Saturday. Part 3

From his position, with his back to the fire exit, Perowne can already see that a bad moment awaits Baxter. He turns away from Perowne and steps out into the centre of the pavement in time to see Nigel and Nark walking away from the BMW, back towards the Tottenham Court Road.

Baxter makes a short run in their direction and shouts, 'Oi!'

They glance back, and Nark, uncharacteristically energetic, gives him the finger. As they walk on, Nigel makes a limp wristed dismissive gesture. The general has been indecisive, 98 the troops are deserting, the humiliation is complete. Perowne too sees his opportunity to withdraw. He crosses the pavement, steps into the road and around his car. His keys are in the ignition. As he starts the engine he sees Baxter in his rearview mirror, dithering between the departing factions, shouting at both. Perowne eases forwards - for pride's sake, he does not want to appear hurried. The insurance is an irrelevance, and it amazes him now that he ever thought it important. He sees his racket on the front seat beside him. This is surely the moment to slip away, while the possibility remains that he can still rescue his game.

After he's parked, and before getting out of the car, he phones Rosalind at work - his long fingers still trembling, fumbling with the miniature keys. On this important day for her he doesn't intend to distract her with the story of his near thras.h.i.+ng. And he doesn't need sympathy. What he wants is more fundamental - the sound of her voice in an everyday exchange, the resumption of normal existence. What can be more rea.s.suringly plain than husband and wife discussing the details of tonight's dinner? He speaks to a temp, what they call in Rosalind's office a hot-desker, and learns that her meeting with the editor has started late and is running on. He leaves no message, and says he'll try later.

It's unusual to see the gla.s.s-fronted squash courts deserted on a Sat.u.r.day. He walks along the row, on stained blue carpet, past the giant c.o.ke and energy bar dispensers, and finds the consultant anaesthetist at the far end, in number five, smacking the ball in fast repeated strokes low along the backhand wall, giving the appearance of a man working off a bad temper. But, it turns out, he's been waiting only ten minutes. He lives across the river in Wandsworth; the march forced him to abandon his car by the Festival Hall. Furious with himself for being late, he jogged across Waterloo Bridge and saw below him tens of thousands pouring along the Embankment towards Parliament Square. Too young for the Vietnam war protests, he's never in his life seen so many people in one place. Despite his own views, he was some , what moved. This, he told himself, is the democratic process, however inconvenient. He watched for five minutes, then jogged up Kingsway, against the flow of bodies. He describes all this while Perowne sits on the bench removing his sweater and tracksuit bottom, and making a heap of his wallet, keys j and phone to store at one of the corners by the front wall he and Strauss are never serious enough to insist on a completely cleared court.

They dislike your Prime Minister, but boy do they f.u.c.king loathe my President.'

Jay is the only American medic Perowne knows to have taken a huge cut in salary and amenities to work in England. He says he loves the health system. He also loved an Englishwoman, had three children by her, divorced her, married another similar-looking English rose twelve years younger and had another two children - still toddlers, and a third is on its way. But his respect for socialised medicine or his love of children do not make him an ally of the peace cause. The proposed war, Perowne finds, generally doesn't divide people predictably; a known package of opinions is not a reliable guide. According to Jay, the matter is stark: how open societies deal with the new world situation will determine how open they remain. He's a man of untroubled certainties, impatient of talk of diplomacy, weapons of ma.s.s destruction, inspection teams, proofs of links with Al-Qaeda and so on. Iraq is a rotten state, a natural ally of terrorists, bound to cause mischief at some point and may as well be taken out now while the US military is feeling perky after Afghanistan. And by taken out, he insists he means liberated and democratised. The USA has to atone for its previous disastrous policies - at the very least it owes this to the Iraqi people. Whenever he talks to Jay, Henry finds himself tending towards the anti-war camp.

Strauss is a powerful, earthbound, stocky man, physically 100.I affectionate, energetic, direct in manner - to some of his English colleagues, tiresomely so. He's been completely bald since he was thirty. He works out for more than an hour each day, and looks like a wrestler. When he busies himself around his patients in the anaesthetic room, readying them for oblivion, they are rea.s.sured by the sight of the sculpted muscles on his forearms, the dense bulk of his neck and shoulders, and by the way he speaks to them - matter-of-fact, cheerful, without condescension. Anxious patients can believe this squat American will lay down his life to spare them pain.

They have worked together six years. As far as Henry is concerned, Jay is the key to the success of his firm. When things go wrong, Strauss becomes calm. If, for example, Perowne is obliged to cut off a major blood vessel to make a repair, Jay keeps time in a soothing way, ending with a murmured, 'You've got one minute, Boss, then you're out of there.' On the rare occasions when things go really badly, when there's no way back, Strauss will find him out afterwards, alone in a quiet stretch of corridor, and put his hands on his shoulders, squeeze tightly and say, 'OK Henry. Let's talk it through now. Before you start crucifying yourself.' This isn't the way an anaesthetist, even a consultant, usually speaks to a surgeon. Consequently, Strauss has an above average array of enemies. On certain committees, Perowne has protected his friend's broad back from various collegiate daggers. Now and then he finds himself saying to Jay something like, 'I don't care what you think. Be nice to him. Remember our funding next year.'

While Henry does his stretching exercises, Jay goes back on court to keep the ball warm, driving it down the right hand wall. There appears to be an extra punch today in his low shots, and the sequence of fast volleys is surely planned to intimidate an opponent. It works. Perowne feels the echoing rifle-shot crack of the ball as an oppression; there's an unusual stiffness in his neck as he goes through his routine, pus.h.i.+ng with his left hand against his right elbow.

Through the open gla.s.s door, he raises his voice to explain why he's late, but it's a truncated account, centred mostly on the sc.r.a.pe itself, the way the red car pulled out, and how he swerved, how the damage to the paintwork was surprisingly light. He skips the rest, saying only that it took a while to sort out. He doesn't want to hear himself describe Baxter and his friends. They'll interest Strauss too much, and prompt questions he doesn't feel like answering yet. He's already feeling a rising unease about the encounter, a disquiet he < can't="" yet="" define,="" though="" guilt="" is="" certainly="" an="" element.="" m="" he="" feels="" his="" left="" knee="" creak="" as="" he="" stretches="" his="" hamstrings.="" when="" will="" it="" be="" time="" to="" give="" up="" this="" game?="" his="" fiftieth="" birthday?="" or="" sooner.="" get="" out="" before="" he="" rips="" an="" anterior="" cruciate="" ligament,="" or="" crashes="" to="" the="" parquet="" with="" his="" first="" coronary.="" he's="" working="" on="" the="" tendons="" of="" his="" other="" leg,="" strauss="" is="" still="" performing="" his="" rapid-fire="" volleys.="" perowne="" suddenly="" feels="" his="" own="" life="" as="" fragile="" and="" precious.="" his="" limbs="" appear="" to="" him="" as="" neglected="" old="" friends,="" absurdly="" long="" and="" breakable.="" is="" he="" in="" mild="" shock?="" his="" heart="" will="" be="" all="" the="" more="" vulnerable="" after="" that="" punch.="" his="" chest="" still="" aches.="" he="" has="" a="" duty="" to="" others="" to="" survive,="" and="" he="" mustn't="" endanger="" his="" own="" life="" for="" a="" mere="" game,="" smacking="" a="" ball="" against="" a="" wall.="" and="" there's="" no="" such="" thing="" as="" a="" gentle="" game="" of="" squash,="" especially="" with="" jay.="" especially="" with="" himself.="" they="" both="" hate="" to="" lose.="" once="" they="" get="" going,="" they="" fight="" points="" like="" madmen.="" he="" should="" make="" excuses="" and="" pull="" out="" now,="" and="" risk="" irritating="" his="" friend.="" a="" negligible="" price.="" as="" he="" straightens="" up,="" it="" occurs="" to="" perowne="" that="" what="" he="" really="" wants="" is="" to="" go="" home="" and="" lie="" down="" in="" the="" bedroom="" and="" think="" it="" through,="" the="" dispute="" in="" university="" street,="" and="" decide="" how="" he="" should="" have="" handled="" it,="" and="" what="" it="" was="" he="" got="">

But even as he's thinking this, he's pulling on his goggles and stepping onto the court and closing the door behind him. He kneels to settle his valuables in a front- wall corner. There's a momentum to the everyday, a Sat.u.r.day morning game of squash with a good friend and colleague, that he doesn't 102 have the strength of will to interrupt. He stands on the backhand side of the court, Strauss sends a brisk, friendly ball down the centre, automatically Perowne returns it, back along its path. And so they are launched into the familiar routines of a warm-up. The third ball he mis.h.i.+ts, slapping it loudly into the tin. A couple of strokes later he stops to retie his laces. He can't settle. He feels slow and enc.u.mbered and his grip feels misaligned, too open, too closed, he doesn't know. He fiddles with his racket between strokes. Four minutes pa.s.s and they've yet to have a decent exchange. There's none df that easy rhythm that usually works them into their game. He notices that Jay is slowing his pace, offering easier angles to keep the ball in play. At last, Perowne feels obliged to say he's ready. Since he lost last week's game - this is their arrangement - he is to serve.

He takes up his position in the right-hand service box. From behind him on the other side of the court, he hears Jay mutter, 'OK.' The silence is complete, of that hissing variety rarely heard in a city; no other players, no street sounds, not even from the march. For two or three seconds Perowne stares at the dense black ball in his left hand, willing himself to narrow the range of his thoughts. He serves a high lob, well placed in so far as it arcs too high for a volley, and slides off the side wall onto the back. But even as it leaves him, he knows he's. .h.i.t it too hard. It comes off the back wall with some residual speed, leaving Jay plenty of s.p.a.ce to drive a straight return down the side wall to a good length. The ball dies in the corner, dribbling off the back wall as Perowne reaches it.

With barely a pause, Jay s.n.a.t.c.hes up the ball to serve from the right box. Perowne, gauging his opponent's mood, is expecting an overarm smash and is crouched forwards, prepared to take a volley before the ball nicks the side wall. But Strauss has made his own calculations about mood. He serves a softbodyline, angled straight into Perowne's right shoulder. It's the perfect shot to play at an indecisive opponent. He steps back, but too late and not far enough and, at some point in his confusion, loses sight of the ball. His return drops into A the front of the court and Strauss drives it hard into the right- *

hand corner. They've been playing less than a minute, Perowne has lost his serve, is one point down and knows already that he's lost control. And so it goes on, relentlessly for the next five points, with Jay in possession of the centre 9 of the court, and Perowne, dazed and defensive, initiating nothing. At six-love, Strauss finally makes an unforced error. Perowne serves the same high lob, but this time it falls nicely off the back wall. Strauss does well to hook it out, but the ball sits up on the short line and Perowne amazes himself with a perfect dying-length drive. With that little swoon of euphoria comes the ability to concentrate. He takes the next three points without trouble, and on the last of these, clinched by a volley drop, he hears Jay swearing at himself as he walks to the back of the court. Now, the magical authority, and all the initiatives are Henry's. He has possession of the centre of the court and is sending his opponent running from front to back. Soon he's ahead at seven-six and is certain he'll take the next two points. Even as he thinks this, he makes a careless cross-court shot which Strauss pounces on and, with a neat slice, drops into the corner. Perowne manages to resist the lure of self-hatred as he walks to the left-hand court to receive the serve. But as the ball floats off the front wall towards him, unwanted thoughts are shaking at his concentration. He sees the pathetic figure of Baxter in the rearview mirror. This is precisely the moment he should have stepped forwards for a backhand volley - he could reach it at a stretch - but he hesitates. The ball hits the nick - the join between the wall and the floor - and rolls insultingly over his foot. It's a lucky shot, and in his irritation he longs to say so. Seven all. But there's no fight to the end. Perowne feels himself moving through a mental fog, and Jay takes the last two points in quick succession.

104 Neither man has any illusions about his game. They are halfway decent club players, both approaching fifty. Their arrangement is that between games - they play the best of five - they pause to let their pulse rates settle. Sometimes they even sit on the floor. Today, the first game hasn't been strenuous, so they walk slowly up and down the court. The anaesthetist wants to know about the Chapman girl. He's gone out of his way to make friends with her. The girl's street manner didn't withstand the pep talk that Perowne, pa.s.sing in the corridor, overheard Strauss deliver. The anaesthetist had gone up to the ward to introduce himself. He found a Filipino nurse in tears over some abuse she'd received. Strauss sat on the bed and put his face close to the girl's.

'Listen honey. You want us to fix that sorry head of yours, you've got to help us. You hear? You don't want us to fix it, take your att.i.tude home. We got plenty of other patients waiting to get in your bed. Look, here's your stuff in the locker. You want me to start putting it in your bag? OK. Here we go. Toothbrush. Discman. Hairbrush . . . No? So which is it to be? Fine. OK, look, I'm taking them out again. No, look, I really am. You help us, we help you. We got a deal? Let's shake hands.'

Perowne reports on her good progress this morning.

The like that kid,' Jay says. 'She reminds me of myself at that age. A pain in the a.s.s in every direction. She might go down in flames, she might do something with herself.'

'Well, she'll pull through this one,' Perowne says as he takes up his position to receive. 'At least it'll be her own decision to crash. Let's go.'

He's spoken too soon. Jay's serve is on him, but his own word 'crash', trailing memories of the night as well as the morning, fragments into a dozen a.s.sociations. Everything that's happened to him recently occurs to him at once. He's no longer in the present. The deserted icy square, the plane and its pinp.r.i.c.k of fire, his son in the kitchen, his wife in bed, his daughter on her way from Paris, the three men in f1 the street - he occupies the wrong time coordinates, or he's in them all at once. The ball surprises him - it's as if he left the court for a moment. He takes the ball late, scooping it from the floor. At once Strauss springs out from the The' for the kill shot. And so the second game begins as the first. But this time Henry has to run hard to lose. Jay's prepared to let ^ the rallies go on while he hogs centre court and lobs to the -- back, drops to the front, and finds his angle shots. Perowne 1 scampers around his opponent like a circus pony. He twists j, back to lift b.a.l.l.s out of the rear corners, then dashes forwards "* '

at a stretch to connect with the drop shots. The constant ._i change of direction tires him as much as his gathering self- f hatred. Why has he volunteered for, even antic.i.p.ated with *

pleasure, this humiliation, this torture? It's at moments like 4 these in a game that the essentials of his character are exposed: "

narrow, ineffectual, stupid - and morally so. The game '

becomes an extended metaphor of character defect. Every error he makes is so profoundly, so irritatingly typical of himself, instantly familiar, like a signature, like a tissue scar or some deformation in a private place. As intimate and self evident as the feel of his tongue in his mouth. Only he can go wrong in quite this way, and only he deserves to lose in just this manner. As the points fall he draws his remaining energy from a darkening pool of fury.

He says nothing, to himself or his opponent. He won't let Jay hear him curse. But the silence is another kind of affliction. They're at eight-three. Jay plays a cross-court drive probably a mistake, because the ball is left loose, ready for interception. Perowne sees his chance. If he can get to it, Jay will be caught out of position. Aware of this, Jay moves out from his stroke towards centre court, blocking Perowne's path. Immediately Perowne calls for a let. They stop and Strauss turns to express surprise.

'Are you kidding?'

'For f.u.c.k's sake,' Perowne says through his furious 106 breathing, and pointing his racket in the direction he was heading. 'You stepped right into me.'

The language startles them both. Strauss immediately concedes. 'OK, OK. It's a let.'

As he goes to the service box and tries to calm himself, Perowne can't help considering that at eight-three, and already a game up, it's ungenerous of Jay to query such an obvious call. Ungenerous is generous. The judgment doesn't help him deliver the service he needs, for this is his last chance to get back in the game. The ball goes so wide of the wall that Jay is able to step to his left and reach for an easy forehand smash. He takes the service back, and the game is over in half a minute.

The prospect of making small talk on court for a few minutes is now unendurable. Henry puts his racket down, pulls off his goggles and mutters something about needing water. He leaves the court and goes to the changing room and drinks from the fountain there. The place is deserted except for an unseen figure in the showers. A TV high on the wall is showing a news channel. He splashes his face at a basin, and rests his head on his forearms. He hears his pulse knocking in his ears, sweat is dribbling down his spine, his face and feet are burning. There's only one thing in life he wants. Everything else has dropped away. He has to beat Strauss. He needs to win three games in a row to take the set. Unbelievably difficult, but for the moment he desires and can think of nothing else. In this minute or two alone, he must think carefully about his game, cut to the fundamentals, decide what he's doing wrong and fix it. He's beaten Strauss many times before. He has to stop being angry with himself and think about his game.

When he raises his head, he sees in the washroom mirror, beyond his reddened face, a reflection of the silent TV behind him showing the same old footage of the cargo plane on the runway. But then, briefly, enticingly, two men with coats over their heads - surely the two pilots - in handcuffs being led 107 towards a police van. They've been arrested. Something's happened. A reporter outside a police station is talking to the camera. Then the anchor is talking to the reporter. Perowne s.h.i.+fts position so the screen is no longer in view. Isn't it possible to enjoy an hour's recreation without this invasion, this infection from the public domain? He begins to see the matter resolving in simple terms: winning his game will be an a.s.sertion of his privacy. He has a right now and then - everyone has it - not to be disturbed by world events, or even street events. Cooling down in the locker room, it seems to Perowne that to forget, to obliterate a whole universe of public phenomena in order to concentrate is a fundamental liberty. Freedom of thought. He'll emanc.i.p.ate himself by beating Strauss. Stirred, he walks up and down between the changing-room benches, averting his eyes from a ripplingly obese teenager, more seal than human, who's emerged from the shower without a towel. There isn't much time. He has to arrange his game around simple tactics, play on his opponent's weakness. Strauss is only five foot eight, with no great reach and not a brilliant volleyer. Perowne decides on high lobs to the rear corners. As simple as that. Keep lobbing to the back.

When he arrives back on court, the consultant anaesthetist comes straight over to him. 'You all right Henry? You p.i.s.sed off?'

'Yeah. With myself. But having to argue that let didn't help.'

'You were right, I was wrong. I'm sorry. Are you ready?'

Perowne stands in the receiving position, intent on the rhythm of his breathing, prepared to perform a simple move, virtually a standard procedure: he'll volley the serve before it touches the side wall, and after he's. .h.i.t it he'll cross to the The ' at the centre of the court and lob. Simple. It's time to dislodge Strauss.

'Ready.'

Strauss. .h.i.ts a fast serve, and once again it's a bodyline, 108 aimed straight for the shoulder. Perowne manages to push his racket through the ball, and the volley goes more or less as he hoped, and now he's in position, on the The'. Strauss flicks the ball out of the corner, and it comes back along the same side wall. Perowne goes forward and volleys again. Half a dozen times the ball travels up and down the left hand wall, until Perowne finds the s.p.a.ce on his backhand to lift it high into the right-hand corner. They play that wall in hard straight drives, dancing in and out of each other's path, then they're chasing shots all over the court, with the advantage pa.s.sing between them.

They've had this kind of rally before - desperate, mad, but also hilarious, as if the real contest is to see who will break down laughing first. But this is different. It's humourless, and longer, and attritional, for hearts this age can't race at above one hundred and eighty beats per minute for long, and soon someone will tire and fumble. And in this unwitnessed, somewhat inept, merely social game, both men have acquired an urgent sense of the point's importance. Despite the apology, the disputed let hangs between them. Strauss will have guessed that Perowne has given himself a good talking-to in the changing room. If his fightback can be resisted now, he'll be demoralised in no time and Strauss will take the match in three straight sets. As for Perowne, it's down to the rules of the game; until he's won the serve, he can't begin to score points.

It's possible in a long rally to become a virtually unconscious being, inhabiting the narrowest slice of the present, merely reacting, taking one shot at a time, existing only to keep going. Perowne is already at that state, digging in deep, when he remembers he's supposed to have a game plan. As it happens, just then the ball falls short and he's able to get under it to lob high into the rear left corner. Strauss raises his racket to volley, then changes his mind and runs back. He boasts the ball out, and Perowne lobs to the other side. Running from corner to corner to grub the ball out when 109 you're tired is hard work. Each time he hits the ball, Strauss grunts a little louder, and Perowne is encouraged. He resists the kill shot because he thinks he'll mis.h.i.+t. Instead, he goes on lobbing, five times in a row, wearing his man down. The point ends on the fifth when Strauss's powerless ball falls feebly against the tin.

Love-all. They put down their rackets, and stand bent over, breathless, hands on knees, staring blindly into the floor, or press their palms and faces into the cool white walls, or wander aimlessly about the court mopping their brows with their untucked T-s.h.i.+rts and groaning. At other times they'd have a post-mortem on a point like that, but neither man speaks. Keen to force the pace, Perowne is ready first, and waits in the service box bouncing the ball against the floor. He serves right over Strauss's head and the ball, cooler and softer now, dies in the corner. One-love, and no effort wasted. This, rather than the point before, might be the important one. Perowne has his height and length now. The next point goes his way, and the next. Strauss is becoming exasperated by a series of identical serves, and because the rallies are brief or non-existent, the ball remains cold and inert, like putty, difficult to fish out of a tight s.p.a.ce. And as he becomes more annoyed, Jay becomes even less competent. He can't reach the ball in the air, he can't get under it once it falls. A couple of serves he simply walks away from, and goes to the box to wait for the next. It's the repet.i.tion, the same angle, the same impossible height, the same dead ball that's getting to him. Soon he's lost six points.

Perowne wants to laugh wildly - an impulse he disguises as a cough. He isn't gloating, or triumphant - it's far too early for that. This is the delight of recognition, sympathetic laughter. He's amused because he knows exactly how Strauss is feeling: Henry is too well acquainted with the downward spiral of irritation and inept.i.tude, the little ecstasies of self loathing. It's hilarious to recognise how completely another person resembles your imperfect self. And he knows how 110 annoying his serve is. He wouldn't be able to return it himself. But Strauss was merciless when he was on top, and Perowne needs the points. So he keeps on and on, floating the ball over his opponent's head and cruising right through to take the game, no effort at all, nine-love.

'I need a p.i.s.s,' Jay says tersely, and leaves the court, still wearing his goggles and holding his racket.

Perowne doesn't believe him. Though he sees that it's a sensible move, the only way to interrupt the haemorrhaging of points, and even though he did the same thing less than ten minutes before, he still feels cheated. He could have Laken the next set too with his infuriating serve. Now Strauss will be dousing his head under the tap and rethinking his game.

Henry resists the temptation to sit down. Instead he steps out to take a look at the other games - he's always hoping to learn something from the cla.s.sier players. But the place is still deserted. The club members are either ma.s.sing against the war, or unable to find a way through central London. As he comes back along the courts, he lifts his T-s.h.i.+rt and examines his chest. There's a dense black bruise to the left of his sternum. It hurts when he extends his left arm. Staring at the discoloured skin helps focus his troubled feelings about Baxter. Did he, Henry Perowne, act unprofessionally, using his medical knowledge to undermine a man suffering from a neurodegenerative disorder? Yes. Did the threat of a beating excuse him? Yes, no, not entirely. But this haematoma, the colour of an aubergine, the diameter of a plum - just a taste of what might have come his way - says yes, he's absolved. Only a fool would stand there and take a kicking when there was a way out. So what's troubling him? Strangely, for all the violence, he almost liked Baxter. That's to put it too strongly. He was intrigued by him, by his hopeless situation, and his refusal to give up. And there was a real intelligence there, and dismay that he was living the wrong life. And he, Henry, was obliged, or forced, to abuse his own power - but 111 he allowed himself to be placed in that position. His att.i.tude was wrong from the start, insufficiently defensive; his manner may have seemed pompous, or disdainful. Provocative perhaps. He could have been friendlier, even made himself accept a cigarette; he should have relaxed, from a position of strength, instead of which he was indignant and combative. On the other hand, there were three of them, they wanted his cash, they were eager for violence, they were planning it before they got out of their car. The loss of a wing mirror was cover for a mugging.

He arrives back outside the court, his unease intact, just as Strauss appears. His thick shoulders are drenched from his session at the washbasin, and his good humour is restored.

'OK/ he says as Perowne goes to the service box. 'No more Mister Nice Guy.'

Perowne finds it disabling, to have been left alone with his thoughts; just before he serves, he remembers his game plan. But the fourth game falls into no obvious pattern. He takes two points, then Strauss gets into the game and pulls ahead, three-two. There are long, sc.r.a.ppy rallies, with a run of unforced errors on both sides which bring the score to seven-all, Perowne to serve. He takes the last two points without trouble. Two games each.

They take a quick break to gather themselves for the final battle. Perowne isn't tired - winning games has been less physically demanding than losing them. But he feels drained of that fierce desire to beat Jay and would be happy to call it a draw and get on with his day. All morning he's been in some form of combat. But there's no chance of backing out. Strauss is enjoying the moment, playing it up, and saying as he goes to his position, Tight to the death/ and 'No pasaran!'

So, with a suppressed sigh, Perowne serves and, because he's run out of ideas, falls back on the same old lob. In fact, the moment he hits the ball, he knows it's near-perfect, curving high, set to drop sharply into the corner. But Strauss 112 is in a peculiar, elated mood and he does an extraordinary thing. With a short running jump, he springs two, perhaps three feet into the air, and with racket fully extended, his thick, muscular back gracefully arched, his teeth bared, his head flung back and his left arm raised for balance, he catches the ball just before the peak of its trajectory with a whip-like backhand smash that shoots the ball down to hit the front wall barely an inch above the tin - a beautiful, inspired, unreturnable shot. Perowne, who's barely moved from his spot, instantly says so. A fabulous shot. And suddenly, with the serve now in his opponent's hands, all over again, he wants Lo win.

Both men raise their games. Every point is now a drama, a playlet of sudden reversals, and all the seriousness and fury of the third game's long rally is resumed. Oblivious to their protesting hearts, they hurl themselves into every corner of the court. There are no unforced errors, every point is wrested, bludgeoned from the other. The server gasps out the score, but otherwise they don't speak. And as the score rises, neither man moves more than one point ahead. There's nothing at stake - they're not on the club's squash ladder. There's only the irreducible urge to win, as biological as thirst. And it's pure, because no one's watching, no one cares, not their friends, their wives, their children. It isn't even enjoyable. It might become so in retrospect - and only to the winner. If a pa.s.ser-by were to pause by the gla.s.s back wall to watch, she'd surely think these elderly players were once rated, and even now still have a little fire. She might also wonder if this is a grudge match, there's such straining desperation in the play.

What feels like half an hour is in fact twelve minutes. At seven-all Perowne serves from the left box and wins the point. He crosses the court to serve for the match. His concentration is good, his confidence is up and so he plays a forceful backhand serve, at a narrow angle, close to the wall. Strauss slices it with his backhand, almost a tennis stroke, so 113 that it drops to the front of the court. It's a good shot, but Perowne is in position and nips forward for the kill. He catches the ball on the rise and smashes it on his forehand, into the left rear corner. End of game, and victory. The instant he makes his stroke, he steps back - and collides with Strauss. It's a savage jolt, and both men reel and for a moment neither can talk.

Then Strauss, speaking quietly through heavy breathing, says, 'It's my point, Henry.'

And Perowne says, 'Jay, it's over. Three games to two.'

They pause again to take the measure of this calamitous difference.

Perowne says, 'What were you doing at the front wall?'

Jay walks away from him, to the box where, if they play the point again, he'll receive the serve. He's wanting to move things on - his way. He says, 'I thought you'd play a drop shot to your right.'

Henry tries to smile. His mouth is dry, his lips won't easily slide over his teeth. 'So I fooled you. You were out of position. You couldn't have returned it.'

The anaesthetist shakes his head with the earthbound calm his patients find so rea.s.suring. But his chest is heaving. 'It came off the back wall. Plenty of bounce. Henry, you were right in my path.'

This deployment of each other's first name is tipped with poison. Henry can't resist it again himself. He speaks as though reminding Strauss of a long-forgotten fact. 'But Jay. You couldn't've reached that ball.'

Strauss holds Perowne's gaze and says quietly, 'Henry, I could.'

The injustice of the claim is so flagrant that Perowne can only repeat himself. 'You were way out of position.'

Strauss says, That's not against the rules.' Then he adds, 'Come on Henry. I gave you the benefit of the doubt last time.'

So he thinks he's calling in a debt. Perowne's tone of 114 reasonableness becomes even harder to sustain. He says quickly, There was no doubt.'

'Sure there was.'

'Look, Jay. This isn't some kind of equal-opportunity forum. We take the case on its merits.'

The agree. No need to give a lecture.'

Perowne's falling pulse rises briefly at the reproof - a moment's sudden anger is like an extra heartbeat, an unhelpful stab of arrhythmia. He has things to do. He needs to drive to the fishmonger's, go home and shower, and head out again, come back, cook a meal, open wine, greet his daughter, his father-in-law, reconcile them. But more than that, he needs what's already his; he fought back from two games down, and believes he's proved to himself something essential in his own nature, something familiar that he's forgotten lately. Now his opponent wants to steal it, or deny it. He leans his racket in the corner by his valuables to demonstrate that the game is over. Likewise, Strauss stands resolutely in the service box. They've never had anything like this before. Is it possibly about something else? Jay is looking at him with a sympathetic half-smile through pursed lips - an entirely concocted expression designed to further his claim. Henry can see himself - his pulse rate spikes again at the thought - crossing the parquet in four steps to give that complacent expression a brisk backhand slap. Or he could shrug and leave the court. But his victory is meaningless without consent. Fantasy apart, how can they possibly resolve this, with no referee, no common power?

Neither man has spoken for half a minute. Perowne spreads his hands and says, in a tone as artificial as Strauss's smile, The don't know what to do, Jay. I just know I hit a winner.'

But Strauss knows exactly what to do. He raises the stakes. 'Henry, you were facing the front. You didn't see the ball come off the back wall. I did because I was going towards 115 I it. So the question is this. Are you calling me a liar?'

This is how it ends.

'f.u.c.k you, Strauss/ Perowne says and picks up his racket and goes to the service box.

And so they play the let, and Perowne serves the point again, and as he suspected might happen, he loses it, then he loses the next three points and before he knows it, it's all over, he's lost, and he's back in the corner picking up his wallet, phone, keys and watch. Outside the court, he pulls I on his trousers and ties them with the chandler's cord, straps on his watch and puts on his sweater and fleece. He minds, but less than lie did two minutes ago. He turns to Strauss who is just coming off the court.

'You were b.l.o.o.d.y good. I'm sorry about the dispute.'

'f.u.c.k that. It could've been anyone's game. One of our best.' They zip their rackets into their cases and sling them over their shoulders. Freed from red lines and the glaring white walls and the rules of the game, they walk along the courts to the c.o.ke machine. Strauss buys a can for himself. Perowne doesn't want one. You have to be an American to want, as an adult, anything quite so sweet.

As they leave the building Strauss, pausing to drink deep, says, 'They're all going down with the flu and I'm on call tonight.'

Perowne says, 'Have you seen next week's list? Another heavy one.'

'Yeah. That old lady and her astrocytoma. She's not going to make it, is she?'

They are standing on the steps above the pavement on Huntley Street. There's more cloud now, and the air is cold and damp. It could well rain on the demonstration. The lady's name is Viola, her tumour is in the pineal region. She's seventy-eight, and it turns out that in her working life she was an astronomer, something of a force at Jodrell Bank in the sixties. On the ward, while the other patients watch TV, 116 she reads books on mathematics and string theory. Aware of the lowering light, a winter's late-morning dusk, and not wanting to part on a bad note, a malediction, Perowne says, 'I think we can help her/ Understanding him, Strauss grimaces, raises a hand in farewell, and the two men go their separate ways.

117 Three Back in the padded privacy of his damaged car, its engine idling inaudibly in deserted Huntley Street, he tries Rosalind again. Her meeting has ended, and she's gone straight in to see the editor and is still with him, after forty five minutes. The temporary secretary asks him to hold while she goes to find out more. While he waits, Perowne leans against the headrest and closes his eyes. He feels the itch of dried sweat on his face where he shaved. His toes, which he wiggles experimentally, seem encased in liquid, rapidly cooling. The importance of the game has faded to nothing, and in its place is a craving for sleep. Just ten minutes. It's been a tough week, a disturbed night, a hard game. Without looking, he finds the b.u.t.ton that secures the car. The door locks are activated in rapid sequence, little resonating clunks, four semiquavers that lull him further. An ancient evolutionary dilemma: the need to sleep, the fear of being eaten. Resolved at last, by central locking.

Through the tiny receiver he holds to his left ear he hears the murmur of the open-plan office, the soft rattle of computer keys, and nearby a man's plaintive voice saying to someone out of earshot, 'He's not denying it... but he doesn't deny it ... Yes, I know. Yes, that's our problem. He won't deny a thing.'

With eyes closed he sees the newspaper offices, the curled edged coffee-stained carpet tiles, the ferocious heating system that bleeds boiling rusty water, the receding phalanxes of fluorescent lights illuminating the chaotic corners, the piles of paper that no one touches, for no one cares to know what 1 they contain, what they are for, and the overinhabited desks *

pushed too close together. It's the spirit of the school art room. Everyone too hard-pressed to start sorting through the old dust heaps. The hospital is the same. Rooms full of junk, f cupboards and filing cabinets that no one dares open. Ancient equipment in cream tin-plate housing, too heavy, too mysterious to eject. Sick buildings, in use for too long, that only "~ demolition can cure. Cities and states beyond repair. The whole world resembling Theo's bedroom. A race of extraterrestrial grown-ups is needed to set right the general disorder, then put everyone to bed for an early night. G.o.d was once supposed to be a grown-up, but in disputes He childishly took sides. Then sending us an actual child, one of His own - the last thing we needed. A spinning rock already swarming with orphans . . .

'Mr Perowne?'

'What? Yes?'

'Your wife will phone you as soon as she's free, in about half an hour.'

Revived, he puts on his seatbelt, makes a three-point turn and heads towards Marylebone. The marchers are still in packed ranks on Gower Street, but the Tottenham Court Road is now open, with attack-waves of traffic surging northwards. He joins one briefly, then turns west and then north again and soon he's where Goodge and Charlotte Streets meet - a spot he's always liked, where the affairs of utility and pleasure condense to make colour and s.p.a.ce brighter: mirrors, flowers, soaps, newspapers, electrical plugs, house paints, key cutting urbanely interleaved with expensive restaurants, wine and tapas bars, hotels. Who was the American novelist who said a man could be happy living on 122 Charlotte Street? Daisy will have to remind him again. So much commerce in a narrow s.p.a.ce makes regular hillocks of bagged garbage on the pavements. A stray dog is worrying the sacks - gnawing filth whitens the teeth. Before turning west again, he sees way down the end of the street, his square, and on its far side, his house framed by bare trees. The blinds on the third floor are drawn - Theo is still asleep. Henry can still remember it, the exquisite tumbling late morning doze of adolescence, and he never questions his son's claim to those hours. They won't last.

Tie crosses sombre Great Portland Street - it's the stone facades that make it seem always dusk here - and on Portland Place pa.s.ses a Falun Gong couple keeping vigil across the road from the Chinese emba.s.sy. Belief in a miniaturised universe ceaselessly rotating nine times forwards, nine times backwards in the pract.i.tioner's lower abdomen is threatening the totalitarian order. Certainly, it's a non-material view. The state's response is beatings, torture, disappearances and murder, but the followers now outnumber the Chinese Communist Party. China is simply too populous, Perowne often thinks whenever he comes this way and sees the protest, to maintain itself in paranoia for much longer. Its economy's growing too fast, the modern world's too connected for the Party to keep control. Now you see mainland Chinese in Harrods, soaking up the luxury goods. Soon it will be ideas, and something will have to give. And here's the Chinese state meanwhile, giving philosophical materialism a bad name.

Then the emba.s.sy with its sinister array of roof aerials is behind him and he's pa.s.sing through the orderly grid of medical streets west of Portland Place - private clinics and chintzy waiting rooms with bow-legged reproduction furniture and Country Life magazines. It is faith, as powerful as any religion, that brings people to Harley Street. Over the years his hospital has taken in and treated - free of charge, of course - scores of cases botched by some of the elderly overpaid incompetents around here. Waiting at red lights he i watches three figures in black burkhas emerge from a taxi If on Devons.h.i.+re Place. They huddle together on the pavement comparing the number on a door with a card one of them holds. The one in the middle, the likely invalid, whose form is somewhat bent, totters as she clings to the forearms of her companions. The three black columns, stark against the canyon of creamy stucco and brick, heads bobbing, clearly arguing about the address, have a farcical appearance, like kids larking about at Halloween. Or like Theo's school production of Macbeth when the hollowed trees of Birnam wood waited in the wings to clump across the stage to Dunsinane. They are sisters perhaps, bringing their mother to her last chance. The lights remain stubbornly red. Perowne guns the engine - but gently - then pulls the gear stick into neutral. What's he doing, holding down the clutch, knotting up his tender quadriceps? He can't help his distaste, it's visceral. How dismal, that anyone should be obliged to walk around so entirely obliterated. At least these ladies don't have the leather beaks. They really turn his stomach. And what would the relativists say, the cheerful pessimists from Daisy's col *; lege? That it's sacred, traditional, a stand against the frip '

peries of Western consumerism? But the men, the husbands $ - Perowne has had dealings with various Saudis in his office Jr - wear suits, or trainers and tracksuits, or baggy shorts and I Rolexes, and are entirely charming and worldly and thor *' oughly educated in both traditions. Would they care to carry the folkloric torch, and stumble about in the dark at midday? The changed lights at last, the s.h.i.+ft of scene - new porticoes, different waiting rooms - and the mild demands of traffic on his concentration edge him out of these constricting thoughts. He's caught himself in a nascent rant. Let Islamic dress codes be! What should he care about burkhas? Veils for his irritation. No, irritation is too narrow a word. They and the Chinese Republic serve the gently tilting negative pitch of his mood. Sat.u.r.days he's accustomed to being + thoughtlessly content, and here he is for the second time this *

124 I.

3* morning sifting the elements of a darker mood. What's giving him the s.h.i.+vers? Not the lost game, or the sc.r.a.pe with Baxter, or even the broken night, though they all must have some effect. Perhaps it's merely the prospect of the afternoon when he'll head out towards the immensity of suburbs around Perivale. While there was a squash game posed between himself and his visit, he felt protected. Now there's only the purchase of fish. His mother no longer possesses the faculties to antic.i.p.ate his arrival, recognise him when he's with her, or remember him after he's left. An empty visit. She doesn't expect him and she wouldn't be disappointed if he failed to show up. It's like taking flowers to a graveside - the true business is with the past. But she can raise a cup of tea to her mouth, and though she can't put a name to his face, or conjure any a.s.sociation, she's content with him sitting there, listening to her ramble. She's content with anyone. He hates going to see her, he despises himself if he stays away too long It's only while he's parking off Marylebone High Street that he remembers to turn on the midday news. The police are saying that two hundred and fifty thousand have gathered in central London. Someone for the rally is insisting on two million by the middle of the afternoon. Both sources agree that people are still pouring in. An elated marcher, who turns out to be a famous actress, raises her voice above the din of chanting and cheers to say that never in the history of the British Isles has there been such a huge a.s.sembly. Those who stay in their beds this Sat.u.r.day morning will curse themselves they are not here. The earnest reporter reminds listeners that this is a reference to Shakespeare's St Crispin's Day speech, Henry the Fifth before the battle of Agincourt. The allusion is lost on Perowne as he reverses into a tight s.p.a.ce between two four-wheel-drive jeeps. He doubts that Theo will be cursing himself. And why should a peace demonstrator want to quote a warrior king? The bulletin continues while Perowne sits with engine stilled, staring 125 at a point of blue-green light among the radio b.u.t.tons. Across Europe, and all around the world, people are gathering to express their preference for peace and torture. That's what the professor would say - Henry can hear his insistent, high tenor voice. The story Henry regards as his own comes next. Pilot and co-pilot are being held for questioning at separate locations in west London. The police are saying nothing else. Why's that? Through the windscreen the prosperous street of red brick, the receding geometry of pavement cracks and small bare trees, look provisional, like an image projected onto a sheet of thin ice. Now an airport official is conceding that one of the men is of Chechen origin, but denying a rumour about a Koran found in the c.o.c.kpit. And even if it were true, he adds, it would mean nothing. It is, after all, hardly an offence.

Quite so. Henry snaps open his door. The secular authority, indifferent to the babel of various G.o.ds, will guarantee religious freedoms. They should flourish. It's time to go shopping. Despite the muscle pain in his thighs, he strides briskly away from his car, locking it with the remote without looking back. Sudden winter sunlight clarifies his path along the High Street. The largest gathering of humanity in the history of the islands, less than two miles away, is not disturbing Marylebone's contentment, and Perowne himself is soothed as he dodges around the oncoming crowds and all the pushchairs with their serenely bundled infants. Such prosperity, whole emporia dedicated to cheeses, ribbons, Shaker furniture, is protection of a sort. This commercial wellbeing is robust and will defend itself to the last. It isn't rationalism that will overcome the religious zealots, but ordinary shopping and all that it entails - jobs for a start, and peace, and some commitment to realisable pleasures, the promise of appet.i.tes sated in this world, not the next. Rather shop than pray.

He turns the corner into Paddington Street and stoops in front of the open-air display of fish on a steeply raked slab 126 of white marble. He sees at a glance that everything he needs is here. Such abundance from the emptying seas. On the tiled floor by the open doorway, piled in two wooden crates like rusting industrial rejects, are the crabs and lobsters, and in the tangle of warlike body parts there is discernible movement. On their pincers they're wearing funereal black bands. It's fortunate for the fishmonger and his customers that sea creatures are not adapted to make use of sound waves and have no voice. Otherwise there'd be howling from those crates. Even the silence among the softly stirring crowd is troubling. He turns his gaze awav, towards the bloodless white flesh, and eviscerated silver forms with their unaccusing stare, and the deep-sea fish arranged in handy overlapping steaks of innocent pink, like cardboard pages of a baby's first book. Naturally, Perowne the fly-fisherman has seen the recent literature: scores of polymodal nociceptor sites just like ours in the head and neck of rainbow trout. It was once convenient to think biblically, to believe we're surrounded for our benefit by edible automata on land and sea. Now it turns out that even fish feel pain. This is the growing complication of the modern condition, the expanding circle of moral sympathy. Not only distant peoples are our brothers and sisters, but foxes too, and laboratory mice, and now the fish. Perowne goes on catching and eating them, and though he'd never drop a live lobster into boiling water, he's prepared to order one in a restaurant. The trick, as always, the key to human success and domination, is to be selective in your mercies. For all the discerning talk, it's the close at hand, the visible that exerts the overpowering force. And what you don't see . . . That's why in gentle Marylebone the world seems so entirely at peace.

Crab and lobsters are not on tonight's menu. If the clams and mussels he buys are alive, they are inert and decently closed up. He buys prawns already cooked in their sh.e.l.ls, and three monkfish tails that cost a little more than his first car. Admittedly, a pile of junk. He asks for the bones and 127 heads of two skates to boil up for stock. The fishmonger is a polite, studious man who treats his customers as members of an exclusive branch of the landed gentry. He wraps each species of fish in several pages of a newspaper. This is the kind of question Henry liked to put to himself when he was a schoolboy: what are the chances of this particular fish, from that shoal, off that continental shelf ending up in the pages, no, on this page of this copy of the Daily Mirror? Something just short of infinity to one. Similarly, the grains of sand on a beach, arranged just so. The random ordering of the world, the unimaginable odds against any particular condition, still please him. Even as a child, and especially after Aberfan, he never believed in fate or providence, or the future being made by someone in the sky. Instead, at every instant, a trillion trillion possible futures; the pickiness of pure chance and physical laws seemed like freedom from the scheming of a gloomy G.o.d.

The white plastic bag that holds the family dinner is heavy, dense with flesh and sodden paper, and the handles bite into his palm as he walks back to his car. Because of the pain in his chest, he isn't able to transfer the load to his left hand. Coming away from the dank seaweed odours of the fishmonger's, he thinks he can taste sweetness in the air, like warm hay drying in the fields in August. The smell - surely an illusion generated by contrast - persists, even with the traffic and the February chill. All those family summers at his father-in-law's place in the Ariege, in a south-west corner of France where the land begins to ripple and swell before the Pyrenees. The Chateau St Felix of warm, faintly pink stone, and two rounded towers and the fragment of a moat was where John Grammaticus retreated when his wife died, and where he mourned her with the famous sad-sweet love songs collected up in the volume called No Exequies. Not famous to Henry Perowne, who read no poetry in adult life even after he acquired a poet father-in-law. Of course, he 128 began as soon as he discovered he'd fathered a poet himself. But it cost him an effort of an unaccustomed sort. Even a first line can produce a tightness behind his eyes. Novels and movies, being restlessly modern, propel you forwards or backwards through time, through days, years or even generations. But to do its noticing and judging, poetry balances itself on the pinp.r.i.c.k of the moment. Slowing down, stopping yourself completely, to read and understand a poem is like trying to acquire an old-fas.h.i.+oned skill like drystone walling or trout tickling.

When Grammaticus came out of mourning, more than twenty years ago, he began a series of love affairs that still continues. The pattern is well established. A younger woman, usually English, sometimes French, is taken on as secretary and housekeeper, and by degrees becomes a kind of wife. After two or three years she'll walk out, unable to bear any more, and it will be her replacement who greets the Perowne family in late July. Rosalind is scathing at each turnaround, always preferring the last to the next, then, over time, developing a fondness. After all, it's hardly the new arrival's fault. The children, entirely without judgment, even as teenagers, are immediately kind to her. Perowne, const.i.tutionally bound to love one woman all his life, has been quietly impressed, especially as the old man advances into his seventies. Perhaps he's slowing down at last, for Teresa, a jolly forty-year-old librarian from Brighton, has been with him almost four years.

The dinners outside in the interminable dusk, the scented wheels of hay in the small steep fields that surround the gardens, and the fainter smell of swimming-pool chlorine on the children's skin, and warm red wine from Cahors or Cabrieres, - it should be paradise. It almost is, which is why they continue to visit. But John can be a childish, domineering man, the sort of artist who grants himself the licence of a full spectrum mood swing. He can migrate in the s.p.a.ce of a bottle of red wine from twinkly anecdotes to sudden eruption, then a huffy retreat to his study - that tall stooping back retreating 129 across the lawn in the gloom towards the lighted house, with Betty or Jane or Francine, and now Teresa following him in to smooth things out. He's never quite got the trick of conversation, tending to hear in dissenting views, however mild, a kind of affront, an invitation to mortal combat. The years and the drink are not softening him. And naturally, as he ages and writes less, he's become unhappier. His exile in France has been a prolonged sulk, darkened over two decades by various slights from the home country. There was a bad four-year patch when his Collected Poems was out of print and another publisher had to be found. John minded when Spender and not he was knighted, when Raine not Grammaticus got the editors.h.i.+p at Faber, when he lost the Oxford Professors.h.i.+p of Poetry to Fenton, when Hughes and later Motion were preferred as Poets Laureate, and above all when it was Heaney who got the n.o.bel. These names mean nothing to Perowne. But he understands how eminent poets, like senior consultants, live in a watchful, jealous world in which reputations are edgily tended and a man can be brought low by status anxiety. Poets, or at least this poet, are as earthbound as the rest.

For a couple of summers when the children were babies the Perownes went elsewhere, but they found nothing in southern Europe as beautiful as St Felix. It was where Rosalind spent her childhood holidays. The chateau was enormous and it was easy to keep out of John's way - he liked to spend several hours a day alone. There were rarely more than two or three bad moments in a week, and with time they've mattered less. And as the pattern of his love life became established, Rosalind has had her own delicate reasons to keep close contact with her father. The chateau belonged to her maternal grandparents and was the love of her mother's life. She was the one who modernised and restored the place. The worry is that if age and illness wear John down into finally marrying one of his secretaries, the chateau could pa.s.s out of the family into the hands of a newcomer. French inheritance 130 laws might have prevented that, but there's a doc.u.ment, an old tontine, to show that St Felix has been exempted and that English law prevails. In his irritable way, John has a.s.sured his daughter he'll never remarry and that the chateau will be hers, but he refuses to put anything in writing.

That background anxiety will probably be resolved. Another more forceful reason why they've kept up their summer visits to the chateau is because Daisy and Theo used to insist - those were the old days, before John and Daisy fell out. They loved their grandfather and considered his silly moods proof of his difference, his greatness - a view he rather shared himself. He doted on them, never raised his voice against them, and hid from them his worst outbursts. From the beginning, he considered himself - rightly as it's turned out - a figure in their intellectual development. Once it became clear that Theo was never going to take more than a polite interest in books, John encouraged him at the piano and taught him a simple boogie in C. Then he bought him an acoustic guitar and lugged up from the cellars cardboard boxes of blues recordings on heavy old 78s as well as LPs, and made tapes which arrived in London in regular packages. On Theo's fourteenth birthday, his grandfather drove him to Toulouse to hear John Lee Hooker in one of his last appearances. One summer evening after dinner, Grammaticus and Theo performed 'St James' Infirmary' under a brilliant sky of stars, the old man tipping back his head and warbling in a husky American accent that made Rosalind tearful. Theo, still only fourteen, improvised a sweet and melancholy solo. Perowne, sitting apart with his wine by the pool, bare feet in the water, was touched too and blamed himself for not taking his son's talent seriously enough.