Outside the weather got worse and worse all morning until the grey cloud reached down and enveloped us, cutting visibility to almost nothing, and Mrs O'Raffety made Buddy phone the airport to be sure the planes were still flying.

For the rest of the afternoon Mrs O'Raffety – in red trousers and long pink crocheted top – exchanged small talk with her son-in-law, politely including me in the exchanges whenever a chance came along. Bret turned his head as if to show interest in what was said but contributed very little. He looked older and more frail. Buddy had confided that Bret had bad days and this was obviously one of them. His face was lined and haggard. His clothes – dark blue open-neck linen shirt, dark trousers and polished shoes – worn in response to the colder weather emphasized his age.

Mrs O'Raffety said, 'Are you sure you can't stay another day, Mr Samson? It's such a pity to come to Southern California and just stay overnight.'

'Maybe Mr Samson has a family,' said Buddy.

'Yes,' I said. 'Two children, a boy and a girl.'

'Do they swim?' said Mrs O'Raffety.

'More or less,' I said.

'You should have brought them,' she said in that artless way that rich people have of overlooking financial obstacles. 'Wouldn't they just love that pool.'

'It's a wonderful place you have here,' I said.

She smiled and pushed back the sleeves of her open-work jumper in a nervous mannerism that was typical of her. 'Bret used to call it "paradise off the bone",' she said sadly. It was impossible to miss the implication that Bret was not calling it that these days.

Bret made a real attempt to smile but got stuck about halfway through trying. 'Why "off the bone"?' I asked.

'Like fish in a restaurant,' she explained. 'Every little thing done for you. Enjoy. Enjoy.'

Bret looked at me: I smiled. Bret scowled. Bret said, 'For God's sake, Bernard, come to your senses.' His voice was quiet but the bitterness of his tone was enough to make Mrs O'Raffety stare at him in surprise.

'Whatever are you talking about, Bret?' she said.

But he gave no sign of having heard her. His eyes fixed on me and the expression on his face was fiercer than I'd ever seen before. His voice was a growl. 'You goddamn pinbrain! Search your mind! Search your mind!' He got up from his low seat and then walked from the room.

No one said anything. Bret's outburst had embarrassed Mrs O'Raffety, and Buddy took his cues from her. They sat there looking at the flower arrangement as if they'd not heard Bret and not noticed nun get up and leave.

It was a long time before she spoke. Then she said, 'Bret resents his infirmity. I remember him at high school: a lion! Such an active man all his life… it's so difficult for him to adjust to being sick.'

'Is he often angry like this?' I asked.

'No,' said Buddy. 'Your visit seems to have upset him.'

'Of course it hasn't,' said Mrs O'Raffety, who knew how to be the perfect hostess. 'It's just that meeting Mr Samson makes Bret remember the times when he was fit and well.'

'Some days he's just fine,' said Buddy. He reached for the coffee pot that was keeping hot on the serving trolley. 'More?'

'Thanks,' I said.

'Sure,' said Buddy. 'And some days I see him standing by the pool with an expression on his face so that I think he's going to throw himself in and stay under.'

'Buddy! How can you say such a thing?'

I'm sorry Mrs O'Raffety but it's true.'

'He has to find himself,' said Mrs O'Raffety.

'Sure,' said Buddy, hastily trying to assuage his employer's alarm. 'He has to find himself. That's what I mean.'

We took the coast road back. Buddy wasn't feeling so good and so one of the servants – Joey, a small belligerent little Mexican who'd been playing cards the previous night – was driving Buddy's jeep and leaning forward staring into the white mist and muttering that we should have taken the canyon road and gone inland to the Freeway instead.

'Buddy should be doing this himself,' complained the driver for the hundredth time. 'I don't like this kind of weather.' The fog rolled in from the Ocean and swirled around us so that sudden glimpses of the highway opened up and were as quickly gone.

'Buddy felt ill,' I said. Car headlights flashed past. A dozen black leather motorcyclists went with suicidal disregard into the white wall of fog, and were swallowed up with such suddenness that even the sound of the bikes was gone.

'Ill!' said Joey. 'Drunk, you mean.' The rain was suddenly fiercer. The grey shapes of enormous trucks came looming from the white gloom, adorned with a multitude of little orange lights, like ships lit up for a regatta.

When I didn't respond Joey said, 'Mrs O'Raffety doesn't know but she'll find out.'

'Doesn't know what?'

'That he's a lush. That guy puts down a fifth of bourbon like it's Coca Cola. He's been doing that ever since his wife dumped him.'

'Poor Buddy,' I said.

'The sonuvabitch deserves all he gets.'

'Is that so?' I said.

In response to my unasked question Joey looked at me and grinned. 'I'm leaving next week. I'm going to work for my brother-in-law in San Diego. Buddy can shove his job.'

A few miles short of Malibu we were stopped by a line of flares burning bright in the roadway. Haifa dozen big trucks were parked at the roadside. A man in a tan-coloured shirt emerged from the mist. Los Angeles County Sheriff said the badge on his arm. With him there were two Highway Patrol cops in yellow oilskins; a big fellow and a girl. They were all very wet.

'Pull over,' the cop told Joey, pointing to the roadside.

'What's wrong?' The slap and buzz of the wipers seemed unnaturally loud. 'A slide?'

'Behind the white Caddie.' The man from the Sheriffs Office indicated an open patch of ground where several patient drivers were parked and waiting for the road to be cleared. The cop's face was running with rainwater that dropped from the peak of his cap, his shirt was black with rain. He wasn't in the mood for a long discussion.

'We've got a plane to catch: international,' said Joey.

The cop looked at him with a blank expression. 'Just let the ambulance through.' The cop squeegeed the water from his face, using the edge of his hand.

'What happened?'

The ambulance moved slowly past. The cop spoke like a swimmer too, in brief breathless sentences. 'A big truck – artic – jack-knifed. No way you'll get past.'

'Any other route we can take?' Joey asked.

'Sure but you'd add an hour to your trip.' The cop squinted into the rain. 'LAX, you say? There are a couple of guys in a big old Lincoln limo. They said they were going to turn around and head back downtown. They'd maybe take your passenger.'

'Where are they?'

'Other side of the wreck. Maybe they left already but I could try.' He switched on his transceiver. There was a burst of static and the cop said, That big dark blue limo still there, Pete?'

There was a scarcely intelligible affirmative from the radio. The cop said, 'Ask them if they'd take someone in a hurry to get to LAX.'

With bag in hand I picked my way past a line of cars and the monster-sized truck that was askew across the highway and completely blocked the road both ways. I found the limousine waiting for me and by that time – despite my plastic raincoat – I was very wet too.

The man beside the driver got out into the heavy rain and opened the rear door for me, and that's the kind of thing you do only if you've got a job you are determined to keep. Now I could see the man in the back: a short thickset man with a rotund belly. He wore an expensive three-piece dark blue suit – gold pocket watch chain well evidenced – and a shirt with a gold collar pin below the tight knot of a very conservative striped tie. It was too Wall Street for the Pacific Coast Highway, where pants and matching jackets went out of fashion with laced corsets and high hats.