‘Did your father ever make you feel guilty, Saul?’

Something had been poisoned between the two of them when Saul wasabout sixteen. He had been sure this was an awkwardness that wouldpass, but once it had taken root the bitterness would not go. Saul’sfather forgot how to talk to him. He had nothing more to teach andnothing more to say. Saul was angry with his father’s disappointment.His father was disappointed at his laziness and his lack of politicalfervour. Saul could not make his father feel at ease, and his fatherwas disappointed at that. Saul had stopped going on the marches andthe demonstrations, and his father had stopped asking him. Every oncein a while there would be an argument. Doors would slam. More usuallythere was nothing.

Saul’s father was bad at accepting presents. He never took womento the flat when his son was there. Once when the twelve-year-oldSaul was being bullied, his father came into the school unannouncedand harangued the teachers, to Saul’s profound embarrassment.

‘Do you miss your mother, Saul? Are you sorry you never knewher?’

Saul’s father was a short man with powerful shoulders and a bodylike a thick pillar. He had thinning grey hair and grey eyes.

The previous Christmas he had given Saul a book by Lenin. Saul’sfriends had laughed at how little the ageing man knew his son, butSaul had not felt any scorn — only loss. He understood what hisfather was trying to offer him.

His father was trying to resolve a paradox. He was trying to makesense of his bright, educated son letting life come to him ratherthan wresting what he wanted from it. He understood only that his sonwas dissatisfied. That much was true. In Saul’s teenage years he hadbeen a living cliche, sulky and adrift in ennui. To his father thiscould only mean that Saul was paralysed in the face of a terrifyingand vast future, the whole of his life, the whole of the world. Saulhad emerged, passed twenty unscathed, but his father and he wouldnever really be able to talk together again.

That Christmas, Saul had sat on his bed and turned the little bookover and over in his hands. It was a leather-bound editionillustrated with stark woodcuts of toiling workers, a beautifullittle commodity. What Is To Be Done? demanded the title. What is tobe done with you, Saul?

He read the book. He read Lenin’s exhortations that the futuremust be grasped, struggled for, moulded, and he knew that his fatherwas trying to explain the world to him, trying to help him. Hisfather wanted to be his vanguard. What paralyses is fear, his fatherbelieved, and what makes fear is ignorance. When we learn, we nolonger fear. This is tar, and this is what it does, and this is theworld, and this is what it does, and this is what we can do toit.

There was a long time of gentle questions and monosyllabicanswers. Almost imperceptibly, the pace of the interrogation builtup. I was out of London, Saul tried to explain, I was camping. Igot in late, about eleven, I went straight to bed, I didn’t seeDad.

Crowley was insistent. He ignored Saul’s plaintive evasions. Hegrew gradually more aggressive. He asked Saul about the previousnight.

Crowley relentlessly reconstructed Saul’s route home. Saul felt asif he had been slapped. He was curt, struggling to control theadrenaline which rushed through him. Crowley piled meat on theskeletal answers Saul offered him, threading through Willesden withsuch detail that Saul once more stalked its dark streets.

‘What did you do when you saw your father?’ Crowley asked.

I did not see my father, Saul wanted to say, he died without meseeing him, but instead he heard himself whine something inaudiblelike a petulant child.

‘Did he make you angry when you found him waiting for you?’Crowley said, and Saul felt fear spread through him from the groinoutwards. He shook his head.

‘Did he make you angry, Saul? Did you argue?’

‘I didn’t see him!’

‘Did you fight, Saul?’ A shaken head, no. ‘Did you fight?’ No. ‘Didyou?’

Crowley waited a long time for an answer. Eventually he pursed hislips and scribbled something in a notebook. He looked up and metSaul’s eyes, dared him to speak.

‘I didn’t see him! I don’t know what you want… I wasn’t there!’Saul was afraid. When, he begged to know, would they let him go? ButCrowley would not say.

Crowley and the constable led him back to the cell. There would befurther interviews, they warned him. They offered him food which, ina fit of righteous petulance, he refused. He did not know if he washungry. He felt as if he had forgotten how to tell. ‘I want to make aphone call!’ Saul called as the men’s footsteps died away, but theydid not return and he did not shout again.

Saul lay on the bench and covered his eyes.

He was acutely aware of every sound. He could hear the tattoo offeet in the corridor long before they passed his door. Muffledconversations of men and women welled up and died as they walked by;laughter sounded suddenly from another part of the building; carswere moving some way off, their mutterings filtered by trees andwalls.

For a long time Saul lay listening. Was he allowed a phone call?he wondered. Who would he call? Was he under arrest? But thesethoughts seemed to take up very little of his mind. For the most parthe just lay and listened.

A long time passed.

Saul opened his eyes with a start. For a moment he was uncertainwhat had happened.

The sounds were changing.

The depth seemed to be bleeding out of all the noises in the world.

Saul could still make out everything he had heard before, but itwas ebbing away into two dimensions. The change was swift andinexorable. Like the curious echoes of shrieks which fill swimmingpools, the sounds were clear and audible, but empty.

Saul sat up. A loud scratching startled him: the noise of hischest against the rough blanket. He could hear the thump of hisheart. The sounds of his body were as full as ever, unaffected by thestrange sonic vampirism. They seemed unnaturally clear. Saul feltlike a cut-out pasted ineptly onto the world. He moved his headslowly from side to side, touched his ears.

A faint patter of boots sounded in the corridor, wan andineffectual. A policeman walked past the cell, steps unconvincing.Saul stood tentatively and looked up at the ceiling. The network ofcracks and lines in the paint seemed to shift uneasily, the shadowsmoving imperceptibly, as if a faint light were being moved about theroom.

Saul’s breath came fast and shallow. The air felt stretched outtaut and tasted of dust.

Saul moved, reeled, made dizzy by the cacophony of his own body.

Above the stripped-down murmurings, slow foot steps becameaudible. Like the sounds Saul made these steps cut through thesurrounding whisper effortlessly, deliberately. Other steps passedthem hurriedly in both directions, but the pace of these feet didnot change. They moved steadily towards his door Saul could feelvibrations in the desiccated air.

Without thought, he backed into a corner of the room and stared atthe door. The feet stopped. Saw heard no key in his lock, but thehandle turned and the door swung open.

The motion seemed to take a long long time, the door fighting itsway through air suddenly glutinous. The complaints of the hinges,emaciated with malaise stretched out long after the door had stoppedmoving.

The light in the corridor was bright. Saul could not make out thefigure who stepped into his cell and gently closed the door.

The figure stood motionless, regarding Saul.

The light in the cell performed only a rudimentary job on the man.

Like moonlight it sketched out nothing but an edge. Two eyes fullof dark, a sharp nose and pinched mouth.

Shadows were draped over the face like cobwebs. He was tall butnot very tall; his shoulders were bunched up tight as if against thewind, a defensive posture. The vague face was thin and lined; thelong dark hair was lank and uncombed, falling over those tightshoulders in untidy clots. A shapeless coat of indiscriminate greywas draped over dark clothes. The man plunged his hands into hispockets. His face was turned slightly down. He was looking at Saulfrom beneath his brows.