Una said, after they had left, ‘I think Annie was one of Stewart’s ladies, though she won’t admit it. I expect he “gave her a whirl”. That was the way he always put it when he only took someone around for a week. Poor whirl girls, I used to feel so sorry for them.’ She paused and looked at him. ‘Let me buy you a drink this time.’

He had an idea women never bought drinks in pubs, that if they tried they wouldn’t get served. It surprised him that she got served, and with a smile as if it were nothing out of the way. He couldn’t finish the whisky she had brought him. As soon as he felt it on his tongue, he knew that his gorge would rise at a second mouthful. The landlord called time, and he and she were out in the street alone together, walking back to Montcalm Gardens by intricate back ways. It wasn’t dark as it would have been in the country, but other-wordly bright with the radiance from the livid lamps. The yellowness was not apparent in the upper air, but only where the light lay like lacquer on the dewy surface of metal and gilded the moist leaves of evergreens.

‘The night is shiny,’ said Una.

‘You mean shining,’ he corrected her stiffly.

She shook her head. ‘No. Shakespeare has a soldier say that in Antony and Cleopatra. It’s my favourite line. The night is shiny. I know exactly what he meant, though I suppose he was talking of moonlight.’

He longed for her with a yearning that made him feel faint, but he could only say stupidly, ‘There’s no moon tonight.’

She unlocked the front door and switched on lights, and they went together into the fragrant polished hall where the vases were filled with winter jasmine. The sight of it brought back to him the yard at the back of the bank where that same flower grew, and he passed his hand across his brow, though his forehead was hot and dry.

‘You’re tired,’ she said. ‘I was going to suggest making coffee, but not if you’re too tired.’

He didn’t speak but followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table. It was a room about four times as big as the one at Fitton’s Piece. He thought how happy it would make Pam to have a kitchen like that, with two fridges and an enormous deep freeze and a cooker half-way up the wall, and a rotisserie and an infra-red grill. With deft swift movements Una started the percolator and set out cups. She talked to him in her sweet vague way about Ambrose and his books, about the banishment of all Stewart’s mother’s novels to the basement after her death, flitted on to speak of Stewart’s little house on Dartmoor, now empty and neglected. She poured the coffee. She sat down, shaking her hair into a bright curly aureole, and looked at him, waiting for him to contribute.

And then something happened to him which was not unlike that something that had happened when the phone rang in the office and he had had the money in his hands, and he knew he had to act now or never. So he said aloud and desperately, ‘Una,’ just hearing how her name sounded in his voice.

‘What is it?’

‘Oh, God,’ he said, ‘I’ll leave, I’ll go whenever you say, but I have to tell you. I’ve fallen in love with you. I love you so much, I can’t bear it.’ And he swept out his arms across the table and knocked over the cup, and coffee flooded in a stream across the floor.

She gave a little sharp exclamation. Her face went crimson. She fell on her knees with a cloth in her hands and began feverishly mopping up the liquid. He ran down the basement stairs and flung himself into his room and closed the door and locked it.

Up and down the room he walked as he had done earlier. He would never sleep again or eat a meal or even be. A kind of rage possessed him, for in the midst of this tempest of emotion, he knew he was having now what he should have had at eighteen, what at eighteen had been denied him. He was having it this way now because he had never had it before. And was he to have it now without its fruition?

Ceasing to pace, he listened to the silence. The light was still on upstairs in the kitchen. He could see it lying in yellow squares on the dark rough lawn. Trembling, he watched the quadrangles of light, thinking that at any moment he might see her delicate profile and her massy hair silhouetted upon them. The light went out and the garden was black.

He imagined her crossing the hall and going up the wide curving staircase to her own room, angry with him perhaps, or shocked, or just glad to be rid of him. He turned off his own light, for he couldn’t bear to see any part of himself. Then he unlocked his door and went out into the pitch-dark, knowing he must find her before she made herself inaccessible to him now and thus for ever.

There was a faint light illuminating the top of the basement stairs. She hadn’t yet gone to bed. He began to climb the stairs, having no idea what he would say, thinking he might say nothing but only fall in an agony at her feet. The light from above went out. He felt for the banister ahead of him, and touched instead her extended hand at the light switch. He gasped. They couldn’t see each other, but they closed together, his arms encircling her as she held him, and they stood on the stairs in the black dark, silently embraced.

Presently they went down the stairs, crab-wise, awkwardly, clinging to each other. He wouldn’t let her put a light on. She opened the door of his room and drew him in, and as it closed they heard Caesar enter the house. Lights came on and Caesar’s footsteps sounded softly. Alan held Una in his arms in a breathless hush until all was silent and dark again.

16

Very little food was kept in stock because Marty hadn’t got a fridge. The bookcase held a few tins of beans and spaghetti and soup, half a dozen eggs in a box, a packet of bacon, tea bags and a jar of instant coffee, some cheese and a wrapped loaf. They usually had bread and cheese for lunch, and every day Marty went out to buy their dinner. But when it got to five o’clock on Monday he was still fast asleep on the mattress where he had been lying since two. Joyce was in the kitchen, washing her hair.

Nigel shook Marty awake.

‘Get yourself together. We want our meal, right? And a bottle of wine. And then you’re going to do like a disappearing act. Get it?’

Marty sat up, rubbing his eyes. ‘I don’t feel too good. I got a hell of a pain in my gut.’

‘You’re pissed, that’s all. You got through a whole goddamned bottle of scotch since last night.’ Unconsciously, Nigel used the tones of Dr Thaxby. ‘You’re an alcoholic and you’ll give yourself cirrhosis of the liver. That’s worse than cancer. They can operate on you for cancer but not for cirrhosis. You’ve only got one liver. D’you know that?’

‘Leave off, will you? It’s not the scotch. That wouldn’t give me a pain in my gut, that’d give me a pain in my head. I reckon I got one of them bugs.’

‘You’re pissed,’ said Nigel. ‘You need some fresh air.’

Marty groaned and lay down again. ‘I can’t go out. You go.’

‘Christ, the whole point is to leave me alone with her.’

‘It’ll have to be tomorrow. I’ll have a good night’s kip and I’ll be OK tomorrow.’

So Marty didn’t go out, and they had tinned spaghetti and bacon for their supper. Joyce unbent so far as to cook it. She couldn’t agree to what she’d agreed to and then refuse to cook his food. Marty stayed guarding Joyce while Nigel went down and had a bath. On the way up again, he encountered old Mr Green in a brown wool dressing gown and carrying a towel. Mr Green smiled at him in rather a shy way, but Nigel took no notice. He flushed Joyce’s letter down the lavatory pan.

Marty was holding the gun and looking reasonably alert.

‘You see?’ said Nigel. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you so long as you keep off the booze.’