“Molly,” Clive said, more to himself.

“You got it in one,” Vernon said. He was watching hungrily, waiting for a reaction, and it was partly to conceal his thoughts that Clive continued to gaze into the picture. What he felt first was simple relief, for Molly. A puzzle had been solved. This was what had drawn her to Garmony—the secret life, his vulnerability, the trust that must have bound them closer. Good old Molly. She would have been creative and playful, urging him on, taking him further into the dreams that the House of Commons could not fulfill, and he would have known that he could rely on her. If she had been ill in some other kind of way, she would have taken care to destroy these pictures. Had it ever moved beyond the bedroom? To restaurants in foreign cities? Two girls on the town. Molly would have known how. She knew the clothes and the places, and she would have adored the conspiracy and fun, the silliness and sexiness of it. Clive thought again how he loved her.

“Well?” Vernon said.

To forestall him. Clive put out a hand for another picture. In this, a head-and-shoulders shot, Garmony’s dress was more silkily feminine. There was a simple line of lace around the high sleeves and neckline. Perhaps it was lingerie he was wearing. The effect was less successful, unmasking completely the lurking masculinity and revealing the pathos, the impossible hopes of his confounded identity. Molly’s artful lighting could not dissolve the jawbones of a huge head or the swell of an Adam’s apple. How he looked and how he felt he looked were probably very far apart. They should have been ridiculous, these photographs, they—were ridiculous, but Clive was somewhat awed. We knew so little about each other. We lay mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white. Here was a rare sight below the waves, of a man’s privacy and turmoil, of his dignity upended by the overpowering necessity of pure fantasy, pure thought, by the irreducible human element—mind.

For the first time Clive considered what it might be like to feel kindly toward Garmony. It was Molly who had made it possible. In the third of the pictures he wore a boxy Chanel jacket and his gaze was turned downward; on some mental screen of selfhood he was a demure and feasible woman, but to an outsider what showed was evasion. Face it, you’re a man. He was better off looking to camera, confronting us with his pretense.

“So?” Vernon was becoming impatient.

“Extraordinary.”

CHve handed the photographs back. He could not think clearly with the images still in his view. He said, “So you’re fighting to keep them out of the paper.”

It was part tease, part mischief, as well as a wish to delay voicing his thoughts.

Vernon was staring at him, amazed. “Are you mad? This is the enemy. I just told you, we’ve got the injunction lifted.”

“Of course. Sorry. I wasn’t quite with it.”

“My idea is to publish next week. What do you think?”

Clive tilted back on his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “I think,” he said carefully, “your staff is right. It’s a really terrible idea.”

“Meaning?”

“It’ll ruin him.”

“Dead right it will.”

“I mean, personally.”

“Yup.”

There was a stalled silence. So many objections came crowding in on Clive that they seemed to cancel each other out.

Vernon pushed his empty glass across the table, and as it was filled he said, “I don’t get it. He’s pure poison. You’ve said so yourself many times.”

“He’s vile,” Clive agreed.

“The word is he’ll be mounting a leadership challenge in November. It would be terrible for the country if he was prime minister.”

“I think so too,” Clive said.

Vernon spread his hands. “So?”

There was another pause while Clive stared up at the cracks in the ceiling, shaping his thoughts. At last he said, “Tell me this. Do you think it’s wrong in principle for men to dress up in women’s clothes?”

Vernon groaned. He was beginning to behave like a drunk. He must have had a few before arriving. “Oh, Clive!”

Clive kept on. “You yourself were once an apologist for the sexual revolution. You stood up for gays.”

“I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“You stood up for plays and films that people wanted to ban. Only last year you spoke up for those cretins who were in court for hammering nails through their balls.”

Vernon winced. “Penis, actually.”

“Isn’t this the kind of sexual expression you’re so keen to defend? What exactly is Garmony’s crime that needs to be exposed?”

“His hypocrisy, Clive. This is the hanger and flog-ger, the family values man, the scourge of immigrants, asylum seekers, travelers, marginal people.”

“Irrelevant,” Clive said.

“Of course it’s relevant. Don’t talk crap.”

“If it’s okay to be a transvestite, then it’s okay for a racist to be one. What’s not okay is to be a racist.”

Vernon sighed in fake pity. “Listen to me—”

But Clive had found his trope. “If it’s okay to be a transvestite, then it’s okay for a family man to be one too. In private, of course. If it’s okay to—”

“Clive! Listen to me. You’re in your studio all day dreaming of symphonies. You’ve no idea what’s at stake. If Garmony’s not stopped now, if he gets to be prime minister in November, they’ve got a good chance of winning the election next year. Another five years. There’ll be even more people living below the poverty line, more people in prison, more homeless, more crime, more riots like last year. He’s been speaking in favor of national service. The environment will suffer, because he’d rather please his business friends than sign the accords on global warming. He wants to take us out of Europe. Economic catastrophe! It’s all very well for you,”—here Vernon gestured around at the enormous kitchen—“but for most people…”

“Careful,” Clive growled. “When you’re drinking my wine.” He reached for the Richebourg and filled Vernon’s glass. “A hundred and five pounds a bottle.”

Vernon downed half the glass. “My point precisely. You’re not becoming comfortable and right-wing in your middle age, are you?”

Clive answered the taunt with one of his own. “You know what this is really about? You’re doing George’s work. He’s setting you on. You’re being used, Vernon, and I’m surprised you can’t see through it. He hates Garmony for his affair with Molly. If he had something on me or you, he’d use that too.” Then Clive added, “Perhaps he has. Did she take any of you? In the frogman’s suit? Or was it the tutu? The people must be told.”

Vernon stood up and put the envelope back in his case. “I came round hoping for your support. Or at the least, a sympathetic hearing. I didn’t expect your fucking abuse.”

He went out into the hall. Clive followed him, but he did not feel apologetic.

Vernon opened the door and turned. He looked unwashed, wrecked. “I don’t get it,” he said quietly. “I don’t think you’re being straight with me. What is it you really object to about this?”

Possibly the question was rhetorical. Clive took a couple of steps toward his friend and answered it. “Because of Molly. We don’t like Garmony, but she did. He trusted her, and she respected his trust. It was something private between them. These are her pictures, nothing to do with me or you or your readers. She would have hated what you’re doing. Frankly, you’re betraying her.”

Then, rather than let Vernon have the satisfaction of closing the door on him, Clive turned and walked away, toward the kitchen, to eat his supper alone.