all my instincts tell me that it will be unravelled soon, very soon. I’m just sorry that the forces of law have intervened to stop me from playing an active part.’ He took my hand and held it in a fragile but determined grip. ‘For the next two months, Michael, you’re my ears and eyes. Remember that. I’m relying on you now.’

He smiled bravely, and I did my best to smile back.

3

Christmas Day dawned cloudy, dry and without character. As I stood at the window of my flat overlooking the park, I could not help thinking back, as I thought back on this day every year, to the white Christmases of my childhood, when the house would be swathed in my mother’s homemade decorations, my father would spend hours on his hands and knees trying to locate the one faulty bulb which was preventing our tree from lighting up, and on Christmas Eve I would sit by the window all afternoon, awaiting the arrival of my grandparents who invariably drove over from their neighbouring suburb to stay with us until the New Year. (I mean my mother’s parents, for we had nothing to do with my father’s; had not even heard from them, in fact, for as long as I could remember.) For a few days the atmosphere in our house, usually so quiet and contemplative, would be lively, boisterous even, and it’s perhaps because of this memory — and the memory of the fabulous whiteness which could always be relied upon, in those days, to blanket our front lawn — that there was still an air of unreality about the grey, silent Christmases to which in recent years I had become numbly resigned.

But today would be different. Neither of us could stomach the thought of eight hours’ Christmas television, and by mid-morning we were in a hired car heading down towards the South Coast. I hadn’t driven for ages. Luckily South London was more or less empty of traffic, and apart from a close shave with a red Sierra and a bruising encounter with the edge of a roundabout just outside Surbiton, we managed to get out into the countryside without serious incident. Fiona had offered to drive, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Maybe this was silly of me, because she was feeling (and looking) better than she’d done for weeks, and if anything I think I’d been more upset than she had by the absurd mix-up over the results of her tests at the hospital, when she’d turned up for her appointment only to be told that it had been cancelled, and somebody was supposed to have telephoned her about it, and the specialist who was supposed to be dealing with her case was at a protest meeting to complain about the administrator’s decision to close down four surgical wards immediately after Christmas, and could she please come back in a week’s time when everything would be sorted out. I couldn’t contain my frustration when she told me this story, and no doubt my frenzy of shouting and foot-stamping had shaken her far more badly than her nervous taxi ride and wasted three-quarters of an hour in the clammy hubbub of the outpatients’ waiting room. I suppose I was out of practice when it came to dealing with a crisis. Anyway, she’d recovered — we’d both recovered — and here we were, gazing in rapture at the barren hedgerows, the converted farmhouses, the diffident rise and fall of dun-coloured fields, like two children from an inner-city ghetto who had never been let out into the countryside before.

We arrived in Eastbourne at about twelve o’clock. Ours was the only car parked by the front, and for a few minutes we sat in silence, listening to the wash of sea against grey shingle.

‘It’s so quiet,’ said Fiona; and when we got out, the opening and shutting of the car doors seemed both to shatter and to be absorbed by the surrounding hush: making me think — I can’t imagine why — of lonely punctuation marks on a blank sheet of paper.

As we walked down to the ocean our footsteps made a pebbly crunch; you could also, if you listened closely, hear a whispered breeze, sibilant and fitful. Fiona unfolded a rug and we sat at the water’s edge, leaning into one another. It was extremely cold.

After a while she said: ‘Where are we going to eat?’

I said: ‘There’s bound to be a hotel or a pub or something.’

She said: ‘It’s Christmas Day. They might all be booked out.’

A few minutes later, the near-silence was broken by the click and whirr of an approaching bicycle. We looked round and saw an old and very corpulent man parking his bike against the wall, then descending the steps and crunching his way towards the sea, a knapsack across his shoulder and a resolute look on his face. When he was about ten yards away from us he put down his knapsack and started taking his clothes off. We tried not to watch as more and more of his huge, pink, astonishing body came into view. He was wearing bathing trunks instead of underpants and, much to our relief, he stopped at these, then folded his clothes in a neat pile, took a towel from his knapsack and shook it out. After that he started picking his way towards the water, pausing only to glance at us and say, ‘Morning.’ He was still wearing his wrist-watch, and a few steps later he stopped to look at it, turned back towards us and qualified his greeting with: ‘Afternoon, I should say.’ Then another afterthought: ‘You wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on my things, would you? If you’re going to be here a minute or two.’ His accent was Northern: Mancunian, at a guess.

Fiona said: ‘Not at all.’

‘How old do you reckon he is,’ I asked under my breath, as we saw him wade, without flinching, into the icy shallows: ‘Seventy? eighty?’

In another moment he had submerged himself and all we could see was his reddened pate bobbing up and down. He wasn’t in for long, only about five minutes or so, starting off with some easy-going breast-stroke, then switching to a vigorous crawl as he charged up and down the same stretch of water ten or twelve times, and ending up on his back for a leisurely return to the shore. When he hit the pebbles he rolled over and clambered out, rubbing his hands together and slapping his flabby upper arms to restore the circulation.

‘Bit nippy in there today,’ he said, as he walked past us. ‘Still, it wouldn’t do to miss. Couldn’t do without my constitutional.’

‘You mean you do this every day?’ asked Fiona.

‘Every day for the last thirty years,’ he said, returning to his pile of clothes and beginning to towel himself dry. ‘First thing in the morning, as a rule. Of course, today’s a bit different: it being Christmas, and so forth. We’ve a house full of grandkids and this was the earliest I could escape, what with all the presents having to be opened.’ Fiona averted her eyes as he began the tortuous business of getting his trunks off while holding the towel in place. ‘Are you from round here?’ he asked. ‘Or just down for the day?’

‘We’ve come down from London,’ said Fiona.

‘I see. Getting away from it all. And why not. Couldn’t face a day of screaming children and Granny hurting her teeth on the walnuts.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Can’t say I blame you. Madness it is, round at our place this morning.’ He pulled his ample stomach in a few inches and fastened his belt. ‘Mind you, it’s the wife I feel sorry for. Turkey, roast potatoes, stuffing and two veg for fourteen people. That’s a lot to expect of any woman, isn’t it?’

Fiona asked if he could recommend somewhere for us to have lunch, and he mentioned the name of a pub. ‘It’ll be full up, mind, but the landlord’s a friend of mine, so if you just mention my name they might find you a corner. Tell them Norman sent you. I shouldn’t waste much time about it, either, if I was you. Come on and I’ll point you in the right direction.’

We thanked him and, once he had finished dressing and had repacked the towel carefully in his knapsack, followed him up to the road.

‘Crikey, what a lovely bike,’ said Fiona, as soon as she saw it at close quarters. ‘Cannondale, isn’t it?’

‘D’you like it? This is its maiden voyage. It was a present from my eldest: they sprang it on me this morning. I do know a thing or two about bikes — been riding them all my life, you see — and I reckon this one ought to be a beauty. Only weighs about half as much as my old Raleigh: here, look at this, I can lift it up with one hand.’

‘How does it feel on the road?’

‘Well, not as nifty as I was expecting, funnily enough. I’ve come from a little way out of town and it’s a bit of a climb. I was finding it quite hard going.’

‘That’s odd.’ Fiona knelt down and started to examine the back wheel. I looked on, bemused.

‘You’d think with seven gears I wouldn’t have any problem at all, wouldn’t you?’

She peered even more intently at a cluster of very intimidating-looking cogs and ratchets at the centre of the wheel. ‘You know, you might have the wrong sort of cassette on here,’ she said. ‘If this is designed for racing then the ratios may be too high for you. It’s all to do with the cadence. This’ll be designed for about ninety r.p.m. and you’re probably doing nearer seventy-five.’

Norman looked worried. ‘Is that serious, then?’

‘Not really. You’re in luck, because you’ve got individually replaceable sprockets. You’ll need a chain whip and a lockring remover, and then you can do it yourself.’ She stood up. ‘Well, it’s just a hunch.’

‘You can have a ride if you like,’ said Norman. ‘See what you think.’

‘Can I? Gosh, that would be a treat.’ She turned the bike round and swung herself into the saddle. ‘I’ll just go up to the roundabout and back, shall I?’

‘Whatever you like.’

We both watched as she pedalled off down the road, uncertainly at first, then gathering speed and confidence. She receded from view until the only distinct feature was her windswept trail of copper hair.

‘Getting a good bit of speed up, there,’ said Norman.

‘She’s an old hand,’ I said, surprised at the pride I took in being able to tell him this. ‘Did a forty-mile sponsored ride a couple of months ago.’

‘Well’—he winked at me in a manly, confidential sort of way—‘you’re a lucky bugger, that’s all I can say. No wonder you don’t want to share her with anybody else on a day like this. She’s a cracker.’

‘That’s not really why we’re here.’

‘Oh?’

‘No. We came down for … well, for health reasons, I suppose you’d call it.’ The urge to confide in someone was suddenly strong. ‘I’m so worried, I couldn’t begin to tell you. We’ve been trying to get some sense out of the doctors, but it’s been going on for months: fevers, night sweats, dreadful sore throats. I just thought a change of scene might do some good — you know, sea air, and all that sort of thing. She’d never say anything about it, but it’s been tearing us both apart; and if it turns out to be something serious, I don’t know how I’d cope, I really don’t.’

‘Aye, well.’ Norman sighed, looking away, and shuffled his feet in embarrassment. ‘I didn’t like to say anything, but now you’ve mentioned it, you do look bloody terrible.’ And just before Fiona cruised back into earshot, he added: ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t wear you out, eh?’

We tried our luck at the pub he’d recommended. The dining area was very hot, very full, and very stuffy, but when we mentioned Norman’s name the landlord did indeed manage to find us a table in the corner, boxed in by a family party of eight, all of them highly boisterous except for a lanky teenager with a streaming cold. He could never quite get to his handkerchief in time, and whenever he sneezed I could see the fine droplets of saliva flying in our direction. We passed on the first course and went straight on to the turkey, which was dry, thinly sliced to the point of transparency, and served with a small mountain of waterlogged vegetables.

‘How come you know all that stuff about bicycles, then?’ I asked Fiona, as she made her first brave inroads into this daunting confection. ‘You were coming across like a real expert.’

She had her mouth full of sprout and turkey, and was unable to answer at first.

‘I did an abstract of some articles about new gear systems just a couple of weeks ago,’ she said, and then embarked upon some serious chewing. ‘I’ve got a good memory for that sort of thing: don’t ask me why.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought it fell within your brief.’

‘We have a very wide brief. It’s not just specialist journals: we cover lots of different subjects. Cycling, cybernetics, sexually transmitted diseases, space travel …’

‘Space travel?’

She noticed my sudden interest.

‘Why, is this another little obsession that you’ve been keeping quiet about?’

‘Well, it used to be, I suppose. When I was little I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. I know probably every other boy of my age felt the same way but those enthusiasms never really leave you, do they?’

‘Strange,’ she said. ‘I never really thought of you as the macho type.’

‘Macho?’

‘Well, the symbolism of all those rockets isn’t exactly hard to fathom, is it? I’m sure that’s the appeal for the average male: thrusting your way into the unknown regions …’

‘No, that wasn’t how I felt at all. Perhaps this sounds strange, but it was the’—I cast around for the word, failed to find it, and had to settle for—‘the lyricism of it, I suppose, that attracted me.’ Fiona seemed unconvinced. ‘Yuri Gagarin was my real hero. Did you ever read his description of what he could see from the rocket while it was in orbit? It’s almost like a poem.’

She laughed incredulously. ‘You’re going to recite it to me now, aren’t you?’

‘Hang on.’ I closed my eyes. It was years since I’d last tried to remember these words. ‘ “The day side of the earth was clearly visible,’ ” I began, and then repeated slowly: ‘ “The coasts of continents, islands, big rivers, big surfaces of water … During the flight I saw for the first time with my own eyes the earth’s spherical shape. You can see its curvature when looking to the horizon. The view of the horizon is unique and very beautiful. You can see the remarkable change in colour from the light surface of the earth to the completely black sky in which you can see the stars. This dividing line is very thin, just like a belt of film surrounding the earth’s sphere. It’s a delicate blue, and this transition from the blue to the black is very gradual and lovely.” ’

Fiona laid down her knife and fork while I was saying this, and listened with her chin cradled in her hands.

‘I had pictures of him plastered all over my bedroom. I even used to write stories about him. And then the night he died in that plane crash’—I laughed nervously—‘and you don’t have to believe this if you don’t want to — but the night he died, I had a dream about him. I dreamed that I was him, plummeting down to earth in this burning plane. And at that stage I hadn’t really given him a thought for years.’ From the blankness of Fiona’s expression, I gathered that she was sceptical about this revelation. So I concluded with an apology: ‘Well, it made an impression on me at the time.’

‘No, I believe you,’ she said. ‘I was just trying to remember something.’ She sat back and gazed at the window, now dotted with spluttering rain. ‘Some time last year, I had to do an abstract of a piece in one of the newspapers. It was about that crash — somebody’s theory about what might have happened, based on new information. You know, post-glasnost, and all that.’

‘What did it say?’

‘I’ve forgotten a lot of it; but the whole thing was pretty indecisive, anyway, I think. Something about another plane, a much larger one, crossing his flight path and creating a lot of turbulence just as he was coming out of the cloud. Throwing him off course.’

I shook my head. ‘My theory’s better than that. Well, it’s the same theory that a lot of people have, actually. The idea is that the Soviet authorities bumped him off, because he’d seen a bit too much of the West and he liked it and he was probably going to defect.’

Fiona smiled: an affectionate but challenging smile.

‘You think you can reduce everything to politics, don’t you, Michael? It makes life so simple for you.’

‘I don’t see what’s simple about it.’

‘Well of course politics can be complicated, I realize that. But I always think there’s something treacherous about that sort of approach. The way it tempts us to believe there’s an explanation for everything, somewhere or other, if only we’re prepared to look hard enough. That’s what you’re really interested in, isn’t it? Explaining things away.’

‘What’s the alternative?’

‘No, that’s not the point. I’m just saying there are other possibilities to be taken into account. Larger ones, even.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as … well, supposing he really did die by accident? Suppose it was circumstance that killed him: nothing more, nothing less. Wouldn’t that be more frightening to face up to than your little conspiracy theory? Or supposing it was suicide. He’d seen things that nobody else had seen, after all — incredibly beautiful things, by the sound of it. Perhaps he never really came back to reality, and this was the culmination of something irrational, some madness which had been burning away inside him—well out of the reach of you and your politics. I don’t suppose you’d like the sound of that much, either.’

‘Well, if you’re determined to get sentimental about it …’

Fiona shrugged. ‘Maybe I am sentimental. But there are dangers in being too dogmatic, you know. Seeing everything in black and white.’ I couldn’t think of an answer to this, and concentrated instead on impaling a trio of spongy peas on the end of my fork. Her next question took me by surprise. ‘When are you going to tell me why you fell out with your mother in that Chinese restaurant?’

I looked up and said: ‘That’s a rather abrupt change of subject.’

‘It’s not a change of subject at all.’

‘I’m not with you,’ I muttered, returning to my food.

‘You’ve been promising to tell me for months. You even want to tell me: it’s obvious.’ Since no response was forthcoming, she continued to think aloud. ‘What could she have said, to hurt you so badly? So badly that it split you in two. The half that refuses to forgive her because it insists on seeing things in black and white, and the other half — the one you’ve been trying to smother ever since it happened.’ I said nothing; just pushed a piece of turkey around my plate, soaking it in thick, oily gravy. ‘Do you even know where she is this afternoon? What she’ll be doing?’

‘She’ll be sitting at home, I expect.’

‘By herself?’

‘Probably.’ I gave up and pushed the plate aside. ‘Look, there can’t be any going back. It was my father who held us together, anyway. Once he died, then … that was that.’

‘But you still saw each other after he died. That’s not why it happened.’

I did want to tell her, that’s the strange thing. I desperately wanted to tell her. But it was going to have to be torn out of me, one piece at a time, and the process was only just beginning. I didn’t mean to be unhelpful: I didn’t mean to sound wilfully enigmatic. That was just how it came out.

I said: ‘People can die more than once.’

Fiona stared at me. She said: ‘Why don’t we just skip the pudding and leave?’

It was an argument, of sorts, even if neither of us could be quite sure how it had happened. We left the pub in silence and spoke only a few words on the way back to the car. Driving home, not wanting to waste the last half hour of daylight, I suggested a quick walk on the South Downs. We walked arm in arm, having silently buried our differences, whatever they were, through a landscape which might have been attractive on a sunny day but now, what with the cold and the encroaching dusk, felt bare and forbidding. Fiona seemed very tired.

I was amazed, in fact, that she’d managed to last this long, and it was no surprise to see her nodding off as we resumed our journey. I looked at her reposeful face and was reminded of the intimacy I’d felt, the sense of privilege, the night that I’d sneaked up to Joan’s room and watched her for a few minutes as she slept. But this was deceptive, because looking at Fiona was not like looking into the past: quite the opposite. For with every snatched glance (I was trying to keep my eyes on the road) I felt that I was being offered a glimpse of something new and unthinkable, something that I had been needlessly denying myself, now, for many years: a future.

We stopped off only once more, at a service station where I went to buy myself some Smarties and a Yorkie bar. By the time I got back to the car she was fast asleep.

And yet, only six days later—

Can this be true?

And yet, only six days later

I’m not sure I can go through with this.

4

The day after Boxing Day, my Christmas parcel of books arrived from the Peacock Press. There was a note from Mrs Tonks, apologizing for having sent them later than usual. I couldn’t motivate myself to look at them or even take the wrapping off. In the afternoon I went over to Findlay’s flat to see the papers he had stolen. They didn’t really tell me anything new. Instead of feeling intrigued, or baffled, or worried by Tabitha’s letter and the concrete evidence it provided that she had once written to the publishers and implored them to procure my services when I didn’t even know of her existence, I was able to register barely a flicker of interest. The Winshaws and their ruthless, fantastic, power-hungry lives had never seemed so distant. As for the envelope which presumably contained the incriminating photographs of Alice, I didn’t even open it.

Fiona was everything now.

The next day she had her rescheduled appointment at the clinic, and this time I was determined to accompany her. For some reason, she’d been feeling quite a lot worse since her day out by the seaside. I thought it would have done her some good. But her cough had returned, more insistent than before, and she complained of feeling short of breath: climbing the stairs to her flat the previous evening, she had had to rest on three of the four landings.

The appointment was at eleven-thirty. We waited ages for a bus and were a few minutes late arriving at the hospital, a black-bricked Victorian monstrosity more conducive, I would have thought, to the punishment of long-term offenders than the treatment of the sick. It didn’t matter, anyway: it was well past twelve when Fiona got called into the consulting room. I waited outside, struggling to sustain a vestige of optimism in the face of these relentlessly dispiriting surroundings: the queasy, pale yellow décor, the malfunctioning coffee machine, which had already robbed us of 6op, the erratic heating system (one enormous cast iron radiator was on full-blast, the other not at all; and every so often the pipes would gurgle and splutter and shake visibly against the walls, dislodging crumbs of plaster). I could only stand it for about five minutes, and was about to go out for a walk when Fiona returned, looking flushed and agitated.

‘Out already?’ I said. ‘That was quick.’

‘They can’t find my notes,’ she said, walking straight past me and heading for the exit.

I hurried after her.

‘What?’

We were outside again. It was bitterly cold.

‘What do you mean, exactly?’

‘I mean that they can’t find the notes to my case. They looked for them this morning and they weren’t there. Some secretary’s probably got them. Lost in the system, basically. They blamed it on the holiday.’

‘So where does that leave you?’

‘I’ve got another appointment for next week.’

Tides of righteous frustration welled up inside me.

‘Fiona, they can’t keep doing this to you. You’re ill, for God’s sake. You can’t let your health be tampered with by a bunch of idiots. We’re not going to stand for it.’

This was just empty bravado, and we both knew it.

‘Shut up, Michael.’ She coughed furiously for about thirty seconds, doubled up against the hospital wall, and then straightened herself. ‘Come on. We’re going home.’

It was New Year’s Eve.

The original plan had been to go back to the Mandarin. I’d phoned them at lunchtime and with a little persuasion had managed to secure a table for two; but by early in the evening it was obvious that Fiona wasn’t well enough to go out, so I promised to cook her dinner instead. There was a large continental grocer’s open on the King’s Road: I bought some fish and cheese and pasta and tinned prawns, in the hope of improvising a seafood lasagne. I got some wine and some candles. I was determined to make an occasion of it. I looked in on Fiona at about seven o’clock and she was sitting up in bed, a bit pale and breathless. Her temperature was high. She wasn’t very hungry, but she liked the sound of this meal. The idea seemed to amuse her.

‘Do you want me to get dressed up?’ she said.

‘Of course. I may even get out my old dinner suit, if I can find it.’

She smiled. ‘I can hardly wait.’

‘I’ll come and get you at nine. How does that sound?’

The dinner suit had a stale and musty smell, and the collar on my dress shirt was much too tight, but I put them on anyway. At nine o’clock the lasagne was bubbling away quite satisfactorily, the table was laid, the wine was nicely chilled. I let myself into Fiona’s flat. She wasn’t in the sitting room and there was no answer when I called out her name. A sudden premonition drew me into the bedroom.

Fiona was kneeling on the floor in front of the open wardrobe. She was wearing a long blue cotton dress which was not yet zipped up at the back. She was rocking slowly backwards and forwards and struggling for breath. I knelt down beside her and asked what was wrong. She said that she’d felt more and more exhausted as she was trying to get dressed, and then she’d been looking for a pair of tights in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe when she found that she couldn’t get her breath. I put my hand to her forehead, which was very hot, and beaded with sweat. Could she breathe now, I asked. She said yes, but she didn’t think she could get up just yet. I said that I was going to phone for the doctor. She nodded. I asked her where the number was. Between short, high breaths, she managed to say: ‘Phone.’

There was an address book by the telephone in the hallway. It took me a minute or two to remember the doctor’s name.

‘Dr Campion?’ I said, when the call was answered, and then realized that I was talking to a machine. There was a recorded message which told me to try another number. This time I got put through to an answering service. The man at the other end of the line asked me which doctor I was trying to contact, and whether it was an emergency. When I’d given him the details he told me that the deputizing doctor would call back as soon as possible.

The phone rang after about three or four minutes. I started to tell the doctor what was wrong. I wanted to be as quick and as clear as possible, so I could get back to Fiona, but it wasn’t that easy. Because he’d never heard of her before, never examined her, never seen any notes, never been told about the case, I had to explain everything from the beginning. Then he asked me if I thought it was serious. I told him I thought it was very serious, but I could tell that he didn’t really believe me. He thought I was talking about someone with a bad cold. I wasn’t going to be put off. I told him he had to come out and see her. He said that he had two other patients to see first — urgent cases, was how he described them — but that he’d come out as soon as he could.

I helped Fiona back into bed. Her breathing was marginally better by now. I went back to my flat and turned off the oven and blew out the candles. Then I changed out of my dinner suit and came back to sit with her.

She looked so beautiful, so—

The doctor arrived at about ten-fifteen. I tried to be angry with him for taking such a long time but he made this difficult by being so kind and efficient. He didn’t do much, just listened to her chest and took her pulse and asked me a few questions. He could see that she was ill.

He said: ‘I think she’d better go into casualty.’

This was the last thing I’d been expecting.

‘Casualty? But I thought that was for accidents.’

‘It’s for emergency cases,’ he said. He tore a page out of his notebook, scribbled four words on it, and then sealed it in an envelope from his briefcase. His own breathing while he did this seemed wheezy and over-emphatic. ‘Take this letter with you. It’s for the casualty doctor. Do you have a car?’

I shook my head.

‘You’d probably have a long wait for a taxi tonight. I’d better drive you both in. It’s on my way home.’

We prepared Fiona for the journey by helping her to put on two thick jumpers over her dress, and some thick woollen socks and a pair of boots. By the time we’d finished with her, she looked slightly ridiculous. I half-carried, half-walked her down the stairs and within a few minutes we were in the doctor’s shiny blue Renault. I was trying to stay calm but found that without realizing it I had screwed his envelope up into a tight ball in the palm of my hand. I did my best to smooth it out as we arrived.

The casualty unit, while not quite as run-down as the outpatients’ clinic, none the less managed to feel both crowded and desolate. Business was brisk. There was frost on the pavements and several people had showed up with minor injuries from slips and falls; and because it was New Year’s Eve, there were already one or two victims of pub fights nursing swollen eyes and head wounds. They were expecting more of those later. At the same time there was an atmosphere of rather desperate levity and celebration in the air. Threadbare decorations adorned the walls and I got the impression that there was some sort of low-key staff party going on in a distant room. Some of the nurses running backwards and forwards were wearing silly brightly coloured hats, and the woman at reception had a radio on her desk, tuned to Radio 2 I gave her the doctor’s note and pointed to Fiona sitting over on a bench, but she didn’t seem to think it was any big deal. That was when I realized that the doctor hadn’t actually been as efficient as I’d thought, because he’d forgotten to phone up and let them know that we were coming in. She told us to wait and that a nurse would be along soon to take down all the details. We waited twenty minutes and there was no nurse. Fiona was shivering in my arms. Neither of us said anything. Then I went over to the desk again and asked what was going on. She apologized and told us we wouldn’t have to wait much longer.

Ten minutes later a nurse turned up and started asking questions. I answered most of them: Fiona wasn’t up to it. The nurse marked the answers off on a clipboard. Quite soon she seemed to reach a decision and said, ‘Follow me, please.’ As she led us off down a corridor I ventured a meek complaint: ‘There don’t seem to be many doctors about.’

It was already after eleven o’clock.

‘There’s only one casualty officer tonight. He’s seeing the majors and the minors, so he’s got a lot on his plate. There was one very sick patient in earlier. Rotten luck, isn’t it, on New Year’s Eve?’

I didn’t know whether she meant it was rotten luck for the patient or for the medical staff, so I didn’t answer.

She took us into a tiny windowless cubicle, equipped with a trolley and not much else, and fetched Fiona a gown.

‘There you are, dear. Can you put that on?’

‘Perhaps I’d better step outside,’ I said.

‘It’s all right, he can stay,’ said Fiona, to the nurse.

I turned to the wall and didn’t look while she took off her clothes and put the gown on. I’d never seen her naked.

The nurse took her temperature and her pulse and blood pressure. Then she disappeared. About a quarter of an hour later we were seen by the casualty officer, a harassed-looking man who went through only the most cursory introductions before putting his stethoscope to Fiona’s chest.

‘Nothing very startling there,’ he said. After that he took her pulse, and glanced at some figures from the chart which had been left by the bedside. ‘Hmm. Bit of a chest infection, by the looks of things. You may have to come in for a few days. I’ll get on to the admitting team, and in the meantime we’ll see if we can get you X-rayed tonight: assuming there isn’t too much of a queue.’

‘She’s been X-rayed already,’ I said. He looked at me questioningly. ‘I don’t mean today. I mean a few weeks ago. Her GP — Dr Campion — sent her up here and they took X-rays then.’

‘Who was the consultant?’

I couldn’t remember.

‘Dr Searle,’ said Fiona.

‘What did they show?’

‘We don’t know. The first time she came for the results he didn’t turn up, and the next time — a couple of days ago — they couldn’t find the notes. Said they were lost in the system.’

‘Well, they’re probably back in medical records by now. We can’t get at them tonight.’ He put the chart back on the bed. ‘I’ll bleep the registrar right away, and she can get hold of Dr Bishop for you. Our houseman,’ he explained to Fiona. ‘He’ll be down to see you in a few minutes.’

With that he left, pulling the curtain behind him. Fiona and I exchanged glances. She smiled bravely.

‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘At least he didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with my chest.’

‘I’ve never thought there was anything wrong with your chest,’ I said. Don’t ask me why: I know people are supposed to make stupid jokes at moments of crisis, but surely not that stupid. But she did her best to laugh, and perhaps it was, in a way, a kind of turning point: a final acknowledgement of the physical attraction I’d been running away from these last few weeks.

The moment soon passed.

Dr Bishop wasn’t long coming. He was young and gangly, with heavy bags under his eyes and an alarming shell-shocked, punch-drunk expression. It looked to me as if he’d had no sleep for thirty hours or more.

‘OK, I’ve been talking things over with the sister,’ he said, ‘and we’ve decided the best thing would be to find you a bed as soon as we can. It’s a busy night tonight and we need all the casualty bays we can get, so it’ll be better for us and better for you. They’re snowed under in radiology at the moment so we’ll have to get the X-rays done in the morning. We’ll get them done first thing. Anyway, as soon as you’re on the ward, you can have your first lot of antibiotics.’

‘The thing is, though,’ I said, ‘she’s got this lump on her neck. We wondered if that might have anything—’

‘The important thing is to find a bed,’ said Dr Bishop. ‘That’s the difficult part. If we can find you a bed, then we’re laughing.’

‘Well will that take long? We’ve been waiting—’

‘It’s pot luck in this place at the moment.’

And with that unsettling remark, he disappeared. A couple of minutes later the nurse popped her head around the curtain.

‘Everything all right in here?’

Fiona nodded.

‘Some of the staff are having a few drinks upstairs. Soft drinks, that is. Just to see in the New Year. I wondered if you might like anything.’

She considered. ‘Some fruit juice would be lovely. Orange juice, or something.’

‘They were looking a bit low on orange juice,’ the nurse said doubtfully. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Would Fanta be all right?’

We gave her to understand that Fanta would be fine, and then we were left alone again, for what seemed like a very long time. I could think of nothing to say except to keep asking Fiona how she was feeling. She said she was tired. That was all she ever complained about, feeling tired. She didn’t want to move, or sit up: she just lay on the trolley, holding my hand. She clutched it tightly. She looked terrified.

‘What’s taking them so long?’ That was my other heavily overworked piece of small talk. Just before midnight I went out into the corridor to see if anything was happening. Looking around for a familiar figure, I caught a glimpse of the casualty officer. He was rushing towards reception. I chased after him, shouting out, ‘Excuse me,’ but then he was met by a team of nurses pushing an unconscious patient along on a trolley. I stood at a short distance while he started asking questions. The patient had only just been brought in, apparently, after being found almost dead in a car. There was talk of carbon monoxide poisoning, and some earnest, low-voiced remarks were exchanged about his chances of survival. I wouldn’t have taken much notice of this, but as the trolley passed by I caught a glimpse of the patient’s face and for some reason it seemed distantly familiar. For a moment I was almost certain that I had seen this man somewhere before. But the feeling could have come from anywhere — it might just have been someone I’d passed in the street a few times — and I soon forgot about it when I felt a tap on my shoulder and found myself looking into the nurse’s beaming face as she said: ‘Mr Owen? I’ve some good news for you.’

I didn’t understand at first, but as my mind came gradually into focus, thinking only of Fiona and the urgent search to find her a bed, I too broke into a relieved, helpless smile. It froze when I realized that the nurse was trying to place two plastic beakers into my outstretched hands.

‘There was some orange juice left after all,’ she said. ‘And listen.’ From the radio on the receptionist’s desk, we could hear the chimes of Big Ben as it sounded the hour. ‘It’s twelve o’clock. A very happy New Year to you, Mr Owen. Ring out the old, ring in the new.’