‘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?’