I…'

He sat staring into space for a moment. Then he shook his head and reached for another cigarette.

'It's impossible to explain,' he said. 'But one can also look at it on an extremely simple level. They were always keen on each other, those two. And I'm no prude, but this jealousy I find astounding. One thing I'll say for Camilla, she's more reasonable about that sort of thing. Perhaps she has to be.'

'What sort of thing?'

'About Charles going to bed with people.'

'Who's he been to bed with?'

He brought up his glass and took a big drink. The for one,' he said. 'That shouldn't surprise you. If you drank as much as he does, I daresay I would have been to bed with you, too.'

Despite the archness of his tone – which normally would have irritated me – there was a melancholy undernote in his voice. He drained off the rest of the whiskey and set the glass down on the end table with a bang. He said, after a pause: 'It hasn't happened often. Three or four times. The first time when I was a sophomore and he was a freshman. We were up late, drinking in my room, one thing led to another. Loads of fun on a rainy night, but you should have seen us at breakfast the next morning.' He laughed bleakly. 'Remember the night Bunny died?' he said. 'When I was in your room? And Charles interrupted us at that rather unfortunate moment?'

I knew what he was going to tell me. 'You left my room with him,' I said.

'Yes. He was awfully drunk. Actually a little too drunk. Which was quite convenient for him as he pretended not to remember it the next day. Charles is very prone to these attacks of amnesia after he spends the night at my house.' He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. 'He denies it all quite convincingly and the thing is, he expects me to play along with him, you know, pretend it never happened,' he said. 'I don't even think he does it out of guilt. As a matter of fact he does it in this particularly lighthearted way which infuriates me.'

I said: 'You like him a lot, don't you?'

I don't know what made me say this. Francis didn't blink. 'I don't know,' he said coldly, reaching for a cigarette with his long, nicotine-stained fingers. 'I like him well enough, I suppose. We're old friends. Certainly I don't fool myself that it's more than that.

But I've had a lot of fun with him, which is a great deal more than you can say about Camilla.'

That was what Bunny would have called a shot across the bow. I was too surprised to even answer.

Francis – though his satisfaction was evident – did not acknowledge his point. He leaned back in his chair by the window; the edges of his hair glowed metallic red in the sun. He said: 'It's unfortunate, but there it is. Neither one cares about anybody but himself- or herself, as the case may be. They like to present a unified front but I don't even know how much they care about each other. Certainly they take a perverse pleasure in leading one on – yes, she does lead you on,' he said when I tried to interrupt, 'I've seen her do it. And the same with Henry. He used to be crazy about her, I'm sure you know that; for all I know he still is. As for Charles – well, basically, he likes girls. If he's drunk, I'll do. But -just when I've managed to harden my heart, he'll turn around and be so sweet. I always fall for it. I don't know why.'

He was quiet for a moment. 'We don't run much to looks in my family, you know, all knuckles and cheekbones and beaky noses,' he said. 'Maybe that's why I tend to equate physical beauty with qualities with which it has absolutely nothing to do. I see a pretty mouth or a moody pair of eyes and imagine all sorts of deep affinities, private kinships. Never mind that half a dozen jerks are clustered round the same person, just because they've been duped by the same pair of eyes.' He leaned over and energetically stubbed out his cigarette. 'She'd behave a lot more like Charles if she were allowed to; he's so possessive, though, he keeps her reeled in pretty tight. Can you imagine a worse situation? He watches her like a hawk. And he's also rather poor – not that it matters much,' he said hastily, realizing to whom he was speaking, 'but he's quite self-conscious about it. Very proud of his family, you know, very well aware that he himself is a sot.

There's something kind of Roman about it, all this regard he puts in his sister's honor. Bunny wouldn't go near Camilla, you know, he would hardly even look at her. He used to say that she wasn't his type but I think the old Dutchman in him just knew she was 5i6 bad medicine. My God… I remember once, a long time ago, we had dinner at a ridiculous Chinese restaurant in Bennington.

The Lobster Pagoda. It's closed now. Red bead curtains and a shrine to the Buddha with an artificial waterfall. We drank a lot of drinks with umbrellas in them and Charles was horribly drunk – not that it was his fault, really; we were all drunk, the cocktails are always too strong in a place like that and besides, you never know quite what they put in them, do you? Outside, they had a footbridge to the parking lot that went over a moat with tame ducks and goldfish. Somehow Camilla and I got separated from everyone else, and we were waiting there. Comparing fortunes.

Hers said something like "Expect a kiss from the man of your dreams," which was too good to pass up, so I – well, we were both drunk, and we got a little carried away – and then Charles barreled out of nowhere and grabbed me by the back of the neck and I thought he was going to throw me over the rail. Bunny was there, too, he pulled him off, and Charles had the sense to say he'd been joking but he wasn't, he hurt me, twisted my arm behind my back and damn near pulled it out of the socket. I don't know where Henry was. Probably looking at the moon and reciting some poem from the T'ang Dynasty.'

Subsequent events had knocked it from my mind, but the mention of Henry made me think of what Charles had told me that morning about the FBI – and of another question, this one regarding Henry too. I was wondering if this was the time to bring up either of them when Francis said, abruptly and in a tone suggestive of bad news to follow, 'You know, I was at the doctor's today.'

I waited for him to go on. He didn't.

'What for?' I finally said.

'Same stuff. Dizziness. Chest pains. I wake up in the night and can't get my breath. Last week I went back to the hospital and let them run some tests but nothing turned up. They referred me to this other fellow. A neurologist.'

'And?'

He shifted restlessly in his chair. 'He didn't find anything.

None of these hick doctors are any good. Julian gave me the name of a man in New York; he was the one who cured the Shah of Isram, you know, of that blood disease. It was in all the papers.

Julian says he's the best diagnostician in the country and one of the best in the world. He's booked two years in advance but Julian says maybe if he calls him, he might agree to see me.'

He was reaching for another cigarette, and the last, untouched, was still smoldering in the ashtray.

The way you smoke,' I said, 'no wonder you're short of breath.'

That has nothing to do with it,' he said irritably, tamping the cigarette on the back of his wrist. That's just what these stupid Vermonters tell you. Stop smoking, cut out booze and coffee.

I've been smoking half my life. You think I don't know how it affects me? You don't get these nasty cramping pains in your chest from cigarettes, nor from having a few drinks, either.

Besides, I have all these other symptoms. Heart palpitations.

Ringing in the ears.'

'Smoking can have totally weird effects on your body.'

Francis frequently made fun of me when I used some phrase he perceived as Californian. 'Totally weird?' he said maliciously, mimicking my accent: suburban, hollow, flat. 'Rillyf I looked at him slouching in his chair: polka-dot tie, narrow Bally shoes, foxy narrow face. His grin was foxy too, and showed too many teeth. I was sick of him. I stood up. The room was so smoky that my eyes watered. 'Yeah,' 1 said. 'I've got to go now.'