Chapter Nine

Adela stood on the deck of the hydrofoil, one foot before the other, hand on the rail, her streaming hair aloft in the wind. She leaned as far as possible over the rail to feel the spray and to see foam jetting from the craft's sides. Her cardigan was billowing, her summer frock flapping; she smiled at the rush of wind on her skin, at the surly sea, the ghost of Capri on the horizon.

The day was febrile with light and vapour; translucent mist rose off the waters; spokes of sunlight developed patches of colour on ochre cliffs. The air was heady with sea change, mercurial weather that might mellow and maintain the placid autumn warmth or wipe the haze with bright skies and strong winds.

They began the journey in the cinema seats of the passenger lounge. The windows were the colour of orangeade, the seats uncomfortable, and when the craft got up speed they went out and gave up conversation to the blast of air and the roar of the engine. Adela was fascinated by the diminishing sight of Positano, suddenly enclosed by a magnitude of scenery that slowly reduced it to a smudge on the coast. It was strange to watch the halcyon town dwindle into the great reaches of sea and sky, and curious to follow the great backdrop of the mountain extending along the coast for miles. One could lose all sense of the modern staring at that band of rock.

Michael caught her smile from time to time, and when Capri approached he joined her on the port side to watch the striated cliff rush up. The craft throttled back and they saw its wash twirling over the surface of the water and slapping on the rocks.

They were a little uncomfortable at first, as if it were slightly false to be so exhilarated by the voyage before they had got to know each other. But the premise of the trip was adventure, and he could tell she was hungry for first impressions. He sensed that she had been restless and her restlessness now had an outlet. The wide horizons of the sea and the spectre of Capri met something acquisitive in her imagination. By the time the craft was moored in Porto Turistico, and they had exchanged the sway of the vessel for the solid flatness of the jetty, she was beaming with excitement.

They stood on the jetty and gazed at the backlit mass of the island. The marina was cluttered with yachts and sailing boats, masts rocking and cockeyed, a lattice through which came the subdued pastels of the waterfront buildings, and above the harbour frontage, terraces of olive and orange trees clambering up to the island's saddle, Capri town, where in due course they would recapture the sun.

After gliding up the hill they emerged from the funicular into the bustle of the centro, a tourist current leading to the Piazza Umberto, with its four hundred wicker chairs and beer tables. The instant convenience of the Piazza was a little premature, and they pressed on away from the German beer signs and credit-card stickers along ancient streets, narrow and smelling of stone. They walked past the palm-court entrances of grand hotels, around the porticoes of churches. They wended their way looking for a caffè that was perfectly situated in relation to all the picturesque elements, a place that would reward anticipation with culmination; but such a spot was hard to find, and none of the smaller squares exceeded the touristic apotheosis of the Umberto with its celebratory atmosphere of efficient profit. And although it was fun to explore, Michael soon felt disheartened, as if famous Capri were no longer real. On corner after corner stood perfunctory restaurants, over-sponsored bars, hotel porches, forbiddingly deluxe. They searched hard and found little to their taste, a negative consensus which was subtly bonding. After strolling past a monastery and sitting in the Giardino di Augusto, they discovered a trattoria on a side street. It had a balcony enfurled with wisteria and a steeply priced menu in a glass case by the door.

Now that they were seated Adela's inquisitiveness seemed to turn on him with full energy, and he quickly sensed that, although she was an actress, magnetic in limelight, part of her charm was her power of attention. She was relaxed, pleased with the setting, and yet extremely careful to listen. She picked up all tones, all gradations of seriousness; she let her companion know that she wanted to do him justice. She had expertise in this realm, knew how to encourage. She followed his face when he spoke, looking at his eyes, his lips, taking his meaning from all sources of expression. And although she was less professionally poised than on their first encounter, when she had so much to convey to a stranger, her relaxation today made it easier to see the reality of her talent. She was facially compelling, possessing features that were not only fine in themselves, but imbued with intelligence. Her gaze held a quickening intensity, as though she were of superior stock, had something special or marked about her which commanded attention, an energy of interest she was able to repay.

Michael felt he could confide in her. Not because she seemed discreet, but because something about her insisted on substance, and to serve her up anything less than one's best material was to risk seeming dull. She presupposed seriousness. She offered it herself. And this generosity of response was the quality that convinced him Hilldyard was wrong. She was not merely plausible, she was stimulating. She was not simply genuine, she was frequently outspoken. Though she had expressive resources and could doubtless project the most heroic emotions on stage, it was the latency of this power he found beguiling. And although she was sensitive and fine, Adela was not precious. Her eyes could glitter with irony, especially when the subject of her parents came up; though even here the irony was kindly, signifying a private perspective rather than a hardening of feeling.

'They've seen me on TV and still think I should marry a merchant banker and have a dozen children. They want happiness through me, and my being an actress spoils that.'

'Aren't they proud?'

She looked blankly at him. 'Dad thinks theatre is something laid on for the middle classes by travelling minstrels, people, you know, from outside society. It's lovely to go to Chichester on a summer evening, but God forbid one's daughter should go on stage and make an exhibition of her feelings.'

He frowned. 'So what do you talk about?'

'With Dad?' She was amused by the question. 'Oh, driving routes. How to get from Wokingham to Croydon when the M25 is down.'

'And your mother?'

Adela contemplated the question with an abstract look. 'She wants things to be ''nice''.'

Michael nodded.

'She doesn't want me to sleep with bisexual actors and says so a lot.' Adela's brow was knitted: the injustice of it. 'I'd love to if I could just find one.'

He laughed.

'I do my best. Honestly. To be a good daughter. But both my parents have set the limits of their life and feel threatened by my independence. I love them, but mentally we're on separate planets. Besides, they think I'm highly-strung.'

'Are you?'

She shrugged. 'I'd call it temperament.'

He raised the glass of wine that had succeeded his lager. 'Let's drink to temperament.'

She smiled, raising her glass.

Michael gazed at the peaks of Anacapri and felt the full warmth of an October sun on his face. They were having lunch on an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea and talking about people who lived in Croydon.

He was curious. 'Do you like being an actress?'

She knew the answer instantly. 'I love the art and hate the profession.'

He was intrigued; she was after all very successful.

'One's creativity is so dependent on luck,' she continued. 'I can't just get out there and act. To do the thing I want to do I need the patronage of casting directors, TV producers. My livelihood is down to their whim. Whoever you are it's a cattle market. Which means rejection and more rejection, and although I've had some breaks I'm sick to the back teeth of bloody rejection. Because what gets rejected is the whole you.' She gazed at him earnestly, inviting him to encompass the reality of that.

He nodded readily.

'A writer can write. A painter can paint. An actor is the one artist who has no creative self-determination. We're dependent on forces beyond our control to be able to express ourselves.' She looked askance. 'Which is why I got on a plane and came out here. For once in my life I thought I could influence my own destiny.'

Michael blinked, almost embarrassed. He showed his sympathy by not saying anything.

'One has a gift, something that feels quite valuable, and to get it across you have to give everything, every last drop. Which you do, and they love you for it, but in the end we're all dispensable.'

'But you love the art?'

'I feel a better person when I act.' She brightened. 'Noble.'

'Noble?'

'Only when acting.' She smiled to reassure him. 'But yes. There's something purifying about giving over everything you have to another character. It's an act of self-effacement, of discovery. Does that sound absurd?'

Michael looked exceptionally grave. It did not sound ridiculous. What she said had a strange effect on him.

'No . . . So how d'you cope with the crap?'

She took in a breath. 'By trying to respect myself. Whatever quality I have it's not going to vanish overnight. And if I can just focus on developing and improving and forget about trying to impress people, I'll be all right. I mean, I've been lucky so far. I just don't want to do rubbish. That's why I admire you.'

'Me?'

She fiddled with her bread. 'You only do the top stuff.'

He did not know whether to be puzzled or flattered.

'Basil Curwen thinks you've got real integrity.'

It remained unconvincing to hear praise from that quarter.

'He says you dazzled him with your knowledge of Hilldyard's novels. And he told me about Intelligent Productions and The Other House and that play by Mike Summers, which, by the way, I saw last year and thought was brilliant.'

He was pleased to hear late acclaim for his only TV drama. 'Thank you.'

'Oh God–' She was almost distressed. 'It was for grown-ups. I mean subtle.'

'He's a very good writer.'

'You're a very good producer. Every time I see something like that I think a miracle has happened. I'll bet The Other House is going to be fantastic.'

It seemed a shame to disillusion her.

'Well, actually, the Beeb canned it last month.'

'Oh!' It was almost a personal blow. 'Why?'

'I expect they're clearing the decks for a bonkbuster.'

'Oh, miserable!'

'Developing quality drama is a short-cut to oblivion these days.' He shrugged. 'Nobody stands up for it any more.'

'That's so depressing.'

'What I was interested in producing the system didn't want.'

'But you'll make other things?' She was concerned.

He wanted to announce his failure, to proclaim it, almost as proof of his values; but Adela had rekindled some of his old pride and that warranted a more careful response than the bitter cry that the system had failed him, that he had gone bust, and it was all the fault of the philistines.

'I don't know.' He did, of course. 'There are other things I might want to do.'

'Oh please!'

'Television is no place for passion, you see. If you care about things passionately don't become a producer, because a producer is a mule of compromise. And compromise is all very nice for business, but it detaches you from what you love. And eventually love has little to do with it. You do the work, but without conviction.'

Michael pushed the stem of his wineglass along the cloth. Adela was listening carefully. He was feeding himself out to her and she was reeling him in.

'I've had an awakening here. Talking to Hilldyard makes me feel that up to now I've wasted my life. I've been struggling to idealise the process whereby something precious is simplified for public consumption. I've turned what I love into career fodder. Become a dealer in the commodity of culture. I haven't contributed to culture. Intelligent Productions has diluted the arts. The arts can't be mediated via television or newspapers. They have to be encountered directly, one to one. The only authentic exchange. All the rest is background noise, the babble of other people's careers, colour-supplement verbiage.'

He frowned and sipped at his wine.

She seemed struck, almost disturbed.

'I knew that in being a producer I was losing my integrity. And if one wants to live according to some kind of self-truth I suppose it's inevitable that you become an artist.' He looked away. 'I've started writing. Nothing ambitious. Just to help make sense of things.'

He sipped at his wine again. He was sounding very earnest. Saying to somebody that you had started 'writing' was about as thrilling for them as declaring oneself vegetarian or Christian.

'What you say is very interesting.'

To Michael she looked more worried than interested.

She drew a strand of hair over her ear.

'Badly paid,' he said.

She looked at him with her green eyes, her features carved in seriousness. 'D'you mind if I tell you something?'

He was suddenly hooked on her parted lips, as if seeing them for the first time.

'You'd have been the ideal producer for this film.'

What held him was the depth of the upper lip, the way it adhered in the corners to her lower lip, two cushions meeting.

'You'd have been brilliant.'

A warm sensation spread through his chest.

'You're not wowed by Hollywood. I mean, you would have made the right decisions.'

Michael blinked, passed a hand across his mouth. He caught what she said; just. 'I've never made a feature film.'

'But that's your strength. You could walk away from all the bullshit. Oh, how frustrating!'

He wondered what to say. He could not share her view of him, though her faith was touching. He could only register the intensity of her disappointment.

'I hope that when you meet James you'll feel less frustrated.'

'Don't give up producing!'

'Right now my only concern is to work with Hilldyard.'

'You'll stay here?'

'For the time being.'

'Won't you be lonely?'

It was an odd question; it had never occurred to him.

'I feel less lonely now than I have in years.'

'Oh gosh.' She put her hands to her lips.

He smiled, raised his eyebrows.

'It's all so extraordinary,' she said.

'What?'

'Your incredible friendship.'

There was a note in her voice of warm-hearted envy, which made him realise how much she understood.

'Perhaps you should stay.' He was light. 'This place would do you good.'

'You could indoctrinate me. Cure me of my worldly ambitions.'

'I don't mean that. I could show you around a bit.'

'I'm serious. I'd give anything to stay. This is so much what I need.'

'Then stay.'

She shook her head.

The expression on Michael's face concealed his disappointment. 'You probably need a holiday.'

'I'm up for jobs on Thursday and Friday.'

'Come back afterwards.'

She frowned thoughtfully, and he wondered what she was reckoning. Her commitments were unknown to him.

'I don't know. There are things and things.'

'Don't let them get the better of you.'

She snorted. 'They always get the better of me.'

He had the apprehension suddenly that she was attached and that her warmth was the warmth of a woman on leave from a complicated and consuming relationship. She had glanced to the side, as if alluding to a certain aspect of her life, and the glance contained a fondness for that aspect.

He managed a half-smile.

'You could be my mentor, I suppose.' She was amused. 'I've lots to catch up on.'

He had found himself presuming that anyone so open, so interested in the progress of her life, would be unattached. She had spoken to him as if freshly created herself.

He was serious in response. 'What have you got to catch up on?'

'I've no personal philosophy. I haven't thought things through like you.'

'Then you must come back.'

'D'you do a crash course?' She laughed.

'That depends on the student.'

'Oh, I'd be a very good student.'

'Two weeks should do it.'

'You'd keep me company?'

'Of course.'

She raised her eyebrows in appreciative amusement. 'What an offer!'

He smiled. 'It would be nice for me.'

She stretched and inhaled, binding her arms tight behind the chair so her frock became breastful. 'Oh the life of the mind,' she hummed. 'All very tempting.' She straightened up to her full seated height, squaring her shoulders, in good posture. 'Shall we go for a walk?'

They paid the bill, rose from the table and made their way out of the restaurant on to a quiet road that ran in the direction of a belvedere under the muscled boughs of a eucalyptus tree. Adela seemed dreamy, taken by the smell of fallen leaves, the gated drives of monumental villas, the luxurious foliage around half-hidden hotels. She was happy to glide on the atmosphere, as if letting Capri into her system with the special openness of a person doomed to go home. She gazed up and across, stood under a tulip tree that rose in chapters of magnitude to a filigree summit against the sky and made sure Michael followed her gaze to the swaying silhouette of a bird that suddenly scattered itself with a screech from the upper branches.

Adela's behind view, the lilting shoulders, the falling arms, the horsey twitch of her frock fell on his eye with a musical smoothness, as though an extra sensuality accompanied vision. He could almost feel the dappled light running across the nape of her neck as she halted and turned, waiting for him to follow.

The path started to descend, and soon they were tripping off steps, gathering speed. Michael was drawn on by the desire to look beyond. Adela bumped along, hand grazing the rail, sharing his anticipation, as though they both wanted to make the discovery first. The path brought them out from under the trees to a railed promenade, and to a wide view of the sea and sky divided by an immense spire of rock.

They slow-motioned on to the promenade, the view hitting back on them until they stopped at the edge, palms on the rail.

'Excellent,' she breathed.

Behind them was a circular bench with a strawberry tree in its middle. After walking the promenade like the edge of a stage, Adela doubled-back to the bench. She sat there and slid down on to her back, hair spiralling over the wooden slats. She lay prone, one foot on the ground, one on the seat, and let the decorated leafy altitudes play on her eyes.

Soon Michael was by her side, sitting contemplatively, palms pressed together between his legs. Without moving he could see everything from the far horizon to the topsy-turvy features of her face. He could see the lineless dome of her forehead, the fine-stitched eyebrows, the lashes of shut eyes resting on a cheek. Her mouth was peacefully closed. She seemed to be listening to the birds and the breeze, almost unaware of him. He tried to claim his own concentration, to receive the spirit of the place and the moment, and not to disturb her reverie.

'Tell me,' she said presently. She twisted round, expelled hair from her face. She looked at him, wanting eye-contact. 'What did you think of that book?'

He frowned at the suddenness of the enquiry; it seemed to come at him from another side of things. 'Oh, I thought it was marvellous.'

She hesitated, pre-mouthing the words. 'What about the theory?'

'The theory?'

'The theory of love?'

He nodded.

'The lurv theory?' She hoiked an eyebrow. 'I mean . . . you know.' She sat up properly. 'The idea that true love is unimaginable until it happens, and that even if you think you're in love with someone, it's always possible that real love will come along like a revelation, making you realise that everything else has been a kind of half-life.'

He looked at her.

'And that is your chance, and you have to take it. In fact, you have to realise it first. And if the chance passes by, that's it. You've missed the opportunity to be happy. The chance of a lifetime. Whoosh. Gone.' She was more than hypothetical, she was assertive.

He shifted his weight. The précis was interesting, and it was interesting that Adela should be so definite about reading the book in this way.

'D'you think that's true?'

He was not ready to venture an opinion. He smiled. 'I'm no great expert on lurv.'

She produced a bent-faced look. 'You've been in love, I hope?'

'I have been.'

'When?'

'When I was married.'

'You were married!'

'Not any more.'

She was utterly astonished, then amused by her astonishment, the suddenness of it, which raised her colouring.

'When was that? Sorry! D'you mind me asking?'

'Eight years ago.'

Adela's eyes were unblinkingly fascinated by the idea of Michael's marriage. 'You seem so unmarried!'

'I am.'

'I mean ever.'

He did not know what he seemed or how he seemed it. She was looking at him for more signs, her irises switching like searchlights over him. She leaned closer, collarbones against neckline.

'So what happened?'

Michael felt disorientated by the frankness of the question. He had no answer that was quite right for someone like Adela.

'You know, on a postage stamp.'

He looked at her lightly.

'Am I being nosy?'

'She was killed in a car crash.'

'Oh!'

'It's all right.'

He could see her embarrassment transforming into a complete readiness of sympathy that almost overflowed from her eyes.

He was always self-conscious about the effect of this disclosure. He did not want Adela to feel sorry for him. Telling people often doomed him to a kind of loneliness. But it was time that she knew and it was necessary to be open.

'I fell in love with Christine on my first day at university,' he began. 'We got married when we were twenty-four. She was a painter. We lived in a flat in Brixton.'

Adela's eyes were still full of surprise.

'She fixed herself up with a studio and did commissioned work, plus her own stuff, mainly landscapes. I loved her ability to express what I could only perceive. And she was beautiful. And of course living at a certain pitch made her irritably perfectionist about things that didn't always matter. She needed space. She needed a structure around her. But when things went well she was pure delight. My better half.' He paused and shrugged. 'When she was twenty-six something snapped. She couldn't paint for a few months, was depressed, prey to strange ideas. I found out then that there was a history of mental illness on her mother's side and before I knew what I was dealing with, before anything was diagnosed or explained, she had got herself killed in a car crash.'

He cleared his throat. He had begun the story and had to finish it.

'For a year I felt like lying down and dying. That was stage one. Stage two was about guilt. For not saving her. For being less gifted than she was, less fine as a person. One tortures oneself mercilessly, and then the rage kicks in. She had ruined my life by getting herself killed. She had taken me with her. Cheated me of my life. All this pain runs through you, and all you can do is hope that tomorrow will be better. For three years I just dragged myself into work. I honestly thought that was it. That was my allocation of happiness in life. I trudged on, numbed one day, distraught the next, and one morning I noticed that whilst all this was going on I had allowed nothing else to count. And the idea that work might count again, that was a turning point. One comes out of the tunnel, if one comes out, with a vengeance. I remember feeling that having been through hell I wasn't going to compromise about the future. I was probably manic. I left the Beeb, set up on my own, tried to put passion back into my work, and discovered that when you have conviction you're a bloody nuisance. In a mad kind of way I needed to go down guns blazing. I needed to purge myself of all cynicism. If that meant taking risks and saying no, and going out on a limb, I had to do that. Perhaps my mother was right when she said that my business problems were self-inflicted, that I was carrying the cross of my grief as a kind of a militant integrity, which alienated colleagues and cost commissions, but which was actually a failure to cope, or depression. But to me it seemed . . . Well, like the start of a recovery. I was rediscovering what I'd learnt from Christine. That art is part of life, and if you trivialise it, you trivialise yourself. Better to give up producing than hack on compromising the best of yourself: the thing you love.' He looked down. 'I was beginning to have strong feelings again. I wanted to hold on to that.'

Adela held her chin in her hand, fingers overlapping her mouth.

He could see at a glance how much she had taken in, how her sense of him had gained depth. But there was nothing she could say to such a speech. No response could strike any kind of note.

'I do believe in true love,' he said, returning to their earlier subject. 'A birthright you encounter by pure serendipity.'

She was happy to take the hint. Her eyes widened. 'But how d'you recognise it? What is it?'

He placed his hand on the seat between them and swung round to face her. 'Knowledge and illumination.'

'Knowledge?'

'When two people complete the best in each other.'

She was eager. 'You believe that can happen?'

'One can only go so far on one's own.'

'That's true.'

Adela seemed troubled. She leaned back against her elbows, pushing forward the swell of each breast.

Michael cupped his mouth.

'It must be incredible,' she sighed.

He swallowed, opened his mouth to speak.

'But suppose you hold out for something better,' she said, 'and it doesn't come along?'

He took in her expression, but then was suddenly mauled by her loveliness, blissfully molested.

She held his gaze.

'There's no alternative,' he managed.

'But what about compromise? One can't expect perfection.'

For a pure moment he felt the unfiltered impact of something unbearably exquisite. He was caught in her mouth's magnetic field, was weightlessly susceptible to iris and eyelash.

'Don't you think?'

'I . . . compromise?'

'Realism.'

'Realism?'

'Not expecting too much of other people,' she said. 'Especially men.'

He hesitated. He knew for a fact he could love Adela. 'You shouldn't expect less from others than you expect from yourself.'

'I know,' she sighed.

'Otherwise it's just a diary entry.'

'Oh Christ,' she wilted. 'Don't!'

Her eyebrows were knitted, her lower lip hung, but she managed a rueful half-smile.

'I've had relationships like that,' he said.

She looked at him directly. He wanted to kiss her. She seemed to read his mind.

'I'm having one.'

'You're having one!'

'Yes,' she said.

The first sensation was of leaning too close to her, and he drew back his hand from the seat between them.

'Damn! You're the only person I've said that to.'

Michael did not blush, but his embarrassment was intense.

'What I can't believe is that this whole thing has been an illusion.'

The admission cut him away from her. He was suddenly relegated, his intensity marooned. He felt peculiar, though not surprised, and slowly, as conversation rambled on, the shock became sorrow.

She sprawled back against the tree, chin on chest, immobilised by confession. She was prey to private thoughts.

'Is that why you have to go back?' he asked eventually.

She hummed softly. 'He's moving to New York for two years and just assumed I'd up sticks and come, as though I have no career, no roots. Which I certainly have. And I'm beginning to think my career is an abstraction to him, which means he doesn't understand me. Which means the relationship isn't real.'

Michael nodded slowly and thoughtfully, and felt a certain coldness enter his heart. Beyond the overhanging leaves stood the Kodachrome picture of a distant sea with its saturated royal blues and horizon of endless promise, and its dazzling stack beating back the afternoon sun, and he felt that his sudden loneliness was unbearably heightened by the crushing beauty of that scene.

He glanced at his watch. Four o'clock. They would meet Hilldyard tomorrow; on Friday she would leave.

Traipsing back to the funicular, he was wryly curious at how suddenly, how steeply, he had succumbed. He had actually had the impulse to kiss her, felt it gather, rise up, an appallingly strong urge. She had sprawled back so fetchingly that he was immensely relieved not to have embarrassed himself.

They cornered through the narrow streets, re-tracing their outward walk with more knowledge of each other and less energy flowing between them, and he wondered about her boyfriend, and what kind of a man he was.

Later, on the hydrofoil, the wind buffeted his face and purged his disappointment. Ahead of them Positano was slowly reborn, its cluttered terraces and shanty villas gradually emerging from the skirts of the mountains, its harbour lights ushering in the dusk. He felt the pull of a homecoming. He could look forward to solitude again, to more reading and talking with the old man, and to Positano's autumnal sanctuary, its gorgeous mornings and ethereal light.

And anyway, he rationalised, as they clambered off the boat on to the quay, glancing over the beach to where he had first seen Adela in her bikini, he had no evidence she liked him in that way. Her friendliness was probably non-exclusive. She was used to delighting people; that was her job. She was personable and attractive and she knew how to make of herself a proposition that was conceptually pleasing. It was her gift to be lovely, and her duty to be generous with that gift. He had succumbed to an allure that doubtless afflicted many intelligent men, men who liked to be engaged intellectually before submitting to the trauma of physical desire.

She was tired, flushed by the sea air, and he escorted her at an easy pace up the twisting Viale. The street was busy with evening traffic, Piaggio scooters, Ape vans, lively children.

He brought her to the hotel, where he gave her a squeeze and they managed a kiss.

'I can't believe I'm going to meet him,' she said.

'I'll call you tomorrow.'

'I'll keep myself free,' she smiled.

He hesitated.

'I won't mention the book,' she promised.

Michael made his way up the winding road, joining in with the six o'clock passeggiata. He took a seat at a bar and stared at the sombre reaches of the evening sky while couples drank beer and smoked cigarettes. Three teenage girls with tousled manes of chestnut hair sucked Orangina through straws. A young man placed his car keys on the next table and shouted across the street to a character in jeans and cowboy boots. The evening was just beginning.

After a last swig he went back to his hotel, where he took the unusual and unsatisfactory step of dining in the restaurant. By the time he slipped up the marble steps to his landing he felt dull and drowsy; and, when he twisted the lock and pushed into the trapped air of his bedroom, the dim light conspired with tiredness to draw him in a headlong slouch to his mattress and to a slow undoing of buttons and shedding of clothes.

He sat for a while on the bed. And then he rose for a last look through the shutters, and found himself drifting on to the balcony and into the cool air and standing before the night and the sea.

Later, he sat upright in bed.

He sat waiting for a moment, his hands flat on the bedspread, while something collapsed within him, some force of resistance that had run out, as it did from time to time, leaving a vacuum in his heart.

It came suddenly, the familiar spasm: a wrench of despair. He lay there, looking to the side, strangely grimacing; and then he tried to move, as if to pull away from the epicentre of the feeling; and as he reached the edge of the bed he wondered if this returning stab of sorrow were the memory of his love for Christine welling up and attacking him from within, like something to be set free.

He bathed his face in his hands and reached for the glass of water on his bedside table. Tomorrow, he thought, he would try to do some more writing.