'What about you, Mrs O'Raffety?' I said. She never invited me to call her by her first name and I noticed that even her son-in-law addressed her in that same formal way, so she must have liked being Mrs O'Raffety. She had, I suppose, paid enough for the privilege.

'I take only half a glass. Chablis affects the joints you know, it's the uric acid.'

'I didn't know that.'

The bottle dripping from the ice water, had made her fingers wet. Fastidiously she dried her hands on a pink towel before touching the cigarettes again. 'You're easy to talk to,' she said, looking at me through narrowed eyes as if my appearance might explain it. 'Did anyone ever tell you that? It's a gift being a good listener. You listen but show no curiosity; I suppose that's the secret.'

'Perhaps it is,' I said.

'You can't imagine how excited Bret was to hear you were actually coming.'

'I'm looking forward to seeing him again.'

'He's with the physiotherapist right now. Miss a session and he's set back a week: that's what the doctor says, and he's right. I know. All my life I've suffered with this darn disc of mine.' She touched her back as if remembering the pain.

When I finished the lobster salad a servant magically appeared to remove the plates to a side-table: mine totally cleaned and Mrs O'Raffety's still laden with food.

'Do you mind if I smoke, Mr Samson?'

The Mexican servant – a muscular middle-aged man with the tight skin and passive face of the Indian – waited for her orders. There was not only a dignity about him, there was an element of repressed strength, like a fierce dog that was awaiting the order to spring.

I felt like inviting Mrs O'Raffety to call me Bernard, but she was the sort of woman who might decline such an invitation. 'It's your home,' I told her.

'And my lungs. Yes, that's what Buddy tells me.' She gave a throaty little laugh and tugged a cigarette from the pack on the table. The servant bent over and lit it for her. 'Now Mr Samson: fresh strawberries? Raspberries? Cook's home-made blueberry pie? What else is there, Luis?' There was something disconcerting about the way that California 's menus defied the strictures of the seasons. 'The pies are just gorgeous,' she added but didn't ask for any.

When I'd decided upon blueberry pie and icecream, and the silent Luis had departed to get it, Mrs O'Raffety said, 'You'll notice the change in him. Bret, I mean, he's not the man he used to be.' She looked at the burning tip of her cigarette. 'He'll want to tell you how tough he is, of course. Men are like that, I know. But don't encourage him to do anything stupid, will you?'

'What sort of stupid thing is he likely to do?'

'The physician has him on drugs up here.' She held her hand up to her head. 'And he has to rest in the afternoon too. He's sick.'

'The surgeons in Berlin didn't expect him to survive,' I said. 'He's lucky to have you to look after him, Mrs O'Raffety.'

'What else could I do? The hospital bills were piling up, and Bret had some lousy British insurance scheme that didn't even cover the cost of his room.' She smoked her cigarette. 'I got Buddy to try getting more money from them but you know what insurance companies are like.'

'You were the good Samaritan,' I said.

'Who else did he have who would take him? And I was related to him in a crazy roundabout way. Not kin. My grandfather married Bret's widowed mother. She changed the children's names to Rensselaer. Bret's real name was Turner.'

'He was married,' I said.

'Do you know his wife?' She flicked ash into the ashtray.

'No.'

'I contacted her. I wrote and told her Bret was on the point of death. No reply. She never even sent a get-well card.' Mrs O'Raffety inhaled deeply and blew smoke in a manner that displayed her contempt. She reminded me of Cindy Matthews just for a moment. They were both women who knew what they wanted.

'Perhaps she'd moved house,' I suggested.

'Buddy got someone on to that. She cashes her alimony check every month without fail. She got my letter all right. She's taken all the money from him and doesn't give a damn. How can a woman behave that way?' She drank iced tea and waited while a huge portion of blueberry pie with icecream and whipped cream was put on the table for me. Then she said, 'Bret and I were kids together. I was crazy about him. I guess I always figured we'd be married. Then one day he went downtown and joined the Navy. I waited for him. Waited and waited and waited. The war ended but he never came back.'

'Never came back?'

'Never came back to live hereabouts. London, Berlin. I got letters and cards from him. Long letters sometimes but the letters never said the one thing I wanted to hear.'

I started eating my pie.

'You didn't think you were going to hear the confessions of a lonely old lady. Well, I don't know what got me started. You knowing Bret, I suppose. The only other acquaintance Bret and I have in common is that bitch of a wife of his.'

'So you know her?' She had spoken of her distantly, as if she existed only as a spender of Bret's money.

'Nikki? Sure I know her. I knew what would happen to that marriage right from the start. Right from the moment she told me she was going to marry him. Sometimes I think she only went for him because she knew how much I would suffer.'

'Is she from around here?'

'Nikki Foster? Her folks had a shoe store in Santa Barbara. She was at school with me. She always was a little bitch.'

'How long did it last?'

'Eight long miserable years they lived together, or so I understand. I've never spoken to Bret about her and he never mentions her name.'

'And he had a brother.'

'Sheldon.' She gave an enigmatic little chuckle. 'Ever met him?'

'No,' I said.

'Big man in Washington DC. Big, big man. A nice enough guy but always on his way to somewhere better: know what I mean?'

'I know what you mean.'

She lowered her voice. 'And none of them seem to have any money. What did they do with all that Rensselaer money? That's what I'd like to know. Old Cy Rensselaer must have been sitting on a fortune when he died. Surely Bret couldn't have given so much of it to that awful woman. But if not, where did it go?'

I don't know what I was expecting but Bret Rensselaer, when I finally got to see him, looked far from fit and well. He was somewhere about sixty, a slim, tailored figure in white cotton slacks, white tee shirt and white gym shoes. It could have been the height of fashion but on his frail figure the outfit looked institutional. He smiled. He'd kept that tight-jawed smile and he'd kept his hair.

But now he'd aged. His cheeks were drawn and his face wrinkled. And yet something of that former youth had been replaced with distinction, as a film star might age and become a president. He was doing some gentle arm exercises when I entered the room. 'Bernard,' he called amiably. His exertions had made him a little out of breath. 'Sorry to be so elusive, Bernard, but there's no way they'll let me break this routine.' He always put the accent on the second half of my name, and hearing him say it in that low burring accent brought back memories. I looked around at this private gym. Someone had spent a lot of money on it: the upstairs had been ripped out to make a 'cathedral' ceiling, there were polished wood bars right across one wall, and a picture window in the other. The floor was wood blocks and the room was equipped with an exercise bicycle, a rowing machine and a big steel frame with a seat inside, and weights and pulleys, like some instrument of torture. Bret was inside it pulling and pushing levers. 'It's time I finished,' he said.

It was that moment of the late afternoon when nature comes to a complete standstill. Even up here on the hillside, there was no wind, not a leaf moved and no birds flew. The afternoon sun – now low and far away over the Pacific Ocean – gilded everything, and the air was heavy and suffocating. It was at this moment that sunlight coming through the big window painted Bret – and the machine that encaged him – gold, so that he looked like the statue of a remote, wrinkled and pagan god.