On The Yankee Station_ Stories Part 4

The room was empty and Gavin walked along the verandah past his bedroom and that of his older sister. His sister, Amanda, was at boarding school in England; Gavin was going to join her there next year. He used to like his sister but since her fifteenth birthday she had changed. When she had come out on holiday last Christmas she had hardly played with him at all. She was bored with him; she preferred going shopping with her mother. A conspiracy of sorts seemed to have sprung up between the women of the family from which Gavin and his father were excluded.

When he thought of his sister now, he felt that he hated her. Sometimes he wished the plane that was bringing her out to Africa would crash and she would be killed. Then there would be only Gavin; he would be the only child. As he pa.s.sed her bedroom he was reminded of this fantasy and despite himself he paused, thinking about it again, trying to imagine what life would be like-how it would be different. As he did so, the other dream began to edge itself into his mind like an insistent hand signalling at the back of a cla.s.sroom, drawing attention to itself. He had this dream quite a lot these days and it made him feel peculiar; he knew it was bad, a wrong thing to do, and sometimes he forced himself not to think about it. But it never worked, for it always came faltering back with its strange imaginative allure, and he would find himself lost in it, savouring its pleasures, indulging in its sweet, illicit sensations.

It was a variation on the theme of his sister's death, but this time it also included his father. His father and sister had died in a car crash and Gavin had to break the news to his mother. As she sobbed with grief she clung to him for support. Gavin would soothe her, stroking her hair as he'd seen done on TV in England, whispering words of comfort.

In the dream Gavin's mother never remarried, and she and Gavin returned to England to live. People would look at them in the street, the tall elegant widow in black, and her son, growing tall and more mature himself, being brave and good by her side. People around them seemed to whisper: "I don't know what she would have done without him," and, "Yes, he's been a marvel," and, "They're so close now."

Gavin shook his head, blus.h.i.+ng guiltily. He didn't hate his father-he just got angry with him sometimes-and it made him feel bad and upset that he kept on imagining him dead. But the dream insistently repeated itself, and it continued to expand; the narrative furnished itself with more and more precise details; the funeral scene was added, the cottage Gavin and his mother took near Canterbury, the plans they made for the school holidays. It grew steadily more real and credible-it was like discovering a new world-but as it did, so Gavin found himself more dissatisfied with the way things were.

Gavin slowly pushed open the door of his parents' bedroom. Sometimes he knocked, but his mother had laughed and told him not to be silly. Still, he was cautious, as he had once been horribly embarra.s.sed to find them both asleep, naked and sprawled on the rumpled double bed. But today he knew his father was at work in his chemistry lab. Only his mother would be having a siesta.

But Gavin's mother was sitting in front of her dressing table brus.h.i.+ng her short but thick reddish auburn hair. She was wearing only a black bra and pants that contrasted strongly with the pale freckly tan of her firm body. A cigarette burned in an ashtray. She brushed methodically and absent-mindedly, her s.h.i.+ning hair crackling under the brush. She seemed quite unaware of Gavin standing behind her, looking on. Then he coughed.

"Yes, darling, what is it?" she said without looking round.

Gavin sensed rather than appreciated that his mother was a beautiful woman. He did not realise that she was prevented from achieving it fully by a sulky turn to her lips and a hardness in her pale eyes. She stood up and stretched languidly, walking barefooted over to the wardrobe, where she selected a cotton dress.

"Where are you going?" Gavin asked without thinking.

"Rehearsal, dear. For the play," his mother replied.

"Oh. Well, I'm going out too." He left it at that. Just to see if she'd say anything this time, but she seemed not to have heard. So he added, "I'm going with Laurence and David. To kill lizards."

"Yes, darling," his mother said, intently examining the dress she had chosen. "Do try not to touch the lizards. They're nasty things. There's a good boy." She held the dress up in front of her and looked at her reflection critically in the mirror. She laid the dress on the bed, sat down again and began to apply some lipstick. Gavin looked at her rich red hair and the curve of her spine in her creamy back, broken by the dark strap of her bra, and the three moles on the curve of her haunch where it was tautened by the elastic of her pants. Gavin swallowed. His mother's presence in his life loomed like a huge wall at whose foot his needs cowered like beggars at a city gate. He wished she bothered about him more, did things with him as she did with Amanda. He felt strange and uneasy about her, proud and uncomfortable. He had been pleased last Sat.u.r.day when she took him to the pool in town, but then she had worn a small bikini and the Syrian men round the bar had stared at her. (David's mother always wore a swimsuit of a p.r.i.c.kly material with stiff bones in it.) When he went out of the room she was brus.h.i.+ng her hair again and he didn't bother to say goodbye.

Gavin walked down the road. He was wearing a striped T-s.h.i.+rt, white shorts and Clarks sandals without socks. The early afternoon sun beat down on his head and the heat vibrated up from the tarmac. On either side of him were the low senior-staff bungalows, shadowy beneath their wide eaves. They seemed to be pressed down into the earth, as if the blazing sun bore down with intolerable weight. The coruscating scarlet dazzle of flamboyant trees that lined the road danced spottily in his eyes.

The university campus was a large one but Gavin had come to know it intimately in the two years since his parents had moved to Africa. In Canterbury his father had been only a lecturer but here he was a professor in the Chemistry Department. Gavin loved to go down to the labs with their curious ammoniacal smells, brilliant fluids and mad-scientist constructions of phials, test-tubes and rubber pipes. He thought he might pay his father a surprise visit that afternoon, as their lizard hunt should take them in that direction.

Gavin and his two friends had been shooting lizards with their catapults for the three weeks of the Easter holidays and had so far accounted for 143. They killed mainly the male and female of one species that seemed to populate every group of boulders or area of concrete in the country. The lizards were large, sometimes growing to eighteen inches in length. The females were slightly smaller than the males and were a dirty speckled-khaki colour. The males were more resplendent, with brilliant orange-red heads, pale-grey bodies and black-barred feet and tails. They did no one any harm, just basked in the sun doing a curious bobbing press-up motion. At first they were ludicrously easy to kill. The boys could creep up to within three or four feet and with one well-placed stone reduce the basking, complacent lizard to a writhing knot, its feet clawing at a buckled spine or shattered head. A slight guilt had soon grown up among the boys and they accordingly convinced themselves that the lizards were pests and that, rather like rats, they spread diseases.

But the lizards, like any threatened species, grew wise to the hunters and now scurried off at the merest hint of approach, and the boys had to range wider and wider through the campus to find zones where the word had not spread and where the lizards still clung unconcernedly to walls, like dozing sunbathers unaware of the looming thunderclouds.

Gavin met his friends at the pre-arranged corner. Today they were heading for the university staff's preparatory school at a far edge of the campus. There was an expansive outcrop of boulders there with a sizeable lizard community that they had been evaluating for some time, and this afternoon they planned a blitz.

They walked down the road firing stones at trees and clumps of bushes. Gavin teased Laurence about his bandy legs and then joined forces with him to mock David about his spots and his hugely fat sister until he threatened to go home. Gavin felt tense and malicious, and lied easily to them about how he had fas.h.i.+oned his own catapult, which was far superior to their clumsier home-made efforts. He was glad when they rounded a corner and came in sight of the long simple buildings of the chemistry labs.

"Let's go and see my dad," he suggested.

Gavin's father was marking exam papers in an empty lab when the three boys arrived. He was tall and thin with spa.r.s.e black hair brushed across his balding head. Gavin possessed his similar tentative smile. They chatted for a while; then Gavin's father showed them some frozen nitrogen. He picked a red hibiscus bloom off a hedge outside and dipped it in the container of fuming liquid. Then he dropped the flower on the floor and it shattered to pieces like fine china.

"Where are you off to?" he asked as the boys made ready to leave.

"Down to the school to get lizards," Gavin replied.

"There's a monster one down there," said David. "I've seen it."

"I hope you don't leave them lying around," Gavin's father said. "Things rot in this sun very quickly."

"It's okay," Gavin affirmed brightly. "The hawks soon get them."

Gavin's father looked thoughtful. "What's your mother doing?" he asked his son. "Left her on her own, have you?"

"Israel's there," Gavin replied sullenly. "But anyway she's going to her play rehearsal or something. Drama, drama, you know."

"Today? Are you sure?" his father asked, seemingly surprised.

"That's what she said. Bye, Dad. See you tonight."

The school lay on a small plateau overlooking a teak forest and the jungle that stretched away beyond it. The outcrop of rocks was poised on the edge of the plateau and it ran down in pale, pinkish slabs to the beginning of the teak trees.

The boys killed four female lizards almost at once but the others had rushed into crevices and stayed there. Gavin caught a glimpse of a large red head as it scuttied off, and the three of them pelted the deep niche it hid in and prodded at it with sticks, but it was just not coming out.

Then Gavin and Laurence thought they saw a fruit bat in a palm tree, but David couldn't see it and soon lost interest. They patrolled the deserted school buildings for a while and then hung, bat-like themselves, on the jungle gym in the playground. David, who had perched on the top, heard the sound of a car as it negotiated a b.u.mpy rutted track that led into the jungle and which ran for a while along the base of the plateau. He soon saw a Volkswagen van lurching along. A man was driving and a woman sat beside him.

"Hey, Gavin," David said without thinking. "Isn't that your mother?"

Gavin climbed quickly up beside him and looked.

"No," he said. "Nope. Definitely."

They resumed their play but the implication hung in the air like a threat, despite their suddenly earnest jocularity. In the unspoken way in which these things arrange themselves, David and Laurence soon announced that they had to go home. Gavin said that he would stay on a bit. He wanted to see if he could get that big lizard.

Laurence and David wandered off with many a backward-shouted message about where they would meet tomorrow and what they would do. Then Gavin clambered about half-heartedly on the jungle gym before he walked down the slope to the track, which he followed into the teak forest. There was still heat in the afternoon sun and the trees and bushes looked tired from a day's exposure. The big soup-plate leaves of the teak trees hung limply in the damp, dusty atmosphere.

Gavin heard his mother's laugh before he saw the van. He moved off the track and followed the curve of a bend until he saw the van through the leaves. It was pulled up on the other side of the mud road. The large sliding door was thrown back and Gavin could see that the bunk bed inside had been folded down. His mother was sitting on the edge of the bunk, laughing. A man without a s.h.i.+rt was struggling to zip up her dress. She laughed again, showing her teeth and throwing back her head, joyously shaking her thick red hair. Gavin knew the man: he was called Ian Swan and sometimes came to the house. He had a neat black beard and curling black hair all over his chest.

Gavin stood motionless behind the thick screen of leaves and watched his mother and the man. He knew at once what they had been doing. He watched them caper and kiss and laugh. Finally Gavin's mother tugged herself free and scrambled round the van and into the front seat. Gavin saw a pair of sungla.s.ses drop from her open handbag. She didn't notice they had fallen. Swan put on his s.h.i.+rt and joined her in the front of the van.

As they backed and turned the van Gavin held his breath in an agony of tension in case they should run over the gla.s.ses. When they had gone he stood for a while before walking over and picking up the sungla.s.ses. They were quite cheap; Gavin remembered she had bought them last leave in England. They were favourites. They had pale blue lenses and candy-pink frames. He held them carefully in the palm of his hand as if he were holding an injured bird.

MUMMY...

As he walked down the track to the school, the numbness, the blank camera stare that had descended on him the moment he had heard his mother's high laugh, began to dissipate. A slow tingling charge of triumph and elation began to infuse his body.

OH, MUMMY, I THINK...

He looked again at the sungla.s.ses in his palm. Things would change now. Nothing would be the same after this secret. It seemed to him now as if he were carrying a ticking bomb.

OH, MUMMY, I THINK I'VE FOUND YOUR SUNGLa.s.sES.

The lowering sun was striking the flat rocks of the outcrop full on and Gavin could feel the heat through the soles of his sandals as he walked up the slope. Then, ahead, facing away from him, he saw the lizard. It was catching the last warmth of the day, red head methodically bobbing, sleek torso and long tail motionless. Carefully Gavin set down the gla.s.ses and took his catapult and a pebble from his pocket. Stupid lizard, he thought, sunbathing, head bobbing like that, you never know who's around. He drew a bead on it, cautiously easing the thick rubber back to full stretch until his rigid left arm began to quiver from the tension.

He imagined the stone breaking the lizard's back, a pink welling tear in the pale scaly skin. The curious slow-motion way the mortally wounded creatures keeled over, sometimes a single leg twitching crazily like a spinning rear wheel on an upended crashed car.

The lizard basked on, unaware.

Gavin eased off the tension. Holding his breath with the effort, heart thumping in his ears. He stood for a few seconds letting himself calm down. His mother would be home now; he should have enough time before his father returned. He picked up the sungla.s.ses and backed softly away and around, leaving the lizard undisturbed. Then, with his eyes alight and gleaming beneath his oddly heavy brows, he set off steadily for home.

Bizarre Situations

Before we start, something from this book I'm reading called Truth, Falsehood and Philosophy: Truth, Falsehood and Philosophy: "It occasionally happens that a situation is so new and unusual that no speaker of the language is equipped to say what words are appropriate for it. We shall call such situations "It occasionally happens that a situation is so new and unusual that no speaker of the language is equipped to say what words are appropriate for it. We shall call such situations bizarre." bizarre."

That's what the book says, and I think it's quite interesting and fairly relevant. But, how to begin? Perhaps: I shall never forget the sight of Joan's crumpled body, her head clumsily de-topped, like a fractious child's attempt to open a boiled egg; as if some giant's teaspoon had levered and battered its way to Joan's decidedly average brain.

Or maybe: I am here in Paris, Monday night, Bar Cercle, Rue Christine-well into my third Pernod-looking for Kramer. Kramer who came to stay and allowed his wife to suicide in my guest bedroom. Suicide? No chance. Kramer murdered her and I have the proof. I think.

Or possibly: To cure some chronic cases of epilepsy, surgeons sometimes resort to a severance of the corpus callosum corpus callosum, the substance that holds together-and forms a crucial link between-the two hemispheres of the brain. The cure is radical, as is all brain surgery, but on the whole completely successful. Except, that is, for some very unusual side effects.

Into which we shall go later; my own epilepsy has been cured in this way. But, to return, the problem now is that all the beginnings are very apt, very apt indeed. Three of them though: three routes leading G.o.d knows where. And then, endings, too, are equally important, for-really-what I'm after is the truth. Or even TRUTH. A very elusive character. As elusive as b.l.o.o.d.y Kramer, sod him.

My preoccupation with truth arises from the division of my corpus callosum corpus callosum and explains why I am reading this book called and explains why I am reading this book called Truth, Falsehood and Philosophy Truth, Falsehood and Philosophy. I open at random. Chapter Two: Expressing Beliefs in Sentences. "Beliefs are hard to study directly and many sentences do not naturally state beliefs...." My eyes dart impatiently down the page: "... although truth does not not have degrees it have degrees it does does have many borderline cases." At last something pertinent. For someone with my unique problems these donnish evasions and qualifications are incredibly frustrating. So, "truth has borderline cases." Good. I'm glad to find the academics admit this much, especially as since my operation the whole world has become a borderline case for me. have many borderline cases." At last something pertinent. For someone with my unique problems these donnish evasions and qualifications are incredibly frustrating. So, "truth has borderline cases." Good. I'm glad to find the academics admit this much, especially as since my operation the whole world has become a borderline case for me.

Kramer was at school with me. To be candid I admired him greatly and he casually exploited my admiration. In fact you could say that I loved Kramer-in a brotherly sort of way-to such an extent that, had he bothered to ask, I would have laid down my life for him. It sounds absurd to admit this now, but there was something almost n.o.ble about Kramer's disregard for everyone except himself. You know these selfish people whose selfishness seems quite reasonable-admirable, really, in its refusal to compromise. Kramer was like that: intelligent, mysterious and self-absorbed.

We were at university together for a while, but he was scandalously sent down and went off to America, where he duly made something of a name for himself as a sort of hoodlum art critic, a cultural vigilante with no respect for reputations. I often saw shadowy photographs of him in fas.h.i.+onable glossy magazines, and it was in one of them that I learned of his marriage-after ten years of rampant bachelorhood-to one Joan Aslinger, heiress to a West Coast fast-food chain.

Kramer and I had grown to become close friends of a sort and I continued to write to him regularly. I'm happy to report that he kept in touch: the odd letter, kitsch postcards from Hammamet or Tijuana. He used to come and stay as well-with his current girl-friend, whoever that might be-in my quiet Devon cottage for a boisterous weekend every two years or so.

I remember he was surprisingly solicitous when he heard about my operation and in an uncharacteristic gesture of largesse sent a hundred white roses to the clinic where I was convalescing. He promised shortly to visit me with his new wife, Joan.

It was during one of my periodic sojourns in the sanatorium that I experienced the particularly acute and destructive epileptic attack that prompted the doctors to recommend the severing of my corpus callosum corpus callosum. The operation was a complete success. I remember only waking up as bald as a football, with a thin, livid stripe of lacing running fore and aft along my skull.

The surgeon-a Mr. Berkeley, a genial elderly Irishman-did mention the unusual side effects I would have as a result of the coupage coupage but dismissed them with a benign smile as being "metaphysical" in character and quite unlikely to impair the quality of my daily life. Foolishly, I accepted his a.s.surances. but dismissed them with a benign smile as being "metaphysical" in character and quite unlikely to impair the quality of my daily life. Foolishly, I accepted his a.s.surances.

Kramer and his wife came to stay as promised. Joan was a fairly attractive girl; she had delightful honey-blond hair-always so clean-bright blue eyes and a loose, generous mouth. She chatted and laughed in what was clearly an attempt at sophisticated animation, but it was immediately obvious to me that she was hopelessly neurotic and quite unsuited to be Kramer's wife. When they were together the tension that crackled between them was unbearable. On the first night they stayed, I overheard a savage, teeth-clenched row in the guest bedroom.

It was the effect on Kramer that I found most depressing. He was drawn and cowed, like a cornered, beaten man. His brilliant wit was reduced to glum monosyllables or fervent contradictions of any opinion Joan ventured to express. Irritation and despair were lodged in every feature of his face.

It didn't surprise me greatly when, three strained days later, Kramer announced that he had to go to London on business and Joan and I found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands. She tried hard, I have to admit, but I found her tedious and dull, as most obsessively introspective people tend to be. She came slightly more alive when she drank, which was frequently, and our preprandial lunch-time session swiftly advanced to elevenses.

I soon got the full story of Kramer's constant b.a.s.t.a.r.dy, of course: a tearful finger-knotting account, leaden with self-pity, that went on well into the night. Other women apparently, from the word go. Things had become dramatically worse because now, it seemed, there was one in particular: one Erica-said with much venom-an old flame. As Erica's description emerged, I realised to my surprise that I knew her. She had figured in two of Kramer's visits before his marriage to Joan. Erica was a tall, intelligent redhead, strong-shouldered and of arresting appearance and with a calm and confident personality. I had liked her a lot. Naturally I didn't tell any of this to Joan, whom-as Kramer predictably rang from London announcing successive delays-I was beginning to find increasingly tiresome; she was getting on my nerves.

Take her reaction to my own particular case, for example. When I explained my unique problems caused by the side effects of my operation, she didn't believe me. She laughed, said I must be joking, claimed that such things could never happen. I admitted such cases were exceptionally rare but affirmed it as doc.u.mented medical fact.

I now know, thanks to this book I'm reading, the correct academic term for my "ailment." I am a "bizarre situation." Reading on, I find this conclusion: "Our language is not sufficiently articulated to cope with such rare and unusual circ.u.mstances. Many philosophers and logicians are deeply unhappy about 'bizarre situations.'" So, even the philosophers have to admit it. In my case there is no hope of ever reaching the truth. I find the concession rea.s.suring somehow-but I still feel that I have to see Kramer again.

Indeed, my condition is truly bizarre. Since the link between my cerebral hemispheres was severed, my brain now functions as two discrete halves. The only bodily function that this effects is perception, and the essence of the problem is this. If I see, for example, a cat in my left- left-side area of vision and I am asked to write down what I have seen with my right right hand-I am right-handed-I cannot. I cannot write down what I have seen because the right half of my brain no longer registers what occurred in my left-hand area of vision. This is because the hemispherical division in your brain extends, so to speak, the length of your body. Right hemisphere controls right side; left hemisphere, left side. Normally the information from both sides has free pa.s.sage from one hemisphere to the other-linking the two halves into one unified whole. But now that this route-the hand-I am right-handed-I cannot. I cannot write down what I have seen because the right half of my brain no longer registers what occurred in my left-hand area of vision. This is because the hemispherical division in your brain extends, so to speak, the length of your body. Right hemisphere controls right side; left hemisphere, left side. Normally the information from both sides has free pa.s.sage from one hemisphere to the other-linking the two halves into one unified whole. But now that this route-the corpus callosum corpus callosum-has gone, only half half my brain has seen the cat. The right hemisphere knows nothing about it, so it can hardly tell my right hand what to note down. my brain has seen the cat. The right hemisphere knows nothing about it, so it can hardly tell my right hand what to note down.

This is what the surgeon meant by "metaphysical" side effects, and he was right to say my day-to-day existence would be untroubled by them, but consider the radical consequences of this on my phenomenological world. It is now nothing but a sequence of half-truths. What, for me, is really true? How can I be sure if something that happens in my left-side area of vision really took place, if in one half of my body there is absolutely no record of it ever having occurred? absolutely no record of it ever having occurred?

I spend befuddled hours wrestling with these arcane epistemological riddles. Doubt is underwritten; it comes to occupy a superior position to truth and falsehood. I am a genuine, physiologically real sceptic-medically consigned to this fate by the surgeon's knife. Uncertainty is the only thing I can really be sure of.

You see what this means, of course. In my world, truth is exactly what I want to believe.

I came to this book hoping for some sort of guidance, but it can only b.u.mble on about the "insufficient articulation of our language," which is absolutely no help at all, however accurate it may be. For example, the door of this cafe I'm sitting in is on my left-hand side. I clearly see in my left field of vision a tall woman in black come through it and advance towards the bar. I take a pen from my pocket and intend to write down what I saw in the margin of my book. I say to myself: "Write down what you saw coming through the door." I cannot do it, of course. As far as the right-hand side of my body is concerned, the lady in black does not exist. So which hemisphere of my brain do I trust, then? Which version of the truth do I accept: lady or no lady?

They are both true as far as I am concerned, and whatever I decide, one half of my body will back my judgement to the death.

Of course there is a simple way out: I can turn round, bring her into my right field of vision, firmly establish her existence. But that's entirely up to me. Oh, yes. Unlike the rest of you, verification is a gift I can bestow or withdraw at will.

I turn. I see her. She is tall, with curly reddish auburn hair. Our eyes meet, part, meet again. Recognition flares. It is Erica.

It was I who discovered Joan's body on the floor of the guest bedroom. (One shot: my father's old Smith & Wesson pressed against her soft palate. I use the revolver-fully licensed of course-to blast at the rooks that sometimes wheel and caw round the house. Indeed, Joan and I spent a tipsy afternoon engaged in this sport. I couldn't have known....) Kramer was still in London. I had gone out to a dinner party, leaving Joan curled up with a whisky bottle-she had muttered something about a migraine. Naturally, I phoned the police at once.

Kramer arrived on the first train from London the next morning, numbed and shattered by the news.

At the inquest-a formality-it came out that Joan had attempted suicide a few months earlier and Kramer admitted to the rockiness of their marriage. He stayed with me until it was all over. They were stressful, edgy days. Kramer was taciturn and preoccupied, which under the circ.u.mstances wasn't surprising. He did tell me, though, that he hadn't been continually in London but in fact had spent some days in Paris with Erica where some sort of emotional crisis had ensued. He had only been back thirty-six hours when the police phoned his London hotel with the news of Joan's death.

And now Erica herself sits opposite me. Her face has very little make-up on and she looks tense and worried. After the initial pleasantries we both blurt out, "What are you doing here?" and both realise simultaneously that we are here for the same reason. Looking for Kramer.

When Kramer left after the inquest he told me he was going to Paris to re-join Erica and make a film on De Chirico for French TV. Apparently unperturbed he had continued to sleep in the guest bedroom, but it was several days before I could bring myself to go in and clean it out. In the waste-paper basket I found several magazines, a map of Paris, a crumpled napkin from the Bar Cercle with the message, "Monday, Rue Christine" scrawled on it and, to my alarm and intense consternation, a semi-transparent credit card receipt slip from a filling station on the M4 at a place no more than an hour's drive from the house. This unsettled me. As far as I knew, Kramer had no car. And, what was more disturbing, the date on the receipt slip was the same as the night Joan died.

Erica is distinctly on edge. She says she has arranged to meet Kramer here tonight, as she has something to tell him. She picks at her lower lip distractedly.

"But anyway," she says with vague annoyance, "what do you want him for?"

I shrug my shoulders. "I have to see him as well," I say. "There's something I have to clear up."

"What is it?"

I almost tell her. I almost say, I want the truth. I want to know if he killed his wife. If he hired a car, drove to the house, found her alone and insensibly drunk, typed the note, put the pistol in her lolling mouth and blew the top of her head off.

But I don't. I say it's just a personal matter.

There is a pause in our conversation. I say to Erica, who nervously lights a cigarette, "Look, I think I should talk to him first."

"No!" she replies instantly. "I must speak to him." Speak to him about what? I wonder. It irritates me. Is Kramer to be hounded perpetually by these neurotic harpies? What has the man done to deserve this?

We see Kramer at the same time as he sees us. He strides over to our table. He stares angrily at me.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" he demands in tones of real astonishment.

"I'm sorry," I say, nervousness making my voice tremble. "But I have to speak to you." It's like being back at school.

Erica crushes out her cigarette and jumps to her feet. I can see she is blinking back tears.

"I have news for you," she says, fighting to keep her voice strong. "Important news."

Kramer grips her by the elbows. "Come back," he says softly, pleadingly.

I am impatient with whatever lovelorn drama it is that they are enacting, and also obscurely angered by this demeaning display of reliance. Raising my voice I flourish the credit card receipt. "Kramer," I say. "I want to know about this."