He was in formal gear, black tie. A tall man and broad, rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, military moustache, black hair greying at the temples – early fifties was my guess. Looked posh, looked like a man who was used to the best of everything. My vision was a little unreliable but he was in sharp focus, coming up the stairs towards me with an interested expression on his face. This was in the tube station at Piccadilly Circus and I was sitting on the floor in the corner at the top of the stairs where you go down to the left for the eastbound platform and to the right for the westbound. The prevailing smell was of hamburgers and frying. With the sound of many footsteps the world went past me coming and going. In a poster on the wall a large black rugby player hurtled towards me at full speed. ‘IMAGINE A TRAIN HURTLING TOWARDS YOU AT FULL SPEED,’ said the poster. ‘NOW DOUBLE IT.’
Mr Best-of-Everything stopped in front of me. ‘No instrument,’ he said. Big voice and he talked like a BBC correspondent, Martin-Bell-in-Sarajevo sort of thing. ‘Nothing for coins to be dropped into, so you’re not busking. Are you begging?’
‘No.’ I wasn’t sure why I was there. I’d been drinking a lot since Serafina left and I sometimes found myself doing odd things in unexpected places.
‘Thinking about the Big What-Is-It, are you?’
‘What’s the Big What-Is-It?’
‘You tell me.’
‘I don’t think I want to.’
‘Perhaps another time.’
‘Are you cruising or what? Do I look like a bit of rough to you?’
‘You look like a bit of misery. If you fancy a chat we could meet this evening at the opera. They’re doing Pelléas with Celestine Latour – best Mélisande since Mary Garden. Turn up around seven and an usher will show you to my box.’ He took a card out of a silver case and handed it to me.
‘Why me?’ I said. ‘What do you want?’
‘Come to the opera and we’ll talk about it.’
‘Which opera? Covent Garden or the ENO?’
He winced. ‘Please – the idea of Pelléas in English is abhorrent. Must go now. See you later. Or not, whichever.’ In the fresh breeze he made as he passed me I smelled money and something else, medicinal and disciplinary, that I thought of as bitter aloes. As far as I know I’ve never smelled bitter aloes but the name suggests the smell I have in mind. The card said, in an elegant little typeface: