15

‘I wouldn’t say he enjoyed it, Denis,’ Tolson said. He pressed Audrey’s back to draw her more closely into the group: the asphalt yard was crowded with the members leaving the club. ‘Len. This is Denis Blakeley.’

The comedian turned from talking to Audrey to look at Leonard, who stood with his arms held stiffly to his sides. Blakeley was dressed in a raincoat, his face only half-illuminated by the gas flares over the yard. He had thin, sharp features, his hair brushed smoothly back over his scalp. He smiled at Leonard and said, ‘If not, why not?’

‘It’s not important,’ Leonard said, getting ready to go.

‘Oh, but it is.’ Blakeley caught his arm and limped a step nearer. For a moment Leonard had the clear recollection that on the stage Blakeley hadn’t limped at all. Then he was suddenly confused as he saw Blakeley’s face close to his and the anxious, vaguely feminine look, inquisitive and almost sensitive, exaggerated by the faint patches of white powder still adhering to his skin. ‘I think it’s important or I wouldn’t do it.’

Leonard didn’t reply: he gazed slowly at Tolson.

‘Come on. What didn’t you like?’ Blakeley said. He was friendly, even courteous in a slightly absurd way, waiting patiently yet still gripping Leonard’s arm. ‘What didn’t you like about it? I don’t mind what you say, but for God’s sake just say it.’

‘It’s the way you pandered down to them,’ Leonard said. He seemed cold, his face frozen by the orange light. ‘You don’t have to feed yourself to them.’

‘Oh, now.…’ Blakeley shuffled closer as if he had been encouraged. ‘Are you sure that’s what I do?’

Leonard moved away, but as Tolson said, ‘Come on, leave him, Denis, he takes all this stuff too seriously,’ Blakeley called over his shoulder, ‘No, you get off on your bike.… Me and Radcliffe here have something to talk about.’ He looked at Leonard confidingly, pressing his hand firmly against his back.

‘Ah, now leave him,’ Tolson said. He sounded strangely concerned.

But Blakeley was already guiding Leonard towards the brick pillars of the gateway. ‘Now, Vic, there’s no need to worry. I shall look after him. I’ll take every care. Good night, Audrey.… Good night, love. Night, Vic. And don’t worry, I’ll take care of him.’ He called once more over his back. Then they were in the comparative darkness of the street. ‘Vic’ll be all right,’ Blakeley said, winking and glancing back.

They walked in silence for some time. Leonard felt the man as some impediment of his own as he limped beside him. He glanced at his eroded face only once, then felt himself walking along as if that stiff, exaggerated articulation were a feature of his own mind.

‘How long have you known Tolson … Vic, then?’ Blakeley said.

‘Not long.’

‘Who was it before that?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Oh, never mind. From the way he talks about you, you’d think he’d known you a lifetime. He’s always been threatening he’d let me meet you. He met you at Ewbank’s apparently? How long have you worked there, then?’

‘Only this summer.’

‘What did you do before?’

Leonard didn’t answer, but Blakeley said, ‘No, I’m asking you.’

‘I sometimes work in an office. Sometimes not at all.’ But when Blakeley questioned him further he wouldn’t reply. When they reached the road up to the estate Leonard stopped.

‘Oh, you go that way, then?’ Blakeley said.

‘It’s the quickest from here.’

‘What you were saying back there,’ Blakeley began difficultly. ‘I know exactly what you mean. But it’s not … how can I put it?’

Leonard had a brief suspicion he was being derided. He couldn’t be sure that Blakeley by his expression and gestures wasn’t mocking him. Yet he stood gazing at him aloofly.

‘What I’m trying to say is that I take it seriously. I take it more seriously perhaps than you imagine – performing. Being an artist as I look upon it.’ He moved round Leonard, drawing his leg in a stiff, angular arc, and looking away into the looming darkness of the estate. ‘Back there, I could see what you mean. Pandering down to them. Yes, I can see that. But then, that’s not the way I look at it. I know these things are difficult to talk about. But I feel you’d understand if I can explain.… It’s important to me, you see.’ He smiled and caught hold of Leonard’s arm. ‘No. I can see you think I’m that bit pretentious.’ He stated it hurriedly as if by self-criticism he could secure Leonard’s real attention. ‘What I’m trying to say is that I have several theories about art … about being an artist, what I do. Look!’ He suddenly laughed, catching Leonard’s sleeve more sharply. ‘Why don’t you come home with me? Just for a few minutes. Have a cup of tea or a drop of something. I only live a few houses away.’ As he saw the tortured look of indecision on Leonard’s face he added more confidently, ‘I must stress that I’m a family man. I wouldn’t say that they’re my entire life.…’ He laughed again, holding Leonard’s arm more tightly and beginning to walk with him up the nearest avenue. ‘That would be fatal wouldn’t it? But without them, the family, I just don’t know what I should do.… The amusing thing is that I like to think that without me they’d be in a similar plight. Do you know what I mean? We’re completely together. We stick together. You must see them.… You don’t mind me talking like this, do you? But I’m afraid I’ve no patience with politeness and all that shit. I like to talk straight away, straight off about the important things. And to me what I do and my family are the important things.… I know a man hates to meet another man’s family like that. But if you don’t meet my family I can’t honestly say that you’ve really met me.’ He laughed again, enjoyably. The road wound steeply up between the darkened houses.

Leonard, though alarmed, appeared to follow the man simply at his insistence. When they reached the gate to the council house and he glanced back he was almost relieved to see that in fact Tolson had been following them. He was some distance lower down the dimly-lit road, sitting on his silent machine after freewheeling down the opposite incline. There was no sign, however, of Audrey.

Although it was late there were three children playing in the small living room. One of them was completely naked and the other two only half-dressed; they looked up at Leonard without curiosity and went on shouting as they threw themselves aimlessly over the furniture in some strenuous game. The walls of the room were covered in photographs of Blakeley in different costumes and parts.

‘So you’ve managed to catch him after all. Well, you were quick.’ A woman of about thirty sat in the corner of the room sewing one of the children’s clothes. Leonard, confused by the sudden brilliance of light and the shouting stared sullenly, almost aggressively, at her. She smiled at him directly as if she recognised something familiar in his response. Not unlike Blakeley in looks, she had a more confident, trusting face, and a decisive, undismayed expression, vaguely self-amused.

‘Oh, now.…’ Blakeley said, but the woman went on, ‘He said he was going to get hold of you on your own, Tolson or no Tolson.’ She continued sewing, yet looking up at him undemandingly, vaguely contemptuous.

‘I thought all these’d be in bed by now,’ Blakeley said, so disappointed that he appeared to forget Leonard completely and went to sit by the stove that dominated the small room. He gazed at the low fire, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.

‘My mother’s upstairs,’ the woman said to him. ‘We’re trying to find them all something to sleep in. Now stop it!’ She stood up and caught hold of the two noisiest, half-clad children and flung them down on a large settee, hitting the legs of the oldest so hard that all three were immediately silent. They became aware of Leonard standing palely in the door.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ she said. ‘We’re not very straight but we’ve left things a bit late tonight.’ She pulled a stack of ironed clothes from an easy chair and he took off his raincoat and sat down.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Blakeley said, watching him fold his coat over the arm of the chair. ‘This is my eldest daughter, Kathleen.’

She seemed about to add something to her father’s introduction, but her expression suddenly lightened and she said, ‘What do I call you? Leonard … or Mr. Radcliffe?’

‘Oh … Leonard.’ He nodded his head, smiling. She seemed pleased that her abruptness should confuse him.

‘Come on,’ she said to the children. ‘Upstairs. We’ll finish you off up there. And if you make any noise you know what to expect.’

They responded eagerly. They pushed each other out of the room and ran noisily up the narrow stairs.

‘She’s very good with the kids,’ Blakeley said. ‘She treats them like pigs and they’ll do anything for her. It’s very strange is that. I’m sorry about all this. As you can see, I’ve got a fair whack of a family. And I can tell you – we only meant to have the one. Kathleen. But these last few years they’ve been tumbling out. ‘Course, it gives Kathleen a good laugh, seeing her mother stuffed up so late in life. The wife’s over fifty, you know.’

‘Were you intending, then, to bring me back here?’ Leonard looked at him with the same shyness, an expectancy that drew a heavy blush down his face. He seemed disconcerted by what had happened.

‘Well, there you are again. I told them I might. Tolson said he’d bring you along … and introduce us. I can tell you, I was more nervous than I’ve ever been tonight, knowing you were there.’

‘Why?’

Blakeley laughed and glanced casually at him. ‘Ah, well.… Perhaps you don’t know what a pride Tolson takes in you.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Oh. You must know him as well as I do by now. Vic has a great lust for power. Unconditional power.… He has this lust to possess people.’ He stated it awkwardly and provocatively, but Leonard remained silent. The ceiling groaned with the children overhead. ‘I suppose with not knowing him long you don’t realise. And then again, it might be a part of everybody, and I haven’t noticed.’ He laughed slightly though, it seemed, without any change of expression. ‘But with Vic it’s built up into something that dominates all the rest of his life. I mean, although he’s never told you about me – and I’ve known him now for seven or eight years, since before he was married – he’s told me all about you right from the beginning. You see, when you said you hadn’t known him long, as a matter of fact it’s nine weeks and four days, to the nearest day. He came here the evening of your very first day at Ewbank’s.’ He brushed his hand against his face, then laughed; it was almost a gesture from his performance. ‘Do you know how he described you? Can you guess?’ He watched Leonard’s expression with some satisfaction. ‘He came bursting in here and said, “Do you know, I’ve met a prince today.” That’s how he described you. And when I said, “How d’you mean, a prince?” he said, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just how I’ve always imagined a prince was”.’ Blakeley laughed, knocking his fist slightly against his thigh. ‘Then he started to tell me about a prince he’d read about as a boy. At school … there you are. You fulfilling some childhood fantasy of Tolson’s. And he’s kept you to himself ever since.’

Leonard had blushed and seemed about to get up when Kathleen came back into the room. It was as if all Blakeley’s vaguely feminine characteristics had been suddenly projected and clearly defined in her; he gazed up at her as if it were she who had been speaking.

‘My mother’ll be down in a few minutes. What’s he been telling you?’ She looked from Leonard to her father and back with the same antagonistic expression.

‘You mind your own business,’ Blakeley said. ‘Is there anything in to drink?’

‘I’ll put the kettle on for some tea, if that’s what you mean. There’s nothing else.’ She turned directly to Leonard, standing over him. ‘I want to hear what you thought of his act first, though.’

‘I didn’t like it at all,’ Leonard said with such evident simplicity that she started smiling, then suddenly giggled, glancing at her father and turning away.

‘Why not?’ she said.

‘He thinks I’m obscene. I belittle myself,’ Blakeley said. ‘And it’s quite true, I do. What was it you said? I pander to them. Stoop down to them. Perhaps he thinks I should be satirical and witty, and sing folk songs with a guitar.’ Apparently recognising himself in this role, Blakeley burst out laughing. ‘I’ve come, and to prove it I’m here!’ he said.

Kathleen laughed with her father; they were curiously alike, except that the woman was harder and firmer, even physically stronger than her father.

‘Perhaps you’re a bit above it all,’ she said to Leonard. Then added, with her father’s deprecating gesture, ‘No, I’m wrong. It is sickening, isn’t it? I can never watch it. I don’t know why he goes on doing it, feeding himself to them, and they sit there like fat ducks in the pond. If it wasn’t him, it’d be someone else. There’s no point to it. But you’ll be surprised,’ she said, looking at her father, who was smiling at her with some sort of enjoyment, ‘surprised how much pleasure he gets out of it. He can even make it all look fine and noble if you let him talk long enough about it. And there’s only one thing you can really say for him. And that’s that he can sing. He’s got a lovely tenor voice. But he’s just given in.…’

‘Given in, she calls it,’ Blakeley cried.

‘Well, I’m glad Leonard’s told you.’

Blakeley laughed more loudly, genuinely pleased with his daughter, and glancing at Leonard now with relief. ‘What do you think to her? Don’t you think she should go up instead of me?’

‘A woman would never do what you do. Stoop … grovel.’

‘Ah, don’t you be too sure,’ Blakeley said, some scarcely concealed feeling suddenly passing between them. ‘My own flesh and blood,’ he added indulgently. ‘What do you think they’ll invent next after children?’ His hand beat unconsciously against his side as he laughed. Kathleen looked away as someone else came into the room. Leonard stood up.

‘Nay, don’t get up for me, love,’ Blakeley’s wife said. A heavily-built woman, red-faced with greyed, almost white hair, she pushed indifferently between the furniture as if by disregarding Leonard she could make him feel at home.

‘I’ve put the kettle on. Kathleen can make it when it boils. We’ve got all the pyjamas in the wash. They’re wrapped up in all sorts of stuff.’ She laughed at her husband but her eyes, small and tired, had an undiminished look of anxiety, as if some deep and early concern about him had never been arrested. The real child of the family was Blakeley.

‘You see,’ he said, ‘she never asks me how I got on.’

‘I don’t need to, love. I can always tell,’ she said, not looking at him and sinking into a chair. But a moment later she pulled her heavy frame up and started to tidy the room. She picked up several fragments of food and numerous small, broken toys.

‘Nothing stays in one piece for long in this house,’ Blakeley said, watching her. ‘Not even the people. We get broken up amongst one another. Don’t you think that …’

‘So you work with Tolson, then,’ Kathleen said with the aggressiveness that accompanied even her slightest gestures.

‘Why do you say it in that tone?’ Leonard said.

‘What tone? Was there a tone? I thought if there’s one person I’m detached about it’s Vic.’

‘You see, like the rest of us,’ her father said, ‘she’s also had some experience of Victor.’ He held his hand to the side of his face as if simulating concern.

‘I was asking for his opinion not yours,’ she said harshly, almost childishly.

Leonard had put on an oppressed, stifled expression as if now he were completely bewildered. Kathleen seemed to take it as a look of shyness or embarrassment: provocatively she added, ‘I suppose my father’s told you what sort of regard … what sort of pernicious regard Tolson holds you in.’

‘No.… No, I don’t think …’

‘Perhaps you don’t realise just how destructive Tolson is? No, I can see in your face that you know well enough. After all, why would he choose you if he didn’t see that you were so vulnerable?’

‘No, you’re wrong!’ Leonard said angrily. ‘I don’t know why you should be so malicious. If you understand why he behaves in the way he does then you’ll find that …’ He shook his head, stammering slightly as if he’d suddenly lost his train of thought altogether. ‘You’ll see that there are ways of directing him.’

‘And what sort of understanding is it then that’s required?’ Kathleen said, but with such a wildness that he only stared at her in silence. ‘Go on, I’m listening. What sort of understanding is required?’

‘You’ve got to see that he’s a big person, and intensely lonely,’ Leonard said, but so subduedly that it seemed only Kathleen, leaning accusingly towards him, actually heard.

‘What was that? He’s a what person …?’ Blakeley said.

Kathleen had turned away. ‘Oh, so that’s how it’s done,’ she said quietly, but it was a tone of disappointment rather than contempt.

‘Ah, now.’ Blakeley had stood up as if only now realising that some quarrel had to be mended. ‘Perhaps Leonard’s experience of Tolson isn’t quite ours. As I’ve said to Kathleen before we ever met you, perhaps you’re a stronger character than any of us imagine.’

But Kathleen hadn’t stayed to listen; she’d gone into the scullery, and a few moments later her mother followed her, her apron scooped up to contain the large amount of debris she’d collected.

Blakeley sat down again, but more alertly. They could hear the two women talking rapidly and intensely in the next room.

‘You see, I don’t know how well you know Tolson, Leonard. But in our experience, well, his influence has always been destructive. And there are lots of people with much the same sort of experience. He’s such a strong sort of person. He doesn’t see perhaps how he knocks other people over. But you: you think there are ways of handling him, then?’

Leonard couldn’t be certain that Blakeley wasn’t looking at him mischievously or whether it were simply a more genuine expression of concern than he’d seen before.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘You see,’ Blakeley went on, ‘Vic sees everything in terms of victories, of his assimilation of other people. He consumes people.’

‘I don’t see why you should be so malicious about him,’ Leonard said, his body twisting narrowly. He rubbed his face tormentedly. ‘I don’t know. I feel that you’ve got me here just to …’ He shook his head.

‘Perhaps it’s simply that you’re a bony piece that won’t digest,’ Blakeley said, as if recognising and encouraging Leonard’s bewilderment.

‘What is it? Do you feel that you’ve been destroyed by Tolson or something? I don’t see anything extraordinary in him at all.’

Blakeley, as if both alarmed yet intrigued that he had attracted Leonard’s attention in this way, waved his hand across his face as if brushing, almost pushing, some obstruction away. ‘As you say, perhaps the best thing is to give in to him straight away and let him use you. After all his only real pleasure comes from overpowering people, swamping them, and after that he can just patronise them. Perhaps it’s best then simply to be patronised.’

‘But I never said that!’

‘I thought that’s what you meant when you said there are ways of directing him. I mean, why do you think he introduced us? He knew I’d take you off for a long talk. He worked up my interest in you, talking of you as some sort of artist, a prince! all that sort of nonsense. Why, us talking here, us reacting here is all the result of a deliberate plan of Tolson’s.… Not deliberate in the way you’re thinking. That’s the worst part about it. He doesn’t plan it on paper or anything like that. No, it’s all intuition. He’s hardly aware of it himself, although he does it. That’s the really monstrous, the really destructive part of it! Intuition!’

Leonard had stood up and begun to glance round the room. His face had hardened as if having recognised this nightmare he were prepared to accommodate it if only it would allow him to move his body casually round the room. He went across to the table just as Kathleen came in carrying a large, steaming tea-pot and a bottle of milk. As he moved several things aside, she glanced at him bitterly and said, ‘Has my father told you about what he calls “our Spanish Heritage”?’

She laughed, but Blakeley himself added, ‘Oh, now, we can leave that alone for once.’

‘Why should we? It was the real reason you asked Leonard back here tonight.’ She turned to Leonard accusingly. ‘You see, it was about the first thing that he told Tolson and we’ve never heard the last of it since.’

Blakeley’s wife came in and put down several cups and saucers.

‘That’s enough, Kathleen,’ he said. ‘It’s going to your head.’

‘You’ll know, of course, about the Peninsular War and how the Duke of Wellington went out there with an English army.’ She nodded reprovingly at her mother, then turned all her attention on Leonard. ‘How he went out to fight Napoleon. Such big names! Well, one of the officers, believe it or not, was called Blakeley. And he married a Spanish lady. A princess related to the Spanish royal family. Now can you see how it all ties up? This talk of princes. He thinks we’re related to Spanish aristocracy, and that you, being a Radcliffe … a Radcliffe, that you both have something in common.… And we live like this! He’s spent nearly all his life down the pit and so did his father before him, and he only came out because of his lungs. Yet he insists that we’re aristocrats! You ask him! You ask him! He knows your family’s entire history, the whole history of the Place. Down to what year? 1470 and the Wars of the Roses! Do you see how Tolson must be laughing. Two aristocrats meeting for the first time!’ She broke into a breathless sort of laughter, while she tried to set out the tea things on the table.

‘That’s why he calls himself an artist – to impress himself that he’s got better feelings, that he’s more sensitive. That he’s elevated above the rest of the herd. Even the doctor, when he was pensioned off from the pit, even the doctor said the trouble with his lungs was largely self-induced.’

‘He didn’t. That’s wrong,’ Blakeley said very formally. ‘He said it was aggravated by a nervous temperament.’

‘No such bloody thing! Rubbish!’ Kathleen was now giggling helplessly, both hands laid on the table.

‘Well, you’ll be able to understand one thing,’ Blakeley said. He was still sitting by the fire. His wife poured out the tea as if nothing had happened. ‘We educated Kathleen thinking she’d be the only child we’d have. She didn’t leave school till she was eighteen.’ He had leaned back in his chair and suddenly started to cry, his mouth dropping open in a huge, maundering leer and his eyes closing with tears. Yet the tone of his voice was peculiarly calm, as if he were unaware that he was crying at all. Only a kind of whine at the back of his throat had made his wife look up and go across to him. ‘As you can see,’ he went on, ‘she can express herself quite clearly. She’s an intelligent girl. An intellectual, you know. The only trouble is she doesn’t see that she only gets worked up about these things out of an affection for me. She just doesn’t see that.’

‘Oh, now you’ll get the complete performance,’ Kathleen said wildly as though this were quite simply a private remark directed solely at her. ‘This’s what usually happens. He’s such a sensitive soul.’ She stood watching the large figure of her mother stooping silently over her father with a strange look of envy. ‘I’m sorry. But why did he have to bring Radcliffe back here? He should have known.’ She shook her head angrily and turned back to the table. But she finished the pouring out of the tea which her mother had left uncompleted.

‘I think I’d better go,’ Leonard said. He had stood back in the corner of the room while the argument flared, but now he moved towards the chair where his coat lay.

‘No … no, you must stay,’ Blakeley said, getting up urgently from beneath the figure of his wife. ‘You see how it is. One thing leads to another. We’re just that bit excited. Nervous at you being here.’ He’d come to hold Leonard’s arm.

‘Yes,’ Kathleen said, ‘I don’t blame you. It’s that my father makes himself so vulnerable. He’s no protection against somebody like Tolson.’

‘But why do you let Tolson tyrannise you?’ Leonard said despairingly. ‘I don’t understand it.…’

‘Ah, but then you don’t know the half of it,’ Blakeley said, sounding disappointed that Leonard hadn’t understood. ‘Do you realise, for example, that it’s spiritual things Tolson seeks to possess most of all. Things he can’t acquire through his own temperament. He’s bound to attack, to consume people in whom he recognises some sort of spiritual quality. And naturally, they’re the ones who are most vulnerable to his physical sort of energy.’

‘I’ll have to go,’ Leonard said and immediately went to the door, pushing it open and groping around in the darkened hall. He found the handle of the front door and pulled it open. A stream of cold air rushed into the over-heated room.

‘Now wait! I’ll come with you,’ Blakeley called. ‘To the end of the avenue.’ He pulled on his jacket as he hurried after him.

They walked in silence. Leonard felt himself drinking in the cold air, clearing the confusion in his mind. Somewhere he had the impression that Blakeley was no longer limping, that he walked beside him quite naturally, but the idea never penetrated sufficiently to cause him to look. After glancing round to see if anyone were waiting in the street, he allowed himself to be lulled by the cold air and the rhythm of his walk and to become completely absorbed by his own thoughts.

‘What I really wanted to say,’ Blakeley said as they reached the road junction, ‘was that … the sort of performance I gave tonight, it wasn’t so much me as a person, but me reflecting them – the audience. Do you know what I mean? It’s important to me, is this. It’s my job to reflect what they are. That’s the theory I wanted to ask you about. After all, this is how I see it: I am them. If I wasn’t they wouldn’t have me there. I’m there by their permission.’

He was clinging to Leonard’s sleeve and trying to turn him so that he could see into his face. No lamp stood directly at the corner and in the faint light he could only recognise Leonard’s face as a pale mask. ‘Don’t you see? It’s their humour, not mine. But I’m not apologising for them. Nor for myself. At some other club I do something entirely different. Just singing straight ballads. But I want you to understand: this is all they’ve got.’

He wasn’t sure that Leonard had even heard him, but he went on explaining more earnestly until Leonard suddenly turned round to him and said quietly, ‘There’s one thing I realise. That there are certain people … certain families who invite people to their homes simply so that they can become a vehicle, a sort of catalyst for all that family’s troubles and quarrels. They’re of no account themselves. It’s simply that they become a receptacle.…’

‘Do you think I’ve done that?’ Blakeley said in a strange voice.

‘Oh, I’m not blaming you,’ Leonard added. ‘It’s entirely my own fault. I’m very slow at understanding certain things … situations. It’s entirely my fault. I should have seen. I seem to go into things with my eyes completely shut.’ And when Blakeley seemed about to interrupt he went on more excitedly, ‘I mean, the absurd thing is that although I don’t know what Tolson’s told you about me, the fact is that we knew each other as boys. We were very good friends for two or three years even.’

‘But is that true? Are you sure? But of course you must be sure or you wouldn’t say it like that. And in that tone of voice. It must be true.’ Blakeley appeared to walk off by himself, moving several paces in one direction, then another, until he returned to his original position. ‘That’s very strange,’ he said, looking carefully at Leonard’s faintly illuminated face. ‘I wonder why he never told me. For he knew I was bound to find out when we met. Do you notice any change? Any change in him, I mean, between then and now.’

‘I shall have to go now,’ Leonard said. ‘It’s just that I wanted you to realise how absurd the situation is.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. I realise that now. I see that. We’ve both been deceived. But why?’

Leonard had turned to go, but with a sudden movement Blakeley took hold of his arm and pulled it against him.

‘Has Tolson told you anything about us? About me, I mean. Or Kathleen?’ he said. Then before Leonard could answer he added in an extremely pleased and relaxed voice, ‘What do you think to Kathleen? She’s a great admiration for you, you know. That’s to say, she’s intimidated by you. Don’t be put off by that aggressiveness. She’s always like that when she feels drawn to a person. I’m afraid it’s the unfortunate result of her past experience.’ He now gripped Leonard’s arm and shoulder in both his hands, and for a moment held him in silence. ‘I’m sorry if I disappoint you,’ he said quietly.

There was something so familiar in the sudden tone and accent that Leonard turned to stare at him in astonishment. It was a voice he had known and heard so many times before that he could only shake his head in bewilderment. Despite its familiarity, its identity eluded him.

‘You’ve got to understand,’ Blakeley said. ‘All this … I’ve never had an education. I don’t really know how to express these things. Not in a way that you’d understand and sympathise with, I mean.’

‘You’d better let me go,’ Leonard said almost inaudibly.

‘You see. You think it’s an act, don’t you? That I’m trying to mislead you. Isn’t that it? You think it’s some peculiar game of deception.’

‘No, it doesn’t matter,’ Leonard said, pulling more fiercely now and grasping Blakeley’s fingers to prise them from his arm. He stared at the older man in complete confusion. A motorbike had started somewhere down the road. Leonard stiffened, his head twisting violently round.

Blakeley suddenly released him and stood dejectedly aside. ‘Ah well. Perhaps it’s just as Tolson intended it should be.’

‘Did you know that he’d followed us? To your house. And now here.’

‘No. But then what does it matter?’ He didn’t even look round.

‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this,’ Leonard said, still staring at Blakeley intensely as though he expected the shape of another person entirely to appear there. The motorbike engine was being revved, heavily and slowly.

‘I think you do,’ Blakeley said. ‘But you’re just refusing to see. This is Vic’s attempt to say to me, “Keep off!”’

‘Keep off? Keep off what?’

‘Him. For me to keep off him.’ Blakeley appeared to turn away slightly with a vague gesture of despair. ‘Well, that and showing you off. Both things together.’

‘I shall have to go.’ Leonard shook his head wildly. ‘This … it’s just some sort of impersonation. I shall have to go.’

He immediately hurried away. He didn’t look round. He heard no other sound from Blakeley and assumed that the older man was watching him out of sight. He walked more quickly. As he passed a side road he heard a motor-bike retreating from the opposite end. It sounded lighter than Tolson’s. He couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t the effect of the steep rise of the estate. He broke into a run. It was only as he pushed his way round the darkened Place that he let out a cry of frustration as he realised that he had left his raincoat at Blakeley’s house.