SAVING THE WORLD

a novel by

philip gillett

chapter one

London. Monday, 19 October 1992. The pink glow of dawn rises behind the tower blocks to the east. Pavements glisten with frost under the yellow glare of street lights. An employee of Ecowatch is stirring.
Mackintosh stretches, luxuriating in the warm cocoon of bedclothes until the sound of tearing sheets jolts him into the next level of wakefulness. Cautiously he withdraws his foot from the hole, aware that he is going to incur his landlady's wrath once more. His eyes flicker open, register the morning light and close again. His head aches. There is an unpleasant taste in his mouth which he would wash away if he could bother to get up. He scratches lazily, his senses still dulled by sleep, till even scratching becomes too much of an effort. Sleep steals over him once more, so that he no longer hears the snoring of the tenant in the room below.
*
As Mackintosh slides back into oblivion, another employee of Ecowatch is jogging. Rob's target is eight miles a day, his progress towards this goal being marked on a chart behind the kitchen door. Clouds of vaporising breath envelop him as he pants up the slope of Chetwynd Road towards Parliament Hill Fields. The pocket of his track suit bulges with stickers proclaiming 'DO NOT PARK HERE!' for affixing to cars parked on the pavement. This morning, frost stops the stickers from adhering to the windscreens, so he makes his protest by nudging wing mirrors as he squeezes between cars and the overgrown privet. Jeanne thinks that his gesture is silly, but she indulges his foibles. 
The thought of his wife brings a surge of renewed energy. It is difficult to remember a time when his morning routine was different and when Jeanne was not part of it. Sometimes only the prospect of seeing her on his return keeps him going. Her scent is enough to excite him. He looks forward to the familiar routine on his arrival home. His towel will be warming on the bathroom radiator. After a shower, he will go into the kitchen where Jeanne will be watching television, her spoon poised over a dish of muesli as she stares at the screen with that look of wonderment which always melts him. He marvels at being married to somebody like Jeanne. His stiffness is banished when he thinks of her. He feels that he will always be able to go on running a little further each day.
*
As Dylan wakens, it takes him a few moments to recall the events of the previous evening. The girl is sleeping with her back to him. It is an attractive back, he discovers as he pushes down the sheet to reveal where it broadens into equally attractive buttocks. The sight prompts him to snuggle closer, fitting himself to the curve of her body. Excitement is taking the place of sleep. His hand explores her. Sally the secretary. He decides that he likes Sally the secretary. She stirs as he nuzzles against her. His hand comes to rest in the wonderful warmth between her thighs, from where he can sense her slightest movement.
'What's the matter?' comes the sleepy voice from under the bedclothes.
'Don't worry—it's early.'
'Mmm.'
'Plenty of time for amusing ourselves.'
'Mmm.'
He nuzzles against her. 'If we don't leave it too long.'
*
Sue awakens early, as usual. Nobody shares her bed. The flat is silent as she tiptoes across the landing and closes the lavatory door softly behind her. Sue hates her body. It keeps letting her down. Her flatmates never have to get up in the night. She never realised that she was different from other girls until she left home. Either her bladder is smaller than theirs, or she has a disease. The thought of being ill is a constant worry, but she cannot bring herself to go to a doctor about something down there.
When she is back in bed, sleep eludes her. She dreams of the lover she has never had and stops her hands from straying over her body as his might. The lies which she has told her flatmates about her mythical boyfriend make her curl with embarrassment. Sometimes she wishes that she had never started the deceit; at other times she is carried along by its plausibility, her conscience lulled by the readiness of people to believe her. Life in London should have been exciting, but it has done nothing except accentuate the gulf between her hopes and reality. After two months she knows no one except her flatmates and people in the office—and she never feels at ease with them. She would like to go home at weekends, but she knows that if she did, she might never bring herself to return to London.
What is wrong with her bladder? During the day she never has to go to the toilet more frequently than other people—she has watched carefully to be sure of that. In spite of drinking nothing through the evening, she always has to get up at least once during the night. Her thoughts turn to terrible diseases. Visions of operations come unbidden, and of having to use the incontinence aids advertised in Saturday newspapers. The youngest person forced to use incontinence pads: how would she keep that from her flatmates? Her eyes are squeezed closed, but that does not shut out the images.
*
The director of Ecowatch is dreaming of a meal in a Japanese restaurant. The staff cannot understand English, so he cannot stop them from bringing another course each time one is finished. His companion in the restaurant and in his bed is Judith. She too is asleep, dreaming perhaps of her estranged husband.
The bed is large. It is in the centre of a large room. The flat is on the top floor of a warehouse in Clerkenwell. The director bought it cheaply, anticipating the time when the area would become fashionable, but fashion has so far passed it by. The lower floors of the warehouse are used for storing leather. The smell is so pervasive that the director  avoids bringing visitors home. Judith suggested using the joss sticks which he lights whenever potential buyers are expected, but the ploy cannot disguise the smell from anybody braving the three flights of stairs.
Work at the warehouse begins at seven. The shouting and banging to an incessant background of Indian popular music are more effective than any alarm clock. The director will soon be out of bed.
*
The shimmering red orb which is the sun rises over the leaning chimney pots of inner London. Birds leave their roosts to serenade the approaching day. The whine of a milk float and the rattle of bottles as it goes over a pothole shatters the silence of Spencer Rise. A cat patrolling a garden wall pauses to watch the intruder. Soon the cars lining each kerb will clog the roads to central London. Owners with foresight have spread newspapers or old blankets over windscreens to protect them from frost.
Light filters through curtains, arousing those who sleep lightly and making others settle deeper into their blankets in a vain attempt to hold back the approaching day. In Clerkenwell, the director groans in his sleep. Instinctively Judith puts out her hand to him. The couple grow still again, so that only the scuttling mice disturb the tranquillity of the flat. In Kilburn, or West Hampstead as her flatmates insist on calling it, Sue twists her head to see the dial of her alarm clock. She likes to rise early so that she can use the bathroom and have her breakfast before the others get up. She hates the morning scramble.
Monday morning is inexorable. The weekend is sloughed off. Sleep must be abandoned, along with those partners who share it. Eventually all the workers of Ecowatch must struggle into wakefulness.
*
Eight o'clock. Mackintosh reaches under the bed for the bottle of Baileys. Dylan stands under the shower, wondering whether Sally the secretary will join him. The director sips coffee and waits for Judith to finish her shower. One virtue of life in inner city London is than he can enjoy a leisurely toilet followed by an equally leisurely breakfast, while still being the first to arrive at the office.
In Tufnell Park, Rob practises breathing exercises in the bedroom. From the kitchen comes the noise of the washing machine as a reproach to his compromises with the consumer society. Such symbols of the consumer society make him feel guilty, but with Jeanne working full-time, they cannot be avoided. It is a measure of his failure to achieve inner harmony that he cannot block out extraneous thoughts sufficiently to concentrate on his breathing. Resolutely he turns to the blank wall and tries again.
Sue stares at the floor from her accustomed vantage point on the lavatory. Sometimes she prays that her bowels will work as well as her bladder, but God never listens. She is not sure about God. The morning struggle fills her with frustration, disgust and humiliation. Each time she asks herself why her body is made that way without finding a convincing explanation. People like her flatmates never worry about God and rejoice in their bodies. They have already made remarks about how long she spends in the lavatory. Sue's little problem, her mother called it.
*
Nine thirty-five. The sun has lost its redness. It hangs low in the sky, dazzling the people hurrying to work without warming them. Sue is glad to get out of the glare, yet as she turns away from Euston Road, her face is still set in a frown. She tries to relax, remembering her mother's warning that the lines would become permanent. It was her mother who instilled in Sue the punctuality which dogged her schooldays and which she still cannot shake off. Today, a signal failure on the Northern Line has delayed her. She is only a few minutes late, but that is enough to upset her even though nobody else is likely to be in the office apart from the director and hopefully he will be shut in his room with the newspapers.
Working for Ecowatch is Sue's first job in London. It is another world from the solicitor's office in Northampton, where everybody was expected to arrive on time, the men wore suits and tea was made twice a day. At Ecowatch, people drift in through the morning, read a newspaper over coffee and drift out again. And except for Rob, their clothes are so scruffy. Sue cannot bring herself to wear casual clothes for work.
On the other branch of the Northern Line, Rob practises relaxation exercises as he waits for the train to move. Delays no longer frustrate him. He ascribes that to the mental exercises. Since he first explored the rhythms of his body, his life has been transformed. He wonders whether the change is reflected in his blood pressure. As the train picks up speed again, he decides that he will buy a blood pressure meter. 
The odour of garlic from the one of his fellow passengers makes him wrinkle his nose. He knows that garlic is good for you, but he cannot bring himself to like it, particularly when it comes at second hand. 
In the rush hour, Dylan likes to stand by the doors of the tube train. This allows him to observe as many of his fellow passengers as possible and to extricate himself at King's Cross with the minimum of effort. Today, one passenger compels his attention by virtue of her awesomely long legs. She is absorbed in a book whose title he cannot see. Wisps of dark hair conceal her face. He judges her to be twenty-five. The scuffed leather coat does not become her, but she makes up for this lapse of taste with a short skirt which displays her legs to advantage. As though aware of his more erotic thoughts, she looks up. Dylan lets eye contact be established before he smiles. A sensuous mouth, he notices as he muses on whether she makes the same journey each day.
Mackintosh is in a bus. He hates Monday mornings. There is always a meeting at the office to compare diaries for the coming week, so he feels obliged to arrive roughly on time. Sometimes he contemplates missing the session, but though he can get away with a lot, that would be tempting fate. Like Dylan, he casts an eye across his fellow passengers, particularly the younger female ones, but more with nostalgia than with lust. He never noticed when the shift occurred, but he suspects that it marked his unwilling transition into middle age.
The director reads The Independent and The Guardian. The Times he likes to take home, if he can find it at the end of the day. Mackintosh is his suspect for pilfering the office newspapers. Several memos have produced no effect, so he is not sure what to do next. The director does not like confrontations. 
The rhythmic thudding of a printing press reaches him faintly from one of the other floors. All the other organisations seem to start earlier than Ecowatch. At intervals he sends a memo to all staff, reminding them that the working day begins at nine-thirty, but nobody takes any notice. Doing that too often would undermine his authority still further. But there will he changes, he vows, as he does regularly. When he next interviews an applicant for a job, he will stress the importance of timekeeping.
When Sue first saw the office, its down-at-heel appearance horrified her. If there had been another job available, she would have taken it. Now she is accustomed to its shabbiness, though she continues to wage a hopeless battle against chaos and dirt. She bought her own furniture polish, though when Rob found out, he insisted that she reclaimed the money from the petty cash. Each Friday she polishes her desk in a fruitless attempt to remove the rings made by other people's coffee mugs. She suspects that Mackintosh rests his mug there deliberately to watch her discomfiture. When she bought plants for the shelf beside her, Dylan and Mackintosh pulled her leg. She stood up to them with a resolution which surprised her.
As she anticipated, the office is deserted. The door to the director's sanctum is closed. She savours those moments when she has the office to herself. She can imagine that she is in charge rather than being the most lowly member of staff. Though nobody treats her as a junior, she is conscious of her ignorance when the others talk about environmental issues. They spend a lot of time talking. 
The sink is discoloured by tea bags—again. It annoys her that men are so careless about keeping things clean. As the kettle boils, she gazes around the office. She can accept that the furniture is shabby because it was bought second hand or salvaged from skips, but there is no excuse for the untidiness. Magazines could be filed or thrown away instead of being left in heaps on the floor. The broken chair could be thrown out, along with the broken typewriter and the broken dictating machine. Her fellow workers seem oblivious to their surroundings. Her gaze rests momentarily and with distaste on Mackintosh's desk and the pin-up calendar beside it. She contrives never to be alone with Mackintosh. The other workers she does not mind, though she suspects Dylan of being a womaniser. The only one whom she would like to know better is Rob. She wishes that he were not married.
The door to the director 's room opens. As the director stares around in apparent surprise at the absence of staff, he runs a hand through the remains of his hair. He looks harassed, but in Sue's eyes he always does.
'Hello, Sue.' He is using his hearty bass voice which always sends a shiver of apprehension through her. 'What's happened to everybody?'
'They're not here yet,' she explains. 
'I can see that.'
The clever things which the others say never occur to her. Nor is she sure how to address the director. Everybody else calls him John, but calling her employer by his first  name does not come easily to Sue. The trouble is that not calling him anything strikes her as rude. She tries to divine whether she has irritated him by being late.
'Shall I make you a coffee?' she offers.
'Please, Sue. If you can bring it in when it's ready. And when the others come, can you tell them we'll have our meeting at ten.'
Sue nods.
'I think it might be a good idea if you came, so you know what everybody's doing.'
Sue tries to hide her surprise and her pleasure at being accepted into the inner circle. Then her face clouds. 'What about the phone? Shall I put the answering machine on?'
The director frowns. 'I don't think it creates a good impression if people meet a machine during office hours.'
Sue's exhilaration dies suddenly, as though she has been rebuked.
'If you leave the door open, you can slip out if the phone rings,' the director  suggests.
She nods as the door closes. She feels pleased because she was not late, or at least only a few minutes late, and that she has been accepted as one of the team. She admires the director because he works such long hours: he is always there when she leaves at five-thirty.
Rob arrives as the kettle boils: Sue makes coffee for him as well. She watches him doing his breathing exercises. When she first came to the office, he insisted on decaffeinated coffee; now he does not bother. Dylan is next to arrive. He puts his arm around her and squeezes her before asking her to make his coffee. She dislikes his familiarity, but she does not say anything. She is not sure what she will do if he asks her out. He has already shown an interest in how she spends her evenings.
'Seen the papers?' he asks.
'John's got them.'
'He would.' Dylan slumps into his seat, his hands over his face.
'Are you all right?' Sue asks, greatly daring. 
'Just tired. Heavy weekend.' 
Sue smiles, though she is not sure what he means. 
*
Nine forty-five. Mackintosh vows to get up earlier on future Mondays. He curses car-driving commuters, juggernaut drivers, children who press the buttons at pelican crossings when they have no intention of crossing and workmen who dig holes in main roads in the rush hour. The bus edges forward another few yards. Mackintosh begins to think that Ecowatch should devote more attention to London's traffic problems and less to the destruction of the Brazilian rain forests. Nobody from Ecowatch has ever been to Brazil, though he did volunteer to go there to gather data. 
The bus stops. Mackintosh wonders as he does each morning how he came to be trapped in the ritual masochism of the London rush hour. He glares once more at his fellow passengers. They wait patiently, accepting their ordeal, and he scorns them for it. As so often, he wonders how they might be galvanised. Only sex and bingo rouse them from their apathy—and he is not too sure about sex. He abandons the bus and walks the last part of his journey, coughing gently in the diesel fumes of Pentonville Road. The classicism of Kings's Cross and the Gothic fantasy of St Pancras raise his spirits before the sight of Desmond Tutu House lowers them again. His workplace lacks any architectural pretensions. It was built in the sixties as a speculative office development and leased by the council as offices for its planning and architecture departments. The concrete has stained since then and paint flakes from the corroding window frames; yet when the bureaucrats moved out, the council perceived a new Jerusalem behind that inauspicious facade and rented the building to such socially desirable organisations as Ecowatch. 
At nine-fifty, Mackintosh enters Desmond Tutu House with his customary reluctance. The revolving doors symbolise his captivity: hours spent imprisoned in an office make him feel like a mouse in a treadmill. He knows that the occasion will come when he continues pushing until he is outside again, but today the routine exerts its spell, carrying him across the foyer to join the crowd waiting for the lift. Foyer is an imposing title for a lobby with emulsioned walls and grime-engrained vinyl flooring. Mackintosh's spirits sink lower. The world of work has sucked him into its womb. He is amongst the clones again. And he is late. 
'Hello there, Mackintosh,' a clone from the design co-op on the top floor greets him as the lift door grinds open.
'Mmph,' says Mackintosh. 
'Good weekend?' 
'Mmph,' says Mackintosh again, intent on squeezing into the lift in the wake of a pair of legs which have long aroused his lust. Their owner remains a stranger in spite of his best efforts, though he suspects that she is another design person. What is needed is a new mission, he tells himself: how to get to know the girl with lovely legs. It will give meaning to what promises to be an uneventful Monday. 
The lift door is closing, but by dint of pushing his fellow workers out the way and hurling himself through the narrowing gap, Mackintosh succeeds both in evading the clone and in pressing himself against his Diana. His action brings mutterings of discontent from the other occupants of the lift, but that is a trifling penance. He breathes deeply, savouring her scent. He has only to lean forward to press his face into her blonde hair and to feel the very movement of her body. The prospect intoxicates him. 
The lift stops with its customary stomach-churning suddenness. When the door opens, nobody moves. Mackintosh wonders whether he has stumbled into heaven. The  door slides closed again. As the lift creaks on its way, he studies the endearing blemishes on his Diana: the pimple on her chin and the hint of a golden moustache. He imagines her examining the moustache each morning in the privacy of her bathroom. It must be a momentous decision for a girl to admit her flaw and seek treatment. Over a shoe shop in Holloway Road is a clinic which specialises in the removal of facial hair. It must be a common problem, he concludes. He has a fantasy of being given a grant to study the incidence of facial hair amongst girls. What ecstasy. 
Again the lift jolts to a stop and the door opens. His Diana turns, so that she is facing him. She has to press against him as she leaves, arousing an ecstasy which banishes all philosophical musings. Excitement surges within him, mingling with disgust as his weakness for the flesh. Is procreation the sum of man's striving? Has civilisation produced nothing to compare with the fascination of a woman's body? Even as the closing door blocks out her image, her scent lingers in the lift like an aura. How could such a vision work in the same building? How could she surround herself with lesser mortals? Mackintosh scratches his unshaven chin as he ponders these eternal questions. Perhaps her blemishes are a ploy to give the impression that she is human when every man knows that she is really a goddess. 
The realisation dawns that something is different this morning. He has passed his floor. His Diana has seduced him from his work. He smiles. The lift stops on the top floor. As the remaining clones push past him, Mackintosh does not move. Now he knows where his Diana works: not in the design co-op, but in the cooperative producing computer software for socialist charities or the one distributing feminist books. He hopes that she is not a feminist. Feminists can be prickly. 
Back to the first floor—his floor. The vestibule is identical to those on the other floors with its range of doors and its one grimy window. Mackintosh savours the emptiness, searching his mind for some profound thought about solitude in the midst of activity, but profound thoughts rarely come to him on Monday mornings. Instinctively he feels that all those doors should generate a profound thought or two: doors keeping people one from another. The image appeals to him. 
Beside the lift is the toilet door. He is tempted to put off facing the idiocies of office life for an hour or so, but some residual element of conscientiousness makes him take a deep breath and pushes open the swing doors to the Ecowatch office. 
Each desk has an individuality reflecting the character of its owner. Though this is common to all offices, the nature of Ecowatch allows greater scope for individuality. Mackintosh's desk is unique in its untidiness, even by the standards of Ecowatch. None of the present staff remembers seeing its surface. The director once decreed that desks should be left clear at the end of each working day. The memo might still be amongst the mass of papers which make their way to Mackintosh's desk and stay there. A scaffolding of wire trays marks one attempt to impose order, but that succumbed to the rising tide of paper. At one time it was the only desk in the office whose waste basket was never emptied, though now this distinction has gone, along with the cleaner. Cleaners rarely stay long at Ecowatch. Nobody stays long at Ecowatch. 
Because Mackintosh likes to be reminded of the artistic aspirations of town planning, postcard-sized Impressionist prints are taped along the wall adjoining his desk. He muses upon them when he tires of his work. If the world of the French middle class in the nineteenth century is distant, the half-concealed passions are still real. From long study, he knows the allure of the women and the urges of men destined to watch them for eternity. As his own urges well up, he reaches into his top drawer for a chocolate biscuit. If this does nothing to quell his passions, it provides a consoling pleasure; and is life not made for pleasure? Dylan accused him of being a biscuit addict, but Mackintosh thought this was unfair. Chocolate biscuits help to stave off the boredom. They are also helping to stave off somebody else's boredom judging by the rate at which they are disappearing. If only his most treasured possessions could be locked away. He makes a mental note to leave a mousetrap in the drawer. 
'How's Mackintosh?' Dylan asks. 'Rearing to go on a Monday morning?' 
'Mmph,' says Mackintosh, vowing once again that when Dylan leaves, he will claim the desk by the radiator. His gaze steals towards his pin-up calendar. The fascination of the flesh is something which he still cannot understand intellectually. He tries to look dispassionately upon the expanse of thighs and breasts, yet always the excitement wells within him. His gaze travels towards Sue. It is a surreptitious gaze, he tells himself as he fantasises about Sue's thighs and breasts. Sometimes he wonders whether the real purpose of office life is to bring the sexes together. 
Earlier in the year, a feminist worked for Ecowatch. Mackintosh shivers at the recollection. She wanted to launch a campaign to raise the consciousness of exploited ethnic minorities, but there was no grant available at the time. He did point out that as ethnic minority men ran the sweat shops, ethnicity was a red herring, but she dismissed that one. And she took offence at his calendar. One morning he found it in the bin. She watched him retrieving it. 
'Do you have to degrade women?' 
'Artistic poses, these.' 
Jacqui curled her lip. 
'Good bodies,' he pointed out, making her lip curl even more. Fortunately Jacqui only stayed a few weeks. Appropriately enough, she went to work for a women's centre. He even contributed to her leaving present. The collection for a leaving present is such a frequent occurrence at Ecowatch that he has been tempted to suggest making regular deductions from everybody's salary. 
As everybody else is already sipping coffee, Mackintosh makes his own. 
'John got the papers?' he enquires.
''Fraid so,' Sue informs him. 'And the meeting's at ten.' 
'Don't know what he does with them in there.' 
'We're all waiting for them,' says Dylan. 
'No work till we get the papers,' Mackintosh insists, banging his fist on the desk so that coffee slops from the mug. 
'Won't be much when we do get them.' 
Mackintosh agrees, though he will not admit it. He suspects his fellow worker of taking the mickey, though the accusation always meets with heated denials. The trouble with Dylan is that women cannot resist him—a quality which always makes Mackintosh suspicious. To mark the end of his conversation with Dylan, he swivels his chair to face Rob. 
'Have we gone broke yet?' 
'We're well on course.' 
'Never happens, does it? “Don't know how we're going to pay salaries this month,” you say. And then you pay them.' 
'By not paying other bills. It's going to catch up with us in the end.' 
'We'll all have left by then.' 
Rob is silent on that one. Time off for interviews is ignored by tacit agreement, like visits to the lavatory. Everybody disappears for interviews from time to time. The protocol is to wait until the handing in of the notice before passing comment.
'And how's Sue?' Mackintosh asks. 'Good weekend?'
'All right,' Sue agrees. At this time on a Monday morning, she always feels at a loss. Nobody seems inclined to work before the meeting, so she does not like to draw attention to herself by looking busy. Whilst the meeting is in progress in the director's room, she is alone with little to do except for answering the telephone and opening the post. At least this Monday promises to be different. 
Being paid for not working makes her feel guilty. Sometimes she thinks that nobody at Ecowatch does anything except drink endless cups of coffee, talk and read newspapers. Rob is the only one who would not look out of place in an ordinary office. He complains about the extravagance of his fellow workers. He is always telling them what a struggle he has to pay the salaries. Talk like that worries Sue. Nothing like it was said in her previous job. If she could not pay the rent, how would she break the news to her flatmates? And what would they do? 
'You're looking preoccupied.' 
Dylan's voice intrudes on her thoughts. Sue looks up to see him watching her. She smiles back politely. 
'What were you thinking about?' he probes. 
'Nothing much.' 
'I'm sure you were thinking of something.' 
She is silent, not knowing how to respond. 
'I suppose we ought to get ready for the meeting.' He yawns. 'Doze through the morning.' 
'What happens at the meeting?' Sue ventures. 
'Nothing much.' 
'So what's it for?' 
'To make us looks important,' Mackintosh explains. 'Have to boost our egos somehow.' 
'I'd rather get on with some work,' Rob grumbles. 
'Got some more figures to add up, have you?' 
'It's how your salary gets paid.'
'Grants pay the salaries.'
'Where's the editor got to?' 
'Probably in bed.'
'He's at a press conference,' Dylan informs them. 
The editor seems destined to usurp Mackintosh's position as office maverick. Nobody calls him by his name and nobody seems to know why. He edits Ecowatch's quarterly newsletter and drafts campaigning leaflets, policy statements and policy analyses, though the director always rewrites them. Previous editors spent their days in the office, laying out material and collecting proofs. The present incumbent prefers to do this at home, using his working day to find the news and to make the news, as he puts it. This means rarely that his appearances in the office are infrequent, though he occasionally turns up for the Monday meeting. 
'The meeting's at ten today,' Sue reminds the others. 
'We'd better get in there then,' says Mackintosh, eyeing her more appreciatively than she likes. 'Come on Rob—leave your figures.' 
'John wants me to come as well,' Sue announces, picking up her shorthand notebook as though she is a proper secretary. To her disappointment, nobody shows any interest. 
The Monday meeting has become an Ecowatch institution. Newcomers question its value, but come to accept it as inevitable. It was begun by the director so that he could keep his finger on the pulse, as he put it; but unlike most of his enthusiasms, this one has not dimmed with time. On Monday mornings, Sue may be found rounding up recalcitrant Ecowatch workers, like a faithful sheepdog scouring the workshops, offices and common services of Desmond Tutu House, with the notable exception of the men's lavatories. It is a measure of her success that most people turn up in spite of their complaints. As the workers drift into the director 's room, only Sue is not carrying a mug of coffee and a diary. They range themselves on the two low couches angled around the circular coffee table which is intended to create a feeling of informality. Mackintosh grabs The Guardian from amongst the heap of newspapers and immerses himself in the sports pages while nothing is happening. The director is at his desk. He contrives to look busy until everybody is assembled. Then he glances up in apparent surprise. 
'Ten o'clock,' Dylan reminds him. 
As the director searches for his diary, he is muttering, 'I don't know where the day goes. I suppose we'd better get started.' 
'Post come yet?' Dylan enquires. 
The director  looks towards Sue. She shakes her head. 
'There's your answer,' says the director. 'You'll have it as soon as it's ready, Dylan. I don't keep it back from you.' 
There are ill-concealed smiles. Reading the post is another way in which the director  keeps his finger on the pulse, though other people have called it asserting titular authority. 
'Good morning everybody,' says the great man, leaving his desk. He joins the others around the table to a subdued chorus of greeting. His chair is higher than the couches. 'Welcome to Sue who's joining us for the first time.' 
Sue feels important and looks modestly at her notebook. The director beams at her, giving credence to the rumour that he takes more than an employer's interest in his youngest employee. Dylan can barely conceal a grin. 
'Are we all here?' the director asks, looking around the assembled company.
'The editor's at a press conference,' Dylan informs him. 
'Sometimes I wonder if he has a full-time job with somebody else.' 
Mackintosh turns to the arts section. 
'If we all got here on time, we could have the meeting at half past nine,' the director  points out. 'I don't think that's too much to ask.' 
Nobody answers. 
'We'll go round the table as usual to compare diaries,' he continues, undeterred by his subordinates' lack of response. 'Mackintosh.' 
Being immersed in the opinions of a feminist film maker on the British cinema, Mackintosh does not respond until Dylan nudges him. He lowers the paper to find the others looking at him. 
'What are you doing this week?' the director repeats gently. 
'Just the usual,' Mackintosh answers, not bothering to look at his diary. The usual round of drinking, leching, reading papers and trying to look busy. He guesses that he is doing the same as most people in the building. 
'Have you thought over what we talked about?' 
Mackintosh nods sagely. What they talked about was a new campaign. What Mackintosh wants is one which he can pursue alone. 
'We'll come back to that in a moment when we've seen what everybody else is doing,' the director continues. His gaze turns to Dylan. 
'Quite a busy week,' says Dylan, consulting his diary. 'Today there's a press conference and the launch of the pamphlet on air traffic and the ozone layer. Tomorrow I'm seeing a guy from ERC which is an American version of Ecowatch. ERC stands for Environmental Resources Concern.' 
'They're doing similar work, you say,' the director probes. 
'They've got a project going on pollution and high-flying aircraft.' 
The director 's expression becomes wary. 'You'll go carefully, won't you? We don't want all our ideas going across the Atlantic.' 
'I'll be discretion itself.' 
'You're not usually.' 
'I am capable of it, John.' 
'How's he coming?' Mackintosh asks. 
'How do you mean?' Dylan queries. 
'This American guy. How's he coming to this country?' 
'The same way as everybody else. It's too far to swim.' 
'If people didn't go jetting across the Atlantic, there wouldn't be any pollution. Think about it.' 
'Unfortunately that's not a viable proposition,' the director intervenes. 
'I thought that's what we were campaigning for.' 
'What about the rest of the week?' the director asks, looking at Dylan. 
'On Wednesday I'm going over to Heathrow to talk to some of the residents about noise. I think we might be able to get more involved there.' 
'If somebody provides the money. The trouble with residents' groups is that they expect us to campaigning for them, but they haven't got the money to pay for it.' 
Mackintosh is tempted to point out charities are supposed to campaign for nothing, but he decides that it is prudent to keep quiet. 
'On Thursday I want to catch up with the paperwork,' Dylan continues. 'Then on Friday there's a conference I'm supposed to be going to in Cheltenham.' 
'Which one's that?' 
'Public transport in rural areas.' 
'I might go along myself.' As the director makes a note in his diary, Mackintosh smothers a smile. Dylan was looking forward to his day out; he will be less keen if he has to share it with the director. A substantial part of the budget at Ecowatch is devoted to attending conferences, particularly those in attractive locations like Bath or Edinburgh. Everybody loves going, though nobody likes to be pinned down as to their value. The usefulness of informal contacts with other organisations cannot be measured, the director once assured his staff. Everybody agreed fervently. 
'Do we both need to go?' Dylan asks warily.
'Certainly we should be represented,' says the director. 
'Agreed, but it doesn't take two of us.'
'We do need to keep a lookout for anybody willing to fund research.' 
'I can do that.' 
'We'll talk about that later.' The director turns to Rob. 'What are you doing?' 
'Worrying.' 
'You always are,' the director rejoins, permitting himself a smile. 
'Some of our suppliers are getting restless. I've got to juggle the bills—and pay the salaries.' 
'Which you always manage to do with your customary skill.' 
'Because I've done it so far, doesn't mean I'll always manage to do it in the future. It only needs a grant to be delayed longer than usual and we're in trouble.' Rob looks at the others to make sure they have understood the implications. His face has gone red. His brow wrinkles. The relaxation so painfully acquired is forgotten. 
'All right, all right.' The director raises a placatory hand. 'We've weathered storms before.' 
Rob turns away in exasperation. 
'Today I've got a BBC interview,' says the director, consulting his diary. 'That means I'm going to be out of the office for a couple of hours this afternoon. Tomorrow I've got to go to Sheffield to address some academics from Eastern Europe about pollution in the Mediterranean. Does anybody know anything about the subject?' 
Nobody does. 
'Might be a useful topic for a research grant,' the director muses, making another note in his diary. 
'We'd have to go there,' Mackintosh points out. 
'Where?' 
'The Mediterranean. It's not like Brazil. We'd have to go there if we got a grant.' 
'I don't know about that.' The director consults his diary again. 'Wednesday's pretty free, though I'm having a word with you about the budget, Rob.' 
Rob nods. 
'On Thursday I'm having lunch with an attaché from the Brazilian embassy. I think he wants to know what sort of policy statement we're going to make on rain forests.' 
'I don't think you should go,' says Dylan. Everybody stares at him. His easy-going demeanour has vanished. 
'I'm not going along with everything they want.' The director is placatory. 'I'll have a meal with him—that's all there is to it.' 
'You're selling out.' 
'I'm not, Dylan.' 
'I've worked fucking hard on this project and I don't want to see it go down the pan.' 
'It's not going to!' 
Mackintosh's gaze strays to the back page of The Guardian as the dispute rages. 
'I've made my point,' Dylan says, leaning back and glaring past the director. 
'Can we get on, please?' the director appeals, turning back to his diary. 'On Friday there's the steering group meeting on a European green policy.' 
Mackintosh stifles a groan. The steering group has been meeting for as long as he has been at Ecowatch, with no signs of reaching any conclusions. Nobody, apart from members of the steering group, knows what happens at the meetings and Mackintosh suspects that even they are none too sure. No policy has ever emerged and nobody is likely to take any notice if it did. 
The director snaps his diary closed. 'Any other points before we discuss what we should do about our next campaign?' 
'The toilets,' Dylan says. 'The toilets don't work.' 
The toilets often fail to work, but nobody has yet found a reason. Men from the council have thrust rods through the pipework of Desmond Tutu House on several occasions, but to no avail. 
'Something nasty must have happened when they were converting the place,' the director muses. 'The council really ought to deal with it.' 
'They've tried.' 
'Smell gets quite nasty,' Mackintosh adds. 
'Rob—will you phone the council again?' 
Rob nods. 
'We keep telling them and nothing gets done,' Dylan protests. 
'What more can we do?' the director appeals. 
The staff of Ecowatch look at each other, but nobody has any answers. Mackintosh bits his tongue to stop himself from laughing at the thought of those finely-honed minds which grapple with the destruction of the Brazilian jungle being unable to solve the problem of a blocked toilet. The others do not share his sense of humour, much to his regret. 
'We all need to complain,' Dylan reasons. 'It affects everybody in the building.'
Mackintosh chortles. 
'We can't spend all the morning talking about toilets,' the director decides. 'What we've got to discuss is a new campaign. As you all know, the Brazilian rain forest project is coming to an end. We can't get the grant renewed and we can't afford to keep on two campaigners unless we get something else going.' 
'Which means I'm for the chop,' Mackintosh deduces. 
'If anybody does have a bright idea, then let me know,' continues the director ignoring the interruption. 'We ought to get this off the ground as soon as possible.' He looks expectantly at his audience, but bright ideas appear to be in short supply. 'It's finding something that catches the mood of the moment,' he thinks aloud. 'That's the only way we're going to attract a grant.' 
'The ozone layer?' Dylan hazards. 
'It's popular, but I think it's peaked now.' 
Mackintosh chortles again. 
'Is something the matter?' the director enquires. 
'The peaking ozone layer—let's campaign about peaking ozone.' 
'It's difficult to research without specialist skills,' the director decides. 'I think we'll have to count that out.' 
'Water pollution?' Rob hazards. 
'How do you mean exactly?' 
'Sewerage effluent on beaches: that sort of thing.' 
'Friends of the Earth are doing that. We've got to try to anticipate the trend.'
'Traffic,' says Mackintosh. 
'Eh?' 'Something about traffic. Volume of traffic, car commuters and congestion, public transport in London ...' 
'There might be something in it.' The director sounds unconvinced. 'Perhaps you could do me a report—just a summary of what you've got in mind and likely funding sources.' 
'The cost of commuting by car,' Mackintosh muses. 'The social cost of the car:   delays, accidents, pollution, new roads. Problems we like to ignore.' 
'What about the grant?' Rob asks. 
'Ah, the grant. Filthy lucre.' 
'It pays your salary.' 
'Like a pimp trying to find a whore.' 
The director scowls. 'I wish you'd keep your humour to yourself, Mackintosh.' 
'We should have several applications on the go,' the ever-realistic Rob reminds them. 
'A good point,' the director agrees. 'It doesn't matter whether we try for several campaigns, or one campaign and several grants.' 
'Prostitutes,' Mackintosh declares, having the satisfaction of seeing Sue looks uncomfortable. 'That's all we are.' 
'I wish you'd take this seriously,' the director snaps. 
'I am. I'm taking it very seriously, considering it's my job on the line.' 
'You've a funny way of showing it.' 
'Very seriously indeed.' 
'Has anybody else got any ideas for a campaign? With all the environmental problems we're facing, it shouldn't be that difficult.' 
'PCBs?' Dylan suggests. 'They're likely to be in the news again soon.' 
The director hesitates. 'That might be too specialised. If we can't show we've got the expertise, we're not likely to get a grant.' 
'How about housing?' Rob asks.
'We'd be competing with Shelter.' 
'Whatever topic you take, somebody's researching it.' 
They contemplate the thought in silence. It makes unemployment seem closer. The director is the first to speak. 
'If Mackintosh and Dylan can look at possible topics and Rob, you draw up a shortlist of funding sources. We shouldn't have too much of a problem matching them.'
A measure of optimism returns to the company: the director can be persuasive. The frown even lifts from Sue's brow. 
'Thank you very much everybody.' The director stands as a sign that the meeting is at an end. The workers of Ecowatch gather up the newspapers and wander back to the outer office to read the job advertisements. Mackintosh stares at the girl on his calendar as he sips his coffee. Why does he never work with girls who look like that? His postcards of Impressionist paintings do something to raise the intellectual tenor of his thoughts, without necessarily raising his spirits. Whenever he aspires to art, the sight of the body reminds him of mortality. Its inadequacies in general and those of his own body in particular rob the human form of nobility. There is no place in his vision of transcendental beauty for corns, varicose veins and cellulite. A minor pleasure at the beginning of each month is turning the page of the calendar and examining the newly-revealed model for such obvious blemishes, but he never finds any. Instead of reassuring him, this makes him suspicious. Have these girls really achieved perfection, or does the photographer's art conceal those inevitable accompaniments to humanity? He looks at October with longing. His own body was once like a machine, responsive to everything demanded of it; now running for a bus makes him so out of breath that he has given up in favour of waiting for the next one. When a rare outburst of enthusiasm prompted him to practise press-ups, his arms collapsed and he lay ignominiously on the floor after two attempts, convinced that he was having a heart attack. Several stiff drinks were needed to get over the shock. Now he ruefully accepts growing older rather than railing against it. The world which he knows is growing old with him—he notices that as the director loses more hair and more pieces of concrete detached themselves from Desmond Tutu House. Those little things which were reassuringly familiar like cast-iron lamp standards, red telephone boxes and underground urinals marooned in the middle of the road are all disappearing. Only his lust is unchanged. Girls are still at the core of his scheme of things. He has spent his adult life trying to understand the paradox: why should a girl's body be a thing of beauty when sexuality is the ever-present reminder of mortality? The age-old philosophical problem is no nearer resolution: why should girls be made of sugar and spice and all things nice? 
'Let's have The Guardian then,' Dylan prompts. 'See what Creative and Media has to offer.' 
Mackintosh gives up the paper. With as keenness which rarely lasts beyond the first day of the working week, he lets his gaze be drawn away from Miss October to the mass of papers on his desk. They become blurred as his eyes glaze over. Once he approached his work with zeal, though he has trouble remembering that far back. Occasional recollections of his student days emerge with startling clarity through the mists of time and lunchtime alcohol. Town planners seemed masters of the world then. What romance he found in the pioneering world of Ebenezer Howard and Raymond Unwin. How he looked forward to playing his own modest part in fashioning a new world. Walking the streets of the Letchworth and Hampstead Garden Suburb, he could experience something of the fervour which went into their creation. That idealism was jolted in his first job, where the priority was to assert the dominance of planners over architects. This meant tinkering with every plan to 'keep the buggers in their place,' as the chief planner put it. Evans was want to describe his arch rival, the chief architect, as 'a cocky little bastard who thinks he knows it all,' the exception being that he knew nothing about landscaping. 
'A town is defined by its landscaping,' Evans would say. By the time he retired, the town was superbly landscaped even if there was a shortage of housing and the traffic jams were legendary. 'Nature knows about landscaping,' he would say. 'Forget about theory and look at nature.' His particular concern was landscaping public conveniences. So effectively did he achieve his ambition that residents were known to take bets on how long a visitor to the town could hold out before being forced to ask for directions. When Evans left, the architects contributed generously to his leaving present. 
Mackintosh often proclaims to anybody who will listen that the reason for planning is jobs for planners. Perhaps it was Evans who made him so disillusioned. Even the Brazilian rain forest no longer grips his attention. He muses on how traffic congestion in London might keep him in gainful employment for a year or so. He knows about traffic management. Evans' successor, Canning, was obsessed by traffic management. Landscaping schemes languished and the architects were displeased when an interchange was proposed on land designated for a housing estate. 
'East-west capacity needs increasing,' declared Canning. 
'He can stick his east-west capacity up his bloody arse,' responded the chief architect. 
Like cats and dogs, architects and planners are destined to be at one another's throats. Mackintosh was glad to make the shift into lecturing. At least students had to listen. If the department had remained open, perhaps he would still be teaching there instead of scrabbling around for campaigns to pay his bills. And he would be working shorter hours: one of the many things about lecturing which appealed to him was finishing at half past three. Two campaigns are needed, Mackintosh decides: one for Dylan and one for himself. Finding topics is easy: a quick inspection of any newspaper reveals enough to keep any researcher busy for years. Finding grants is the difficult part, but that is Rob's problem. Mackintosh reaches into the top drawer of his desk to find a fresh sheet of paper on which to crystalise his thoughts, or more serendipitously for another chocolate biscuit to sustain him. The remaining biscuits are soft and crumble under his fingers, adding to the mess in his drawer. Wondering anew who the biscuit thief might be, he swivels round to scrutinise his companions. Only Sue catches his eye and she looks away a little too quickly. 
*
Sue always gets alarmed when men look at her. She feels that they are stripping her, assessing her sexually and comparing her uninspiring body with those of other girls. What she would like is to return the men's stares and to be provocative enough to discomfit them. Instead she looks away as she always does, hoping that Mackintosh will not ask her out. She wishes she were smart and sophisticated, so that she could put men like him in their place. Her flatmates manage it effortlessly. She thought that she would become like them, but it has not happened. She ventures another look at her working companions. Mackintosh is staring at his pin-up. She decides that he is the most repellent individual she has ever met. Her mother would say that he has let himself go. His stomach bulges. He needs a shave. His clothes look as though they have come from a jumble sale: they are crumpled, out of fashion, ill-fitting and smelly. And he is old—at least thirty-five. 
Dylan has kept his boyish looks, though he must be in his middle twenties. Sue can imagine him not looking out of place in the pub in Northampton where students go, though she never went there herself. While nobody is paying attention, she admires his trim figure. One gesture always excites her: the way he pushes his fair hair back unthinkingly when it flops across his forehead. And she loves his half smile when he talks to her. In spite of this, she is wary of him. Girls are always ringing the office wanting to speak to him. Sometimes he boasts to Rob and Mackintosh about the girl he was with the previous evening. Then Sue feels embarrassed and keeps her eyes on her typing as she pretends not to listen. 
Rob is different. She trusts Rob. He is little older than Dylan, but much more mature. If she was talking to her friends back home, she would call him dishy. She misses her friends. In London, there is nobody she can tell about her feelings. Hers is a secret passion. 
* 
Dylan sips his coffee. The Guardian has yielded no promising jobs, so Ecowatch will benefit from his valuable time for a little longer. He toys with writing to the richer charities rather than waiting for them to advertise. Mackintosh's suggestion of campaigning about traffic congestion made his heart sink. A campaign like that will prompt him to get out if nothing else does. It is too parochial. Perhaps his campaigning days are over. He is moving into a new phase of his life, even if Mackintosh wants to continue fighting lost causes. Advertising holds more appeal for Dylan. He watches his companions. His fellow campaigner gazes longingly at his calendar. The worst fate is to be like Mackintosh. Sue is gazing at Rob as she always does when thinks nobody is looking. Her pudgy face goes doe-like. Dylan studies her critically. She is not irredeemably unattractive. Innocence might ultimately be boring, but it has an initial charm. He would not like to leave Ecowatch without coaxing some passion out of her. Dylan has a theory that all girls are passionate, though some keep it hidden. His mission is to help them reveal it. The mystery is why Sue should be infatuated with a boring character like Rob. 
* 
Rob stares at the cheques which the Monday post has yielded: they total seventy-three pounds. The Monday post is normally the best of the week, so the omens are not good. No grants are due for a month and Ecowatch is already overdrawn. The folder of unpaid bills is overflowing: even if he removed the solicitors' letters, it would still not be manageable. It annoys him that nobody else at Ecowatch shows any concern about where the money comes from. They might take more notice if their salaries were not paid. He would love to take the ultimate step, but he would be affected as much as the others. The thought of his mortgage always spurs him to put aside the unpaid bills for another month. 
He is getting tense. He leans back, staring at the wall as he goes through the familiar cycle of breathing exercises. His anxieties disperse with the ease of the sun dispersing mist. The transformation wrought by a few simple yoga techniques always makes him marvel. His old optimism returns, even if he knows that it will not last. As he closes his eyes, Jeanne's image is with him. He cannot help the smile coming to his lips. Whatever the problems of Ecowatch, the thought of Jeanne always helps him to cope. 
His thoughts go back to the morning run which has become an increasingly important feature of his life. A marathon is the ultimate challenge. He has never gone beyond six miles. He tries to contemplate running three or four times that distance. Sometimes he feels that everything is possible; at other times he feels far older than his years. What he cannot understand is why his moods change so quickly. Sometimes even jogging a mile seems an effort. His pace slows to the shuffle adopted by elderly joggers. His shoulders slump. It frightens him to see his future. It makes him resolve to devote more effort to looking after his health. Office life is not good for him—especially life in the Ecowatch office. Too much tension; too many bad vibes. The others forget that he wants to find another job as much as they do. He looks at his colleagues. Dylan is scanning the broadsheet section of The Guardian. Rob gets on tolerably well with Dylan. Mackintosh is staring at the girlie calendar which makes Rob feel uncomfortable whenever it catches his eye. Sue is gazing at her work. Rob suspects that she is lonely in London. He sympathises. 
'What we need is a scandal to expose.' Dylan declares. 
'Scandal?' says Mackintosh, looking up. 'Know of one?' 
'A scandal we can use to get ourselves in the headlines. Some cover-up by big business or the government.' 
'They don't make headlines these days—not unless they're laced with sex,' Mackintosh points out, speculating on what sort of environmental scandal might contain a useful element of sex. 
'There must be something,' Dylan insists. 
'The director wouldn't like scandal. Might affect our grant-receiving credibility as he calls it.' 
Dylan says something about bugger the grant-receiving credibility if it gets publicity, but nobody listens. Such conversations are too common in the Ecowatch office on Monday mornings for anybody to pay much attention. 
'Anybody want this?' Dylan holds out the newspaper which Rob takes, grateful for any escape from his preoccupations. Monday morning is always the same at Ecowatch.

chapter two

The workers of Desmond Tutu House appreciate their lunch hour. The stresses of Monday morning can be forgotten as they crowd into the Rising Sun. There the atmosphere is convivial, the beer flows freely (so long as salaries have just been paid), the talk is of sex and politics; and the toilets work. The two bars are crowded, hot and heavy with tobacco smoke. Scores of conversations tempt the casual eavesdropper.
With a Cumberland sausage in one hand and a pint of Young's in the other, Dylan squeezes towards a table which has been commandeered by four girls. Two are worthy of his attention. He switches on his smile.
'Mind if I put my drink down here?'
The girls smile back. Dylan lingers as he leans across the nearest one, letting her scent evoke the old excitement. She has long dark hair which rides over her shoulders as she moves and which is close enough for him to touch if he was not holding a sausage. Her eyes are dark, a feature accentuated by her sculpted face and her make-up. Smouldering sensuality is his assessment.  
With equal pleasure he turns his attention to the girl opposite. The thick auburn hair and full lips might have strayed from a pre-Raphaelite painting. She appraises him knowingly. He likes that. So which one will he choose? A tantalising choice.
'Move along there,' Mackintosh's voice comes from behind him.
Dylan groans inwardly and savours the scent of the raven-haired beauty again, letting his thoughts drift into pleasantly erotic realms. It is one of those occasions when he wishes that he had extricated himself from his fellow workers and come to the pub on his own.
When Dylan has manoeuvred himself further around the table, Mackintosh takes his place and puts down his pint. After looking over the girls appreciatively, he nudges Dylan.
'Done all right, haven't we?' 
'What do you think I came over here for?' Dylan mutters back. 
They study the two desirable girls who are talking with their two less desirable friends and pretending not to notice their admirers. 
'Why?' Mackintosh asks, keeping his voice low. 
'Why what?' 
'What's attracting us?' 
'The usual: tits, arses and pretty faces.' 
'I was being metaphysical.' 
'Still comes down to tits, arses and pretty faces. Look at them.' 
Mackintosh looks. 'Hormones or conditioning?' he muses. 'What gets us?' 
'Who cares?' 
'Sometimes you need to know.' 
'Bollocks. You might as well say you need to know whether they've got piles or whether their feet smell.' 
'Do smelly feet put you off?' 
'It's not something I worry about.' 
'I wouldn't say I worry.' 
'You sound as if you are.' 
Mackintosh tries to assume a carefree appearance. He leans towards Dylan again. 'Which one would you go for?' 
'Depends which one I can pull.' 
'If you had the choice.' 
'So long as it's one of the attractive ones.' 
'Why do we ignore the other two?' 
'Because they're evolution's failures.' 
'There's probably some bloke out there who thinks they're the greatest thing since draught Guinness.' 
'He's welcome to them.' 
'They probably do their best.' 
'That's the trouble: they don't. Look at the one with acne.' 
'She can't help it,' the fair-minded Mackintosh protests. 
'She could do something about her hair. And the other one's fat. She could go on a diet. If you want to know what attracts us, think why we don't fancy them. It's biology: you don't breed with second best unless you're desperate.' 
They chew their sausages meditatively. For Mackintosh, erotic images of beautiful girls banish thoughts of press conferences and Brazilian rain forests. 
'Moles are strange,' he muses. 
'Eh?' 
'Little brown spots on the skin.' 
'I know what they are.' 
'They should be unattractive, but the Mediterranean girl's got one on her neck which is quite appealing. You can see it when she moves her head.' 
They study the girl with raven hair, waiting for a glimpse of the mole. 
'She's beautiful and she knows it,' Dylan murmurs, tiring of the game. 'Wouldn't call her Mediterranean. Skin's too white.'
'True.' 
'Look at the way she's got her legs crossed.' 
Mackintosh looks. Her dress rides up her thighs revealing a broadening area of flesh encased in black tights. He nibbles his sausage. 
'What is it about black tights?' he wants to know. 
'Are you going to tell me?'
'I was being rhetorical.'
'Bad habit.' 
'But they are a turn-on, aren't they?' 
'Sometimes you can hardly bear to pull them down.' 
Mackintosh dreams of the opportunity. 
'Wouldn't she look fantastic just in tights?' Dylan muses. 
'Fantastic,' a fervent Mackintosh agrees. 
'And she knows we're talking about her.' 
Mackintosh turns away while Dylan continues to regard her with undisguised interest. 
'I take it she's your choice?' Mackintosh asks. 
'I think so.' 
'All those pre-Raphaelite charms wasting their sweetness on the desert air.' 
'Don't you fancy them?' 
'Bit on the plump side, perhaps.' 
'Well-padded. The pre-Raphaelites always were.' 
'Perhaps,' Mackintosh concedes, studying her critically. Comely plump rather than grotesquely fat is his considered judgement. 
'Is she beautiful?' he wonders.
'Yes.' 
'Beautiful rather than attractive?' 
'Difficult one that.' 
'How do we make the distinction? Is there some objective measure?' 
'You're intellectualising again.'
'Sorry.' 
'I think I'd call her beautiful,' Dylan decides. 'There's got to be something classical about beauty—something that shines through bad photographs and survives hangovers. Attraction is a will-o'-the-wisp.' 
'Got it in a nutshell.' 
'One of those flashes of illumination which I bestow on the world.' 
Mackintosh feels peeved that it was not his idea. Nor can he recall those previous flashes of inspiration which Dylan claims, but he does not press the point. 
'Can't remember seeing this lot here before,' he says to bring the conversation back on track.
'We'll have to find out where they work, won't we?' 
'So we move in for the kill?' 
'There is no other way.' 
They finish their sausages. Dylan wipes his hands on a napkin; Mackintosh wipes his on the inside his pockets. He feels the old apprehension at having to display his own technique as his colleague leans over the table. 
'Enjoying yourselves, ladies?' Dylan asks, picking up his glass.
The girls break of their conversation. They smile. 
'Hope I'm not interrupting.' 
'We were just having a chat,' says the pre-Raphaelite. 
'Not talking about us, I hope?' 
She shakes her head. She is smiling.
'I'm Dylan, by the way, and this is Mackintosh. He's got a first name, but nobody ever uses it.' 
Now Mackintosh smiles at the girls. They smile back. 
'What are your names?' Dylan probes. 
'I'm Lisa,' the pre-Raphaelite volunteers. 'This is Carol, Penny and Maria.' 
Dylan faces the raven-haired beauty. 'Hello Maria,' he says, ignoring the acne-ridden Carol and the obese Penny. 
'Hello Dylan,' she responds in an accent which Mackintosh places as no nearer to the Mediterranean than Clapham. A little of his excitement dies. 
'Mind if we join you?' Dylan is asking. 
'There aren't any more seats,' Maria points out. 
'Never mind.' He squats beside her, smiling conspiratorially as she uncrosses her legs. Mackintosh sighs. He does not like squatting: it hurts his legs and people can see his bald patch. Suddenly he feels old. He looks around for a spare stool, but none is free. And Lisa is on the other side of the table, which presents a logistical problem. He edges around the table towards her. Lisa: it is hardly a pre-Raphaelite name. He hopes that his knees will not crack as he kneels beside her, but they do. 
The view is different from table level. It is what a dwarf might see. Legs become more prominent and Mackintosh has to admit that Lisa's legs are a disappointment. He can also look up her  nose. On the other side of the table, Dylan seems happy enough losing his balance against Maria. They giggle. Mackintosh looks up at Lisa and she smiles. He has to admit that hers is a winning smile. 
'Haven't seen you here before,' Dylan is saying. 
'We come here sometimes,' Maria responds. 'It gets a bit crowded, that's the trouble.' 
'We come here pretty regularly. Meet our friends here.' 
Mackintosh nods in agreement, hoping that the girls will join their circle of friends and spend their lunch hours there more regularly. 
'Where do you work?' Dylan asks Maria. 
'Penny and me work for Barclays. Carol and Lisa are at British Rail.' 
In the offices,' adds acne-ridden Carol.
 'You don't say.' 
Don't waste your sarcasm, Mackintosh wants to say, seeing Carol's look of incomprehension. 
'What happens when it's all privatised?' Mackintosh wants to know. 
'We'll call ourselves Railtrack.' 
'Terrible policy.'
'And you meet up every day, do you?' Dylan presses on, ignoring this diversion. 
'Once or twice a week,' Maria informs him. 'It's difficult for us to all get away at the same time.'
'Chance to talk about us men,' says Mackintosh and wishes he had kept quiet when he sees Lisa's frown. 
'We have got other things to talk about,' she informs him. 
'You're old friends, are you?' Dylan asks, seeking safer ground. 
'Me and Carol come up on the same train,' Maria explains, 'so we all sort of got to know each other.' 
'Go to discos, do you?' 
'Couple of times a week.' 
Mackintosh knows where the conversation is heading and resists smiling. The disco routine is one of Dylan's favourites. 
'Do you fancy coming along to this place I know?' Dylan offers, conforming to type. 'I think you'll like it.' 
'What sort of place?' Maria asks suspiciously. 
'It's in the West End: a club with a disco and restaurant.' 
'What's its name?' 
'Interested?' 
'I might have been there.' 
'Not this place.' 
'So where is it?' 
Dylan fishes a card from his wallet and hands it to her. 'Ever heard of it?' 
'No.' 
'You'll enjoy it.' 
Maria hesitates, staring at the card. The others watch the exchange with interest. Mackintosh holds his breath. When she agrees, he wants to applaud. Another successful chatting-up completed. How he envies Dylan his technique. 
'Wakey, wakey,' Lisa prompts, making Mackintosh realises that she is talking to him. Those great, green eyes are upon him. He wonders how anybody could resist them. 
'Do you go to this place as well?' she repeats.
'No, not me. Not a disco type.' 
'What are you then?' 
'Not a disco type,' he repeats, knowing that he is losing Lisa's interest and that he must redeem himself. 'My idea of going out is to have a good meal.' 
'I like eating out,' she says eagerly. 
'Especially Indian food. I don't mean your average curry house Indian takeaway. I mean the real stuff.'
'What's the real stuff?' 
'You've got to know the right places,' he reveals, uncomfortably aware that the rest of the group is listening. He does not like his technique coming under such scrutiny. 
'And you know all the right places, do you?' says Lisa. 
'I'm getting to know them.'
'Good thing I met you, isn't it?' 
Mackintosh preens his whiskers contentedly. The difficult part is over. He even smiles at Carol to show that there are no hard feelings. His thoughts turn with pleasurable anticipation to meals with Lisa. The next stage is being alone together, which might present difficulties if she lives with her parents. Parents dislike Mackintosh on principle, though what the principle is still mystifies him. Life will be easier if she shares a flat: flatmates can be persuaded to keep out of the way. 
Only when the excitement of the chase is on him does he lament how squalid is his own room with its patchwork of job-lot wallpapers holding the plaster in place, the stained and threadbare rugs hiding holes in the lino, and furniture which might just have been acceptable when it was second hand. Some people can make something of a bedsit; Mackintosh is not one of them. Nobody is invited to his room. Then he regrets not having a house like other people of his age, but the feeling never lasts long. 
One idée fixe which emerges when his colleagues in the office are talking about their holiday plans is to paint a beautiful girl on a Grecian island. It remains a dream because Mackintosh never has the money for holidays. Yet the appearance of somebody like Lisa reawakens his hopes. Why should it not become a reality, he asks himself, eyeing her speculatively. She notices his interest and smiles, which is an encouraging sign. Mackintosh feels lucky. 
* 
The director drums his fingers against his leg and wishes that he had eaten lunch first. The chair suspends him inches from the floor—a position designed to assert the inferiority of clients, or to stop them from leaving. The twinges in his back make him feel his years. He wonders whether to lever himself from the chair before it becomes more uncomfortable and whilst he can still manage unaided. To dispel these intimations of mortality, he studies his surroundings. They reinforce his conclusion is that estate agents earn more than the director of Ecowatch. Certainly this one does. The plate glass, polished marble and leather seats belong to the world of ostentatious hotels, banks and companies which set out to overawe clients. Uplighters on spindly black columns resemble slumbering stalks: Desmond Tutu House with its naked fluorescent tubes seems a world away. The carpet defies the law that pale carpets always attract stains. He wonders whether somebody has to give it a shampoo it every week to keep it in that condition. Certainly the receptionist would not deign to do anything so menial. He watches her appreciatively. She is every man's ideal of a receptionist—a being from some advertisement for high-class chocolates with her expensive coiffure, high cheekbones and flawless complexion. She skims her magazine, glancing occasionally at the director captive in his chair as a spider might keep a proprietorial eye on a fly enmeshed in its web. She knows that she is being watched in return and she preens herself. The director smiles inwardly. He sees her wriggling on her seat. The little foible makes her almost human. The poor girl wants her lunch the same as anyone else. He has a fantasy of her as the receptionist at Ecowatch, but how would he justify a grant for a receptionist when most visitors are workers from other charities hoping to borrow coffee? If fantasy is stretched to its limit, she would be his secretary with her desk in his office and stripped of its modesty panel— 
 'Sorry to keep you waiting, John.' 
The unctuous tones of the estate agent stir the director from his reverie. A hand with immaculate cuffs fastened by gold links is offered to him, presumably for shaking rather than for helping him up. He levers himself from the chair and grips the clammy hand, wondering whether he has met its owner before, or whether all clients get called by their first names. 
'Did Sharon get you come coffee?' 
The director takes the opportunity to smile at the receptionist, trying to see her as a Sharon. 
'I'll bring it through,' she announces in the bored tones of somebody tired of fending off unwelcome callers. 
The two men go into the inner office. The chairs are more comfortable there—and they can be sat on without having to worry how to get up. As the estate agent makes his way to the far side of the desk, the director muses about having a larger desk of his own. Rob would argue, but one privilege of being director is having the last word. 
'So how can we help you?' the estate agent begins, putting his hands together as though the two men are about to share a prayer. The gold cuff links glint. The director watches this display of ostentation with distaste. 
 'I've a penthouse flat for sale,' 
The estate agent beams. 'I think we can help you there. I'm not exaggerating when I say we've quite a reputation in that field.' 
The director is less sure, but he is not one to dampen another man's enthusiasm. 
'So where is the property?' the estate agent enquires, taking up a Mont Blanc fountain pen of impressive size. 
'Close to the City.' 
'Where, exactly?' 
'Just to the north.' 
'The Barbican, you mean? It's a highly desirable area.' 
'Not exactly the Barbican, but it's very near.'
The estate agent's pen is poised over the form. He  looks puzzled. 
'It's like docklands,' the director explains. 
'I don't think I understand.' 
'Clerkenwell. I think it's going to be the next area for development.' 
The estate agent looks unconvinced. 'So you're offering us instructions on a flat in Clerkenwell. Is that right?' 
'A penthouse flat.' 
'If it's in Clerkenwell, we can't really say it's in the Barbican, can we, John?'
'You mentioned the Barbican,' the director protests. 
'Because of the impression you gave.'
The director refrains from mentioning that scruples rarely inhibit estate agents. 
'I think I'd be right in saying there isn't much warehouse conversion in that area,' the estate agent probes. 
'Not yet. That's why it's such an opportunity.' 
'And you're on the top floor?' 
'Penthouses normally are.' 
'And how many flats in property altogether?' 
'Only the one.' 
'I'm not sure I understand you, John.' 
'That's what makes it such a unique opportunity.' 
'The rest of the warehouse is being converted into flats, is it?' 
'Eventually.' 
'Do you know when?' 
'Not really.' 
The estate agent frowns. 'You mean the developer's run into difficulties?' 
'The warehouse is still being used,' the director explains. 'Difficulties with the lease. In a couple of years it should be empty.' 
'And then it's being converted, is it?' 
'I think prices are likely to be soaring by then. It's one of the few areas near the City which hasn't already been developed.' 
The estate agent puts down his pen. 'Frankly, John, I'd wait for a couple of years, if I were you.'
'But I've got to sell for personal reasons.' 
Personal reasons: the director likes that phase, though he is aware that his desperation is showing. 
'It's not really a field we specialise in,' says the estate agent, leaning back in his chair. His stomach is rumbling; the director's stomach rumbles in sympathy. 
'I thought you said you had quite a reputation,' the director persists. 
'It is quite a specialised market.' 
'But you sell docklands flats?' 
'Of course.' 
'And Barbican flats?' 
'Yes.' 
'Then I don't see what the problem is.' 
'Have you given instructions to any other agents?' 
'One or two,' the director confesses, thinking of the sixteen other agents who have responded with the same caution. 
'We're happy to assist you, but I think it's only fair to warn you that this may be a difficult property to sell. Clerkenwell might be an up and coming area in the future. Who knows? All I can say is that there's no demand for properties there at the moment.'
A knock at the door interrupts the estate agent's assessment. Sharon enters with coffee and biscuits. The director tries to look on the bright side. If there is no hope of selling his flat then at least he can continue the verbal sparring long enough to consume most of the chocolate digestives with his coffee. The best that other agents have offered is rich tea. 
* 
Sue usually shops in the lunch hour in spite of the hazards of carrying a bulging carrier bag to Kilburn on a crowded bus. She has already suffered a split bag in the rush hour battle. Since the day when her fruit rolled the length of the bottom deck never to be seen again, she always cradles the bag in her arms. From the aroma which wafted along the bus, she was certain that somebody was eating one of her oranges. 
Experience has taught her that shopping after work is a rushed affair. The shops near the flat are small and grubby. When she does use one, she always thinks that the men who gather by the cash register and talk in their own language are making comments about her. It is a relief to hurry out to the street. 
The other reason why she dislikes shopping after with work is that getting back late disrupts her evening. In her more cynical moments, she tells herself that this hardly matters because she never does anything special, but the routine of preparing food and eating before retreating to her room to listen to the radio has become important to her. Its familiarity is comforting. 
Shopping in the Brunswick Centre supermarket takes half an hour, leaving half an hour to spare. She never eats lunch—it would make her put on weight—so when the weather is fine, she likes to read in the gardens. Her secret hope is that one of those well-thumbed romances will come true. An old man smelling of mothballs once put his hand on her knee and a middle-aged lady clutching a carrier bag full of religious tracts wanted her to attend a prayer meeting, but so far no handsome prince has appeared to transform her life. Now the colder weather is coming, she has had to abandon the gardens in favour of going straight back to the office. Because the office newspapers are so boring, she buys a magazine when she can afford it. Reading provides an excuse not to get involved in conversation with Dylan. She does not trust him. 
What she really likes is window shopping. When she first came to London, she dreamed of spending her lunch hours trying on dresses in Oxford Street stores, but the office is too far away. Sometimes on a Saturday she takes a bus to Oxford Street. Even then she rarely buys anything except tights and underwear. The salary which Ecowatch pays leaves little to spare for clothes, while the communal changing rooms make her feel embarrassed. Her flatmates are always buying new clothes. As they try on each other's latest purchases, Sue stays in her room. They never ask her to join them. 
Once a week she buys a frozen meal as a treat. The cost puts her off buying ready-made meals more frequently. She does not enjoy cooking, though she knows that she ought to have one good meal a day. At home, her mother prepared all the food. Since coming to London Sue wishes that she had paid more attention during home economics classes. Sharing a kitchen adds to her difficulties. She cannot get used to putting her name on all her food cartons in the fridge, or preparing a meal while one of her flatmates is eating at the same table. When the others are out, she can spend more time preparing dinner. Her special pleasure is to eat in front of the television, watching the comedy shows which her companions scorn. The worst occasions are when one of her flatmates brings a boyfriend home. Sue feels in the way then. When he speaks to her, she never knows how to reply. One of them nibbled her cheese as she tried to make lasagne. 
Should she go to the Rising Sun or should she make an excuse? The invitation surprised her—Dylan has been less persistent since she refused to go out with him. If the others were not going as well, she would not have considered his offer. She half suspects Dylan of playing a joke on her: no one from the office will be there. Then men will look at her, recognising her unease. She hates entering a pub on her own. It was silly to say that she would go, but Dylan was persistent. She only gave in for the sake of peace; having agreed, she does not want to let him down. And there is a reason for going which nobody else will guess: she has wanted to try Guinness since somebody mentioned jokingly that it was good for constipation. She must seize any opportunity to solve her little problem, though the prospect of taking alcohol again makes her apprehensive. Memories of the last occasion are still vivid. At a party in honour of a friend's engagement, she drank too much wine and became giggly. Her friend's fiancée had to drive her home and she was sick in the car. 
She wonders what Guinness is like. She has seen it being poured. The froth looked like cream. Once she tried beer; she hopes that Guinness tastes better. Her qualm is whether it might work too quickly—she worries whether the lavatory in the Rising Sun is clean. She hates public lavatories. If only the lavatories in Desmond Tutu House worked properly. 
* 
Rob stays in the office for lunch, reading the job advertisements as he eats his wholemeal sandwiches. Jeanne tells him that he eats too much bread. Since she began attending evening classes in healthy eating, he is resigned to such revelations. Until then, he imagined wholemeal bread was good for you. On one occasion, Jeanne prepared rice cakes spread with tahini for his lunch. They resembled circles cut from polystyrene ceiling tiles; the taste was not dissimilar. He put them in a bin on the way to work and bought sandwiches instead. When Jeanne asked when he thought of them, he confessed that he was not keen on rice cakes. It was an edited version of the truth rather than a lie, but as he lay beside her that night, he wondered whether infidelity started that way. 
There are few openings for accountants who want to work in the voluntary sector. Rob pushes The Times aside to ponder on what could go into his sandwiches by way of variety. What he likes is cheese, but even he knows that cheese is high in saturated fat. Jeanne encourages him to use tahini, but he prefers peanut butter. She has not said what is wrong with peanuts: that probably comes later in the course. She did suggest that he try avocado with a salad instead of sandwiches, but he thought that extravagant. When Ecowatch goes bankrupt, such considerations will be irrelevant anyway. The day cannot be far off. John will have to face facts soon. Rob takes secret pleasure in the idea of the director looking for a job. The market for directors of bankrupt charities must be limited. Rob imagines John being forced to sell his penthouse flat at a derisory price. Everybody at Ecowatch knows the flat by repute and everybody looks for an excuse to go there. Dylan once suggested holding an Ecowatch party there, but the director vetoed the idea. Rob promises himself that he will take a look at it one Saturday—preferably on a wet Saturday, when he can conceal himself under an umbrella—but there always seem to be more pressing concerns at weekends. 
Perhaps he should go to an employment agency. It is something he has never done before, having always associated agencies with typists rather than mature administrators, but he must find a job before the crunch comes. The crunch. He grins. He has never had to preside over the accounts of a bankrupt charity before. At least there are no assets to strip. 
A more immediate question is whether he should go to the Rising Sun. Sometimes he joins Dylan, Mackintosh and the editor to be sociable, though he would rather go to the library or the squash club. The sessions at the Rising Sun are predictable. Dylan will be chatting up any attractive girls who give him the slightest encouragement, while Mackintosh will be pouring down as much beer as possible when other people are buying it. The last time Rob joined them, Mackintosh insisted on sketching one of the girls at the next table, which was an advance over his usual habit of picking his nose over his beer. Whether the drawing was any more than an oblique way of picking her up, only Mackintosh knew. He looked happy enough, humming tunelessly and studying his model with an avidity which would normally get him thrown out or slapped. The other girls were giggling. The model preened herself, flattered even by such dubious attention. Rob felt a fleeting nostalgia for his own bachelor existence. A month later, he can still remember the girl Mackintosh chose: fun-loving, with blonde hair which she tossed back in a careless gesture which aroused and fascinated him. She habit of moving as she laughed irritated the erstwhile artist. She leaned back, emphasising her breasts, one leg bent as her foot rested on a stool. Rob remembers that posture vividly. All the men were looking at her. Part of him wanted to keep going back to the pub in case she was there again; the other part despised her. From what he gathered from Dylan, she never appeared again. Nor was the finished sketch ever shown in the office. If it was anything like the rest of Mackintosh's efforts, it was terrible. 
Rob glances at his watch. Forty minutes left—not enough time for a game of squash, or to visit the library. One drink at the Rising Sun will satisfy his social obligations. Jeanne has not prohibited alcohol yet. Or he could stay where he is. 
* 
Sue enters the pub hesitantly, peering in all directions as though she is shortsighted. At first she is disconcerted to see no familiar faces. She sidles past the groups of drinkers, trying not to disturb them. It is not until she reaches the rear bar that she finds her workmates. Her heart sinks when she sees that Rob is not there. Dylan is examining a girl's hand in some romantic prelude. Opposite, Mackintosh crouches by a girl with red hair who seems not to welcome his attentions. The other two girls at the table look bored. Sue wants to slip out before she is noticed, but Mackintosh has noticed her. She goes closer, hoping that he will buy her a drink, but he shows no sign of getting up. Her smile crumples. She feels as though she is a schoolgirl again, caught in a place which is out of bounds. Her instinct is to run outside, but that would attract too much attention. Instead, she forces herself to go to the bar and order a half of Guinness. At least that delays having to join the others. 
'How's Sue?' Mackintosh greets her as she brings her drink to the table. He scratches his unshaven chin in a way which disgusts her. There is something dirty about facial hair—something animal. She rests the bulging carrier bag of food between her feet. Arriving late makes her feel conspicuous. And she has nobody to talk to. She vows that she will never visit a pub again, however much Dylan tries to persuade her. 
'This is Sue from our office,' Mackintosh introduces her. He gestures to the girls seated around the table. 'May I introduce to you Lisa, Carol, Maria and Penny.' 
Sue smiles at the four girls who regard her with scant interest. Predictably, Dylan and Mackintosh have positioned themselves close to the two most attractive girls. Sue wonders whether she ought to talk to the others, but apart from Carol's acne, no topic of conversation occurs to her. Why is finding something to talk about always so difficult? She takes her first mouthful of Guinness for want of anything else to do. The taste is worse than anything which she imagined. She would spit the stuff out if she was alone. Instead, she tries not to pull a face as she swallows. Her stomach heaves. Fortunately she has not eaten lunch, or she would be sick. How anybody could enjoy such a drink is beyond her comprehension. 
Either nobody notices her discomfiture, or everybody avoids looking at her. She gazes around helplessly for a way to dispose of the Guinness without attracting attention. Drinking any more is impossible, whatever it does for her constipation. She wants something sweet to drink like fruit juice, but she cannot face going to the bar again. Would anybody notice if she took her drink to the ladies and poured it away? 
At this point, Dylan remarks that he is surprised to see her drinking Guinness, which makes everybody look at her. She feels her stomach churning. Perhaps the Guinness is having its desired effect after all.
'I don't like it,' she explains. 
'Then what did you get it for?' 
Leaving her Guinness on the table, she picks up her handbag and shopping and flees without looking back and without answering. 
'What's up with her?' Lisa asks. 
'She's funny is our Sue,' Mackintosh excuses her. 'Not very keen on pubs. Not like us.' 
The girls grin. Dylan takes the opportunity to squeeze Maria who does not object. Mackintosh is considering whether to squeeze Lisa. He gazes upon her legs so tantalisingly close and glories in primaeval lust until he becomes aware that something is happening to his own legs. All feeling has gone. He puts one hand on the carpet to keep his balance. Lisa notices. 
'What's the matter with you?' 
'Just changing position. Getting uncomfortable down here.' 
'You'll have your feet going to sleep, kneeling down like that.' 
Mackintosh thrusts out one leg cautiously, keeping his balance by holding the table.  Lisa giggles. 
'You look as if you're doing a Russian dance.' 
'Just testing.' 
The movement has encouraged the circulation, so that the numbness gives way to exquisite pain which Mackintosh tries not to show. His mouth twitches as he stops himself from crying out. He hopes that he does not look as old as he feels. It is old men who cannot stand. Dylan never has such problems. 
'Still testing?' Lisa asks as Mackintosh tries his other leg with a similar result. 
'Making sure everything's working.' 
'I told you: they've gone to sleep. They won' half be painful when you get up.' 
Lisa slips in his estimation. 
'Go on, get up,' she urges, slipping even further. 
'Not just yet.' 
'It'll be worse if you don't.' 
Muttering to himself, Mackintosh tries to comply. The attempt is short-lived. He rubs his legs, aware that the other girls are fascinated by his antics.
'Go on,' Lisa insists. 'You've got to do it.'
He obeys, rising with the unsteadiness of a newborn animal. 
'Don' half make a fuss, don't you?' Lisa complains. 
'So would you.' 
'What's your job?' 
'We're campaigners.' 
'What's that mean?' 
'Have you heard of Ecowatch?' 
Blank faces reveal that none of the girls have. 
'We organise campaigns for a charity called Ecowatch—things like saving the Brazilian rain forest.' 
'How do you do that?' Carol wants to know. 
'I told you. We campaign—get people to support us.' 
'Then what?' 
'Then we find something else to campaign about.' 
'How about some more drinks?' 
This time it is Mackintosh who groans inwardly. Much as he likes the company of girls, the problem is that they always expect to be bought something. He tries to catch Dylan's eye, but without success. As the circulation returns to Mackintosh's legs, the pain increases. That makes him groan all the more. 
'I'll have a Dubonnet and lemonade,' Lisa says. She looks towards her friends, her eyebrows raised. 
'I'll just have a coke, please,' says Carol. 
'I'll have the same,' says the obese Penny. 
Mackintosh shifts from one foot to the other. 
'Can you get me a rum and orange?' Maria calls. 
'And another pint for me,' says Dylan, but by then Mackintosh has turned away and is pretending not to hear. As he makes his way to the bar, he calculates the likely cost of six drinks. The total is alarming, especially when he thinks of what he owes in rent, not to mention the cost of food, heating, travel and little pleasures like drinks in the evening— 
'Hello there,' comes a familiar voice. 'Thought you'd be here.' 
Mackintosh turns. The editor is grinning in that boyish way which Mackintosh envies. He has the knack of always looking at ease. The first impression he gives is of an ineffectual youth from a well-off family playing who is playing at journalism. Mackintosh suspects that the editor plays on this image. 
'What happened to you this morning?' Mackintosh asks. 
'Press conference.' 
'You've always got a press conference.' 
'They keep holding them.' 
'Are they all worth going to?' 
The editor touches his nose. 'Contacts.' 
'Ah.' 
'And there's the food to look forward to.' 
'Wasn't a charity then,' Mackintosh deduces, recalling press conferences at Ecowatch with their crisps and boxes of wine. 
'Property developer.' 
Mackintosh nods sagely. 
'Are you trying to get served?' the editor enquires as his colleague fails to catch the barmaid's eye. 
'That's the idea.' 
'You don't sound all that keen.' 
'It shows?' 
The editor looks towards the table where Dylan is standing. 'Who are your little friends?' 
'They work near here.' 
'What's commonly known as a pick-up.' 
'I cannot tell a lie.' 
'And yours is the cherubic one?' 
'You could say that.' 
'Going off her already?' 
'She's thick.' 
The editor takes another look at the company around the table. 'Dylan looks happy enough with his one.' 
'You know Dylan.' 
'And you're buying drinks for the lot of them?' 
'Supposed to be.' 
'But you're having second thoughts.' 
'I'm broke.' 
'Mankind's perpetual problem. I'd slip you a fiver if I could, but alas ...' The editor stares vacantly across the bar as though a host of other problems assail him, finding no resolution. He shrugs off his reverie and turns back to Mackintosh. 'You know what you could do?' 
'Sod off.' 
'Exactly.' 
Mackintosh risks a glance at his former companions, but they are too deep in conversation to notice. He feels aggrieved at how little he is missed. 
'Off you go then,' the editor urges. 
Mackintosh goes, sauntering to the screen between the front and back bars and using its protection to move smartly to the door. At it closes behind him, he reflects that women are never worth the effort and money expended on them. He looks at his watch. The temptation is to find another pub, but he should do some work. There will be time enough for drinking when Ecowatch runs out of money.
At the office, he finds Rob reading the newspaper and Sue reading a magazine. He favours Sue with his most winning smile. 
'Didn't you like the pub?' 
She shakes her head. 
'I know what you mean,' he sympathises. 
'I was thinking of going down there,' Rob says. 
'Dylan and the editor should be there for half an hour or so.' 
'There's hardly time now.' 
Sue watches Rob as she listens to the exchange. She admires the way he never exceeds his one hour lunch break, unlike the others. The silence while they were together was magical. She imagines being his wife—making a home for him, cooking his meals, sharing his happiness and consoling him when he is low. She wishes that Mackintosh had not come back. 
When Dylan comes back, he does not speak to Mackintosh.

chapter three

Evening. Countless office blocks are studded with lights in the vibrant, never-sleeping city. An illusion, of course. Under the shadowless glare of fluorescent tubes emerge the nocturnal inhabitants of those offices, like the advance guard of some subterranean civilisation with their weaponry of vacuum cleaners, polishers, mops and buckets. They settle into the night routine: Nigerian students telephoning home and middle-aged ladies in nylon overalls making illicit photocopies for favourite nephews.
In the offices of Ecowatch, the director is still at work. On his way back from the BBC interview about the effects of oil exploration in national parks, he called at the library in Holborn to acquaint himself with issues surrounding pollution in the Mediterranean. After a search of the catalogue yielded four works more suited to an A-level geography student than to a distinguished speaker at international conferences, he experienced his first inklings of panic. Next time he has to speak on some outlandish subject, he vows that Dylan can exercise his much-vaunted research skills to come up with the material. The director's only consolation is that he is speaking first thing after lunch, when nobody will be paying attention. 
*
Dylan preens himself before the full-length mirror. Around him, drawers and cupboards hang open in mute testimony to the care which has gone into his attire. The room is warm, comfortable and decorated to his taste. Because his landlady is too elderly to want a change of tenant, the rent is cheap. Contentedly he straightens his tie, savouring the smoothness of silk. It provides a necessary splash of colour to his attire. His clothing is chosen with care: linen suit, grey shoes and a grey and white shirt. For Samantha, his image has to be sleek and up-market. He brushes imaginary fluff from his lapels. Dress is a matter of style as much as money. He has style while people like Mackintosh have not. How Dylan hates working with cretins.
The thought of Samantha restores his good humour. Their meeting place is the acme of sophistication. Nobody will guess that is the most lowly-paid person there. It is where Samantha can throw off her inhibitions and be herself. A suburban disco would leave her bored and defensive. What intrigues him is her combination of the sophisticated and the carnal. She loves shopping in Knightsbridge—every time they meet she is wearing something different. When not talking of clothes, her conversation is about holidays: from skiing holidays in Austria and summers in Bermuda to weekends in the country and riding with friends. He loves her breathless enthusiasm for life. As the evening progresses, her conversation will become more desultory. He will hold her more tightly, more intimately, and she will not mind. When they go to her flat, instinct takes over and she is a girl like any other. In the morning will breeding reassert itself. She will be subdued, as though wanting to forget what she has done, hardly talking to him, washing fastidiously, hiding her body from him, searching her wardrobe for clothes which will reassert her image. The abrupt change in her mood alarmed him the first time. He wondered what he had done wrong. The second time he was prepared, though the change in her personality still intrigued him. What deep psychological trauma did it betray? Perhaps this is the night when he will find out.
Sometimes he wonders whether he will marry a girl like Samantha. The idea has much to commend it. He will have entry into a wealthy and titled family. A new circle of friends and new job opportunities will open up for him. Then another image insinuates into his mind: of Samantha as she will appear late in the evening, when alcohol is having its effect and breeding starts to slip, not minding as her dress rides up her thighs and her strap falls from her shoulder, nor when her long blonde hair tangles around her face and her make-up smudges as she nuzzles against him. He smiles affectionately at the prospect. 
*
Mackintosh pushes away the fish and chip wrappings. He would lean back in his chair if it was likely to survive the experience, but the flimsy framework has already collapsed once, to be stuck together again, unbeknown to his landlady. Instead he pulls his overcoat more tightly around him. The single bar of the electric fire makes no impression on the cold. And he is running out of coins for the meter.
Unlike Dylan, Mackintosh has a room which is not cheap, comfortable or secure. Each Friday he vows that this will be the weekend for finding something better, but each Saturday, more immediate pleasures present themselves than trailing around accommodation bureaus. 
The light of a forty-watt bulb does little for his surroundings. He tried putting in a hundred-watt bulb, but he forgot to take it out again the following morning. By the evening it had been replaced. His landlady never mentioned the matter. He still wonders if she tours her kingdom each morning specifically to ensure that no tenant has fitted a higher-power bulb overnight. The one provided barely gives enough illumination for reading, so Mackintosh looks out his window as he eats. Some of the houses opposite have been gentrified. He glimpses the stripped pine bedrooms and fitted kitchens with interest and envy. Ecowatch had a campaign against gentrification. Mackintosh dutifully campaigned, but he still hankers after living in a place with luxuries like central heating and constant hot water. Everything about his present surroundings contrives to lower his spirits. The mattress sags. Brown mottling encroaches on the mirror over the washbasin like a cancer. The basin leans uneasily away from the wall, with only the lead plumbing and a wooden prop to hold it in place. An electric boiling ring is the extent of his cooking and water heating facilities. If he ever finds a girl to cook for him, he will have to provide something better—not that the problem seems likely to arise.
Lisa might have proved to be a good cook. The memory of her pricks his conscience. All might have been different had she come into his life soon after pay day. As Dylan never offered to pay for drinks, his subsequent annoyance at Mackintosh's disappearance was unjustified. Mackintosh toys with the idea of going into the Rising Sun more regularly in the hope of encountering Lisa again. The prospect arouses mixed emotions: unrequited lust might turn out to be both expensive and painful.
The bathrooms of the houses opposite hold an intense fascination for Mackintosh. At dusk, his attention is attracted whenever a light goes on behind one those opaque windows. His hope is to see the silhouette of a beautiful girl as she disrobes, but he has never discerned more than a few vague shadows. He likes to fantasise that the day will come when a girl throws open a window to reveal her nakedness to him. Why she should do so is not clear, but the idea is too appealing to discard lightly.
Time for his art. Mackintosh tries to work each evening. Reluctantly he abandons the window. The cold does not encourage him: his fingers are numb and even his brain seems dulled. What he would really like is to go to bed and watch television from under the threadbare blankets, with a bottle of Baileys at his side. As each pay day draws nearer, the notion of buying a television grows in appeal, but once the money is in his account, it always gets frittered away before he can succumb to the ultimate indulgence. At least the torn sheet has not been discovered, judging by the lack of a response from his landlady. He knows that he ought to buy a replacement before his carelessness is brought to light, but he also knows that he will never get around to it.
Clad in an overcoat and fingerless mittens, Mackintosh settles in front of the electric fire with his sketch pad and a handful of soft pencils. The image of a beautiful girl haunts him. She looks like Lisa. Committing the first line of her body on the page is always a moment of excitement, like the beginning of a journey. At least for a while, his lethargy is banished. The lines flow together as he recreates her, unashamedly savouring her sensuality in a way which is rarely possible in real life. Time stands still as he draws. He is content.
When the sketch is completed, he studies it critically. How quickly the moment of creation stales. Where he derived contentment in his vision, now it brings him unease and frustration. The image looks contrived. Her beauty has eluded him. The sense of latent energy which he strived to recreate is lost. In a corner of the pad he draws her again, lingering over the curves which excite him, trying once more to bring her to life. At length he tears the page from the pad and throws the screwed-up ball on the floor. After that, he contents himself with trying to recapture her face with its halo reddish-brown curls.
'Sorry Lisa,' he murmurs as he works. 'It was unfortunate. All very unfortunate.' But in real life there will be no opportunity to explain. Opportunities never come twice with girls like Lisa.
It is a fair likeness, though something is missing from the eyes. Lisa's eyes revealed a sadness, though perhaps that was wishful thinking on his part. When excitement made them light up, he was entranced, feeling himself swept along by her enthusiasm. It depresses him that her spirit proves so evanescent. He has only to look at Degas' drawings to realise the crudity of his own efforts. Nobody is going to hail him as a major artist. Sometimes he despises all his work. In his more depressed moments, he looks through his portfolio put together over some fifteen years. It reveals a predilection for female nudes, but a shaky technique and no obvious development of style. If he tore up everything he has done, there would be no loss to the world.
Sketching sessions are apt to degenerate into morbid self-examination. Mackintosh knows that he should have gone to art school. That would have sharpened his technique and given him a sense of purpose, changing his drawing out of all recognition. At secondary school, art counted for so little that further study never occurred to him. Ironically it was the frustration of working in a local authority which stimulated his interest, but by then it was too late to retrain. At least lecturing offered such incidental pleasures as casting his eye over the girls in the new intake each October and fantasising. There was sure to be one girl with potential. Potential meant good legs and a face a man would die for. If he had been admissions tutor, he would have ensured that there were more girls on the course. Entering the lecture theatre would have meant confronting row upon row of attractive girls all with their attention focused on him. That beats spending his evenings huddled over an electric fire.
After the creative outburst and the soul-searching comes the drinking. Baileys is a recently developed taste. Teachers used to be his drink, but that upset his stomach. When a doctor insisted that he give it up, he obeyed with ill grace, not liking to be hostage to his body or to take advice from professionals seeking to inhibit a free spirit. But the treatment worked. Baileys soothes, several glasses more so than one. How he wishes that he had the money to be an alcoholic.
*
Rob looks bemused. 
'It's all arranged,' Jeanne announces, humouring him. 
'Why didn't you say anything before?'
'I forgot—I'm sorry. It's not as though we planned anything for this evening, is it?'
'I might have done.'
'Did you?'
'No.'
'Then what are you making such a fuss about?'
Rob scans his wife's face suspiciously, trying to remember what his tapes on inner harmony had to say about situations like this. Not much is the obvious answer. His carefully engineered peace of mind has vanished, replaced by something verging on anger. It is a new and interesting emotion for him, which he is tempted to display at work. Everybody at Ecowatch thinks of him as placid old Rob who never gets worked up about anything. Maybe it is time to show his darker side.
'You look like a little boy who's sulking,' Jeanne scolds him.
'I just wish you'd mentioned it before, that's all.' 
'I've said I'm sorry.' 
'I still don't understand why you're going.' 
She repeats as though to a child, 'Because there isn't enough time in the healthy eating course to talk about everything, we've started a discussion group.' 
'And how long is this going on for?' 
'Till the end of term. What are you looking at me like that for? It's only a few weeks.'
They glare at each other. 
'I'm really getting interested in nutrition,' Jeanne defends herself. 'I've been thinking about training as a nutritionist. You're supposed to be interested in health—I thought you'd like the idea.' 
He tries not to rise to the bait. Though he approves of the notion of a healthy diet, part of him hankers for bacon and eggs. Another part wants to be awkward. 
'I don't know how you feel about it. It means cutting down my working hours ...' 
Still he does not respond. 
'Anyway, I've got to go now. Do you want the car?' 
He shakes his head. 
'See you later then. I shan't be all that late.' 
Closing the door has a note of finality. Rob makes no move to eat even though the meal which Jeanne prepared for him is cooling. When she started evening classes, he was encouraging; now he feels that something has been set in motion which he cannot control. Tension makes the muscles of his neck ache as they used to. The exercises which he has been practising so assiduously have brought neither inner peace nor tranquillity, but only an illusion of them. He toys with the thought of sending the tapes back with an indignant letter, but at present he cannot be bothered to do anything. His anger has gone, dissipated by tiredness. He pushes the plate away, feeling the customary pang of guilt at wasting food. 
The silence is dispelled when he switches on the television. Laughter fills his ears without engaging him as he gazes unseeing at the screen. There is no certainty in his job or in his marriage any more. Who thought that a Monday could be so bad?
* 
Sue is in reflective mood. Wistfully she imagines herself as Patience on her monument or Venus on her throne, except that nobody can see her and if by some unfortunate circumstance she were glimpsed, such resemblances would hardly spring to mind. The image of Sue on the lavatory does not carry the same poetic appeal. But there is no alternative. She must remain where she is, trying to resolve her little problem for another day. 
Her thoughts drift to her other predicament. A proverb about weaving a tangled web echoes in her mind. The trouble started when her flatmates kept talking about boyfriends. Rather than confess that she did not have one, she told them that she was going out with Gavin. After that first lie, she could never bring herself to confess that Gavin did not exist. As the weeks passed, she fashioned a mythical Gavin for her flatmates: a computer programmer sharing a flat in Fulham and working near Oxford Circus. The more stories she has to make up about him, the more he comes to dominate her life. Three evenings a week she pretends to see him, while in reality she goes to evening classes. Each time she hopes that her flatmates will not question her the following morning. When they do, she tells them about the film which Gavin took her to see—fortunately the newspapers at Ecowatch have film reviews which give her an idea what the new releases are like. Yesterday she recounted how Gavin had taken her to an Indian restaurant where the food was served on metal trays instead of plates. For that she drew on a conversation which she overheard on a bus. Fortunately her flatmates were not interested enough to ask where the restaurant was. 
The evening classes are in local history, homoeopathy and art history. She chose the subjects not because they interested her, but because the tutors assured her that no books were needed and no written work was required. Her flatmates would think it odd if she took a pile of textbooks on her dates. When term ends, she will say that Gavin is abroad with his family for Christmas. Abroad for a month. It sounds far-fetched, but every excuse sounds hollow. It surprises her that nobody has seen through her stories. What will happen during the summer when there are no classes, she does not know. Hopefully she will have left the flat by then. And if Rob's forebodings come true, Ecowatch will have closed and she will be out of work. 
Sometimes she wonders how she could have expected so much of coming to London. Her gaze ranges over her bleak and familiar surroundings. She is glad of the warmth of her cardigan—usually she hangs it over the poster of a young Marlon Brando on the door. She studiously avoids looking at him as he glowers down at her. Through the tiny window high in the wall she glimpses the lighted windows of the neighbouring house. If she can see windows, it worries her that other people might be able to see her. She leans forward so that any watchers are out of view. Not that she likes bending double—apart from being uncomfortable, she does not like being brought close to the stained, curling floor tiles. She hates cleaning the lavatory, but the task always falls to her by default. Sometimes she suspects that the only reason her flatmates tolerate her is because she does the cleaning. 
Goose pimples multiply on her thighs. She shivers, wishing that the window was not wedged immovably open. The rattle of the door handle makes her heart thump. She is paralysed, staring at the bolt. 
'Is that you, Sue?' one of her flatmates calls. 
'Yes.' 
Her response sounds unusually reverberant. Now the spell is broken, she pulls her jeans more decorously around her thighs. 
'Can you hurry up? I'm dying for the loo.' 
She wants to say that she must stay until her little problem is sorted out, but instead she calls, 'Okay—coming.' 
Time to renounce her throne. Perhaps there really is something wrong with her. 
* 
The editor's passion is photography. For anybody at Ecowatch to see him without his camera would be as unthinkable as calling him by his name. His colleagues have learned by experience not to mention photography. One careless phrase and normally taciturn editor will not stop talking until the unfortunate listener pleads a prior appointment and makes his escape. 
What the editor seeks is visual truth. He explained this at length to Mackintosh, who made the mistake of musing in the editor's presence on whether photography could be an art. Finding visual truth, the editor declared, means revealing all artifice, all things which we do not want to see. It means risking pain, embarrassment, discomfort and hostility. Mackintosh managed to extricate himself after five minutes, but he got the general idea.
The editor enjoys travelling by tube: it gives him the opportunity to observe the parade of humanity in detail. The merciless light reveals flesh sagging from fatigue, lines etched by laughter or sorrow, eyes reddened by hours at the computer monitor and spots imperfectly camouflaged by make-up. He examines each traveller, appraising face, clothes and bearing. Some are too absorbed in books or evening papers to notice; others look away uneasily. Sometimes he photographs a passenger. Nothing is said, but the subject always alights at the next station. 
The editor alights at Holloway Road. As the doors close and the train accelerates, he stands on the platform, camera in hand, the metal case between his feet. The signal switches to red. Signs sway in the turbulence. A page from a newspaper billows along the platform. The few other passengers who have alighted are walking towards the exit. The editor takes a series of photographs in rapid succession before going after them. 
The shops of Holloway Road are closed, grilles locked across the windows. Empty pavements glisten in the drizzle. Traffic still streams northwards under the yellow sodium lights. The editor hurries in the opposite direction, shielding his Nikon inside his coat. At a doorway beside a shop selling second-hand furniture, he rings the bell and speaks into the entry phone. When the buzzing begins, he pushes the door open. A narrow staircase rises between walls of varnished panelling. The single, naked bulb swings in the draught from the door. He climbs carefully, holding the metal case in front of him, his steps drumming on the bare wood. On the first floor, the door to the front room is ajar. Bright light spills onto the landing. A girl coughs. 
The editor used to make forays into the wasteland around King's Cross, photographing gas holders, disused warehouses and tramps sprawled on cobbles. Almost by accident he strayed south of Euston Road and became fascinated by the terraces of small hotels separated from the pavement by railings and shadowy basement areas. At night, the gaudy facades and the neon signs jostled for attention. But what attracted him most were the prostitutes, some leaning against the railings, others sauntering beside the parked cars. He felt dazed by their numbers and by the openness with which they plied their trade. When the first one spoke to him, he was too surprised to respond.
Photographing prostitutes is fraught with difficulties. He was interested in how the camera made them suspicious and hostile. Even offering them money did not completely overcome their suspicions. To avoid scenes in the street, he was forced into using a telephoto lens. 
When he came to know the area, his preference was for working in shabby hotel bedrooms lit by coloured lights from the signs outside. Sometimes the reflection of the room could be captured in a dressing-table mirror. In almost every shot there was a prostitute repairing her make-up in a hand mirror, perched on the edge of the bed in her coat, or sprawling naked across the bed. This was Sickert's world. The editor loved the paradox: clothes are a facade obscuring the truth of nakedness, yet the emotional impact of a naked woman counts for little unless the tawdriness of her surroundings reveals her status. 
'You like photographing things—try this,' said one of the few girls who did not object to his camera. She gave him a scrap of paper on which was a telephone number and the name 'Tony'. The editor rang from the office the next day. Tony offered him photographic work—and there was a fee. Thus began the weekly visits to Holloway Road. 
Light from the kitchen spills across the landing. The other two doors are closed. Tony is waiting.
'Hello there, Derek. How are you?' Tony extends his hand and the two men shake hands solemnly as they do each week. Tony is a short, swarthy Cypriot who wears expensive suits and smells of garlic. Though only in his late twenties, his hair is already thinning, the strands carefully drawn over the bare patches. 
'Not so bad,' the editor responds. 
'Do you want some coffee?' 
'Please.' 
As his host returns to the kitchen, the editor goes into the front room and switches on the light. The bleakness is relieved by heavy gold curtains which were probably left by a previous incumbent. The floor is bare. The walls and the cast iron fireplace are painted white. Four floodlights on tripods are switched off. The hissing Calor heater makes the atmosphere stifling and dries the throat. Against the rear wall is a paint-spattered wooden chair. The only other piece of furniture is a stool. Heaped in the corner is a sheepskin rug. 
He has to remove his Nikon before taking off his coat which he hangs over the door. He is kneeling beside the open metal case and selecting lenses when Tony reappears. 
'Here you are, mate.' 
'Thanks.' The editor rises, taking the mug gratefully. He clasps it with both hands to warm them as he gazes around the room. The sense of something about to happen which is generated by the four floodlights ranged in a semicircle around the chair stirs his sense of excitement. 
'Cold tonight,' says Tony. 
'And it's starting to rain.' 
A passing lorry makes one of the tripods vibrate on the uneven floor. The editor goes to the window and moves the edge of the curtain. Redevelopment is taking place across the road. A hoarding spattered by fly posters surrounds the cleared site. The lights of an off-licence provide an oasis of brightness among the remaining shops. The others are empty, their windows broken, the grilles which protected them rusting. The editor wonders how many tramps are sheltering there. Tramps make good subjects: all their pretence has gone. 
'Ready to start?' Tony asks. 
'Might as well.' The editor kneels again, putting the mug aside to turn his attention once more to the case with its neatly-stored lenses, filters and films. There is muffled conversation and a scuffling of steps on the bare boards as Tony fetches the girl from the back room. 
'This is Sharon.' 
The editor smiles, assessing his model as he gets to his feet. He judges her to be fifteen—a sulky girl with pouting lips and shoulder-length brown hair hanging thin and straight. She holds the dressing-gown protectively around her. He guesses that this is her first session. 
'She's going to help us for the evening,' Tony explains. He talks as though she is doing the two men a favour. The editor often speculates how Tony finds the girls. They are all of school age. 
The routine has become familiar. The editor enjoys displaying his expertise. He does not hurry as he changes the lens. 
'If you can sit on the chair, Sharon,' he instructs. 
The girl obeys, not letting go of the dressing-gown. He watches, savouring that last glimpse of her before he has to uncover her secrets. 
The room is changed when Tony switches on the floodlights. Attention becomes focused on the girl. She looks uneasy—a character at the heart of a drama which she cannot understand. The editor likes the effect of a battery of lights, penetrating her being like X rays, allowing no escape, no secrets. The bare, white wall behind her becomes a screen, reflecting light on her. He prowls around her, looking for unwanted shadows, assessing how lighting might heighten her sexuality. One tripod he puts on its side, so that light shines upwards, banishing shadows from under her jaw and nose. 
'Try not to screw up your eyes,' he urges. 'You'll get used to the lights.' 
Sharon tries to do as he bids. Her eyes follow the editor's movements like those of a caged animal watching its captor. 
'I think we're ready,' he murmurs to Tony. 
The lights have already changed the girl, bringing out a waif-like quality which was hardly apparent before. Now he has to explore that, yet to satisfy Tony, he needs to transform her into the embodiment of everything men desire. It is an intriguing challenge. 
'Take off your dressing-gown now, Sharon,' says Tony in the tone of a dentist reassuring an anxious patient. The girl hesitates, looking suspiciously from one man to the other before complying. When Tony takes the dressing-gown from her, her body is  stiff and awkward. Her gaze is fixed on the floor. She wears a black G-string. Her breasts are small and firm. 
'If you turn round so you're facing the chair and your back's to us,' Tony prompts. 'Now spread your legs as if you're going to push the chair between them. And hold the edge of the seat and lean forward.' He watches approvingly as she complies. 'Bend forward,' he urges. 'Really push your bum out as though you're going to be spanked. That's it.' 
The G-string almost vanishes between her buttocks. The camera motor whirs as the editor circles her, taking shots seemingly at random. 
'Now sit on the chair,' Tony continues. 'That's it. Keep your legs wide apart and lean back. There—great, great. And smile! We're not going to eat you.' 
The editor adjusts the aperture. When he looks up, Sharon has the parody of a smile on her face. 
'Breathe deeply and try to relax,' he coaxes. 
In silence the men watch the rising and falling of her breasts as she breathes. Her shoulders slacken as she tries to relax, but the rictus smile belies her efforts. The motor whirs again as the editor tries to capture her tension. It is the impromptu moments which make the sessions worthwhile, though Tony has told him that the first shots are always a waste of time. 
'Forget about us, forget about the lights,' Tony croons. 'Imagine you're with your boyfriend.' 
The words have no effect.
'I know what will help you,' Tony mutters, darting from the room. He returns almost immediately with a radio. The batteries are running down: distorted pop music reverberates around the room. 
'Go with the rhythm,' Tony urges. 'That's it. That's great.'
The men settle back, waiting for the rhythm to take her, but the jerky movements of her body bear little relation to the music. The editor feels pity. 
'Imagine you're miming for a video,' Tony suggests, with a touch of desperation.  
Using a faster shutter speed, the editor kneels before her as he shoots. Tony continues, 'Now lift your bum so you're arched over the chair. That's it. That's great. Look at the camera like it's a guy you want to fuck. You've got the idea.' 
The editor moves restlessly, fascinated by the effect of different camera angles on the seductiveness of the pose. 
Tony claps. 'Okay, Sharon—you can stand up now.' 
To the editor's disappointment the pose is abandoned. Sharon looks incongruous, standing with arms at her side as though in a school assembly. Tony takes the chair away. 
'Now a few frontal shots. Lean forward pouting your lips as though you're going to kiss your boyfriend.' 
She makes a half-hearted attempt to comply. 
'Imagine you're going to kiss me.' Tony crouches before her, his lips thrust upwards in an unconsummated kiss. The editor contrives to capture in one shot both Tony's expression and the girl's efforts to comply before kneeling beside his colleague to concentrate on Sharon. All the time, Tony is crooning, 'That's it. That's great.' As he gets up, he asks, 'Are you warm enough?' 
Sharon nods. 
'Head up. Really push your tits out so we get some really sexy shots. That's the way. Push them out more.' Exasperation is evident in Tony's voice. The editor wonders whether Sharon notices. He works without speaking, trying to capture the girl's discomfiture. 
At last Tony claps his hands. 'Lie over the chair and I'll give you something to relax you.' As he darts from the room, the girl looks towards the editor for guidance. He shrugs—and then takes a shot of her puzzlement. 
'You'd better do it,' he advises. 
'I dunno what he means.'
'Lie across the seat on your tummy,' Tony calls from the kitchen. 
Without losing her suspicion, Sharon complies, her breasts hanging limp. The editor snatches another photograph before Tony returns with a syringe and a vial. The girl twists her head to see what is happening. She is mesmerised by the needle as Tony fills the syringe and squirts a fountain of liquid into the air. Her hands clench. The editor watches with distaste. 
'A little prick and then you'll relax nicely,' Tony croons. 'It makes you feel good for a couple of hours—like you've had a few drinks, but you don't get a hangover.' 
'No,' the girl moans, struggling to get up, 'I don't want you to.' But Tony gives her no opportunity. pressing down on her bottom with one knee so that she is pinned to the chair.
The camera whirs as the needle penetrates the girl's buttock. She squeals. A shiver passes through her body. As the plunger descends, she is rigid. 
'All done.' Tony withdraws the needle and takes his knee away. 'That was nothing, was it?' 
Sharon relaxes. She looks over her shoulder, trying to see whether she is bleeding as Tony pus the syringe and vial on the mantelpiece. 
'It's called perphenazine,' he mutters to the editor as the two men watch. 'It relaxes them quickly. Do you want another coffee while we're waiting?' 
The editor shakes his head. He watches the girl sprawled over the chair, curious to see the changes wrought by the drug. On his first session, the notion of what was expected horrified him. He wanted to get away from that place and never to see Tony again. 
'What's wrong?' Tony had sounded aggrieved. 'They want to do it. They get paid well. Nobody's getting hurt, are they? What did you expect?' 
'Not this.' 
'Why don't you try it for one session—see what you think. You get paid well.' 
The notion was repugnant, though the editor had to admit that an extra source of income was welcome: photography is an expensive hobby which the salary at Ecowatch barely supports. 
'Just taking a few photographs of girls. What's the matter with that?' Tony wanted to know, spreading out his hands in a gesture of openness. 'There's nothing you can't see on the beach or on page three.' 
The editor had to agree, though it was a long time since he had ventured on the beach or read a newspaper with girlie photographs on page three. Afterwards, he could rationalise: he was doubtful about the work because Tony's ideas were contrary to the values he had always upheld. It surprised him that they were so pernicious. One reason why he went ahead was to prove to himself that he was free of his past. His touchstone was truth: if he kept to that, he told himself, then he could not be corrupted. There was truth in the girls, in their hopes for money and fame which would never be fulfilled. There was truth in their bodies, divested of pretence and illusion. Perhaps there was even truth in his own compliance. He was tired of the contrived images seen in photographic exhibitions and coffee-table books. Photographing prostitutes was his way of rebelling against artificiality; photographing Tony's girls was no more than an extension of that. It was his entry to the underworld of photography, where all pretence at art was put aside. That was enough to make him welcome the opportunity. He agreed to try one session and found that he enjoyed it. The money was an added inducement. Tony wanted to take the rolls of film, but the editor insisted on processing them himself. To abdicate control before he had seen the images which he created would have cheapened his work. As he developed the prints of that first session, the technical challenge of presenting nakedness obsessed him. He knew that he could not give up. 
'How are you now?' Tony asks, standing over Sharon. 'Feeling more relaxed?' 
The girl nods. She is still lying over the chair, but now she is limp. 
'Smile then.' 
She smiles the beatific smile of somebody not in control of her senses. 
'You can take the G-string off now. Can you manage?' 
Her response has the lazy slowness which comes after being aroused from sleep. She climbs off the chair, putting her hand on the back of the chair to prevent herself from stumbling. Afterwards, she stares at the two men, unseeing, the G-string around her ankles. 
'Take it right off,' Tony instructs. 
She obeys, leaning against the chair again as she stands on one leg. 
'It takes away the anxiety,' Tony murmurs to the editor. 'I try not to use it because it makes them sleepy. Nothing too bad. She'll be over it in the morning.' 
'Do their parents know what they do here?' the editor whispers.
'Depends. Some of them do.' Tony moves closer to the girl. 'Turn round.' 
She turns. Tony pushes the chair in front of the girl, so the edge of the seat presses into the front of her knees. 'Keep your legs wide apart and bend over it, leaning on the back. Push out your bum. That's it. Great.' 
As the editor works, he muses on how much the pictures are his own work and how much they are Tony's. He feels as though he is working with a choreographer. Perhaps that very fact detracts from the truth he is seeking. The images which he records are corrupted. 
'Bend down further,' comes Tony's commentary. 'Keep your legs straight, that's it. Looking over your shoulder. And smile. Let's have a big smile. Tilt your head back. Great.' 
Rain beats on the windows. The room is becoming stifling with the heater and the lights. And all the time the camera motor whirs intermittently, as though a bee is trying to escape. The expression on Sharon's face is the parody of a smile. 
'Now we'll take the chair away. Can you let go?' 
As she lifts her hands, Tony deftly pulls away the chair and puts the stool in its place. 'Sit down on that.' 
The stool is more suited to a child. The girl looks incongruous with her knees drawn up to the level of her breasts. She faces the men. 
'Let your legs fall apart, that's it.' The commentary is remorseless. The editor crouches before her, seeing her ignominy through the lens and trying not to be moved by it. 'Now lean forward, as though you're kissing the camera. That's it. That's great. Make your eyes larger.' 
The editor tries not take shots which make her look drunk. 
'Now lean backwards gently. Don't fall over.' 
Her breasts stand proud from the negligee. 
'You're doing well. Now can you stand with your legs apart and your back to us? And bend down with your hands on the stool. Let's see your face between your legs. And smile! Great! Okay.' 
As she straightens, Tony removes the stool with the aplomb of a conjurer performing a trick and drags the sheepskin rug into the centre of the room. 
'Now lie down.' He stands back as she curls into a foetal position. 'That's great. And smile. Hold it. Great. Now roll onto your back. Bend your knees. Great. Let's have them wide apart, hands on your thighs.' Tony gestures the editor to go even closer. 'And now sitting up, straightening your legs. Keep your legs wide apart. Hands on your knees. Don't bend your arms. That's great.' 
There is a moment of stillness. The editor holds his breath. Sharon has difficulty following the barrage of orders. He wants to capture her vulnerability. And for an instant she is beautiful. 
Tony gestures him to continue shooting. 'Now can you crouch on all fours?' comes the prompting. 'Look at us. And smile. Great. That's great. I'd like you to lie down, legs apart. Arch your back. Keep looking at us and pout. Pout your lips. Good. We're getting some good pictures. Now can you kneel with your back to us, hands on the ground? Push out your bum and look over your shoulder at us. A lovely smile. That's fine.' Tony is giving his instructions from over the editor's shoulder. 'Turn to face us again. Open your legs. Draw up your knees. That's right. Play with yourself. Really enjoy it. That's it. Great.' 
When the girl tires, the session normally ends. 
'Just one more,' the editor intervenes. 'Can you lie on your tummy? That's it. Just relax.' He finds himself adopting Tony's coaxing tone. What strikes him as he looks through the viewfinder is the innocence of the pose. 
Tony claps rather too soon for the editor, who can only manage two shots. 
'That's good, Sharon. You can put your clothes on now.' Tony holds out the dressing-gown. The girl stares at it rather than putting it on. He has to drape it around her shoulders and lead her to the back room. The editor takes a final shot as they move away from him.
When Tony returns, he shakes his head despairingly. 'She hasn't got it, has she?'
'We might get a few good shots out of it,' the editor consoles him. 
'I'd like to vet them beforehand, but you can't always do that.' 
The editor tries to look sympathetic. 
'You can't even be sure then. Sometimes they're different as soon as they take off their clothes. All the fizz goes. You know what I mean?' 
The editor knows. The two men are silent for a moment as though in remembrance of a modelling career which hardly began. 
'You like the work, Derek?' Tony asks. 
'It's certainly different,' the editor concedes. 
'I was wondering about getting two models—good ones this time. Are you interested?' 
The editor's old doubts return. Does morality mean anything? Is there really visual truth in what he is doing? Is he contributing to corruption, or breaking down the barrier between art and life? 
'It's good money.' 
'Okay.' 
'I'll see what I can arrange for next Monday. This is working well, Derek. You're getting some good work.' 
'Thanks.' 
'You enjoy it. That's good. I like to see the girls enjoying it, not like that one.' He gestures contemptuously to the doorway. 'Everybody works well when we're happy.' 
'I suppose so.' 
Tony produces a wad of folded ten-pound notes and peels some off for the editor. 'Thanks for everything, Derek.' 
Thanks, Tony.' 
'I know I can trust you. Bring the prints and negatives next week and we'll see if there's anything worth saving.' 
On previous occasions, a courier, anonymous in black leather, has collected the prints and negatives from the editor's flat on the following Thursday evening, which made developing and printing a rush after working all day. The editor likes to take pains over enlargements. 
'And Derek—I know I've said it before, but you won't sell copies to anybody else, will you?' 
'Of course not, Tony,' says the editor, mustering all his sincerity. The coldness of his colleague's smile makes him shiver. He is certain that something nasty is in store if he double-crosses the little Cypriot. 
* 
The director listens. He is standing in the middle of the kitchen with a cricket bat in one hand. Judith watches incredulously from the doorway. 
'What—' 
'Ssh,' hisses the director, his head swivelling slowly as he scans every corner. 
'What are we looking for?' Judith whispers, suppressing a smile. 
The director continues his scrutiny without answering. 
Judith composes her expression. 'You look like one of those mechanical toys with your head swivelling round like that. Does one arm move up and down as well?' 
'Ssh.' 
'What?' 
'There's a mouse.' 
'Do you think it's listening?' 
'Mice have very sensitive hearing.' The director peers into the dark corners beside the washing machine and behind the waste bin. 'They get into the spaces under the kitchen units. We've probably got a nest of them under there.' 
'What do you expect to do with a cricket bat?' 
'It was the first thing I picked up.' 
'I don't think it's very practical.' 
'I don't play cricket with it these days.' 
'Did you ever read Beatrix Potter?' 
The director frowns. 'Years ago.' 
'It makes you more sympathetic towards mice.' 
'Pity she didn't spend more time exterminating the things instead of writing about them.' 
Judith dissolves into giggles. 
'What's the matter?' the director asks, abandoning his search. 
'You look so funny standing in the middle of the kitchen with a cricket bat.' 
'Thank you.' 
'Come here.' 
'You've frightened him off.' 
She nuzzles against him. 'My beautiful mouse-catcher.' 
'It's that Nazim downstairs, you know. It's alive with mice down there and they don't care.' 
'Forget it.' 
'The times I've been down there to tell him. You've seen me.' 
'Don't get so worked up.' 
'I'll have to put those granules down again. That really gets the day off to a good start, hunting round for dead mice first thing in the morning.' 
'Why don't you get the council in?' 
'Then everybody's going to know we've got mice.' 
'If the council got rid of them, we wouldn't have them, would we?' 
'There'd still be legions of them coming up the pipes from downstairs. That's the trouble with old buildings: lots of little pipes going through large holes. It's like a murine motorway.' 
'What a lovely image.' 
'No it's not. I think we'll get a new house next time.' 
'I thought you said new houses didn't have any character?' 
'I've changed my mind. At least new houses don't have mice.' 
She strokes his neck. 'We'll be out of this place soon, so stop worrying.' 
'You think anybody's going to buy it? If the smell of leather doesn't put them off, the mice should.' 
'The smell's not that bad.' 
'We don't notice because we're used to it. When I came back from Stockholm, it smelt like you'd spent the weekend stewing kippers.' 
'I think you're making too much of it.' 
'And you can smell the mice.' 
'You're getting obsessed.' 
'There was one watching me this morning when I was eating breakfast. It's like having a dog sitting there waiting for scraps.' 
'Did you give it anything?' 
'Of course I didn't. I'd have given him some of the granules if they'd been handy.'
'You've had a bad day, haven't you?' 
'Does it show?' 
'Come and sit down.' 
The director allows himself to be led from the kitchen. 
'So what happened to put you in a bad mood?' Judith wants to know when they are settled on the settee. 
'How's your knowledge of pollution in the eastern Mediterranean?' 
'Non-existent.' 
'Pity. That's what I'm supposed to be talking about when I address a meeting tomorrow.' 
'I'm sure you'll enthral them.' 
'If I knew anything about it! That's why I spent half the afternoon in the library, which I might say was a total waste of time.' 
'You know you always get like this when you're making a speech. It's stage fright.'
'It's not students I'm talking to this time. These are experts. They know their subject.'
'So what are you going to say?' 
'I don't know. I'll have to talk generally—the political implications of pollution control, assuming I can think of any.' 
'You'll be your usual authoritative self.' 
'I'll have to make an early start to get to Sheffield for ten-thirty, particularly if I've got to scrape up dead mice first.' 
'We'll have an early night.' 
'I won't be able to sleep.' 
'What do you want to eat?' 
'Nothing. The mice have put me off.' 
'Then let's go to bed.' 
'Already?' 
'Why not? And you're going to forget all about mice and pollution.' She lets her lips touch his. 
'I'll try.' 
'Promises, promises.' 
* 
Dylan's law states that if a girl invites him back to her home at the end of the evening, then he will be staying the night. Samantha clung to him as they left the club and refused to let go, probably because she would have fallen down if she had tried to stand unaided. At least he can satisfy his curiosity about how she lives.
It is a shabby, Victorian house like a hundred others close to Battersea Park. The interior has more character. Pastel walls contrast with the heavy patterned rug on the floor and the bright colours of wall rugs and scatter cushions. The colours help to distract attention from some undistinguished furniture. As he settles on the cushions, Dylan decides that he feels comfortable there. An understanding landlord has allowed his tenants a free hand. Somebody has thought about the room and that somebody is not Samantha. She is more concerned with having a good time.
A cistern flushes. Samantha is straightening her dress when she returns. To Dylan's disappointment she has not changed into something more suited to the intimacies ahead.
'Do you want coffee?' she asks. 
A tricky question from a tactical point of view. Coffee-making wastes time and distracts from the ultimate goal, but coffee might stop her from falling asleep. 
'Do you want one?' he counters. 
She shrugs. 'Not particularly.' 
'Sit down.' He pats the cushion beside him. 
'Let's have the other light on.' She lurches across the room to switch on the table lamp and then back to the doorway to turn off the main light. Dylan is relieved that she accomplishes this without falling or knocking anything over. She gives a grunt as she sinks down beside him. He wishes that he had kept her away from the wine. 
'Had a good evening?' he asks. 
'Lovely.' 
He kisses her, his fingers seeking the zip of her dress before she gets too sleepy. She offers only token resistance. 
'Let's go to bed,' she murmurs in his ear. 
'Why not here?' 
'Let's go to bed,' she says again, struggling to stand up, pull him to his feet and hitch up her designer dress all at the same time. Dylan gets up, feeling for the zip on her dress again. In this fashion they proceed to the bedroom where Dylan does not notice the decor. 
* 
The Baileys has run out. The coins have run out, so the electric fire is cold. Even the light of the sixty-watt bulb seems to have grown dimmer. Mackintosh stares out of the window, hoping for signs of activity in one of the bathroom windows—or anywhere. To his normal winter clothing he has added gloves over the fingerless mittens, as well as a scarf. The options pass through his mind. The pub will be warm, but he does not want the company of lonely old men who gather in saloon bars. Anyway, he is broke. He could console himself with food, but a glance along the shelf which constitutes his larder only reveals half a packet of mouldy bread and a tin of sardines. He could go back to drawing, but that is difficult in gloves. Anyway, inspiration has gone. 
Inspiration. His lips move in the parody of a smile. Artists need technique, not inspiration; but he is not really an artist. He stares out the window, trying to absorb the unpalatable fact. It needs to be faced. He is not an artist; he is a campaigner. He earns his living by minutely examining the world's problems and reaching no conclusions—that peculiarly modern activity which satisfies the liberal consciences of people like redundant lecturers. Perhaps he should give up his job if it does not come to an end of its own accord. Perhaps that is the stimulus which his painting needs. 
Drink dulls his senses. Too late for making rational decisions about his future; too late to go out. He pulls the curtains. Bedtime. All he has to remember is not to put his foot through the hole in the sheet. 
* 
The television programmes do not improve, or at least they do not hold Rob's interest. When Jeanne is home, they rarely watch—she says that television sets give off radiation. Rob keeps meaning to ask Dylan for his opinion and he keeps forgetting. His own opinion is that watching television is an alternative to thinking. When he said this in the office, Dylan called him a snob. 
Last week, when Jeanne was at her healthy eating course, he overcame his distaste and watched a sitcom and a quiz show. The sitcom was quite enjoyable. He savoured the decadence of putting his feet on the other armchair and not having to think. The quiz show fulfilled his worst fears. He felt ashamed to be watching. It was as though somebody were crudely manipulating his responses. What depressed him even more was the thought that a large sector of the population was watching, probably with enjoyment. Even as he felt superior to them, his conscience pricked him. When Jeanne came home, he never told her what he had done, though he tried to envisage her reaction if he had. She would have accused him of abandoning his principles and she would have been right. 
Today there is another comedy, but the surreptitious pleasure has gone. He turns off the set, making the silence seems deeper. Jeanne's absence hits him harder. He prowls from room to room, unable to concentrate. Normally he enjoys a P.D. James novel, but today he puts it aside, unable to concentrate. None of his favourite records suits his mood. In the kitchen he searches for the tea bags without success. Jeanne's strictures against tea come back to him and he feels an unreasoning irritation towards the teacher of the healthy eating course which screaming softly does not relieve. Scream any louder and the people upstairs will hear. 
Clutching a mug of herb tea, he slumps into an armchair before the silent television to brood. What is happening to his marriage? A week ago he thought it was happy and secure; now he is not sure. Going to an adult education class one evening a week seemed reasonable when Jeanne first mentioned it. He had considered going with her, but he disliked the rush to eat and get ready after a day's work. When Jeanne expressed doubts, he even encouraged her to go. 
During his first evening alone, he savoured the novelty. It was like being a bachelor again, having the flat to himself and not needing to consider somebody else's feelings. He considered going out, but he no longer has friends of his own. Anyway, he was never one for going to pubs. That was when he succumbed to the television. 
Something has been unleashed by the course. One evening a week has turned into two and there are still eight weeks left till the end of term. What he cannot understand is why a second meeting each week is needed. He concedes that eating is important, but then he remembers his great aunt who was addicted to suet puddings and lived to ninety. His own view is that exercise and the avoidance of stress are more important to health than diet, though he knows that he cannot support his opinion. He considers going jogging when Jeanne is at the class, but he does not like running at night: it is too easy to tread in dog shit. Visiting a gym is preferable. He can make Monday his regular gym night. 
He feels more relaxed now a decision is made, even if he changes his mind later in the week. A celebration is in order. With renewed enthusiasm he heaves himself from the chair and heads for the kitchen in search of something more celebratory than herb tea. Alas, his wife's drive for healthy eating has extended to healthy drinking. All he can muster for his celebration is a container of grape juice in the fridge, and that has been open for too long. Even the coffee has disappeared, replaced by chicory. He returns to his chair, a glass of grape juice in hand, and stares at the darkened garden as he dreams of fish and chips. 
* 
Sue savours the opportunity to do what she wants while her flatmates are out. The choice is between reading and watching television. As she takes her Senokot tablets, she concludes that there should be something more to her life at her age. There should be a man: not an imaginary one like Gavin, but a real man. She had high hopes of evening classes, but evidently her sort of man does not like homoeopathy, art history or local history. She still clings to the hope that she will encounter him by chance. It might be in the street, in the supermarket, or even in the lift at Desmond Tutu House. On one occasion she was squeezed between two attractive men in the lift. She held her breath, hoping that the moment had come; but she suspects that the men never noticed her. 
She wonders what Rob is doing.  She admires Rob more than any other man she has known. He has patience, kindness, good humour and integrity. At least his evening will be better than hers. He will be with his wife, discussing the television programmes they have been watching. The comforting thought for Sue is that she might have watched the same programmes. If Rob mentions them in the office tomorrow, she can talk intelligently about them. Just for a moment it brings him closer. 
She tries to imagine Rob's wife. She will be a year or two younger than Rob: a woman aware of social issues, but not a militant feminist. She will be a woman of compassion and sensitivity: Rob could be attracted to nobody else. Sue washes down her tablets with water and tries to turn her thoughts elsewhere: she gets maudlin if she dwells on Rob's home life for too long. When she has drunk her cocoa, she will go to bed. It will be warmer there and she can read. With luck she will be asleep before her flatmates return. 
	* 
They face each other in the hall. 
'What are you looking at me like that for?' Jeanne asks. 
'Like what?' 
'You're not still upset, are you?' 
'No.' 
'Obviously you are.' 
Rob shakes his head. 'Not true.' 
'I suppose you've been brooding all the evening?' 
'No.' 
'I know you have.' 
Rob stares at her, disconcerted by her unexpected insight and afraid because she is no longer on his side. As she turns away to take off her coat, the spell is broken. He goes back to the living room, not knowing how to express his helplessness. 
'Have you been sitting in the dark?' Jeanne's voice has softened. She is close behind Rob. He turns. 
'Why not?' 
'I wondered what you'd be doing.' She puts her arms around him, drawing him closer so that her scent intoxicates him. 
'Nothing much.' 
She squeezes him. 'Silly Rob.' 
He wants everything to be as it was before, but that cannot happen. Is the obstacle in his mind? The feeling of Jeanne's breath on his face no longer excites him. When she kisses him, he does not respond. She draws back. 
'What's the matter?' 
'Nothing.' 
'Yes there is.' 
'There's nothing.' 
'You're sulking.' When he does not answer, she turns away. 'I'm going to bed.' 
Rob nods absently. He does not follow. 

chapter four

Friday. Ahead looms the weekend with all its promise. Though that promise is rarely fulfilled, it touches the most pessimistic hearts to make the end of the working week tolerable.
Normally the director likes attending meetings of the steering group for European green policy, but as this one is in London, it holds less attraction for him than usual. The last meeting was in Paris, the one before in Berlin and the next one will be in Copenhagen. He enjoys the combination of travel, good conversation and a generous allowance for expenses, courtesy of the European Union.
The host organisation has a large meeting room. From previous visits, the director knows that particularly good cream cheese and pineapple sandwiches will be provided. He also knows that if he allows himself to be sidetracked by conversation, the only sandwiches left will be salami.
Fifteen organisations are represented on the steering group. As expenses are paid long after the event, some impoverished organisations are regularly fail to send representatives. Others such as Ecowatch refuse to be sidetracked by such mundane matters as a shortage of money. On this occasion, ten delegates are attending. Those from conservative organisations wear suits; those from the radical fringe opt for jeans and heavy, shapeless sweaters. The director favours the smart, casual look. Observing his smart, casual companions, he cannot help concluding that the time has come to renew his wardrobe. It is well endowed with casual clothes, but their continued smartness is questionable. Most of them date from the sixties and seventies, when he held a lecturing post in a polytechnic. He feels comfortable in them, so there has been no reason to change—until now. He looks down surreptitiously. Moths have been at his sweater. If he had noticed earlier, he would have selected another one. The trousers are serviceable if baggy. His Hush Puppies are scuffed, but Hush Puppies always are. Judith is always on at him to buy something new, so she will be pleased by his decision. He hates buying clothes. His excuse for putting off the fateful day is that he wants to sell the flat first, but he might be reduced to looking like Mackintosh before that happens. His flat: how he tries to forget it without ever succeeding. If it were not for Judith, he would abandon it to the mice and rent a bedsit.
'It's John, is it not?'
'Conrad!' The director emerges from his reverie and grasps the speaker's hand, thankful for the diversion. 'Haven't seen you since Berlin. How are you keeping?'
'Fine, my friend. Fine.'
'And how's the environmental movement in Germany? More active than ours from what I read in the papers.'
'You read of our Green Movement?'
'I wish we could generate that sort of interest in environmental issues.'
Conrad nods. With his aristocratic bearing, he looks reminiscent of a Prussian general planning a campaign, as his ancestors did.
'I am glad to be in London again. It is too long since I was last here.'
'Perhaps you will come to us for a meal,' the director offers, remembering too late that invitations are out of the question until the mice problem is solved. He is vexed by the way rodents have come to dominate his social life—and by the way he is unconsciously mimicking the German's precise English.
'I would like to do that very much,' says Conrad and the director's spirits sink. 'Unfortunately I must fly back tomorrow and tonight I have already arranged to visit some friends.'
'Pity,' says the director, his spirits rising again. 
'But at our next meeting we shall have a meal together.' 
'We shall indeed,' the director agrees fervently. For once fate has been kind to him. Inviting somebody to dinner without first consulting Judith is enough to trigger days of strained silence and reproachful glances without the problem of the mice. 
'Can we make a start?' calls the chief executive of the host organisation who is acting as chairman. He nudges laggard delegates towards the table with the practised skill of a sheepdog rounding up its flock, except that the delegates prove more recalcitrant than sheep. 'Can we make a start please, gentlemen? We've a long agenda to get through.' 
At length everybody is seated and the murmur of conversation stilled. All eyes turn to the chairman who switches on his smile. 
'May I welcome you to London. I hope you enjoy your stay, even though our weather isn't at its best.' 
Delegates glance at the window, apart from the director of Ecowatch who assumes an expression of bored aloofness. He has always thought that his counterpart in Countryside Concern has the demeanour of particularly ineffectual clergyman—and chairs meetings like one. It is an appropriate comparison: Countryside Concern has an ethos redolent of drawing-room tea parties in shire counties. It also benefits from the  bequests of rich dowagers. These pay for a prestigious headquarters and allow Countryside Concern to maintain a high profile. The director wishes that a few rich dowagers would interest themselves in Ecowatch. If its financial state took a turn for the better, his first action would be to double his salary. 
'Has everybody got an agenda?' the chairman asks. 
Three people have forgotten theirs, prompting a flurry of activity by the clerical staff. Five minutes later, the meeting is under way again. 
'The first item is apologies for absence. We have no apologies, though our numbers do seem rather depleted.' The chairman sounds reproachful. The delegates look at each other like errant parishioners being confronted with the sins of their fellows. 
'Item two: date of the next meeting which is the sixteenth of June in Copenhagen.' 
Murmurs of assent. 
'I think it's appropriate to bring up the topic of the meeting in December next year.' The chairman looks around for signs of dissent, but none are forthcoming. 'As you may recall, it was going to be held in Brussels, but I understand that the room will not now be available.' 
The director of Ecowatch marvels on the exclusiveness of a group which can only find one suitable meeting room in the whole of Brussels a year ahead. Even summit meetings do not have that problem. 
'Do we have any other suggestions for a venue?' the chairman enquires.
'Rome,' says the delegate from Sweden. 
'Rome,' the chairman repeats. 'Is that a possibility?' 
Eyes turn to the Italian delegate who does not easily fit into any of the sartorial camps. He is fat, forty, unshaven and a chain-smoker. The age of the Italian fashion designer has passed him by: the director remembers suits like that in Bicycle Thieves. 
'Sure.' The Italian stubs out his cigarette. 
'Can we leave that to you to arrange?' the chairman asks hopefully. 
'No problem.' 
'Excellent.' 
The director reflects that Rome in December will at least be free of tourists. The more he thinks about the idea, the more it appeals to him. A two-day conference can be extended into a one-week holiday with little effort. He will take Judith. To the best of his knowledge she has never been to Rome. He feels the stirrings of optimism. Looking at tourist attractions through her eyes will be like seeing them anew. He has vague memories of a film in which visitors were seeing Rome for the first time. He tries to remember whether the star was Gene Kelly or Frank Sinatra. Or were they both in it? 
'All in favour of Rome?' the chairman is asking. 
Three Coins in a Fountain. The director is pleased to have remembered the title. 
'Any queries on the minutes of the last meeting?' 
A rustle of papers ensues as delegates search for the minutes of the last meeting. 
'Yes,' says the delegate from Amsterdam, as he always does. 'It is a travesty of what I said.' He has risen to glare at the chairman. The gesture loses some of its impact because he is only five feet tall. He has no neck, so that his head appears to swivel on his shoulders as he observes the reaction of his fellow delegates. The director is always reminded of Mr Toad. 
'It is only meant to be a summary,' the chairman points out. 
'But not an accurate summary.' 
The chairman sighs. 'What's the matter with it?' 
'It is not accurate.' 
'In what way?' 
The director looks through the day's programme again while the dispute rages. His own paper entitled 'European environmental policies—a common goal?' is low on the agenda—so low that it is unlikely to be discussed. He suspects the chairman of having a hand in that. 
The Dutchman is expounding in increasingly broken English on why the minutes of the previous meeting are inaccurate. The gist of his argument is that he proposed an international panel to control pollution in the Rhine, but the minutes do not make clear that it should have mandatory rather than advisory powers. 
The director waves his agenda to catch the chairman's eye. 'I think my paper is relevant here.' 
'Your paper is item thirteen on the agenda,' the chairman points out. 'All we're trying to establish at the moment is the accuracy of the minutes of the Paris meeting.' 
'I realise that, but my paper covers the very issues our friend here is concerned about—' 
'We're not concerned with substantive issues at this stage.' 
'I think that's an excessively rigid interpretation.' 
'I'm keeping to the normal procedure.' 
'I realise that.'  
'I wish to have my inaccuracies recorded,' cries the Dutch delegate. 
The chairman raises his hands in supplication. 'Your objections to the minutes have been noted, Johan.' 
'I want to know the wording,' Johan insists. 
The director glances at his watch. Picking through the minutes is likely to continue until the tea break, after which there will be consideration of matters arising from the minutes. Destined to oblivion, along with his own paper, are discussions on regional inequalities, the impact of farming policies on land use in the EU and the plight of EU fishermen. Sometimes he despairs of the steering group. He hopes that the sandwiches will make up for a wasted morning. 
* 
'I'm still not sure why you came,' Dylan says. 
'Research,' Mackintosh answers. 
'How do you mean?' 
'We talked about it at the Monday meeting: I've got to put together something on the social costs of the car, so this is a good place to start.' 
'It's been done to death. You won't get anybody to pay out for another report.' 
'I don't know so much.' 
'A fiver if you can.' 
'Done.' 
They are sitting at the back of the conference hall. An academic is speaking on the finance of public transport in central London. Now that the bar has opened, most of the delegates have already disappeared. 
'Balls,' Mackintosh murmurs. 'He's talking bullshit.' 
'Academics usually do.' 
'What's next?' 
'Haven't you seen the programme?' 
'I haven't got the papers.' 
'Didn't you get them when you registered?' 
'It was a bit of a scramble out there.' 
Dylan looks suspicious. 'How did you get in?' 
'Said I was you and I'd just popped out to my car.' 
'Like it.' Dylan pushes the programme on his companion's lap. 'That's what you've got to look forward to.' 
Mackintosh runs his eye over the day's offerings. It is what the director would call a well-balanced programme with speakers from academia, the transport operating companies, local government and a partnership of transport consultants. 
'All balls,' he sums up. 
'At least we agree on that.' 
They agree on very little else, Mackintosh reflects. If they were two strangers thrown together in a pub, they would soon agree to differ and gravitate towards separate ends of the bar. Though their efforts have been devoted to the same project over past months, most of the work has been done independently. While Mackintosh's image is that of the old reprobate, Dylan's is that of the young Turk. Though there can be no more than ten years between them, they belong to different generations. For Mackintosh, middle age has sneaked up, like walking on the mud at the seaside and being cut off by the tide. The results are apparent each morning when he looks in the mirror. Each day he resolves to take himself in hand, but the impulse never lasts beyond breakfast. Part of the trouble is that he never feels middle-aged, whatever the mirror tells him. The passions which stirred him at nineteen are with him still. 
'Do you think I'm middle aged?' he asks. 
'Depends what you mean,' Dylan says disinterestedly. 
'Do I look middle aged?' 
'Yes.' 
'Thanks.' 
'You asked.' 
'Why?' Mackintosh persists. 
'Why what?' 
'Why do I look middle aged?' 
Dylan turns from the speaker on the platform to study his companion. 'The grey hairs, the lines, the bags under your eyes, the yellow teeth—' 
'That's enough.' 
'You wanted to know.' 
The moral is never to ask Dylan anything. Mackintosh has a sudden desire to find a mirror to reassure himself there is an element of exaggeration in this damning litany of his decline. Dylan exaggerates even in writing reports. And why ignore the undoubted fact that clothes have a lot to do with image? It is common knowledge amongst women. With a change of clothes, a different person emerges like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Mackintosh has visions of a debonair version of himself being pursued by girls. Mentally he apportions his next salary. If he does buy clothes, Baileys will be beyond his reach for a few weeks. Is it worth the sacrifice of his pleasure to satisfy other people, even if they are girls? He steals a glance at Dylan, content in the knowledge that youthful charm will give way to middle age all too soon. As yet no traces of grey are visible in Dylan's styled hair and there are no bags under the eyes. Mackintosh feels envious of the way his companion contrives to look stylish on an Ecowatch salary. It makes him wonder whether Dylan has done a deal with John for more money. His own clothes have a well-used appearance, which is unsurprising given that they come from charity shops. 
The speaker on the platform sits to as much applause as an audience of two dozen can muster. As the questions begin, Mackintosh tries to reconcile his desire to visit the bar and the lavatory, as well as listening to the questions. He concludes that he might manage all three with careful planning. 
There is a knack in being chosen to ask a question at a conference. Mackintosh has developed his own technique, which is to stand and begin talking as soon as the speaker shows signs of finishing an answer—and before the chairman can object. In this way he asks, 'Do you have a car?' 
'I do,' the academic agrees, 'as I'm sure you do.' 
'As a matter of fact I don't, but what I'd like to know is how you justify having a car in view of your stated support for public transport.' 
The academic smiles. 'I haven't said I'm against private transport.' 
'Sounds like double-talk to me.' 
'Can we have another question, please?' the chairman interposes. 
'So would you support the freedom to use the car in city centres?' Mackintosh continues before anybody else can speak. 
'I'd like to see disincentives,' the academic concedes. 
'What's that mean?' 
'A toll on city centre car use, or a tax on company parking places.' 
'So you expect companies to absorb the extra costs?' 
'I'd rather see it as changing their corporate philosophies.' 
'You don't think a toll might cause companies simply to put up prices or relocate?' 
'There's always a risk with disincentives.' 
'I think we should hear somebody else,' the chairman appeals. 
'All cobblers,' Mackintosh mutters, edging along the row to the gangway. He does not hear the next question. 
The lavatories in conference hotels are impressive and these are no exception. They are warm, well-appointed and clean—and unlike the ones at Desmond Tutu House, they work. After emptying his bladder in preparation for the lunchtime drinking session, Mackintosh gazes into the mirror as he washes his hands. The man staring back at him could well be ten years older. He leans across the washbasin to examine his skin more closely. Lines become chasms; pores become volcanoes. He recoils, vowing once more to take himself in hand as he stumbles towards to the bar.
Hotel bars are less of a delight. Their prices are exorbitant and they do not have Young's on tap. He scans the delegates for one who might buy him a drink, but he sees nobody he knows. He could go out to a pub, but then there would be the problem of getting back in. Sometimes he wonders whether conferences are worth the effort. 
'Mackintosh!' 
A hand clamps his shoulder. When he recovers from the shock, he turns to see a familiar face.
'My old mate!' 
They shake hands with enthusiasm. Mackintosh has known the journalist since his lecturing days. They meet infrequently and usually over many beers. 
'What are you having?' the journalist asks. 
Mackintosh relaxes at the words. He orders a lager. As he watches it being poured, he marvels at this strange twist of fate. While the drink is being paid for, he even manages to remember his saviour's name and to ask 'So how's Dick these days?' 
Dick leans reflectively on the bar. 'Not so bad. And you?' 
'Not so bad,' Mackintosh agrees. 'I'm with Ecowatch now. Have I seen you since I started there?' 
'Don't think so. You know I'm freelance now?' 
Mackintosh duly raises his eyebrows, unsure weather freelance journalist has the same euphemistic connotation as freelance researcher, namely being out of work. 
'Don't hear so much of Ecowatch as we used to,' Dick observes. 
'You've heard about our work on the Brazilian rain forest, haven't you?' 
'No.' 
'So much for influencing decision makers.' 
'All campaigning bodies have the same problem,' Dick declares, slopping beer on the carpet. 'They get complacent. The middle-aged spread shows.' 
Mackintosh knows about the middle-age spread. 
'I suppose it's self-preservation,' Dick continues. 'You start worrying more about the organisation than what it's supposed to be doing.' 
Mackintosh drinks, content to consign Ecowatch and its campaigns to temporary oblivion. 
'Did you see my piece in Time Out last week?' Dick asks. 
'No.' 
'Pity.' 
'So what have you been doing?' 
'Whatever comes along.' 
'Apart from Time Out articles.' 
'Odd bits here and there.' 
'We're trying to get a new project going.' 
'Odd bits,' Dick muses, as though he has not heard. 'I thought about something like commuting in London. I had an article on the subject in The Guardian. I don't know whether you saw it.'
'That's why I came today: to pick up a few ideas.' 
'That's what you need if you're going to survive as a freelance: articles in the serious dailies.' 
'Nobody's touched the subject lately. Everybody moans about it, but there's been no serious study.' 
'You can get words by the thousand printed in the monthlies and quarterlies, but you might as well not bother. Nobody reads them.' 
'We've got to find funding, of course. The old problem. You haven't got any ideas, I suppose?' 
'Unless they're really well known, that is. Getting something in the New Statesman is useful. I did a piece for them about the elderly in inner cities. I don't know whether you remember it. About six months ago.' 
'No funding, no project. And that means no job.'
'You're on the high wire as a freelance—and there's no safety-net.' 
'I wouldn't mind going back to lecturing, but you don't get many posts advertised now. Not like in the days when we were drawing up structure plans. Then there were jobs for the asking.' 
'Not that I'd go back to being told what to write. Not now.' 
'You wonder what it's going to mean for planning in the future when all that's left is approving plans for house extensions and retirement flats.' 
The bar is filling. The two old colleagues stare reflectively into their drinks. 
'What do we concentrate on that's going to get us a grant?' Mackintosh ruminates. 'Ways of controlling the car, improving public transport, the effect of commuting by car on the urban environment, the economic costs of commuting by car ...' 
'You've got to sell the idea,' Dick declares, emerging from his reverie. 
'Who to?' 
'Dunno.' 
'That's the problem.' 
'You're right there.'
'What do you think of the conference?' 
'Haven't seen much of it really—only came because I got a press ticket. Usually means they can't sell enough places and they want the thing to look well attended.' 
'Too many conferences.' 
'Gives us something to write about.' 
'Lot of freelances around these days as well.' 
'Cheaper than keeping staff reporters.' 
'It's all communication now: magazines, television, computers, faxes. Words flying everywhere.' 
'I like that: words flying everywhere.' 
'It's true, isn't it?' Mackintosh insists. 
'It's true all right.' 
'Why are we talking as though we're drunk?' 
'The intoxication of words.' 
'Sometimes I wonder: do we play at being drunk? We know what drunks should do, so we slip into the role.' 
'Profound stuff.'
'What we should do is have another one,' Mackintosh decides. Heedless of his parlous finances, he buys the next round. The two men go back to contemplating their glasses.
'How's the wife?' Mackintosh asks, remembering the attractive, dark-haired girl he met at one of their sessions in a pub. 
'Divorced.' 
'Sorry to hear that.' Mackintosh tries to recall her name. She spoke hesitantly, as though afraid that nobody would listen to her opinions. She seemed a strange companion for somebody like Dick. 
'That's the way it goes. It all happened a couple of years ago. Got over it now.' 
Mackintosh calculates that the evening he remembers so vividly must have been five years ago. It is an uncomfortable reminder of the passage of time. 
'How about you?' Dick is asking. 
'How about me? 
'Not married?' 
'No.' 
'Surprising.' 
'Why?' 
'It comes to most of us at some time or another. Not living with anybody?' 
'No.' 
'I thought you had something going with a lecturer at the poly. What was she called—Alison?' 
'Annabelle.' The name unlocks bittersweet memories which threaten to flood Mackintosh's mind. He definitely had something going with Annabelle. For six months friends thought of them as a couple. The polytechnic administration even provided a joint invitation to the Christmas party. It was soon afterwards that things started to go wrong. He thought he was being himself; she called it conceit. Her mannerisms began to irritate him where previously he had found them endearing. One Sunday at her flat, when she wanted them to go out with her friends, his patience snapped. Rather than having to make conversation with people whom he did not particularly like, he insisted that he would rather get on with his painting. Annabelle was not sympathetic about what she called his hobby. He became annoyed and stormed home to paint; that made him realise how much time had been frittered away on what he was coming to see as an infatuation. That first row proved to be their last. The relationship was fun while it lasted, but would he have wanted it to continue? 
'So it never worked out,' Dick prompts. 
Mackintosh shakes his head. 'Never worked out,' he agrees. 
'How about since?' 
'Nothing much.' 
'I've been seeing this girl called Emma.' 
'Something going there?' Mackintosh dutifully enquires. 
'Not sure. I met her at a demo.' 
Mackintosh raises his eyebrows. 'I didn't know there were such things these days.' 
'Nothing like they used to be, of course. Makes you quite nostalgic about the days of CND: all those thousands of people with but a single cause and Canon Collins out there in front. No, this one was about animal rights.' 
'Are you into that these days?' 
'I was only reporting it. Doesn't matter to me one way or the other. Anyway, I met Emma and we went from there.' 
'How old is she?' 
'Nineteen.' 
'Christ.' 
'I'm not that old.' 
'You are compared with her.' 
'It's not cradle-snatching, for God's sake!' 
A raw nerve has been hit. Mackintosh conjures a picture of his old colleague mounting a nubile nineteen year old. He feels a twinge of envy. 
'Should we be getting back?' he prompts, noticing the exodus of the other delegates. 
'Who's speaking?' 
'A transport planner.' 
'Let's give it a miss. I'd rather be out here thinking of my lovely Emma.' 
'Randy old sod.' 
'And drinking.' 
'Ah, now you're talking.' 
'Do you wonder why we do it?' 
'Drinking, you mean? Or women?' 
'I was thinking of the Drink. Costs a lot, ruins your gut and compels you to visit the sort of revolting piss holes they have in most pubs.' 
'You're all right here: it's a good piss hole.' 
'You've visited it, have you?' 
'Been there, tried it.' 
'That's the sort of recommendation I like. Sometimes I think there ought to be an Egon Ronay guide to piss holes.' 
'Write one.' 
'I might well do that.' 
Mackintosh fleetingly considers putting it forward as the next Ecowatch project, but he dismisses the notion as fanciful. He enquires, 'You're living with her, are you, this Emma?' 
'Not yet.' 
'But it's on the cards?' 
'Definitely on the cards.' 
'And there's no problem about being older?' 
'It seems to worry you more than it does her.' 
'Doesn't worry me,' Mackintosh assures him, trying to think where he might find himself a girl of nineteen. Demos have never appealed to him: he never cares strongly enough about anything to sit on a roadway with a placard and invoke the wrath of the police. Sue is the only girl of the right age with whom he comes into contact and he has never thought of her as a potential concubine. Perhaps he should. He considers how he might make an overture without risking outright rejection. However he goes about it, he suspects that Sue might be more embarrassed than pleased. 
'Suppose I ought to go in,' he announces without enthusiasm. 'Find out all about transport policies.' 
'You know about them already. Stay and have another drink.' 
'I might be missing some good ideas.' 
'There aren't any new ideas on transport policy: you recycle the old ones. No new forms of transport, are there?' 
'No.' 
'So what's the point of going? You might as well have another drink.' 
Mackintosh weighs the pleasure of propping up the bar against the tedium of sitting through a paper given by a transport consultant whose name he recalls from his lecturing days. This was the man who gave a talk to students, during which Mackintosh fell asleep. There is no contest. 
* 
Denuded of most of its staff, the Ecowatch office looks more down at heel than usual. The autumn sun shines mercilessly on dented filing cabinets and the curling veneer on chipboard desks. Sue pauses from her typing to gaze in vexation at her efforts. What she needs is a new typewriter. Nobody uses golf-ball typewriters these days. The golf ball keeps jumping, giving her letters a slapdash appearance however much care she takes. The director always looks reproachful when she tries to explain that it is not her fault. She feels that she is making excuses. Her mother always used to say a bad workman always blames his tools. 
She looks across to Rob. He is absorbed in his ledgers, unaware of the intensity of her gaze. She hopes Ecowatch will not close because then she will almost certainly lose touch with him. A tension grows in the silence as she struggles for the words which will makes her feelings known without frightening him. 
'Do you want some tea?' she asks at last. 
Rob looks up. He smiles. 'Good idea.' 
Her legs feel weak as she rises to fill the kettle. She hears him saying, 'What are you doing this weekend?' and her heart sings. 
'I don't know,' she responds lamely. As she turns on the tap, she tries to tell herself that he is making polite conversation rather than asking her out. Her hands are shaking. She searches for a less pathetic answer, but in the end all she can say is, 'I shan't do very much. I never do.' 
'Sounds like my weekend.' 
'What are you going to do?' The words come more easily now. 
'I might come in here tomorrow.' 
She looks towards him, startled. 'You don't work on Saturdays, do you?' 
'I don't make a habit of it. I just want to get the books up to date. It's the end of the year soon.' 
'That's months away.' 
'It's not long. I've got to put together next year's budget, so all the routine stuff gets left while I'm doing that.' 
Her heart thuds as she asks, 'Is there anything I can do?' 
'It's mainly getting the ledger posted, which is pretty much a one-man job. Thanks for offering, though.' 
She turns away, deflated and embarrassed. The kettle is overflowing: she turns off the tap and tips some of the water into the sink. With great daring she asks, 'Doesn't your wife mind you coming here on a Saturday?' 
'I shouldn't think so.' 
As the kettle boils, Sue tries to make sense of Rob's answer. It does not suggest a happy marriage. 
'I get more work done here on a Saturday,' he explains. 'There aren't any interruptions.' 
'How often do you do it?' 
'Only three or four times a year when I've got to work on the budget and the end-of-year accounts.'
 'Am I supposed to stay on after five-thirty?' she asks, taking the opportunity to raise a matter which has bothered her since she started working at Ecowatch. 
'What makes you say that?' 
'I'm always the first to leave.'
'You're often here before the others.' 
'John's always here first.' 
'He's a workaholic.' 
'Where I used to work, you expected to leave at half past five.' 
'I'd carry on as you are.' 
'John hasn't said anything about me going?' 
'No. It's a sort of tradition here, not keeping fixed hours. I suppose it's because people have to go to meetings at odd times. It doesn't affect you.' 
'I've been worrying about it.' 
'I shouldn't.' Rob hesitates before he adds, 'If you do fancy coming in tomorrow, I wouldn't mind some help sorting out the unpaid invoices and getting the petty cash book up to date. You won't get any overtime for it, though.' 
'I don't mind.' 
'I don't want you to think I'm forcing you.' 
'I've got nothing to do,' she assures him. 'I'll be here at half past nine, same as usual.' 
'Let's make it ten, so we can both have a little lie in.' 
The prospect excites Sue so much that as she makes the tea, she spills hot water over the draining board. 
* 
Like a latter-day spectre, the editor prowls Highgate cemetery, savouring its tranquillity. In summer a party of schoolchildren ran away screaming as his gaunt figure arose from behind a grave. On an autumnal Friday he has the place to himself. He enjoys the sensation of being alone in a wilderness. His steps cease. In the stillness he can hear a blackbird searching amongst the dead leaves under a thicket. He turns up his collar against the chill breeze as he surveys the battlefield of graves and undergrowth. There is a grim satisfaction in seeing how vain were those strivings towards immortality. The inscriptions on some stones are still legible—life and death encapsulated in a few trite phrases. The ornate monuments convey the poignancy of the past and the fragility of the present better than any words. He loves photographing them. He has to believe that one day his disparate black and white images of girls, graves, old men and townscapes will be juxtaposed in a book or an exhibition. People will see the coherence in his vision of the world and they will be moved. 
The oldest and most interesting part of the cemetery is closed, which is a matter of lasting regret to the editor: the Egyptian Avenue, Circle of Lebanon and Terrace Catacombs offer such photogenic potential. The locked gatehouse is on the lane climbing to Highgate. The editor loves walking between those high, moss-covered walls overhung with trees. It is like a secret lane from a childhood adventure story. London seems far away. He always wonders who lives in the incongruous glass and steel house seemingly perched among the branches. More breathtaking is to stand by the gatehouse and look across the slate roofs of Tufnell Park to the sprawling city. Landmarks such as St Paul's belong to an older city being overwhelmed by commerce. In the distance, a radio mast marks the heights around Crystal Palace. Beyond is the misty outline of the North Downs, where a winking red light betrays the presence of another mast. London is no more than a town in a valley. That vantage point puts it into perspective. Amongst the streets, London seems like a city with no end.

chapter five

Saturday morning, when the workers of Ecowatch normally rest from their labours and dream of how they will spend the weekend. Sue's Saturday treat is to lie in till half past eight, savouring the indulgence and knowing that her flatmates will not surface until lunchtime. Her alarm is set for seven-thirty, but she awakens long before it rings and rehearses the coming scene with Rob again and again in her mind. Such is her anxiety that she can manage no more than a cup of tea for breakfast. She knows that she ought to have her bran, but she cannot face cereal.
For the first time she has a double seat to herself on the bus, which is a promising start for the day. Being pressed against a stranger always makes her feel uneasy. She wonders whether she could avoid the rush hour by getting to work half an hour earlier during the week.
London has a leisured air at nine o'clock on a Saturday morning. The usual traffic jams are absent. Pedestrians linger before shop windows rather than scurrying towards offices. In this encompassing calmness, Sue can hear her mother telling her in disapproving tones that she is throwing herself at a married man. She does not feel that she is doing anything wrong. Perhaps love is taking control of her. Her stomach churns. If this is love, she is not sure that she likes it.
Passing Euston station. Sue still feels a pang of homesickness every time she sees it. This was where she first set foot in London. Six months earlier, she would not have envisaged living away from home. Then there was the trouble at work. Instead of taking her side, her mother accused her of not growing up. That shook her. She kept telling herself that her mother must have had a bad day, but nothing could be the same afterwards. She needed to prove that she was independent. Moving to London was a dramatic way of doing it, but now she has to live with her decision.
Alighting from the bus. Confronting St Pancras and King's Cross stations, majestic from a distance but scavenged by tramps and pigeons. She remembers stories from her grandmother about tramps abducting girls and selling them to Arabs, so she hurries past when they ask her for money. Both stations strike her as ugly, but when she ventured her opinion in the office to show that she thought about such things, Mackintosh lectured her on the aesthetics of station architecture. One of the few things she understood was that both stations are great architecture—Mackintosh called them symbols of the Victorian ethos—but St Pancras still reminds her of an over-decorated wedding cake and King's Cross is like a prison. At evening classes, she has the same problem of not understanding what the tutors are talking about. Rob never goes on about the aesthetics of architecture or renewable energy sources. She feels that he is on her wavelength. 
At first, the squalid streets around King's Cross oppressed her; now she hardly notices. The low sun gives them the quality of a painting, making her look anew at the stark outlines, weatherworn textures and begrimed tones. She feels pleased that her art history course must be having an effect. Changing her perceptions, her tutor would call it.
Sue expects Desmond Tutu House to be silent, but the workday sounds greet her: the thudding of the print co-op's press and the whir of air-conditioning from the cooperatively run computer bureau. As she goes up in the lift, she is thankful to be alone, for anybody else must hear the thumping of her heart. She wonders whether girls of her age can get heart attacks.
The office door is unlocked. Rob looks up in surprise as she enters. As he smiles, all her carefully prepared phrases are forgotten.
'Hello, Sue. You're early.'
'The bus didn't take so long as usual.'
'I wasn't expecting you really.'
Sue smiles back, unable to think of an answer. 
'Anyway, it's good to see you,' he tells her.
She wants to reply that it is one of the greatest moments of her life, but she hides her pleasure by turning away to take off her coat. She hears Rob saying, 'I feel a bit guilty for suggesting it now,' and that makes her face him again.
'You shouldn't.' The force of her words alarms her. 
'You have to say that, don't you?' 
'It's not as though I've got anything else to do.' 
'It certainly helps me.' 
'Do you want coffee?' 
Rob's eyes light up. 'My saviour.' 
Then she remembers. 'I thought you were trying to give up caffeine.' 
'I don't have it at home.' 
'I wasn't criticising ...' She breaks off, confused. Rob smiles, much to her relief. 
'Shall we have tea instead?' he wants to know.
'I don't mind. It's up to you.' 
'Let's have tea, if that's all right with you.'
'I'm trying to cut down on coffee,' she babbles as she fills the kettle. 'It's not supposed to be good for you.' 
'You ought to ask Jeanne about that.' 
Sue feels let down. Her movements slow. She asks, 'Is Jeanne your wife?' 
'She's doing a course on nutrition.' 
'I know coffee's not good for you, that's all.' As Sue plugs in the kettle and switches it on, she is aware of her inadequacy in comparison with the all-knowing Jeanne. She wishes that she had not come to the office.
'Sorry to deprive you of your lie in,' Rob says, which makes her feel better. 
'I don't have one,' she lies. 
'I always wake up at the same time, so I go jogging as usual. Wouldn't miss my morning run over Parliament Hill Fields.' 
'Where's that?' 
'On the fringes of Hampstead. It's part of the heath.' 
'I don't know it.' She is shaking her head. She keeps promising herself that she will explore the city which is her temporary home, but then she hears her mother's voice telling her how easy it is to get mugged or raped in London. That makes her put it off, though she knows that she is being silly. 
'You ought to be a tourist for the day and take one of those tours on an open bus,' Rob is saying.
'That's a good idea.' 
'I've always lived in London, so I take it for granted. I suppose it's different when you've just come here.' 
Sue can think of no reply. She busies herself making the tea. She is sure that Rob notices her hands shaking as she puts the mug on his desk. 
'Thanks.' He smiles up at her. She feels a burst of pleasure which makes up for all her doubts. 
'What do you want me to do?' she asks. 
'Did you have you keep a petty cash book in your last job?' 
She shakes her head. 
'Then here's your chance to learn.' 
* 
Mackintosh likes Saturday mornings. He stares at the ceiling, savouring the warmth beneath the bedclothes. As winter approaches, the pile of yellowing blankets provided by his landlady grows ever thicker. Their provenance mystifies him. Does she obtain them when the contents of redundant hotels are being auctioned, or from those weekly street markets where all things unwanted and worn out gravitate? He shifts uneasily at the thought of the countless people who have lain beneath them. The mattress he tries not to think about: he only lifted the bottom sheet once. His toes seek out the hole in the sheet without finding it. His guilty secret has been discovered. He imagines his landlady sewing a patch over the tear and some other hapless tenant rediscovering it in five years time. So long as he is long gone: another five years in that place will be the ultimate admission of failure. 
A gurgling of water in pipes signals that somebody is flushing the lavatory. Mackintosh sees little of his fellow tenants: their company would only reinforce his depression. His landlady favours working men and has attracted to the house a collection of itinerant labourers, widowed street sweepers and poorly-paid clerks. Most move on within three months. Mackintosh's stay is a personal record at sixteen months. Usually he gets asked to leave within a year, or he is forced to renew the unending quest for something cheaper. He wishes that his landlady would take in students. He mentioned it to her, but she showed no interest in the idea. He likes the thought of students, particularly female students. From his own undergraduate days he can recall their laughter, their scents lingering in the air like ghosts and the serendipitous finding of their underclothes hanging to dry in the bathroom. All he finds in the bathroom in his present lodgings are dirty socks. 
Saturday. The day is his own. He stretches luxuriously now he can be confident that the sheets will stand it. The divan creaks. In the still of the night, he hears the bed in the adjoining room creaking as its occupant turns over. The modest rent does not buy privacy. Nobody makes love there. It is a place where dreams fester. He wonders whether other tenants have dreams like his. 
Two days freed from the yoke of Ecowatch. He picks at the hard skin on his heel as he ponders how to spend his time. Stocking up on food should be a priority, but that means doing battle with the Saturday crowds in the supermarket. He ought to visit the library to see what jobs The Times Higher Education Supplement offers. There might be girl students to distract him, but knowing his luck there will only be the resident tramps whose smell pervades the reading room and who clutch the best magazines as they slumber. A visit to the Tate Gallery is more appealing. It is a place of riches: of paintings to contemplate, like-minded people to overhear and beautiful girls to worship. Alas, on Saturdays it is also full of children and Mackintosh does not like children. With regret, his visit to the Tate is put aside. His conscience tells him that he should be painting; his pocket tells him that he would be better employed trying to sell his paintings. What he wants most is to stay in bed until the pubs open. 
A knock on the door jolts him into wakefulness. 
'Mr Mackintosh,' his landlady calls. 
He lies very still and prays that the divan will not give him away by creaking. 
'I know you're in there.' 
Bluff, he tells himself. All bluff. 
'You still owe me the rent for last week.' 
Each payday he means to put aside the rent for the coming month, but somehow it never happens. 
'We can't go on like this.' 
Mackintosh knows that he is unlikely to find another room as cheap. Better to plunge his bank account further into the red and pay up rather than to face the time-consuming business of looking for somewhere else. 
'I'll expect it today.' 
The thought of looking for a room reminds him of an intriguing contrast. Estate agencies are welcoming places designed to tempt the potential buyer; accommodation agencies with their utility seating, bare wooden counters and staff of grim spinsters resemble the unemployment benefit offices of old—except that accommodation agencies represent private enterprise, albeit at its lowest level, and are invariably situated above Chinese takeaways or at the end of particularly noisome flights of stairs. 
'I know you can hear me.' 
Mackintosh holds his breath. He waits until his landlady shuffles to the stairs before he resumes scraping his heel. So long as he can keep out of her way for the rest of the day, he can put off going to the bank until Monday—or Tuesday. 
* 
The editor likes Saturdays. He normally gets up at first light to take photographs before the city is overwhelmed by people. His attitude towards his fellow citizens is equivocal. He likes to observe their idiosyncrasies, but he does not feel at one with them. Distance from his fellow man allows him to think and to create, unfettered by the need to consider other people's feelings or to make conversation. The value of freedom was brought home to him in the days when he tried living with a girl. She kept making demands and that created tension. After the inevitable rift, he roamed through the silent flat, revelling in his solitariness. 
Sometimes he thinks that photographing a woman is as sensual an experience as making love. Those early morning walks give him the excitement of an explorer wandering through a lost city. Even the familiar streets around the office assume a different character: the wreath of mist hanging over the canal beneath York Way, the Italianate atmosphere of King's Cross Road with the blackened Victorian terraces hemmed in its valley, the intricate latticework of gasometers behind the station and the smell of hay in the passage beside the Royal Veterinary College. The smell of the new day is soon dispelled. By eight o'clock, his fantasy city dissolves like a mirage. In its place is the  everyday world—and even that is ignored by the people who destroy its magic. 
In spite of the editor's desire for solitude, countryside bores him. He was raised in a town; he has always lived in urban surroundings. Sometimes on train journeys, the beauty of the countryside touches him, but he knows that it is an illusory beauty. Fields which look as smooth as football pitches from a distance are peppered with cracks and hillocks which turn walking into torture. In wet weather, the soil turns into a morass of mud which seeps into his shoes and spatters his clothes. Being in the country means being stung, bitten and scratched. He knows that from experience. Once in his teens he went for a camping holiday. After one day he sought refuge in the nearest town. Since then he has taken his holidays in cities. His most recent visits were to Paris, Rome and Madrid. New York is his goal. With Tony's money he might afford it. Towns and cities are ideas turned into tangible things: toeholds in a hostile world. Approaching a city for the first time and savouring its unknownness generates the same elation as embarking on a love affair. A girl he can appreciate not only for her beauty, but as the summation of each throw of the genetic dice, generation after generation, to be revealed in her humour and foibles, her moods and jealousies. In the same way, a city bears mute testimony to attempts by succeeding generations to solve the recurring problems of life: from political antagonisms, cussedness and shortage of money to the intransigence and inadequacies of building materials. The results are on display for those who look, displacing the solutions of the earlier generations. He savours that sense of continuity and the way it is hidden from most people. He knows that by revealing what is overlooked, he will destroy its mystery. That is an argument for not showing his works. The thought of not having an exhibition does not worry him. It is the compulsion to see the world anew which drives him on. 
Much of his day will be spent in the darkroom, conjuring images of a girl he will not see again. Whatever the technical challenges, making a print cannot recreate the thrill of that first sight of her in the viewfinder. All day he will be alone. There are moments of when he will want to share his achievements, but he knows that the presence of somebody else would rapidly become a distraction. He rolls over to stare at the curtained windows. The warmth of the bed is a temptation to inactivity, but he remembers Tony's warning and he shivers. 
* 
Dylan usually likes Saturdays, though sometimes he welcomes work as a convenient excuse to extricate himself from a situation which threatens to get out of hand. This is not such an occasion. Julie's gentle, rhythmical breathing brings memories of the previous evening flooding back with the vividness of waking from a dream. It was an eventful evening. What he finds difficult to understand is why the frivolity which previously he had found so endearing in Samantha became irritating over the course of a few hours. Was it a natural ending of their relationship, or had a day with Mackintosh made him less tolerant than usual? 
'I want to go somewhere else,' she announced like a child bored with a grown-ups' party. 
'Where?' 
'I don't know. I thought you were the one who knew everywhere.' 
He decided to treat her remark as a compliment and conceded the point with a gracious nod. 
'Think of somewhere,' she ordered petulantly. 
'What sort of place do you want?' 
'Somewhere different.' 
'It depends what you want to do. Do we eat, or dance, or what?' 
'I just want is to go somewhere else,' she repeated very slowly, as though to a child.
So they went somewhere else—somewhere which was different. With his hand on his heart he would have to confess that there was an element of maliciousness in his choice. Samantha halted in the doorway. Even with the flickering, coloured lights he saw in her face the horror of somebody who had strayed into a world beyond her understanding and who wanted to go back to what she knew. The youths in their studded leather jackets had already noticed her and were calling her to 'Come in, darling,' though she may not have heard above the thudding beat of rock and roll. The incessant backdrop of sound was still evident when they returned to the car park on her insistence. Samantha slammed the car door without speaking. He sat beside her, making no comment when branches of shrubs caught under the wings as she reversed violently. Even then he could not stop himself from looking at her legs as she jabbed the pedals. 
'Do you want me to drive?' he ventured as she narrowly missed a bollard at the car park exit. 
No answer. 
'You said you wanted to go somewhere different. That was an authentic bit of Clapham colour for you.' 
Still no answer. 
'It's raunchy, I'll give you that. They have some good groups though.' 
At this point he abandoned any attempt at conversation and let Samantha concentrate on her driving. At the Clapham Common station she stopped the car. She had not spoken since leaving the club. When he glanced at her, she was leaning back in her seat, staring ahead, hands gripping the steering wheel as though she was in a trance. 
'So what happens now?' he asked. 
'You get out.' 
'I wondered whether that was the idea.' 
She did not respond. As the silence lengthened, he could not stop himself from watching her legs out of the corner of his eye. That made him remember the good times. He accepted that the relationship was at an end. What surprised him was that his equanimity. 
'Get out then,' she prompted. 
'You don't think you're overreacting?' 
'No.' 
'You wanted somewhere different and when I take you somewhere different, you're still not happy.' 
'I said I wanted somewhere different—not a place like that.' 
'You didn't say what you wanted.' 
She did not answer. It was like rehearsing an argument rather than having one. 
'I can't read your mind, can I?' 
That did provoke her. When she turned to him and he saw the hate in her eyes, he thought that she might attack him. 
'Will you get out, please?' she said in an over-controlled tone. 
'If that's what the lady wants.' 
He obeyed meekly, seeing no point in a row. She did not say goodbye. As he stood by the kerb, she drove off without glancing back. He could have laughed at what was happening. One part of his mind was already considering how he should spend the rest of the evening. The only consolation was that Samantha had not left him stranded miles from any public transport. 
At the start of the journey back to central London he felt relieved and a little ashamed at his lack of emotion; by the Oval he was already planning what he might say to Julie. Some premonition had made him ring her a few days earlier. For a while they had something going, though they had not seen each other for a couple of months. Her pleasure at hearing from him again was obvious even over the phone. He made vague noises about meeting, not expecting that it would happen quite so soon. 
He strokes her neck, loving the down-like hairs. Julie stirs and settles back into sleep. She always was a heavy sleeper, he recalls. Other occasions when he lay watching her come back to him, overwhelming him with nostalgia. He lies back in her bed, content. 
* 
The director feels at a loss on Saturdays, wrenched from his routine of going to the office. He lies in bed listening for mice. Initially he liked Judith's suggestion of buying a cat, but on reflection emptying a tray of cat litter each morning offers little improvement over enduring the mice. Mouse traps he views with suspicion since catching his fingers in one whilst trying to set it. The pain would have been worthwhile if the mouse had not removed the cheese without tripping the spring. Chemicals are more reliable: the rodent corpses in the morning are proof of their efficacy. He shivers at the thought of beginning the day by hunting for furry bodies to shovel into a black sack. Moving is the only permanent solution. 
The figures which have preoccupied him over so many months go through his mind again like some ritual incantation: how much he might get for the flat, how much he would lose and the monthly repayments on a mortgage which would cover both his losses and the cost of a new flat. He dreams about moving. He prays about it, more out of desperation than from religious fervour. Sometimes he imagines a property speculator making the first tentative overtures. A new development is being planned, but the warehouse occupies the centre of the site. The emissary looks uncomfortable. Of course the company realises the distress and upheaval occasioned by looking for a new home. Needless to say, generous recompense would be made. If he would care to consider the proposal for a few days—
There is a noise which might be a mouse. The director listens intently, wishing that Judith did not breathe so noisily in her sleep. The kitchen is a better vantage point, but the bed is warm. And anyway, he prefers to wear boots when he is hunting and he does not keep them by his bed. 
His thoughts drift inevitably to work. The director has a love-hate relationship with Ecowatch. He enjoys formulating policy, but he would rather be in charge of a larger and more prestigious body which would pay a bigger salary and allow him to attend more international conferences. Some things he would be glad to leave behind, including Mackintosh and the Ecowatch management committee. Mackintosh is too keen on going his own way—usually towards the nearest pub. Whatever the next project, the director is determined that there will be no place for Mackintosh on it. 
Handling the committee is more problematic. It meets every two months to review management and to chart policy with what the director privately considers to be the aplomb of a man driving down the M1 with his eyes closed. The twelve committee members include worthies of the environmental world, intent upon being known for their involvement in good works, the director of a property company which demonstrates its environmental credentials by sponsoring conferences for Ecowatch, and a councillor to watch that the council's grant is being spent wisely. The director prefers the ones who make donations without asking how the money is spent, but they are in the minority. Paradoxically, he resents the way they only appear for free sandwiches, though he has to admit that he would be equally resentful if they came into the office more frequently. And he is annoyed at having to write reports on the management and finances of Ecowatch whenever things go wrong. Half the members never read them and the other half think that he is being alarmist. Nobody except Judith knows his frustration. One day he is going to surprise the management committee. He often imagines the scene as he tells the members what he thinks of them. He can visualise their expressions as he puts his notice on the table and announces that he is going to take his lunch break for a change. All he is waiting for is his American professorship. 
The American professorship hangs like a mirage before him. When everybody else at Ecowatch has gone home, he laboriously types his letters of application. Each one takes at least two hours with several false starts—typing is not one of the required skills for a director. How he admires Sue's facility. Once he was huddled over her typewriter when Dylan came back to the office. It was hard not to look like a little boy caught doing something naughty. Dylan can be so supercilious that sometimes the director has a sneaking sympathy for people like Mackintosh who have to work with him. 
The cheery sound of Radio One marks the start of another working day in the warehouse. The mice have gone to ground in those dark places beneath the kitchen floor known only to plumbers. The director closes his eyes and tries to sleep. 
* 
'How are you getting on?' Rob asks, leaning over his new assistant. 
'All right.' 
As they gaze at the petty cash books, Sue is thinking less of the figures than of Rob's nearness. His aftershave and his warmth impinge on her senses. Nothing so exciting has happened to her since coming to London as being alone with him for the morning. She wants him to know something of her exhilaration—but not too much. 
'And the totals agree across and down, do they?' 
'Yes.' 
'Great. I'll have to get you doing more of this.' 
'I quite enjoy it.' 
'Do you want to carry on? I don't know what your plans are for today.' 
'I haven't got any.' 
'Whenever you want to go, just say.' 
'Let's carry on. I see what you mean about not getting any interruptions. Usually the phone's ringing every five minutes.' 
'You could sort out the payments, such as there are.' 
'What have I got to do?' 
He brings a pile of invoices, a book of cheque stubs and another cash book and leans over her. 'It's just a matter of getting these in the order they were paid, starting with the oldest. They should all have cheque numbers on them, so you can put them in number order. Then you enter them in the cash book the same way as you did the petty cash. If you don't know which heading a payment comes under, ask me.' 
'Do you want some more tea before I start?' 
'Sounds like a good idea. Thanks.' 
As Sue fills the kettle, she asks, 'What does your wife think about you working here on a Saturday?' She experiences a sense of abandon now there is no turning back. When no answer is forthcoming, she glances at Rob. He is staring at the wall, lost in thought. She does not like to disturb him. She suspects that he is close to asking her out. 
* 
Rob is thinking about his morning run. It was his longest yet. By Highgate ponds, where the lane was slippery with leaves, he paused to get his breath. Birdsong was the only sound. The smells were of earth and rotting leaves rather than traffic fumes. Beyond the railings was the first pond, shrouded by trees and unused by swimmers on a chill October morning. He could believe that he had strayed into another world. His cares were left behind, however transiently. Here was freedom. He imagined plunging through the still surface of the water in a primeval ritual of purification. It was a seductive picture—until he remembered how he hated cold showers at school. Sometimes he worries about getting soft. It can happen easily with a sedentary job. He toyed with joining the territorial army as a way of toughening up, but the prospect of having to fight put him off. Whether his decision revealed cowardice or integrity, he is not sure. One thing is clear: with a wife and a mortgage to consider, it is difficult to envisage how his life can change. 
Sue's closeness brings him back to earth. She puts the mug near his elbow. He looks up and forces a smile. 'Sorry—I was miles away.' 
'I didn't mean to disturb you.' 
'I'm afraid I'm not very good company today,' he confesses, knowing that he sounds whingeing. 
'I don't mind.' 
'I shouldn't inflict my problems on you.' 
She wants to ask what problems. Instead, she says, 'We all get down sometimes.' 
'I suppose so.' 
'Do you like London?' She speaks quickly, not looking at him. 
'I've always lived here, so I take it for granted,' Rob says, conscious that they have already ventured along this conversational route. He cannot make up his mind whether Sue is simple-minded or naive. What annoys him is having to check her work in case she is the former. Then he feels mean for being critical. Nobody else bothers to give up Saturdays to help him. 
'I'm not sure whether I like it yet, but I suppose I'll get used to it,' she is saying. 'Perhaps I'll give it a bit longer.' 
'Have you been thinking of leaving?' 
'I don't know.' 
'Ecowatch is the sort of place where people are always coming and going,' he admits, pretending not to notice her confusion. 
'It's not the job. It's London.' 
'How long have you lived here?' 
'Only since I started working for Ecowatch.'
Rob smiles encouragingly. 'Have you got somewhere decent to live? That's important.' 
'I share a flat with some other girls, but I don't get on with them all that well.' 
'It's better than being alone in a bedsit.' 
She smiles, not answering. She wishes that she did live in a bedsit.
'Do you like going to the theatre and cinema?' 
She looks even more confused. 'Not since I've been in London. I haven't been to the theatre at all, except when I was at school. I haven't thought about it.' 
'You should do.' 
'It's not that I don't like films. I just never seem to get around to going. And it's expensive.' 
'The best thing about London is having so much to choose from,' Rob declares, reflecting that for all the films and plays he sees, he might as well live in Wigan. The last time he went to the theatre was with Jeanne, soon after they got engaged. They went to the New End Theatre in Hampstead. He could not make much sense of the play, but the occasion remains vivid in his memory. A faraway look comes to his eyes as nostalgia for those days of happiness claims him. 
'I'm going to evening classes,' Sue is saying. 
Rob is no longer keen on evening classes. Something about them attracts women. He suspects that the tutors are the principal attraction. 
'Local history, art history and homoeopathy,' Sue continues. 
To Rob's surprise, the image of three tutors leering over Sue makes him feel indignant. He steals another look at her to check his reaction. In the past he has felt sorry for her, but now he feels responsible for her in a paternal way. It is a novel experience. To break the silence he asks, 'Do you go to art galleries?' 
'No.' 
'I thought as you're doing an art history course ...' 
'I'm supposed to.' 
'How do you mean?' he prompts. 
'We're supposed to go and look at paintings. The tutor keeps asking me which ones I've seen.' 
'And which have you seen?' 
'None of them, except in books.' 
'Haven't you been to the National Gallery yet?' 
She shakes her head, smiling an apology. 
'Go,' he urges. 
'I suppose I ought to.' 
'You'll regret it if you don't. Then there's Kenwood, the Tate and the V & A.' 
To his alarm the words tumble out and he cannot stop them. 'Not forgetting Lord Leighton's house. It's only small, but it's got a marvellous atmosphere. It's in Holland Park.' 
'I've never heard of it.' 
'If you like Victorian painting, that's the place to go.' 
'We haven't done the Victorians.' 
Rob remembers doing the Victorians. He went to an exhibition of their work with Jeanne. Certainly he learned nothing about them at school, where art consisted of drawing interminable bowls of fruit. If he had not lived in London, he suspects that art would have remained a closed book for him as it has for Sue. 
'I haven't really been anywhere,' she confesses. 
'The art galleries open on Sundays, so you could go to one every weekend,' he suggests, trying to quell the dream of taking her. Apart from being married, he is too old for taking girls to art galleries. Sometimes he feels that he missed his youth. He envies people like Mackintosh who can look back on going on demonstrations, getting drunk and reading poetry to girls in black stockings at two in the morning. At least this train of thought gives him one idea: he can go to a film at the Camden Plaza next time Jeanne is out. It will teach her a lesson if she comes home to an empty flat. 
* 
Julie breaks off from pouring fruit juice. The kitchen is festooned with plants and Snoopy posters. Stencils of flowers adorn the refrigerator. Nothing has changed since Dylan was last there.
'Carry on,' he urges.
'What are you looking at me like that for?'  
'Because you're beautiful.' 
'Don't.' She turns back to her task to avoid his scrutiny. 
'Don't what?' 
'Don't look at me like that.' 
'Silly girl.' 
'It's embarrassing.' 
'Why?' 
'Of course it is.' 
'There's no of course about it.' 
'You're not a girl, so you wouldn't understand.' 
'Try me.' 
'You make me feel as though I haven't got anything on.' 
'You should be flattered.' 
'I'm not.' 
'You didn't have anything on last night.' 
'That was different.' 
'Certainly was.' He nuzzles against the curve of her shoulder, experiencing her warmth through the dressing-gown. Her scent overwhelms him. 
'I was glad you rang,' she murmurs, putting down the carton. 
'Should have rung before, shouldn't I?' 
'You should.' She draws back so that she can see his face. 'What have you been doing all this time? Who have you been going out with?' 
'Would I go out with anybody else?' 
'Yes.' 
'I had a little fling, but it's all over now.' 
'Are you sure?' 
'Sure.' 
They kiss. 
'What do you want to eat?' Julie asks, disengaging herself. 
'How about cereal?' 
'Cereal for my lord and master. What sort?' 
'Whatever you've got.' 
'Cornflakes all right?' 
'Fine.' 
Dylan watches Julie preparing breakfast and hopes that her breathless enthusiasm will not prove so wearing this time round. She catches his eye and smiles. A big girl—kindly, but without Samantha's sophistication. A girl to come back to. She does not seem to mind. 
Having a bowl of cereal set before him reminds Dylan of being a child again, but he refrains from suggesting to Julie that she is a mother figure. She sits opposite, watching with her customary eagerness as he pours milk on the cornflakes. He smiles.
'What are you thinking about?' she probes. 
'Your tits.' 
Her smile disappears. She pulls the dressing-gown primly around her before announcing, 'You've got very basic instincts, Dylan.' 
'We all have. It's just that some people hide them.' 
'Yours are more basic than other people's.' 
'You love them really. Adds excitement to your life. You never know what's going to happen next.' 
'Do you want anything cooked?' she asks, reminding him more than ever of his mother. 'What are you grinning for this time?' 
'Nothing.' 
'You don't grin like that for nothing.' She leans forward, frowning. 'Is it because I covered up my tits?' 
He laughs. 'You're priceless!' 
'I'm glad you appreciate me. Sometimes I suspect you don't.' 
'How could you think that?' 
'The way I don't see you for weeks on end.' 
'I'd like to see more of you—' 
'But you're so busy seeing all your other girlfriends.' 
'It's work that takes my time. We've got so many projects on the go, it's incredible.' He makes a grand gesture to emphasise the immensity of the tasks before him—and knocks over a busy lizzie. While Julie clears the soil from the table, he eats his cornflakes. The bowl is almost empty by the time she settles opposite him again. 
'You are staying this time, aren't you?' she probes. 
'If you want.' 
'You know I do.' 
'Then how could I resist?' 
She bounces up and down in her enthusiasm, letting the dressing-gown fall open. 'What shall we do today?' 
'Whatever you fancy,' he offers, trying to remember Julie's usual fancy. 'We could go round the shops, find a market, or whatever you like.' 
'Are you staying tonight?' 
'There's quite a good chance,' he agrees, wondering whether he will be allowed to do anything else. 
She leans forward, squeezing his hand. 'You won't regret it.' 
He hopes that she is right. 
* 
Mackintosh needs a market. It is a conclusion reached with regret, for he regards the notion of marketing as the antithesis of creativity. Every minute spent selling paintings means less time for creating them, yet selling a picture a week for a reasonable sum—say a hundred pounds—would give him the freedom to devote himself to his calling. The notion is tempting. He glances at the stack of paintings against the wardrobe. Selling those would see him through to the spring. If only staying in bed did not have more immediate appeal than hawking his wares like some double glazing salesman. He recalls his previous attempts at marketing without enthusiasm. The most recent one was the open air art exhibition in Hampstead. Not being one of the coterie of regulars, he had to be content with a pitch away from the canvas shelters. The rain began at ten, transforming his watercolours into abstracts which evolved even as he threw plastic sheets over them. Nor was setting up his own one-man show on the church railings in Islington any more successful: the vicar called the police. 
Mackintosh feels under the bed, but without finding the bottle of Baileys. He closes his eyes. Landladies, jobs and exhibitions all contrive to make his life complicated when all he wants is to paint. 
'Bugger them all,' he mutters, settling beneath the bedclothes again. 'Bugger them all.' 	* 
Sue accepts that Rob will not take her out. Her predominant response is regret, though part of her is relieved that she will not have to make conversation about subjects like art and betray her ignorance.  She hopes that she has not made a fool of herself already. She looks at the cash book. The figures blur into meaninglessness. Perhaps it was not such a good idea to volunteer. 

chapter six

Unusually, the director is home by six-thirty. He gazes almost with affection at the warehouse now that he may not be there much longer. As he climbs the seemingly endless flights of stone steps to the flat, there is a spring in his step. Judith is waiting for him as he opens the door. She looks agitated.
'I've been trying to phone you,' she whispers. 'There are some people here to look round. They say they've got an appointment.'
'They weren't supposed to be here till seven,' he whispers back, 
'Well they're here now.'
'Have you given them coffee or something?'
'I haven't had a chance.'
The director assumes his welcoming smile and leads the way into the living area where the visitors are waiting. 'You must be Mr and Mrs Sartori.'
The men shake hands. Mr Sartori is short and swarthy—the epitome of a trattore. He introduces his wife who is even shorter and fatter, prompting the director to speculate how the couple would manage the stairs several times a day. Not that it is his concern.
'I wasn't expecting you just yet.'
'We are a little early. I am sorry.'
'Not to worry, not to worry.'
'Your charming wife has been entertaining us.' 
'Good, good.' The director glimpses Judith out the corner of his eye. She is glaring at him. Hurriedly he turns back to the visitors. 'Have you looked round yet?' 
'We have just arrived,' explains the Italian. 'We arrive then you arrive.' 
As the director nods, he is formulating a tour of the flat which will reveal its finer points while glossing over its less attractive features. He prays that the bedroom is tidy and that Judith has not left her knickers hanging to dry in the bathroom. 
'You've probably noticed that there's no parking problem in spite of being in the centre of London,' he begins
'What about during the day?' 
'Very easy to park,' the director lies, dismissing the occasion when the only way to reach the entrance was to duck under the trailer of an articulated lorry. 
'Good.' 
'This is the main living area, as you can see.' The director gives a suitably expansive gesture to emphasise its size. 'We've tried to keep the original features of the warehouse as far as possible.' He looks around as though seeing anew the venerable wooden beams and cast iron pillars. He has to admit that the flat can look impressive.
'You have done all this?' 
'We took charge of the conversion,' the director says modestly, avoiding Judith's eye. 
'Is very airy, very open.' 
'That's how we like it,' he agrees for better or worse. 
'There is a smell.' 
'Smell?' 
'The leather.' 
'You hardly notice after a while.' 
Mr Sartori nods without looking convinced. 
'It might just be cooking smells,' Judith suggests. 
The director is not sure about that one. It highlights one problem of open-plan living: cooking smells waft everywhere. 
'Can we look at the kitchen?' says Mrs Sartori, as though her thoughts are running along the same track. She smiles. The director wonders how tall, beautiful, Italian girls become transformed into dumpy Italian matrons. Eating pasta cannot have so drastic an effect. 
Judith ushers the visitors into the kitchen area, the director bringing up the rear. 
'Is very nice,' says Mrs Sartori. 
'Good, good,' says the director. 
'Much room.' 
'There's all the space you like,' the director agrees. He has to admit that a flat in a warehouse can look impressive. If the whole building were turned into flats, there would be no problem in selling, as estate agents keep telling him. He watches as Mrs Sartori opens a cupboard; he hopes that a mouse will not jump out. 
'Now the bedrooms,' says Mr Sartori when his wife is satisfied. 
'Ah yes.' The director glances at Judith, hoping for some clue as to whether their bedroom is tidy, but her expression gives nothing away. 'We've got the main bedroom which is very spacious.' 
He remembers too late that in the language of estate agents' literature, the largest bedroom should always be referred to as the master bedroom. This time he leads the way, darting ahead of his visitors to satisfy himself that no socks or dirty shirts are scattered over the floor. Relieved by what he sees, he holds the door open for Mr and Mrs Sartori, watching their faces for signs of approval. 
'Nice—is very nice,' says Mrs Sartori. 
'We think so.' 
When Mr Sartori nods approvingly, a flickering flame of hope sparks in the director's breast. He takes up position by the window for his next piece of salesmanship. 
'You can look out over London,' he declares, confident that darkness obliterates the view of the printing works opposite. Everybody looks obediently out the window. Light are visible in the Barbican flats. 'And you'll notice the floor.' 
All eyes turn to the floor. The director is proud of his work with the sander, which filled many hours with dust and noise, and drowned out the radio from downstairs. The wood gleams under its protective waxing. 
'I don't think you can beat natural materials. It looks good and it's warm.' He forbears from mentioning the noise when anybody walks over it. Fortunately the Sartori's are wearing soft shoes. 
'There is a second bedroom?' says Mr Sartori. 
'I'm glad you mentioned that,' says the director, trying to inject renewed enthusiasm into his voice as he shepherds his guests from the main bedroom. The spare room doubles as his study. He cannot overcome his reluctance at showing his own sanctum to strangers. Selling property has something in common with visiting the doctor: both mean surrendering privacy for some greater good. He opens the door of the spare room to reveal papers overflowing onto the bed and the floor. Perhaps informality is a selling point, he tells himself, looking hopefully at his guests. His spirits sink as he sees Mr Sartori's frown. 
'You only have two bedrooms?' 
'That's right. That's what was on the estate agent's particulars.' 
'Is not many.' 
'There's enough for us,' the director declares, wondering whether the Sartori's belong to one of those extended Italian families. It is on his tongue to suggest that they take over the whole warehouse when the lease falls due, but that might be precipitate. 
'You are happy here?' asks Mrs Sartori. 
'Very happy,' the director assures her, nodding vigorously till he wonders whether he is overdoing it. 'But we want to get out of London,' he explains, not looking at Judith. 
Mrs Sartori nods approvingly. 'Is a warm flat.' 
'Very warm,' the director agrees, reflecting that it should be if the size of the gas bill is any guide. 'Especially with the double glazing.' 
'No, no,' says Mrs Sartori, reaching out expressively as though she is conducting an orchestra. 'Is warm—the feel is warm.' 
'The atmosphere,' Judith interprets. 
'Yes, the atmosphere. Is a very warm atmosphere.' 
'We see the bathroom,' says Mr Sartori. 
'Ah yes, the bathroom.' The director leads them to the bathroom with some trepidation. It is not really untidy, though it does not have the pristine look of hotel bathrooms. He wishes there were no talcum powder spilt over the floor and that the gold-plated taps were polished. 
'Is very nice,' says Mrs Sartori. 
'Quite a spacious bathroom I think you'll agree.' He looks around for some outstanding feature without finding one. 
'And warm,' Judith adds. 'You need a warm bathroom.' 
When the bathroom has been admired, everybody troops back to the living area. The director beams at Mrs Sartori. 'I think you like it.' 
'Is nice flat,' she agrees, but without the enthusiasm of the total convert. 
'Very nice,' he encourages. 
'But no,' says Mr Sartori. 
'No?' 
'No.' 
'Oh.' The director regards his two visitors helplessly. 'I'm sure we could come to some arrangement on price.' 
'No.' 
'Oh.' 
'It is the warehouse. We do not want to live in a warehouse.' 
'It's like docklands. You know docklands? Only it's cheaper.' 
'There is the smell.' 
'Very little smell,' the director lies. 
'Yes, is smell,' Mrs Sartori contradicts him. 
'That's why I thought if we negotiated on the price ...' 
Mr Sartori shakes his head. 'I am sorry.' 
The director smiles bravely. 
'Thank you for showing us round,' says Mr Sartori, edging towards the door. 
'Thank you very much,' choruses Mrs Sartori. 
'You've got my number if you'd like to have another look,' the director calls as the visitors clatter down the stone steps. 
'Thank you,' Mrs Sartori's voice echoes up the stairwell. 
With the door closed, the director sighs. 'I think we deserve a drink after that.'
'Why didn't you tell me they were coming?' Judith sounds exasperated. 
'They weren't supposed to be here till seven. I was going to tell you when I got in.' 
'If you'd rung me, I could have tidied the place up a bit. It was embarrassing.' 
'It couldn't be helped.' 
'It could, John. For goodness sake ring me as soon as you know there's a viewing.'
The director nods helplessly. 
'You're so thoughtless sometimes,' Judith complains. 
'Do you want that drink?' 
'No.' She clumps across the wooden floor, making the director wince. He hopes that she will be more careful when potential buyers are around, but this is not the moment to raise the matter. The bedroom door bangs. 
'Bugger, bugger, bugger,' he mutters, wondering if anything else can go wrong and knowing that it can. 
* 
'So it's off to the discussion group, is it?' Rob tries to keep the sneer out of his voice. 
Jeanne sighs. 'I thought we'd been through this. I haven't got time to argue now.' 
'Mustn't be late for the group, must we?' 
'Are we going to have this every week?' 
'What?' 
'You know.' 
'I don't know.' 
'You sulking.' 
'I wish you'd told to me before you started all this, that's all.' 
'So you could try to put me off?' 
'No.' Rob turns away in exasperation. 
'We went through all this,' Jeanne reasons. 'It's a subject I want to know more about, okay? And they're a nice crowd.' 
Rob turns to face her again. 'Ah yes, the people.' 
'What's that mean?' 
'Nothing.' 
'It's all right for you. You've got people to talk to at the office. I spend all day with five-year-olds. I need a change.' 
'I understand that.' 
'Well then.' Jeanne smiles a strained smile. 'I've got to go. I shan't be late back.' 
Rob manages to smile back. Some of the old closeness returns. 
'Don't let's argue,' Jeanne urges, hesitating by the door. 'We'll talk about this later.' 
And she is gone. Rob settles in an armchair. For a long time he is motionless, summoning the image of her, drawing in the scent of her which pervades the room. His thoughts range over the two years since their marriage. It seemed an idyllic phase of his life. Now, for the first time in their marriage, their social lives have diverged. It is difficult to imagine her on close terms with people who are strangers to him. 
Another thing her obsession with healthy eating has to answer for is the banning of sponge pudding. Rob considers his diet to be healthier than average. He eats wholemeal bread with sunflower seed spread and he only has fried food once a week, but sponge puddings are his weakness. Whether flavoured with chocolate or ginger, or soaked in treacle or syrup, he finds them irresistible. Now Jeanne will not make them on the grounds that they are unhealthy. Under the new orthodoxy, the only permitted desserts are fresh fruit and yoghurt. He does not mind fruit, though the natural yoghurt which Jeanne insists on buying makes him pull a face; yet on cold, dark evenings the yearning for sponge pudding can become acute. He gets up. Jeanne will not be back for two hours, so there is no need to hurry. 
The tin is concealed in his coat pocket. He reads the cooking instructions on his way back to the kitchen. Jeanne would study the ingredients first, so he avoids looking at them. While the saucepan of water is heating, he hunts for the tin opener. Every kitchen has one, he tells himself as he rifles through the drawers. An obsession with healthy eating cannot have banished it altogether. 
His increasingly frenzied search yields an old-fashioned tin opener nestling behind a container of bleach. It was there when they moved into the flat—he recalls joking that it might as well stay there for the next tenants. Washing hardly makes it look more hygienic. He presses the tip of the rusting blade against the tin with some misgivings, but it pierces the metal efficiently enough. Two holes and the tin can be dropped into the boiling water. Then comes the waiting. There is a jauntiness in his step as he strolls through the flat, trying to see it as a potential buyer might. Not an impressive place: the kitchen fitted out as cheaply as possible by the developer, the pokey bathroom squeezed in as an afterthought, its plasterboard walls buckling from the dampness. At least the broad living room windows and ornate cornice are reminders of those gracious days before the house was converted into flats. He wishes that he had known it then. 
As a stranger, what can he tell about the couple who live there? The paperbacks are those any literate, middlebrow person might have accumulated: novels by Kingsley Amis, Raymond Chandler, Catherine Cookson and Ruth Rendell, together with a selection of vegetarian cookery books. In deference to his work there are a few books on the environment, but not enough to betray more than a passing interest. The tapes are a mixture of light classics and folk. No CD player: obviously the flat belongs to a couple who have to watch their expenditure. The furniture is imitation Habitat, probably bought at MFI. 
As a stranger, he goes into the bedroom and opens the wardrobe. The clothes are those of a conventional man in the lower ranks of office life who tastes were set in the early eighties. His wife dresses smartly on a limited budget. 
Looking at Jeanne's clothes generates a surge of affection which threatens to destroy his new-found objectivity and makes him close the wardrobe door quickly, ashamed of the voyeur in him. Back in the living room, he makes an effort to regain his detachment. The couple who own the flat are in their late twenties or early thirties. No newspapers are in evidence: they probably economise by making do with one of the serious Sunday papers. They are ordinary, kindly people, concerned about their world, but not to the point of changing their lifestyle. They might go to a film if it is well reviewed and being shown in Hampstead or Camden, but that is the limit of their artistic pretensions. 
He remembers his decision to see a film. Too late now the pudding is heating. The visit to the cinema will be for another day.
The television helps to distract him. The programmes are so compulsive that he can disregard the triviality which might once have worried him. The characters are known to him now. He laughs along with the studio audience. When he goes into the kitchen, he turns up the sound. 
It takes a few moments to decide how to take the tin out of the water. The strategy which he evolves is to pour away the water and then to lift the tin from the saucepan with the oven cloth. Then comes the problem of opening the tin. He has not used an old-fashioned opener for a long time. It takes a while to master the sawing motion. The smell of the pudding spurs him on, despite the heat of the tin. With the lid pushed back, the jagged ridge left behind stops the pudding from sliding satisfyingly onto the plate. He has to spoon it out, sacrificing the thrill of seeing an intact pudding in all its steaming glory; but that is a trifling cost. 
Sitting before the television with the plate on his knees, he revels in his first taste of forbidden food. Chocolate sauce would be the ideal complement, but he is content. Next week he will have a sultana pudding—and buy a new tin opener. After that, he plumps for a syrup pudding with extra syrup spooned over it. How horrified Jeanne would be. 
All too soon the pudding is eaten. When comedy gives way to news on the television, Rob turns off the set. The patronising tones of the announcer grate on him: he does not like being told how to react. With the silence, a sense of anticlimax settles over him, emphasising that he is not used to being alone any more. Time to hide all traces of his feast. The plate and spoon are washed, the tin is hidden in the bottom of the rubbish sack and the tin opener is pushed to the back of the cupboard again. Lest any smell of cooking should linger in the air, he swings the back door to and fro a few times. The flat grows cold. 
Since his marriage, there have been few occasions when he has ventured out in the evening with no destination in mind. Popular myth has peopled the darkened streets of inner London with muggers. He looks about uneasily as he squeezes between the cars parked along the kerb, but the only sign of life is an old man walking his dog. Working for Ecowatch has steeped Rob in such values as a concern for the community, but his present mood brings home to him he knows nothing about his immediate neighbours. Even the occupants of the other flats in the building remain strangers. 
The pub by the station is a Victorian builder's fantasy of a French chateau. Each day as he passes it, Rob speculates about who drinks there and how such a monumental pile has survived two world wars and numerous changes of fashion. It dominates the drab houses and shops which surround it. Tiers of ornate brick and stonework rise to the topmost battlements. The narrow, wedge-shaped edifice sits uneasily at the junction of two main roads, giving the impression that it is about to topple onto the underground station facing it. 
As Rob pushes open the door, his spirits sink. Whatever majesty the builder wanted to convey has been lost inside. It is the sort of pub which he would normally go out of his way to avoid. Nobody appears to have noticed his entrance. An old lady hugs her stout in one corner. Two drunks try to focus on each other across a table. Countless stains and cigarette ends have subdued any brightness which the carpet once possessed. Music blares from the jukebox, ignored by the youths clustering around the fruit machine. Only the ceiling retains vestiges of grandeur. The Lincrusta is stained brown with tobacco smoke; dust clings to long light flexes which contrive to keep the squalid world being played out below at a distance. 
Rob orders a half of lager, wishing that he had followed his instincts and walked out. 
'Quiet this evening,' he remarks to the barman. 
'About the usual. We get a few regulars in.' 
Rob nods. He regards pubs as places for meeting friends and killing time before going on to somewhere more interesting. Normally he pities people who go there alone to drink, which makes it all the more disturbing to find himself amongst them. 
'We get busy at the end of the week when the men on the building sites get paid,' the barman adds. 'Sometimes you can't move in here.' 
Rob nods again. When the drink is paid for, he carries it to the nearest table. The upholstery proves unyielding in spite of signs of foam protruding from gashes in the vinyl. The Victorian pub of his imagination with its atmosphere of faded opulence like some venerable theatre has proved a chimera. Better to have stayed at home. 
He only takes a few sips of lager before one of the drunks stumbles against his table on the way to the bar and knocks over his glass. Both men stare at the pool of lager spreading across the wood and tricking onto the carpet. 
'Sh-shorry, mate.' The drunk lurches towards the toilets. Rob wants to call after him, but he is afraid of antagonising him. The barman emerges from behind the bar with a grubby cloth. 
'Do you want another one?' 
Rob shakes his head. He watches the table being given a cursory swab and wonders how whether spilling the drink was a sign. 
'Shocking isn't it?' comes a wheezing female voice from behind him. He turns. The old woman at the adjoining table is leaning forward, fixing him with bloodshot eyes. Her edges of her raincoat are blackened and shiny with wear. It is fastened with safety pins. 
'Sorry?' 
'You don't want to get like them,' she tells him. As she speaks, he watches her teeth with fascination. They appear to be embedded in something white and powdery. 
'I wasn't going to.' 
'They'll be here till closing time,' she continues, nodding by way of emphasis. The movement sets her hearing aid whistling, but she appears unconcerned. 'They're here every night.' She peers more closely at him. 'Haven't seen you here before.' 
Rob shakes his head. 
'Nice pub this, so long as you don't get too many of that sort.' She nods towards the other drunk who has lapsed into sleep, his head slumped against his chest. 'Do you live near here?' 
'Not far away.' He feels at her mercy now the barman has retreated behind the bar. 
'I come in every night.' 
Rob wonders why he always gets chosen. When he travels on the tube, drunks and eccentrics always sat next to him. Perhaps he looks sympathetic; a more likely explanation is that they see him as an easy touch. 
'It's a bit of company. You appreciate that when you get to my age.' 
He stares determinedly away. Unfortunately his gaze settles on the barman who is watching the exchange. To avoid continuing the conversation, he has to turn pointedly in the other direction and risk antagonising both the barman and the old woman. 
'The beer's not too expensive in here, that's what I like,' she continues, apparently not deterred by his lack of interest. 'You get some of these places, they overcharge you.' 
Rob leaves without looking at his companion and without responding when the barman calls good night. Once outside, he experiences a mixture of guilt and elation at his action. The empty sodium-lit streets seem inviting in their freedom. He wishes that he had his track suit on so that he could work off his negative emotions by jogging. 
Parked cars crowd the streets around the school where Jeanne's classes are held. He looks for his car—their car. From the pavement he glimpses students in the lighted windows of upstairs classrooms, but his hopes of seeing Jeanne remain unfulfilled. His pace slows, making a girl walk out in the road to keep her distance from him. Her suspicion disconcerts him. He longs to explain that he is harmless, but there can be no explanations to a stranger. 
The playground in front of the school entrance is used as a car park. Once more he looks for their car, but without success. Almost half past nine, when the course is due to finish. He waits by the gates, his body hunched against the cold. A fine drizzle makes the roofs and pavements shiny. He recalls without much enthusiasm the evening classes in accountancy and he marvels at the thirst for knowledge which make's people forsake warm homes in order to spend their evenings in austere classrooms. Sometimes he wishes he had gone to university; then he sees the way Dylan and Mackintosh behave and concludes that all university did for them was to prolong their schooldays. The harsh judgement on his fellows makes him feel pompous. He often tells himself that he is too serious. It goes with being a loner. Part of the trouble is that he dislikes parading his mistakes before other people. That was why he gave up evening classes after a term: he preferred to study for a qualification in accountancy by correspondence. 
The jangle of bells brings his musings to an abrupt halt and makes his heart beat faster. On cue, the rain becomes heavier. The students show no eagerness to leave; irrationally he feels that this is inconsiderate given that he is getting soaked. Only the thought of seeing Jeanne buoys his spirits. He goes into the school entrance for shelter. It is a place of glass, bare concrete and wood, with a patina of wear which brings back memories of his own schooldays. Soon, voices echo down the stairwell. The first students appear. All women. Is it his imagination, or do they look with pity on him—a bedraggled figure with rain dripping off his glasses? The trickle of students becomes a flood. They are laden with the paraphernalia of evening classes: canvases shrouded in polythene, books, notebooks and cake tins. Rob watches a noisy group clogging the stairway as a solitary woman in middle age tries to sidle past. Attractive girls and elderly women are in animated conversation. A man with a greying beard holds the arm of a women who walks with the aid of a stick. Hampstead ladies talk in penetrating voices. Snatches of conversation are everywhere: Italian cookery, astronomy and Victorian china. 
After ten minutes, the entrance is quiet again and Jeanne has still not appeared. The caretaker scratches his head when Rob enquires about the healthy eaters. 
'It's not on Monday, I can tell you that.' 
'I know the course isn't today, but there's a discussion group.' 
'Not on Monday there isn't.' 
'There must be.' 
'They'd have to see me to unlock the classroom, so I should know. Anyway, everybody's gone.' 
Rob looks helplessly around the deserted entrance. After thanking the caretaker, he makes his way outside. Emotions vie within him so that he imagines them tearing him apart. Only one car is left in the playground. Rain gushing from a broken gutter spatters the asphalt. Even as he hesitates, wondering what to do, the floodlights are switched off. 
Retracing his journey. Past the pub, the muffled sounds of the jukebox reaching him, the frosted glass concealing the people whose lives touched him so briefly. His shoes squelch with every step. Into side roads familiar from his journey to work and where the lighting is sparse. Turning into his street. The car is outside the flat as though nothing has happened. He feels no emotion as he lets himself into the hall. Music comes from the radio. The warmth and dryness should be welcoming, but when Jeanne calls from the kitchen, he does not answer. His silence makes her come to the doorway. Her smile of welcome dies. He feels the satisfaction of seeing her concern. 
'Where have you been?' she asks. 'You're soaked.' 
He stares, expecting her to realise. 
'Rob—what's the matter?' 
He turns away, taking off his coat. 
'What's happened?' 
He shakes his head, not looking back. She cannot see the tears blurring his eyes. 
* 
It is a long time since Mackintosh last drank Guinness. The first sip is like coming back to an old friend. It lines the inflamed membranes almost as well as Baileys and is more suitable for drinking in pubs. 
'You look like an educated man, sir.' 
'You could say that,' Mackintosh agrees, smelling the nostalgic reek of whisky as the Irishman leans towards him. He tries to guess how long the niceties will last before the request for a drink is reached. 
'Do you mind me asking, sir, what's your line of work?' 
'I'm a painter.' 
The Irishman's eyes grow large. 'You mean an artist?' 
'That's right.' 
'Can I shake you by the hand, sir?' 
Mackintosh allows his hand to be shaken. 
''Tis something I've always wanted to be meself, a proper painter.' 
'You're better off doing something else. Anything else.' 
'It's hard, I know that, sir. I used to do a bit of drawing. Never sold anything. Not good enough. Haven't got the talent, you see.' 
'A very precarious life, being an artist,' Mackintosh declares. 
'You don't have to tell me.' 
'Relying on patrons, not knowing when the next commission's coming.' 
'It's hard, sir. I understand that.' 
'You sell a painting to a gallery: the point is you can only sell it once. However many people come to look at it, you don't get any more money.' 
'You don't know what it costs you, do they?' 
'They certainly don't.' 
'Do you mind me asking, sir, are you married?' 
'Have been, several times.' 
'It can be difficult to live with the artistic temperament.' 
Mackintosh nods sagely. He enjoys fantasising in pubs. It is a pleasant and harmless pursuit which he should indulge in more often. The protocol has to be observed: stories must be within the bounds of possibility, there must be no questioning of their validity and no attempt should be made to maintain contact beyond the confines of the bar. 
'The artist has to live with his muse,' he declares. 
'Women don't understand that.' 
'And yet it's hard to live alone.' 
'I can't disagree with you there, sir.' 
'It's lonely.' 
'You're somebody who knows loneliness. I saw that immediately.' 
Mackintosh regards his fellow drinkers—the widowers, the rejected, the solitary Irishmen and the alcoholics—and reflects that a pub is a haven for lonely people. At such moments, he wishes that he had stayed in his room, wielding the brushes with which he professes to earn his living. The irony is that coming to the pub was meant as an escape, but now the story is under way, he may as well continue. 
'Married three times,' he reminisces. 'The first time I was very young. Never get married before you're twenty-five. Fatal.' 
'You've known strife, sir. I can see that.' 
'It only lasted a few months,' Mackintosh adds. 'Chorus girl. Flighty.' 
'They are, sir. You don't have to tell me.' 
'Couple of years later I met a debutante. Got carried away in spite of myself. She was very beautiful, you see. Incredibly beautiful.' He ignores the voice deep inside him telling him that he is going over the top. 'And she was rich. Trouble was the different lifestyles. No way round that.' 
'The artist has to live with his muse,' the Irishman repeats. 
'A year we stayed together. Tempestuous time. Rows.' Mackintosh pauses long enough to give the Irishman time to nod understandingly. 'The third one was different. We had an affinity. We were friends as well as lovers. You can't always say that.' 
'Then what was the matter, sir, if you don't mind me asking?' 
'She died. Cancer.' 
There is a respectful silence. Mackintosh looks into his Guinness, wishing that such inventiveness would come to him when he is painting. 
'Do you believe in God?' he asks.
'I'm a good Catholic, sir. Mebbe I don't go to church as often as I should, but I've never lost the Faith.' 
'There was a time after Sally died when I couldn't believe in God any more.' 
'Your faith was being tested.' 
'I threw myself into work. I've never produced so many paintings in a couple of months.' 
If only it were true. Mackintosh has an intriguing idea: perhaps being an artist means no than believing that he is an artist. And might the dictum also hold true for quality? What the public think is a good painting is a good painting. He considers his oeuvre. It is large, but honesty compels him to admit the unsettling fact that there is not one painting which he would call good, let alone a masterpiece. The admission makes him feel guilty at frittering away his time in a pub. One solution would be to lose his new-found friend and to get back to some real work; the other is to drink enough to find oblivion, which is easier if more expensive and the cause of more suffering the next morning. 
'I've got to be honest, sir,' says his companion. 'I haven't got enough for a drink.' 
'Then let me buy you one,' Mackintosh offers, knowing that with those six words his course is set. 
* 
Sue sits with her flatmates in the pub. She has to admit that it is a nice pub: not crowded, or smoky, or occupied by men who stand at the bar and leer at her. What she cannot understand is why the others invited her. 
'This place is okay early in the evening,' says Fiona. 'It gets horrendous later on.' 
Fiona works for an advertising agency, though what she does is not clear to Sue, who envies Fiona's clothes and her confidence. She steals a glance at her other companions. She envies them as well. Jane is secretary to a solicitor. At weekends, Jane likes to go back to her parents' home in Berkshire where she keeps her horse. Helen is the most beautiful, the most sophisticated of the three. She works in an art gallery. Sue is in awe of her. Helen always looks impeccable, making Sue's best clothes seem dowdy by comparison. 
'Do you realise we can go for a whole week and only see each other on the way to the bathroom in the morning?' Helen asks. 
'That's because you're always out with one of your boyfriends,' Jane points out. Sue suspects that deep down Jane is jealous, though she is too well bred to show it. 
'Not always.' 
'Most evenings.' 
'Anyway, the fact remains that this is the first time all four of us have been out together. It's incredible.' 
As Sue has so little in common with the others, she does not find it incredible. The surprising thing is that they should have thought her a suitable flatmate in the first place. 
'We can pick up some fellas,' Fiona is saying. 'I want a rich, hunky man.' 
'Don't we all?' Jane murmurs. 
'What about Sue? What sort of fella do you like?' 
Sue keeps her gaze on the table as the others look at her. She mumbles that she is happy with Gavin. 
'That's this boyfriend you've told us about, right? He's dishy, is he?' 
'I think so.' 
'When are we going to see him?' Helen asks. 'You never bring him to the flat.' 
'Is he rich and hunky?' Fiona wants to know as Sue tries to think of an excuse to offer Helen. 
'You're obsessed with hunky men,' Helen accuses her friend. 
'You wouldn't say no if one came your way.' 
'Not the beer-swilling rugby club types who make you go weak at the knees.' 
'What about Bryan? You fancied him.' 
'You must be joking!' 
'You couldn't take your eyes off him.' 
'I don't know what you're talking about.' 
'Helen—come on!' 
Sue remembers Bryan. He looked at her in too friendly a fashion, he used the toilet without lifting the seat and he left the tops of beer cans on the settee. But as least she can relax now the conversation has been deflected from Gavin. What she needs is a photograph of him to give verisimilitude to her story, but who would give her a photograph? She wonders whether she could broach the subject to Dylan without letting him get the wrong idea. 
'So are we going to pick up some fellas?' Fiona asks. 
'Or are we going for a meal?' Jane suggests.
As the discussion drags on, Sue wishes that she had not come. The others tolerate her. Within a couple of months they will despise her. She knows she must move before that happens, however much she dislikes the idea of looking for somewhere else. 
'Sue!' 
She looks up. 
'What's it going to be?' Jane asks. 'Fellas or a meal?' 
'I'd rather have a meal.' 
Fiona looks deflated. 
'A meal it is,' Jane says gleefully. 'Where's it going to be?' 
'I know this rather good Malaysian place,' Helen tells them. 'Unless anybody's got a better idea.' 
They agree to go Malaysian. Sue wonders whether to say that she has been for a Malaysian meal with Gavin, but the others might quiz her about the food. Though she is pleased that the others have vetoed Fiona's plan to go looking for fellas, she worries whether she has enough money for a meal and whether she will be expected to use chopsticks. She thinks of pleading a headache as an excuse to go back to the flat, but she knows that if she does, the others will talk about her. 
'We'll have another drink first,' Fiona decides. 'Same for everybody?' 
'I'll have Guinness,' Sue says, aware that the others are looking at her in surprise. 
'I didn't know you were a secret Guinness drinker.' Fiona sounds respectful. 
'I have it sometimes. Just a half, please.' 
'I know it's supposed to be good for you,' Helen says when Fiona has gone to the bar. 'I tried it once. That was enough.' 
'You get used to it,' Sue assures her without much conviction. 
'I don't know that I want to.' 
Sue is not sure either. 
'I never thought of you as a Guinness drinker,' Jane admits. 'I associate it with old men hunched over their dominoes, but obviously I'm wrong.' 
'I haven't got much of an image to worry about.' 
'Don't run yourself down.' 
Sue smiles uncertainly, aware that she is the centre of attention again.
'Buy some new clothes and you change your image.' Jane urges. She turns to Helen. 'Isn't that right?' 
'It's true,' Helen agrees. 'Get really good clothes and they change the way you feel about yourself. And you ought to have your hair styled.' 
'I can't really afford it,' Sue confesses, shaking her head. 
'It hardly costs anything—twenty pounds or so.' Helen studies her critically. 'I'd really like to have a go at your make-up.' 
'I don't know.' 
'I could totally change how you look, Sue. I mean it.' 
Sue looks down, flattered and embarrassed by the attention. 
'There you go.' Fiona sets the tray on the table and puts a glass of Guinness before Sue. 'May you enjoy it.' 
If pressed, Sue would have to confess that it does not look enjoyable. She remembers her first taste of Guinness and her stomach turns. She watches the others taking their drinks. 
'To rugby club fellas everywhere,' says Fiona, holding up her glass. 'May they come my way.' 
'You're obsessed with rugby types, do you know that?' Jane accuses her. 
'Not obsessed.' Fiona can hardly contain her amusement. 'It's just a healthy interest. What do you think, Sue?' 
'I've never been out with anybody from a rugby club,' Sue has to confess. 
'You don't know what you've missed.' 
'She's missed being bored to death,' Jane observes. 
Helen explains to Fiona, 'We're been trying to persuade Sue to change her image. We're going to transform her.' 
'Great idea.' Fiona looks excited. 'What are we going to do?' 
'She needs some new clothes and a proper hair cut and I want to make her up.' 
'We'll get her looking so her boyfriend doesn't recognise her.' Fiona assesses Sue. 'You're about my size. You can try some of my clothes.' 
'And I'll make an appointment for her with my hairdresser,' Jane says. 
Sue does not know whether to thank her companions or to protest that she would rather keep her present image. She cannot afford the sort of hairdresser whom Jane uses. 
'When are you bringing this Gavin to the flat for us to have a look at?' Fiona presses. 
Sue shakes her head. 'I don't know. He's got a lot of work on at the moment.' 
'Invite him for a meal,' Jane suggests. 
'Great idea,' Fiona agrees. 'We can look him over.' 
Sue can think of no reply. She sips the Guinness to cover her confusion and struggles to avoid grimacing. 
'Talking of boyfriends, when are you getting engaged?' Helen asks Jane. 
Jane assumes an air of innocence. 'Who said I was?' 
'You're seeing a lot of Jeremy these days. It's in the air, as they say.' 
Jane sips her drink, enjoying the attention of the others before revealing, 'I shouldn't be surprised if something happens over Christmas. We're going to France.' 
'We'd better start looking around for somebody to take your room.' 
'If we did get engaged, we wouldn't be getting married till the summer, so I shouldn't worry yet.' 
Sue barely listens. As she tries to quell the nausea which the few sips of Guinness have given her, she wonders why she keeps putting herself in these predicaments. Drinking the Guinness will almost certainly make her sick, but leaving it untouched will look silly. And as she cannot leave, it is only a matter of time before the conversation will come back to Gavin—
'Can I try some,' Fiona is asking, looking at her. Sue overcomes her surprise and pushes the glass across the table, wishing that her flatmate would drink the lot. Fiona takes a mouthful and pulls a face. She gives the glass back to Sue. 'It's ages since I had Guinness: it hasn't got any better. How can you drink it?' 
'You get used to it,' Sue insists. The others are looking at her, though whether out of pity or curiosity she is not sure. 
'Is that what you drink when you're with Gavin?' Jane wants to know. 
'I wanted to try it really.' 
'You must bring him to our Christmas party,' Fiona says. She looks around the others. 'I take it we're having one?' 
Jane looks excited. 'Of course. We must have a Christmas party.' 
'Be rather fun,' Helen agrees. 
Sue knows that she must leave before it happens. 
* 
Loud, urgent music. Lights. Heat. Movement. So much purposeless movement that Dylan feels himself an alien being. The people caught in that frenzy are no more than objects for study. When he is in such a mood, even Samantha seems distanced from him. Samantha. He jolts himself from his reverie to watch her dancing. The rhythm has taken her so that she too is in a world of her own. Her face shines with perspiration. She has found a kind of ecstasy and he is envious. He responds to her attraction in spite of himself. What is it that draws him? In the past he has always been able to dismiss the question; finding an answer now assumes greater urgency. He suspects that the game has changed: the game of teasing a girl's interest until it is aroused and held, like dangling a skein of wool before a kitten. Now he is playing her game. He has disobeyed Dylan's second law of seduction which is that when a girl gets serious, it is time to move on. There were unusual circumstances in Samantha's case, but the fact remains that he has gone back to her. She made him grovel, but that was to be expected. She had to satisfy her pride. 
The gestures of the dance have become automatic, losing their sensuality. It would be interesting if any man succeeded in attracting her attention. Dylan knows that he should feel envy, but it would be mingled with relief. He studies her critically. A classy girl. Breeding tells. A girl who is used to getting her own way. Her vivacity attracts attention; he knows from experience how much alcohol is needed to dim it. A mouth made for kissing. Fine, high cheekbones which would make the editor want to photograph her. Dylan remembers nuzzling against her. He remembers her look of puzzlement as she noticed him studying her face. Her beauty is in her eyes. Their blueness makes him think of them as precious stones. Cold and beautiful. Only once did he see tears spilling from them. He never told her how that moved him. 
The dance has ended. Dylan watches her coming back to him. Why does he want to be with her rather than any other girl, he asks himself. 
'That was good.' 
'I'm glad.' 
'You're looking serious,' she accuses him. 
'Deep thoughts,' he reveals. He has to tell himself that she cannot know them. 
'Why didn't you want to dance?' 
'Just tired, that's all.' 
'That's not like you.' She looks concerned. He loves the way her brows knit together. 
'That's the way it goes.' He rises. 'What do you want to drink?' 
'You're sure you're all right?' 
'Yes. What do you want?' 
'Vodka and lime, please.' 
'Vodka and lime for the lady.' 
'And don't forget the ice.' She watches him carefully. 'You are coming back to the flat tonight, aren't you?' 
'Of course.' 
'I thought you might be seeing your other girlfriend.' 
'I haven't got another one.' 
Samantha raises her eyebrows. She looks sceptical. He remembers nights with her and wonders how many more there will be. Will he grow tired of her? Will he seek out her essence and find emptiness? Perhaps Dylan's second law is immutable after all. 
*
Is he prostituting his meagre talents? Is he pandering to the baser instincts of humanity? As the editor walks from Holloway Road tube station, he still cannot be sure. The trouble is that when he studies the photographs, he has to admit that they are good and that he finds satisfaction in creating them. What he would like is a Hasselblad. It is worth the investment if he is to continue working for Tony. And he will be able to afford it. A 903 is his dream. 
He is at the door before he can come to any decision. The routine of pressing the bell and waiting for Tony's voice has become automatic. The bare, uninviting staircase hardly signifies. Upstairs, he inhales the familiar smells of garlic, coffee, cigarettes and cheap cosmetics. A light shows under the back room door. The muffled sounds of a radio come from inside. 
'Hello there, Derek,' says Tony, emerging from the kitchen. 'How are you?' 
'Not so bad.' 
The greeting is as unchanging as the ritual handshake. 
'I've just made coffee. You want some?' 
'Please.' 
Tony goes back to the kitchen, leaving the editor to go into the front room. The sight of the four floodlights grouped before the chair never fails to generate a tingle of excitement. He has hung up his coat and is opening his case when Tony appears with a mug of coffee in each hand. 
'Should be a good session tonight,' Tony promises. 'She's special,' 
 'Last week's efforts,' says the editor, holding up a large, bulky envelope. 
'That was a waste of time.' 
'One or two are okay.' 
The envelope is exchanged for a mug of coffee. Tony puts his own mug on the floor and wipes his fingers on a handkerchief before taking out the photographs. He sifts through the prints in silence. As the editor watches, the images and the location bring the previous Monday vividly to mind. He wishes that Tony would allow him to use black and white film: colour film cannot rival its starkness. 
'Nothing for us,' Tony announces, putting the photographs back in the envelope. 'Pity. They're good shots.' 
'What are you going to do with them?' 
'Burn them.' Tony frowns at the editor's expression. 'Safer than leaving them lying around. There aren't any more prints, are there?' 
'Everything's there including the negatives,' the editor lies. 
'Good.' 
'Who have we got this week?' The editor keeps his voice low. 'You said she was special.'
'Ellie. She's very pretty, very sexy.' 
All the girls are pretty and sexy according to Tony. The editor imagines the Cypriot hanging about outside school gates, looking for girls who are pretty; or at least girls who are willing. When he finds them, how does he tempt them? Is it with money, or does he hold out the prospect of a modelling career?  If they are interested, does he warn them not to tell their mothers? The editor suddenly feels cold. There is something evil about Tony which sours the whole enterprise. 
When Ellie makes her entrance, the editor has to admit that she is different. Apart from being very pretty and very sexy as Tony promised, she displays a confidence which Sharon never possessed. She wears the familiar nylon dressing-gown with fitting disdain: its tawdriness has never been so obvious. Padding protrudes from a split seam. Injudicious use of an iron has puckered the gaudy red fabric. A cigarette burn scars the collar. Her hands barely protrude from the sleeves. The hem reaches the swelling of her calves. She has not bothered to fasten the cord: the dressing-gown hangs open to reveal the familiar black G-string. The editor wonders idly whether Tony bothers to have it washed between sessions. Judging her age is difficult. She looks seventeen, but experience tells him that looks are misleading. Her face is knowing. As she appraises him, half smiling, he is not sure who is being exploited. 
'I'll get things set up,' he murmurs, putting his mug on the floor to turn his attention to the lights. When he glances up, Ellie is leaning back against the chair, one leg bent at the knee. She catches his eye. The dressing-gown falls further, revealing pert breasts. It could be an unconscious gesture, but he does not think so. Perhaps the session is going to be special. 
'Are you warm enough?' Tony asks as he does each week. The editor has discovered that there is a practical purpose to the question: goose pimples show on the photograph. 
'Yer—fine.' 
The editor's hands are unsteady as he screws the Nikon to the tripod. 
'You can take the dressing-gown off now,' Tony says. 
The editor looks up in time to see the dressing-gown falling at the girl's feet. She notices his interest and throws him a kiss. 
'Very special girl, Ellie,' Tony repeats. 'We're going to have lots of good pictures tonight.' 
The editor can only agree. Ellie's smile broadens in anticipation. 
'If you can sit down.' 
She sits with legs apart and leans forward, pouting, her eyes still fixed on the editor. A natural. He gazes at her though the viewfinder. The challenge of capturing that sexuality is enough to justify his decision to work with Tony. He sees her tongue run slowly around her upper lip—
Breaking glass. Steps pounding up the stairs. When the editor looks up, Tony is already disappearing through the doorway, presumably with the intention of reaching the fire exit in the kitchen. Ellie's smile has gone. The editor has time to take two shots of her disappointment and confusion before the police enter. Within a few moments the room is filled with their presence. Ellie stands. As a policewoman drapes the dressing-gown around her, the editor tries to photograph her look of disappointment. 
'You're nicked,' says a man in plain clothes, taking his arm.

chapter seven

'What's the idea of a Tuesday meeting?' Mackintosh asks.
Dylan shrugs. 'Don't ask me.'
'Where's The Guardian?'
'John must have it.'
'Great.'
'One perk of being the boss: you get the newspapers first.' Dylan nods towards Rob who is staring at the wall, apparently transfixed by some inner vision. 'What's the matter with him?'
'Perhaps we've got a grant,' Mackintosh suggests. 'About time.'
'We haven't applied yet,' Dylan points out.
'Or it could be a legacy. Some rich benefactor's snuffed it.'
'Have we got any benefactors?'
'Doubt it.' Mackintosh studies his postcards, dreaming of the day when one of his own paintings will be copied. Age has given the cards a dog-eared appearance which accords well with the character of the office. A job which was supposed to be temporary has stretched from months into years as he clings to the chimera of being an artist. He still thinks of his work as temporary, though the detritus on his desk gives the lie to this illusion. 
The world is divided into those who accumulate and those who throw away—and Mackintosh is one of the accumulators. If pressed, he would have to confess that much of the paperwork is unread. Anything important is likely to be requested by somebody else, though finding it can prove a thankless task. He swings his chair to face Rob. 'What's the matter, mate?'
Rob shakes his head. 'Nothing.'
'Any idea what this meeting's about?'
'No.'
'Probably another contribution to the hot air machine.' 
When there is no response, Mackintosh abandons his attempt at jollying Rob along and turns to face his personal art gallery again. The calendar is ephemera of the highest order. The girls' beauty is almost as transient as the photographs which are discarded each month. Soon there will be another calendar and twelve different girls will display their charms for his delectation. It is a minor pleasure in a fairly dismal world.
The director opens his door. 'Can you come in, please. You as well, Sue.'
'What about the telephone?' she queries.
'Leave it.'
Such a declaration convinces Mackintosh that something important is afoot. He joins the drift into the inner sanctum. The director does not look like the recipient of a legacy. Mackintosh settles himself on the corner seat, regretting that in his anticipation he forgot to make himself coffee. His eyes rest on Sue as he speculates whether she might be prevailed upon to make some. A domesticated creature is Sue: lacking imagination in his estimation, but she attends to the mundane matters of life with efficiency. Sometimes he wonders what life would have been like if he had married such a girl. 
Sue wishes that there had been time to go to the toilet before committing herself to a meeting of indeterminate length. She drank half a carton of fruit juice at breakfast, but it has stimulated her kidneys with no perceptible effect on her bowels. She despairs at having her life dominated by such unsavoury matters. Unlike insomnia or a bad back, they do not provide proper topics of conversation.
Rob looks at Sue, envying her uncomplicated life. He feels tired after a night locked in his thoughts, his face turned away from Jeanne, aware of her presence by the movements she made in her sleep and the regularity of her breathing. How he despised himself for lying in the same bed. The alternative was to sleep in an armchair in the living room, but that would have prompted questions in the morning which he did not want to answer. He snorts. A mortgaged flat with one bedroom: that is the sum of his achievements.
The questions which turn in Dylan's mind are without answers: delicious questions like whether he should spend the evening with Julie or Samantha. He is still not sure that he has done the right thing by seeing Samantha again. From her occasional barb, he suspects that she will not let him forget what happened. One satisfaction is that he will get to know her flatmates better. On previous occasions, he only encountered them briefly over breakfast. A bevy of the nubile rich is an intriguing notion.
'Can we start meetings on time, please,' the director snaps, cutting through the musings of his subordinates. He closes the door and pulls his chair to the table. 'If we all got here on time, it might be easier.'
Nobody replies. Only Sue looks uncomfortable and she was on time. The men have heard it before.
'I don't think it's unreasonable,' the director appeals, taking his seat. When nobody disagrees, he continues, 'I called this meeting because there's been an incident which affects us all. I want to keep you in the picture.' He pauses as though expecting some sign of approval for his stance, but nothing happens. 'I think it's essential for Ecowatch that we show a united front if we're confronted by the media.'
'About what?' Dylan asks.
'I'm about to tell you.'
Dylan shrugs. The exchange is watched by Mackintosh who reaches the gleeful conclusion that the director is in a spot.
'Last night the editor was arrested,' the director continues. 'The charge concerns child pornography. His solicitor only gave me the barest details.'
The stillness is profound. Mackintosh feels his sense of the absurd spinning out of control. He presses his nails into his palms to suppress the urge to laugh.
'I assume nobody here knew anything about what he was doing?' the director asks.
Silence. 
'There may be nothing in the charges—' 
'You sound as though you believe there is,' Dylan interrupts. 
'Of course he's innocent until proved guilty,' the director insists. 'If he has been involved, I can't imagine anybody here would condone such activities. They're against everything Ecowatch stands for.' When nobody seems inclined to argue, he goes on, 'My immediate worry is that the popular press is going to blow the whole incident out of proportion and link our name with it.' 
Mackintosh marvels at the distaste which can be brought to the words 'popular press'. At heart, the director is a liberal who would have been more at home in the days of paternalism, and who would ban the popular press if the opportunity came his way—before writing a paper to present his action as a blow for freedom from press tyranny. 
'As you all know, we rely on grants. We're trying to attract grants at the moment. So this is the last thing we want. If we can't get grants, Ecowatch doesn't survive.' The director looks around his audience to make sure that they have understood the implications. 'I've put it in stark terms and I don't apologise for that.' 
Mackintosh savours the silence as thought it was a single malt whisky. As the other listeners absorb the implications of what has occurred, he looks around for The Guardian: everybody will want it soon enough if there is job-hunting to be done. He becomes aware that the director is looking at him with disapproval, so he abandons his search and makes a noble attempt to concentrate on the subject in hand. It is not a completely successful attempt. He keeps wondering how many jobs the director has applied for. The fantasy flits through his mind of the two of them waiting to be interviewed for the same job—and he knows who will get it. 
'I hope the situation can be retrieved. In fact I've little doubt it can if we all pull together.' 
This sets Mackintosh off again. His lips quiver with ill-suppressed mirth. Pull together. Play up and play the game. How such phrases are redolent of an age which has little to do with Ecowatch, He remembers them from boys' adventure books which were already out of date when he was young. Perhaps they survived longer in the minor public school where the director was educated. 
'I ask you not to talk to anybody outside Ecowatch about this. And if the press ring, put them through to me. Is that clear, Sue?' 
Sue nods. Mackintosh reflects that paternalism reigns supreme—such is the way of the Hampstead liberal. Where is the director's confidence in his staff, proclaimed at so many meetings around that very table? 
'Is there anything you want to ask me?' the director challenges, looking for signs of dissent. 
'Isn't the press going to be more of a problem when the editor comes back?' Dylan asks. 
'He's not coming back.' 
Dylan's brow furrows. 'Presumably he'll be out on bail till the trial?' 
'He's tendered his resignation as from today—which I've accepted.' 
'I thought you hadn't spoken to him?' 
'I spoke to his solicitor.' 
'You're quick enough to wash your hands of him. Shouldn't you find out whether he's guilty first?' 
The director bridles. 'Let's be precise about this, Dylan: he resigned.' 
'Come off it.' 
'It's the best course for both of us—' 
'It's not the best course for him if he hasn't got a job.' 
'At least this way we're minimising the damage to Ecowatch. If our grants are withdrawn, we're all out of a job, don't forget.' 
'Doesn't Ecowatch have any responsibility to its workers?' 
Mackintosh likes the way Dylan avoids calling them employees. 
'The editor isn't a worker here any longer.' 
'That's pedantic.' 
'It's factual.' The director's voice has grown louder. 
'This is a set-up.' 
'I wish you wouldn't see conspiracies everywhere, Dylan.' 
'Who mentioned conspiracies?' 
'Are there any more questions?' the director appeals to the others. 
'Who does the editor's work?' Dylan wants to know. 
'We'll all have to lend a hand.' 
'I suppose we've all got time to spare? Rob's having to juggle the bills so we can pay salaries, Sue's trying to type your letters while the phone's going all the time and I've got a report to finish off—for a project we've already been paid for.' 
And Mackintosh is fully occupied in looking for another job, the forgotten one wants to say. It will be a job with more money, shorter hours and beautiful girls in attendance. He has not been diligent in scanning the ads each day. Not only must he go through the newspapers in the office, but a visit to the library to pore over The Times Higher Education Supplement has become imperative. Yet even as he resolves to change his habits, he knows that it will not happen. Lunchtime is for drinking—a respite from the deadening influence of Ecowatch. Looking for work is a full-time occupation in itself—if he really wants a job. Even that is not certain. Fate is providing him with an opportunity to devote himself to painting and only the fainthearted would shy away. The trouble is that he is fainthearted. 
'You wouldn't think of recruiting another worker?' Dylan continues. 
'How can I when there's no certainty we're going to get another grant?' the director reasons.
'There's never any certainty, is there? We've been staggering from grant to grant for as long as I've been here.' 
There is no certainty. How that sentence reverberates in Mackintosh's mind. Philosophical depths are being plumbed. He enjoys linguistic quests for the meaning of existence. The pity is that they seldom find a place in the officialese which he is condemned to read and occasionally to write. Reports are repositories for the minutiae of statistics. It is in his painting that he looks for something more, though his quest may be fruitless. 
'Circumstances have changed,' the director is saying. 'Would you come here when we're at the end of a grant and subject to the sort of publicity that might stop us getting another one?' 
As Dylan shakes his head over this gulf of comprehension, the director turns to Rob. 'Perhaps you can update us on the present financial situation.' 
Eyes turn to Rob whose thoughts have been drifting back to the events of the previous evening. He does not think that he will ever forget the Images which kaleidoscope into one another and then fragment with a terrible clarity: the loneliness of the flat, the babble of the old woman in the pub, the waiting in the rain and the eventual realisation that he has been deceived. And there will be more—he knows that there well be more. 
'There's not much to say,' he confesses, drawing his thoughts back to the matter in hand. 
'There must be something,' the director urges. 'I mean you look after the books. You must know our situation.' 
'I think everything's much the same as usual,' Rob confesses after some deliberation. 
The director turns back to the others, not hiding his exasperation. 'The first thing to say is that salaries will be paid this month.' 
'And what about next month?' Dylan asks. 
'What would you say?' the director appeals to Rob again. 
'I don't know what's going to happen. The cash flow's so variable.' 
'We haven't got reserves like a lot of other charities,' the director explains. 
'So no money after this month,' Dylan sums up. 
'Nobody's said that. Certainly we're in a serious situation, but we've been in worse and I've every confidence we'll come through again. If you hear any rumours, I want you to tell people what the truth is.' 
'What is it?' asks Mackintosh. 
'I've just told you! We're in a tricky situation, but if we all work together we're going to get through it.' 
Mackintosh nods sagely, marvelling at how simple everything sounds. All the practised ease of the public relations man is there, making light of the difficulties and finding certainties in illusions. From such qualities are leaders made. 
'We may have to reorganise ourselves,' continues the director, glancing at Dylan for signs of dissent. 'It might mean taking on work which we don't like. I've got to be involved in fund raising when I'd rather give my time to policy work. Bluntly, we've got to bring in some money and for a while campaigning comes second.' 
He is visibly relaxing now the awkward part is over, so Mackintosh feels quite sorry for him when Dylan asks, 'Don't you think that's contradictory?' 
'Why?' 
'Because we're a campaigning body and people aren't going to give us money if we don't do any campaigning.' 
'It's a question of presentation.' 
'I don't understand.' 
'Don't be obtuse, Dylan.' 
'It's a matter of substance. I don't understand why presentation should come into it.' 
'We've got to look for projects which are going to yield a quick return.' 
'I still don't see what that's got to do with presentation.' 
'It's how we put ourselves across to other organisations. We don't want to appear overanxious about funding—' 
'Even if we are.' 
'We don't want anything that's going to tie up staff time for long periods with no return.' 
'What do you call quick?' 
'Something that's going to pay your salary next month.' 
'In other words we're going broke.' 
'Look, Dylan, are you doing this for an argument?' 
'No.' 
'You're obviously not listening.' The director's face has reddened. 'You're more interested in point-scoring.' 
'I'm listening to you panicking.' 
'You heard him?' the director appeals to the others who watch the exchange in awed fascination. 'You see what he's like?' 
Nobody answers. Mackintosh gazes lovingly at Sue's knees. 
'So we go looking for projects which we might not agree with, but which pay up front,' Dylan sums up. 
'Yes. I'll be spending my time trying to get donations and interest-free loans.' 
'Who from?' 
'Trusts, companies and individuals who are sympathetic. Don't underestimate the amount of goodwill we've got.' 
Sue worries about the fullness of her bladder and vows never to drink so much fruit juice with her breakfast again. She looks up to find Mackintosh watching her, which makes her more uncomfortable. She shifts uneasily, wishing that she had put on a longer skirt. 
'What about the Brazilian rain forest report?' Mackintosh asks the director. 
'We've had all the money, haven't we?' 
'Had it, spent it.' 
'Then put the report aside. Find something that pays.' 
'We'll get good publicity if we give it a press launch.' 
'We only had three people at our last press launch,' Rob points out. 
'Happens,' concedes Mackintosh who has never heard of it happening elsewhere. 
The director permits himself a smile. 'I'm not even sure we want to court publicity at the moment. We're likely to be getting rather too much of it.' 
'So what do I do?' 
'I told you. Explore new projects. You were talking about looking at traffic in London. How far have you got with that?' 
'I'm working on a submission at the moment,' Mackintosh lies. 
'Then get moving on it. Don't get bogged down in methodology. Sound out the London boroughs.' 
'They're not interested.' 
'Sell it to them. I'll give you the names of some people to speak to. Don't let petty bureaucrats put you off.' 
Mackintosh groans inwardly. He hates using the director's contacts: they never remember the director. 
Rob has a fantasy of Jeanne appearing in the editor's pornographic photographs. The reality is likely to be less squalid than this, but only a little. Jeanne has a man. Rob confronts the fact without illusion now. His own relationship with her is riddled with deceit. For weeks—perhaps for months or years—there have been lies. Perhaps she never was on the nutrition course. He should have found that out when he was at the school. His world has become one in which he has to check on his wife. 
'Think what else we might take on apart from campaigning,' the director continues. We've got the expertise to do consultancy work. I don't want vague ideas. I want fully worked out and costed projects. Find out who's going to be interested and how soon you can get things started. The most important thing is to find out how much money we can get and how soon.' 
'We can only take on one project at a time,' Dylan objects. 
'Let's worry about that when we're in a position to choose between them.' 
Dylan looks unconvinced. 
'We've got to try out new ideas,' the director urges. 'No sitting on our laurels.' 
Sue fears that if the meeting goes on much longer, she will have to excuse herself. Everybody will know the reason. It is so embarrassing. She wishes that the director had never insisted that she attend. It is not as though she can contribute anything. 
'What are you going to say to the press?' Dylan wants to know. 
'I shall explain that the editor's private activities have nothing to do with Ecowatch and that he's not working for us any longer,' the director explains. 
'And you think that's going to be enough?' 
'I do know how to deal with the press.' 
Mackintosh remembers the recorded debate which was never televised, when the director came near to being assaulted by a road haulier for urging more radical cuts in the motorway building programme; but this is not the moment for raising inconvenient details. 
'And the editor sues Ecowatch for unfair dismissal,' Dylan murmurs. 'All good publicity.' 
Checking up sounds preferable to spying, Rob decides. When Jeanne goes to the next so-called discussion group, he will follow her. It is important to be sure of his facts. Deciding what to do will come later. 
'I've already turned down one invitation to speak at a conference,' the director reveals, as though expecting some words of consolation or admiration. None are forthcoming. Like Mackintosh, Dylan is looking at Sue's knees. He reflects that an opportunity is slipping by. Although not in the same league as Samantha, Sue has her qualities, like innocence and big tits. If Ecowatch is to disappear, he should make the most of what it has to offer. 
Mackintosh speculates about what Sue thinks of him. He shivers metaphorically at the chill winds of age which separate them. What is her choice in men? Is he in the friendly uncle category, which is only marginally better than the dirty old man category? He eyes her speculatively, trying to divine the passions which drive her. She conceals them well. She gives no signs of having a private life. He imagines her plumping for the first man who swears his undying passion. And he can imagine her beau, if she has one: nineteen, works in a bank and has acne. The dull predictability is saddening for one who has fond memories of his own student life in Liverpool in the late sixties when the city seemed the centre of the universe. Evenings were spent in hot, noisy clubs where pop groups tried to sound like the Beatles. Poetry readings in pubs, art exhibitions in the Walker and the Bluecoat Chambers and socially relevant drama at the Everyman fired his creative imagination in a way that studying never could; and there was alcohol to bathe everything in a golden haze. Youth is the time for experimenting with lifestyles as casually as trying on new clothes, for railing against society and discovering one's own potential. Mackintosh is convinced that Sue is missing these formative experiences. Dylan is the opposite: he gives the appearance of having come to terms with the mysteries of life when he was in the cradle. Mackintosh feels envious, as one who is still exploring them. More than anything else he dreams of holding his own exhibition. It will be in a Bond Street gallery adorned with beautiful girls, at least one of whom will invite him to share her bed. The Sunday papers will carry reviews of his work. He will be mentioned in the same breath as Stanley Spencer, a figure he admires both for his life and his art. No more squandering his talents on proselytising, or scrabbling for environmental ills to expose to an indifferent public. The people who gain satisfaction from these activities are the colourless ones, the mediocrities. How many of them he has to encounter each day; how easy they are to recognise—  
'Mackintosh!' 
Abruptly he abandons his musings to find the others looking at him. 
'I hope we haven't woken you,' the director observes. 
'Not at all.' 
'Good. So can I have the report within three days?' 
'Surely.' 
The director glances at his watch. 'I'm going to see the bank manager, so we'll have to finish there.' He permits himself a smile when he notices Rob's response. 'Rob, you looking startled.' 
'You never said anything about going to the bank.' 
'I had a word with the manager just now and he seems very keen to help us.' 
'I'd better come with you.' 
'I do know my way to the bank.' 
'I need to know what's happening.' 
'And I'll be keeping you fully informed, Rob. Don't worry.' 
'I'm supposed to be the accountant here.' 
'And an excellent job you're doing.' 
'It's difficult if you're trying to strike deals behind my back.' 
'That's not the intention.' 
'He's going to want security. I've told you that.' 
'I'm sure we can come up with a formula. There's no need to get on your high horse, Rob.' 
The others watch the exchange with interest, not used to this display of feeling on Rob's part. He leans back, his body tense. He is shaking his head. 
'We can get guarantees,' the director protests. 
'Who from?' 
'I don't want to go into that now, but we can get them.' 
'We haven't got any rich backers, John,' Dylan intervenes. 
'We do have sympathisers with money, but I don't want to name names until everything's finalised.' 
'Why not?' 
'I'll worry about that and you look for where we can get grants. Right?' 
'Right,' says a belligerent Dylan. 
'If that's all ...' 
'If you're not going to tell us anything, there's not much else to say,' is Dylan's parting retort as the company files from the room. When the door is closed, Dylan throws a pencil across the office. 'How can you work with him, Rob? The man's a cretin.' 
'He's doing things off his own bat and he expects me to control the finances,' Rob complains as Sue scuttles from the office. 
'How can we do anything in this place with him in charge?' 
They stare at each other, for once united. 
'So we've got anonymous backers,' Mackintosh muses. 
'He must have been crawling to somebody,' Rob says.
'Or fucking a millionaire's daughter,' Dylan suggests. 'If it's not all in his megalomaniac imagination.' 
'He doesn't know the first thing about how this place is run,' Rob complains. 
At that moment the director emerges from his room, cutting short the complaints. He is dressed to go out and carrying his case. As he heads towards the exit, he remarks to nobody in particular, 'I thought we had work to do. I certainly have.' 
When the outer door closes, Dylan makes a suitable gesture. 'Bastard,' he mouths. 
'He doesn't even know how much we've got in the bank,' says a vexed Rob. 
'How much have we got?' Mackintosh asks. 
'What I said: just enough to pay this month's salaries.' 
'And then we're broke?' 
'That about sums it up.' 
They digest the implications. 
'How about starting an alternative Ecowatch?' Dylan suggests, as he does as regular intervals. 
'Won't bring in any money,' Rob says, as he always does. 
'So it's back to the rich benefactors,' Mackintosh sums up. 'We search the plush corners of Hampstead for rich widows who like worthy causes.' 
'The way John's talking, he's already found one,' Rob points out. 'Perhaps that's why he keeps disappearing for long lunches.' 
'He's still going round the estate agents trying to sell his flat,' Dylan reveals. 
'Obviously without much success.' 
'I wonder how he'll get on at the bank,' Mackintosh muses. 
All eyes turn to Rob for the authoritative view. 
'The manager's going to dress it up, but no security, no overdraft,' is Rob's verdict. 'John knows that.' 
'So he'll be back soon?' Mackintosh queries.
'I'd give him half an hour at the most.' 
'Not even time for us to go down the pub.' 
'Not open yet,' Dylan reminds him. 
'What's this report I'm supposed to be writing?' 
'We're supposed to set down our ideas on the future of Ecowatch.' 
'It hasn't got one.' 
'So long as you can spread that over four pages. Should pass the time between looking for jobs.' 
'I still haven't found The Guardian.' 
'Wasn't it lying around in sir's room?' 
'I never saw it.' 
'Have a look in his desk.' 
Mackintosh has a deep-seated fear of being found in forbidden places by figures of authority like headmasters and chief planners, but being unable to think of any rational objection, he overcomes his misgivings and ventures into the director's room. He takes the opportunity to sit in the orthopaedic chair which was bought for the director's bad back and is the only comfortable chair which Ecowatch possesses. The desk is clear of papers: the director does not like to leave work outstanding, though Mackintosh suspects that the only way to achieve such a rarefied state is to do no work at all. If he enjoyed the privacy of that shabby office, perhaps he could devote the bulk of his time to reading The Guardian, or better still Penthouse. A new perspective opens on Ecowatch: the whole organisation could be devoted to doing nothing. Somewhere in Desmond Tutu House there may be a group which has already reached nirvana. Mackintosh grapples with the dawning realisation that one of life's secrets has at last been vouchsafed to him. Doing apparently useful things is unnecessary. Society pays people to pretend that they are employed, the only condition being that nobody reveals the secret—
'You're looking very preoccupied.' 
Mackintosh jumps at the voice. He looks up to see Dylan standing in the doorway, grinning at his discomfiture. 
'I was playing with ideas.' 
'Is the paper there?' 
'Haven't looked yet.' 
'Too busy enjoying being in the seat of power.' 
Mackintosh inspects the drawers. More in hope than expectation he tugs at the one in which staff files are kept; it is locked as usual. 
'No joy?' Dylan asks. 
'If he's got it, he's taken it with him. Or somebody on one of the other floors nicked it. That's the trouble with having the newspapers left in the entrance.' 
'Rob's told the suppliers enough times.' 
'Bastards.' 
'Come and do your c.v. Sue's typing them up, then we're going to run off copies.' 
Mackintosh abandons his search and joins the others. In the face of redundancy, the squabbles with Dylan seem petty. 
'Do you really think we're going to be made redundant?' Sue asks Rob. 
'I think there's a good chance, the way things are going,' Rob admits.
Sue watches him, hoping that he will break into a grin and confess that the whole thing is a joke, but his face remains serious. Every time she thinks about the rent, her stomach turns over. 
'You ought to wander round the building and ask the other charities,' Dylan suggests. 'There's often a job going somewhere on the admin. side.' 
'I don't think John would like it.' 
'I shouldn't worry about sparing John's feelings. Everybody's going to know what the editor's been up to soon enough. Then they'll start withdrawing their grants and Ecowatch is down the pan.' 
Sue's misgivings are not allayed. From what she has seen of the other organisations, she is not keen to work for any of them. The feminists are abrasive and too many of the men are like Dylan, mentally stripping her as she waits with them for the lift. She ventures, 'But if we don't say anything to the press and let John handle everything—' 
'They'll find out at the editor's committal hearing. Come next Sunday, it should be all over News of the World.' 
'That's terrible.' 
'It's good, juicy copy. If he thinks we can keep it quiet, he's off his trolley.' 
'Surprising how little we know about the editor,' Mackintosh muses. 'Except that he's mad about photography.' 
'And he's got kinky tastes in subject matter,' Dylan adds. 'I didn't think he was interested in anything except environmental stuff.' 
'We couldn't know much about him when we hardly ever saw him,' Rob points out. 'He was only here for about two hours a week. I never understood how he got away with it.' 
'It's called cheek,' says Dylan. 'Shall we have a look in his desk?' 
'I don't think we should.' 
'He's not going to mind, particularly if he's left.' He sits at the editor's desk before Rob can object further and rummages in the top drawer. Mackintosh edges closer, hoping to discover evidence of where his chocolate biscuits have been going. 
'Look at all these!' Dylan brandishes a clutch of ballpoint pens. 'Should please you, Rob—you're always moaning about having to order new ones.' He investigates further. 'And there's the stapler. I wondered what happened to that.' 
Mackintosh admires the editor's cunning in coming into the office after everybody else has gone home and helping himself to other people's chocolate biscuits and the office coffee before settling down to writing his copy—or to work of his own. An idea forms in Mackintosh's mind. The office is a haven which is warm, free and empty during the evening now that the editor is removed from the scene. He could bring his sleeping bag. The idea blossoms. There might be no need to keep up his room if he could find somewhere to store his paintings—
'Custard creams,' says Dylan, turning his attention to the lower drawer. 'Anybody interested?' 
'Might as well use them up,' Mackintosh offers, taking the packet before anybody else claims them. He watches Dylan unearthing cuttings left over from past newsletters. The oldest ones have turned brown. 
'What's he keep all these for?' 
'Not one to throw things away, our editor.' 
'Obviously follows your shining example.' 
'His own little contribution to recycling.' 
'You don't recycle things by keeping them in drawers.' 
'Who's going to edit the newsletter?' Rob asks. 
Dylan pushes the drawer closed. 'You heard the boss. We do—only we haven't got time, so it won't get done.' 
'Never understood why we bother with it all,' Mackintosh says, sampling the custard creams. They are soft. 
'Because we get a grant for it,' Rob tells him. 'Why do we do anything around here?' 
'And to think it's all coming to an end.' 
'If we don't produce it, we'll have to give the grant back.' 
'Tell the director.' Dylan announces, closing the drawer. He stands. 'On which happy note, I'm off to the library. Anybody coming with me to browse through the job ads?' 
'What about if John comes back and asks where you've gone?' Sue wants to know. 
'Too late to worry about what he says.' Dylan picks up his leather jacket and gives her an elaborate bow from the doorway. 'See you later, folks.' 
With Dylan gone, Mackintosh settles back in his chair to stare at his calendar and marvel at his own conscientiousness in staying put. He even tries to think of likely contacts. The trouble is that unless they are used regularly, they cease to be useful. People move on. They forget him. It is going to be a morning of trying to jog memories over the telephone. He might have done better to follow Dylan. Mackintosh suspects his fellow researcher of discovering a pub which opens early—something he has long been looking for himself. A pleasant drink is a better way of passing the morning than trying to look busy. He munches a custard cream and surveys the chaos of his desk. In his lecturing days, he shared a study with an obsessively tidy economics lecturer named Chad. It was not a happy experience for either party and left Mackintosh with a lasting distrust of economics lecturers. He often looked with scorn upon Chad's desk, which gave the impression that nobody used it, while Chad cast reproachful glances at Mackintosh's heaps of books, journals and articles spreading inexorably across the floor. The tidying began subtly, but gathered momentum when Mackintosh raised no objection. Collapsing heaps became orderly piles arranged on his desk rather than around it. Chad assumed a secret smile which made Mackintosh suspicious. Overdue library books were returned, which Mackintosh only noticed when his library fines stopped spiralling out of control. That was when the head of department had a word about the problems of sharing a study. It was a friendly word; Mackintosh agreed that there were problems. The next term he had the distinction of being the only lecturer with a study of his own. It was a very small study—its previous use as a cupboard accounted for its lack of a window and the row of hooks on the door—but the inconveniences were trifling when compared with the sense of freedom which it gave him. 
Mackintosh swings his chair to face Sue. Their eyes meet and she smiles. It is a wan smile. He reflects that in all the time they have worked together, he has barely taken any notice of her. And now there may not be much time to make amends. 
'Cheer up,' he urges. 'We're not out of a job yet.' 
'Do you think it's going to come to that?' 
'Don't know.' He shakes his head. 'I just don't know.' 
'Do you think it's a good idea to look for other jobs?' 
'It's a good idea to keep your eye open. Everybody else at Ecowatch does.' He glances at Rob who avoids catching his eye. That encourages Mackintosh to smile at Sue again. 'I suppose you've got rent to worry about.' 
Sue nods. She is the sort to worry about rent, he surmises. A conventional girl, but not unattractive. Her clothes do not show her to best advantage, which makes her easy to overlook. An idea formulates in his mind. He asks, 'What do you think of all this business?' 
'How do you mean?' 
'What's happened to the editor?' 
'I don't know really.' 
'Did you ever get treated to one of his lectures on photography?' 
'No.' 
'You're lucky.' 
'I won't now, will I?' 
'Do you think any the worse of the editor for what he did?' Mackintosh persists, determined not to be diverted into sentimental reflections on the editor's plight. 
'Child pornography isn't very nice.' 
'But we don't know whether he was guilty, do we? I mean he might have been making an ironic comment on the concept of child pornography.' 
Sue looks doubtful. 
'Or there might have been an artistic purpose to it,' Mackintosh hazards. 
She looks even more puzzled. 
'I mean I draw nude models, but I wouldn't call my work pornographic. I don't know how you feel.' 
She shakes her head. 'I don't know.' 
'Do you think it's pornographic in those circumstances?' 
'I don't know. I suppose not.' 
'I mean would you do it?' 
'Drawing models?' 
'Being drawn.' 
'Nude modelling?' Her voice rises to a squeak. She looks horrified.
'I'm thinking in the abstract,' Mackintosh amends hastily. Sue turns away to hide her embarrassment. 'The point I'm trying to make it that it's easy to get things distorted when you don't know the facts.' 
'I suppose not.' Her expression has turned to confusion. It makes him feel protective towards her. Suddenly she is beautiful. 
'Strange how we all see each other every day and we don't know anything about each other,' he struggles on. 'I mean I don't know what you do in the evening.' 
'Nothing much.' 
'Living in London and you're not doing much? Shame on you!' 
She looks flustered. 
'Terrible,' he chides. 'I mean here you are in the great city. Make the most of it.' 
'I do go to evening classes.' 
'You can do that anywhere. I mean it's not exactly living life in London to the full, is it?' 
'I don't like late nights: they make me feel tired in the morning.' 
'You shouldn't be worrying about that. It's when you leave here at half past five that your proper life starts.' 
'I can't not worry about work.' 
'Think about living. That's what comes first.' 
'You need money for that.' 
'We'll have to talk about this.' He watches Sue's response. She hardly looks enthusiastic, but it is too late to draw back. 'Perhaps one evening.' 
'I'm a bit busy.' 
'It's worth it to sort out your future.' 
'I don't think anybody's going to sort that out.' She speaks so softly that he hardly catches the words. Not the moment for a recital of all her problems, he decides.
'We'll have to see then.' He swings his chair to face the calendar again as a signal that the conversation has ended. On further reflection, he concludes that letting the matter drop is a tactical error. Another failure to be chalked up. Sometimes life seems like a succession of failures interspersed with chances to climb out of the mud, but the mud always sucks him down again. He doodles on a letter from a Japanese planning student which he never bothered to answer. If Ecowatch does come to an end, dole money will keep him going for a while; but then the old financial difficulties will reassert themselves unless another source of income comes his way. Sketching tourists is artistic prostitution, but prostitution pays. He wonders whether he ought to be more ingratiating. He envies the director who has refined obsequiousness to the point where it is part of his persona. Skill like that keeps you out of the dole queue. 
'What are you going to do when we go bust?' he asks, swinging his chair towards Rob. 
'Who knows? Go away, probably.' 
'Sounds good. Where?' 
'Is America far enough?' 
Mackintosh raises his eyebrows. 'Is it?' 
'Do you ever want to take off—to run and run and leave everything behind?' 
'Don't know about running. Hitching a lift perhaps. I've thought about hitching up the M1 sometimes. Trouble is you've got to come back again—unless you want to stay in Leeds.' 
'Let it be America.' Rob stares into the distance. 
'Better than Leeds, I suppose.' 
'What do you keep going on about Leeds for?' 
'It's where you get to at the end of the M1. I went there once for a planning enquiry. Makes you want to turn round and go home again.' 
But Rob is not listening. He has never thought of breaking away before; now the lure of far off places seems irresistible. Visions of New York culled from films and television programmes crowd his mind, generating excitement such as he has not experienced since the early days of his marriage. The flat will have to be sold. Telling Jeanne does not worry him: he no longer cares what she thinks. What amazes him as much as Jeanne's treachery is the speed at which his own feelings have changed. He thought that he was a staid, predictable accountant; now he is not so sure. 
'Are you all right?' Mackintosh enquires. 
'Fine. Just sorting things out in my mind.' 
'Ah.' 
Rob feels relieved by his colleague's lack of curiosity. He has always harboured a sneaking admiration for Mackintosh's free spirit; now the roles are reversed. 

chapter eight

The editor meets his former fellow workers in the Rising Sun on the day following his release on bail. Nobody else in the pub seems aware of his notoriety. Mackintosh scans the huddles of drinkers for Lisa and her friends, but they are not there. He hangs back hoping that somebody will buy a round. Dylan does, probably to impress Sue. Rob asked her along. The surprising thing is that she agreed to come, though she does not look happy at being there. She asks for a bitter lemon. Her request is so modest that Mackintosh wishes he had offered to buy her a drink: the gesture might have put him up a notch in her estimation. When he looks at her for long enough, he can believe that he is in love with her.
Dylan holds up his glass. 'To what might be our last session together.' 
'Will be the last if I go inside,' the editor agrees. 
'I wasn't thinking of that.' 
'Something else happened?' 
Dylan tells him. 
'Ah,' says the editor, nodding. 'The old Ecowatch problem.' 
'At least it's made John's take things seriously for a change, even if Rob thinks he's doing all the wrong things.' 
'Which he is,' Rob interposes. 'He's looking for new sources of funding so we can carry on the same as before.' 
Dylan grins. 'He'd call it lateral thinking,' 
'I'd call it heading for disaster.' 
'It's crisis meetings every day,' Mackintosh joins in with grim relish. 'Apparent participation is the name of the game.' 
The editor pulls a face. 'Never did like those Monday meetings. Nothing ever happened.'
'Well now it's worse.' 
'Sums up Ecowatch, doesn't it? Lots of talk that doesn't lead anywhere—except to earn a crust for its poor, unfortunate workers.'
'Bit like being a student again.'
Dylan slaps Mackintosh on the shoulder, almost spilling his drink. 'That's it precisely. Working for Ecowatch is an extension of student life by other means. Discuss.' 
The editor shakes his head sadly. 'It's the endless blather that's what I can't stand.' 
'Isn't that the point of being a student?' Dylan asks. 'You put the world to rights, only nobody's interested.' 
'Ah, but then you know it's not important. At Ecowatch you have to pretend it is. You find a nice juicy academic problem for the management committee to chew over and when they've run out of things to say about it, you set up a conference so a hundred people can discuss it. By then you've got enough verbiage to write a report, only the bottom line is instead of a mark you get a grant.' 
'If it's good enough.' 
'John once said we were the voice of the environmental conscience,' the editor recalls. 'You could look on it as conscience money.' 
'Shouldn't Ecowatch be the conscience of the environmental voice?' Mackintosh queries. 
'It's verbiage either way.' 
'Does he believe it?' Rob asks. 
The editor shrugs. 'We've never got around to swapping deep thoughts, so I can't help you there. At least he knows when he's onto a good thing.' 
'And when he's losing it,' Dylan adds. 
The editor takes a mouthful of lager and closes his eyes in ecstasy. 'This is like nectar when you've been used to police station tea.' 
'A slow, lingering death as the money haemorrhages away,' says Mackintosh gleefully, refusing to be sidetracked. 'The phone cut off, the electricity cut off and as the coup de grace, no money to pay salaries. Then one morning we'll turn up at half past ten as usual and find the place locked up because the rent hasn't been paid.' 
'We're already two quarters behind,' Rob reveals. 
'We'll all be gone by then if we're not getting paid,' Dylan points out. 
Mackintosh cannot help smiling. 'With our commitment?' 
'You're one down already,' the editor reminds them. 'I hear I've resigned.' 
Dylan frowns, suddenly serious again. 'I had a go at him about that, the bastard.' 
'Can't have a whiff of scandal tainting the good name of Ecowatch, can we?' 
'Fancy sacking you as soon as he heard: that's what got me. He didn't even wait for the committal hearing.' 
'My solicitor was flabbergasted. Apparently as soon as he explained what had happened, John was more interested in distancing Ecowatch than in finding out whether there was anything in the charges, or how I was getting on.' 
'Appeal to the management committee.' 
'They'd take his side. They always do.' 
A silence descends on the drinkers as they brood on the injustices of the world in general and those of Ecowatch in particular. 
'Couldn't you go to a tribunal?' Mackintosh suggests. 'You've got a good case.' 
'That's what my solicitor suggested. Trouble is if I get found guilty, it's a bit academic. If I get off, I'm not sure I'd want to rake over the same ground again—assuming Ecowatch is still going.' 
'There's the compensation.' 
'You can't use it if you're inside.' 
'Don't think like that.' 
The editor shrugs. 'Who knows what might happen? I might get off. Ecowatch might pull through: a leaner, fitter Ecowatch rising from the ashes with exciting new projects to keep everybody busy and lots of money to fund them.' 
'You might get off. I wouldn't put my money on Ecowatch pulling through.' 
'Who's doing my work now, as a matter of interest?' 
'Nobody.' 
The editor pulls a face. 'Par for the course.' 
'We're supposed to fit it into our leisure moments.' 
'Have you got any leisure moments to fit it into?' 
'Got it.' 
'Crazy,' Dylan mutters. 
The editor shakes his head sadly. 'It's a pity to think of my baby being lost to the world because nobody's got the time or interest to keep it going.' 
'At the moment we're more concerned with looking for new jobs.' 
'Mustn't get in the way of job hunting? Always an important aspect of Ecowatch life.' 
'John's view is that there's very little extra work involved,' Mackintosh explains. 
'He's always thought like that, reckless optimist that he is. Still, it's not very flattering to find I'm so dispensable.' 
Sue sips her bitter lemon and tries to keep as far from the editor as possible. She cannot understand how somebody who seemed nice enough on their few encounters in the office could do terrible things to children. Her hope is that the others will not leave her alone with him. If that happens, she will leave. She did not really want to come in the first place. It has disrupted her lunch hour. She planned to go shopping, but she felt that she ought to show solidarity with the others. Anyway, it was Rob who asked her. As an additional motive, the opportunity may arise to ask Dylan for a photograph. She is still trying to think of a way to broach the topic. She must ask him soon, for if anything happens to Ecowatch, she is sure to be the first to be made redundant—anybody can do her work. Then the job-hunting will begin again. She shivers at the recollection of introducing herself to glamorous receptionists who patronised her, and of being made to wait for what seemed like hours with everybody looking at her. When she was called to the interview, she was tongue-tied. Nervousness made her do badly on keyboard tests. She thought ordeals like that were in the past when the job at Ecowatch was offered to her. What possessed her to come to London, she asks herself yet again. If it had not been for the trouble at work, life might have continued uneventfully. She would still have argued with her mother, but she could have found a flat locally if things got really bad. 
Thinking about how her first job ended still makes her tremble. Her behaviour was out of character, but she does not see why people should take advantage of her good nature. She did not like staying behind at the office to finish urgent work, but it was accepted practice. Usually it made little difference to her, for she had nothing to do in the evening. This day was different: her friend, Jenny, was having a birthday meal. They had arranged to meet straight from work. It had been arranged for weeks. She was looking forward to it. The thought that there might be extra work occurred to her, but she pushed the possibility to the back of her mind. It was unfortunate that on the day of the meal, there was a tape of letters to be typed by the end of the afternoon. She knew what was going to happen. Though rehearsed her answer again and again in her mind, she feared that her courage would fail her. Her heart was thumping as she put the cover on her typewriter. Mr Lewis chose that moment to come out of his office. Looking back, she suspects that he did it on purpose. Certainly his surprise at seeing her getting ready to leave was exaggerated. When he enquired whether the tape was finished, she told him that she could not stay. His response was that he did not ask her often. It was not true: she had to stay more than any of the other girls and it had happened several times over the previous week. She told him so. Her temerity surprised them both. She tried to explain that it was a special evening, but he was annoyed and turned his back on her. The next morning she gave in her notice. That evening came the problems with her mother—
Dylan is saying, 'Any difficulty we can get through if we pull together, according to John.' 
'I think he believes it himself,' the editor responds. 
'Play up and play the game,' Mackintosh proclaims in his best imitation of the director. 'All the usual school clichés.' 
Not for the first time, Mackintosh suspects that Dylan went to a public school. He displays that air of effortless superiority which marks the elite. 
The editor shivers. 'John doing his blue-arsed fly act isn't a pretty sight.' 
'Today he's running around looking for sponsors, yesterday it was donors.' 
'Takes his mind off his flat.' 
'Poor Sue's typing letters to all the likely trusts.' 
'It's going to take me all week,' Sue complains, glad of an opportunity to contribute to the conversation. 'I'm writing the same letter about fifty times. It would be much easier if we had a word processor.' 
The editor grins. 'You'll be lucky. I was after a laptop for months. He wouldn't listen.' 
'It's all go,' Mackintosh continues. 'Rob's busy laundering the accounts.' 
'It's not laundering,' Rob objects. 
'Exercising your creative accounting skills. Sound better?' 
The editor looks wistfully at the barmaid. 'All this activity and I've been missing it.' 
'You started it,' Mackintosh points out. 
'Amazing really.' 
'You'd have missed it anyway: you were never in the office enough to know what was going on.' 
'I always felt pinned down there. You want to get on with something and there's a meeting to go to or more memos to read.' 
'A sort of claustrophobia.'
The editor's eyes gleam with recognition.  'You felt it was well.' 
Mackintosh knows that he should have followed his colleague's example and spent more time attending to the important things of life. The trouble is that he can while away the whole morning in the office, drinking coffee and reading newspapers. 
'So tell us then,' Dylan urges the editor. 
'Tell you what?' 
'What you've been up to. That's what we've been waiting to hear.' 
The editor smiles modestly. 'Not much to tell really.' 
'Only getting arrested on a porn charge. Sort of thing that happens every day.' 
'Bit unfortunate that.' 
'Unfortunate! That's putting it mildly.' 
The editor sucks his lower lip as he considers his response. 'I didn't think of it as porn,' he decides. 'It was more a photographic exploration.' 
'I shouldn't tell the jury that.' 
'Funny—my solicitor said the same thing.' 
'As an explanation, it lacks something.' 
'Doesn't life get complicated? If only we could climb back into the womb.' 
'Superb if not very original concept.' 
'Alas, in adversity we go back to the comforting old clichés.' 
'Whatever way you get out of this, I don't think it's going to be via the womb.' 
The editor has to agree. 
'So what did happen?' Mackintosh presses, unwilling to let the conversation drift into philosophical musings, however interesting. 
'There I was taking photographs and the police burst in. I didn't realise what was happening at first. I thought it was some sort of joke.' 
'So you were photographing girls?' 
'Yes.' 
'How long has this been going on?' 
'Only a few weeks. I was quite getting into it.' 
'I'm sure you were,' Dylan says dryly.
'As I say, I didn't think of it as pornography.' 
'It was hardly portrait photograph.' 
'It's not as though they were children. They were all in their teens.' 
'What did you think when you were looking through the viewfinder?' Mackintosh wants to know. 
All eyes turn to the editor who seems lost in thought once more. 'I thought about their innocence,' he says at last. 'Even the ones who were right scrubbers managed to keep the awkwardness and the self-consciousness once they showed their bodies. That was touching.' He sips his lager. 'I thought about their beauty, of course. It was like when flowers first open: so perfect, so pristine, and you know it won't last. The other thing that struck me, strangely, was the predictability of bodies. I suppose it's like being a doctor: the sight of pubic hair might get you going the first time, but after that you hardly notice it. You're more concerned with how to pose the girl to best advantage than the erotic effect on you.' 
'Something else not to tell the jury,' Dylan advises. 
'I thought about it a lot while I was locked up. Not much else to do. Interesting experience being incarcerated. Not pleasant, but interesting. Don't know whether I'll say the same thing if I'm inside for ten years.' 
'Make an article out of it,' Mackintosh suggests. 
'I might do that when it's all over. I suppose the hearing got in the paper?' 
Rob produces an Evening Standard. The men crowd round, leaving Sue to sip her bitter lemon unregarded. The editor's misdeeds merit a paragraph on page two. 
'How can I compare with a falling pound?' he asks. 'Quite disappointing in a way.'
'Not exactly star billing,' Dylan sympathises. 
The editor smiles ruefully. 'The trial should do better. Achieve my moment of notoriety.'
'Ecowatch worker photographs girls with no knickers,' Mackintosh proclaims. 'I can just see it.' 
'That's sensationalising it.' 
'Sensational case,' Dylan points out. 'The tabloids are going to have a field day.' 
'Ah—the tabloids. Upholders of public morality—especially if they can get some pictures of the girls to go with it.' 
Sue pretends to be lost in her own thoughts. She wishes that the others would stop sniggering about knickers and pubic hair. What amazes her is how they can talk as though they want Ecowatch to close. Perhaps they do. She glances at Rob, hoping that he will realise how awkward she feels, but he seems to relish the implications of the trial as the others. 
'John's going to be pulling the remains of his hair out when the trial comes round,' Mackintosh predicts. 
'There's a lot of publicity in it for Ecowatch,' Dylan points out. 
'He won't see it that way.' 
'You were talking about a leaner, fitter Ecowatch,' Dylan says to the editor. 'How does the idea of an alternative Ecowatch grab you? It's one of the ideas we've been tossing around.' 
Mackintosh is tempted to point out that Dylan has been the only one to toss it around, but this is not the moment for acrimony. He is surprised when the editor's eyes light up. 
'A reborn Ecowatch dedicated to exposing environmental cover-ups rather than trying to see all sides. I like the idea. We could carry on the newsletter: thoughts from your editor in his prison cell.' 
Mackintosh notices Sue. 'You're very quiet.'
She smiles. 'I was listening.' 
'What do you think about it all?' 
'I don't know.' 
'You must have some sort of view.' 
She shakes her head. 'Not really.' 
Mackintosh cannot decide whether her words signify innocence—or just being thick. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to thick girls who have nothing but their bodies to offer. Then he might have been content. 
Sue asks herself why she agreed to come to the pub when she knew that she would hate it. Her hope is that Mackintosh will become engrossed in conversation with the editor again and leave her alone. Rob is paying no attention to her. She wonders whether she has upset him; either that, or he finds her boring. She knows that she is not interesting or beautiful like Dylan's girlfriends. Sometimes she thinks that she will end up an old maid, pitied by everybody. There was a woman like that at the solicitor's office where she used to work. Miss Pinker was in her fifties and secretary to the senior partner. The office was her life. She always came in early and often worked through the lunch hour. The others secretly laughed at her because she insisted on having tea in her own bone china cup and buying her own rich tea biscuits which she kept in an airtight box locked in her desk drawer. Sue suspects that her flatmates already think of her as a Miss Pinker. 
'I'm going back,' Rob announces, draining his glass. 
'Have another one,' the editor urges. 'It's just getting interesting. We need you here for this.' 
Rob shakes his head. 'I've got some work to do.' 
'Don't be a party-pooper. Have another one.' 
'I'm going as well,' Sue tells him. 
Dylan sighs. 'Does the idea of a reborn Ecowatch bring no excitement to your heart?' 
She smiles, shaking her head. 
'If John asks, we're in the library,' he tells her. 
'We'll say we haven't seen you,' Rob intervenes, seeing Sue's hesitation. 
'Hardly a ringing endorsement,' Dylan murmurs as the couple leave. 
'I think Rob's got things on his mind,' Mackintosh points out. 
'Like his job,' 
'It's not worrying us, is it?' 
'We're different.' 
'Strange how outfits like Ecowatch always divide into the doers and the administrators.' 
'And there go the administrators,' the editor intervenes. 'There's something unproductive about administering. How does Rob stand it?' 
'Very precise sort of mind has our Rob,' Mackintosh explains. He does not add that it is a pedant's mind, which makes decisions on economic criteria. Creativity is missing from Rob's soul. Not that creativity is appreciated. Mackintosh is resigned to the fact that Rob probably lives in a flat better than his own miserable room. Everybody lives somewhere better. That was brought home to him in his lecturing days, when students' lodgings were more invariably more luxurious than his own. All the young people whom he taught seemed to own cars, televisions and stereo systems, none of which he possessed. In his more optimistic moments, he tells himself that he is less concerned about material matters than his fellows; in his pessimistic moods, the acceptance of failure seems more realistic. 
'Shall we have another one?' the editor asks. 'That is unless you two are hurrying back to your labours.' 
'I don't think there's any urgent need.' Dylan glances at his fellow researcher of confirmation. 
'And it's my round,' says the editor, which makes the fellow researcher respond with alacrity. 
When the glasses are refilled, a silence settles on the company. Mackintosh is tempted to tell the editor of his own artistic interest in the female form, but Dylan's presence deters him. The risk of unleashing Dylan's sarcasm has stopped him from mentioning it in the office. Dylan might be one of the doers, but his artistic aspirations are problematic. A more oblique approach is called for. 
'What did you do with the photographs?' Mackintosh enquires of the editor. 
'The police took them. Evidence.' 
'What about your other photographs—the ordinary ones? What do you do with them?' 
'Nothing really,' the editor confesses. 'I've built up a portfolio which might do for an exhibition.' 
Mackintosh nods slowly, reflecting that he has been building up a portfolio for a lot longer than the editor. Much to his annoyance, Dylan changes the subject by asking the editor, 'So how does the idea of a reborn Ecowatch grab you?' 
'Could be something in it.' 
Mackintosh wonders who would spearhead this fledgling body. He suspects that Dylan already has his eye on the post. 
'Might be worth looking around for grants,' the editor continues. 'I know some of the powers that be would prefer an Ecowatch without John in charge.' 
'Who?' Mackintosh asks, surprised that the absent editor should have stumbled upon this hitherto unknown nugget. 
The editor taps his nose. 'Confidential.' 
'John might resign if we get over this.' 
'Not unless he's pushed,' Dylan diagnoses. 'He hasn't done too well in getting another job, has he? What we ought to do is cultivate the management committee—get them on our side.' 
'There's plenty of scope,' the editor agrees. 
Mackintosh does not like the tenor of the conversation. Being redundant with the occasional visit to the Jobcentre as his only commitment holds more appeal than working under Dylan. He listens with half an ear to the two schemers as he scans the other drinkers once more. Now the lunchtime rush is over, the pub is becoming an increasingly masculine preserve ideal for serious drinking but otherwise devoid of interest. Sometimes he wonders why the Rising Sun has become the Ecowatch local. Habit has a lot to do with it. Even the director used to join them in the days before estate agents claimed his lunch hours. 
'What do you think?' Dylan asks him. 
Mackintosh waits for a clue. 
'Run it as a cooperative,' says the editor. 'You've got charities all round you working like that.' 
'And losing money hand over fist because they haven't got a clear policy.' Dylan points out. 'Sounds good, but you never get decisions made.' 
Mackintosh's suspicions of his colleague grow. He forbears to mention that even with the present top-heavy management structure of Ecowatch, decision-making amounts to bowing to the inevitable. 
'I used to work for a cooperative,' the editor reminisces. 'We had Monday meetings just like at Ecowatch, except that there were real decisions to make: which way policy was going, how to allocate the money, that sort of thing. Took hours. We'd get bogged down on things like who's turn it was to buy the office coffee.' 
'Which proves my point,' says Dylan. 
'On the other hand it did work in its own chaotic fashion. I'm sure we could get backing.' 
Mackintosh is tempted to point out that the editor might not have to concern himself with the endless and frustrating search for funding for a year or two. 
'We've got to find some research topics which are going to go down well with sponsors,' the editor continues. 
'That's what we've been doing,' Dylan explains. 'That's why we've had so many meetings.' 
Mackintosh mentally rehearses his own list of research topics. It has become a reflex action since his academic days. The topics are dusted down like favourite pieces of china, to be put back on the shelf in the face of the inevitable indifference. 
'Never thought Ecowatch meetings got anywhere,' says the editor. 'They were more an ego trip for John.' 
'Is that why you never came?' 
'And because they're always too early in the morning. I'm not at my best at that time of day.' 
'Where was this place you got arrested?' Mackintosh asks. 
'Why?' 
'Just wondered.' 
'In the seedier reaches of Holloway Road. I wouldn't recommend going there.' 
'I'll take your advice,' Mackintosh lies, feeling proprietorial for his home territory. 
The editor pulls a face. 'Not a nice place. Dereliction, grubby little kebab houses, anonymous people out of a Beryl Cook painting and a procession of juggernauts grinding up the A1.' 
'So it was a proper studio was it?' Mackintosh persists as representative of North London's anonymous people. 
'Just an empty room with a couple of lights, if you call that a studio.' 
'I wondered how you got involved.' 
'The recommendation of a whore.' 
No appropriate response occurs to Mackintosh. Nor can he think of a subtle way of discovering how to enter the world which the editor has so lately and so dramatically left. For Mackintosh realises that photography is his vocation. 
'What happened to your camera?' he probes.
'I'm a bit worried about the Nikon, actually: my solicitor's trying to find out what's happened to it. I don't want the police buggering it up.' 
'How did you come to meet this whore?' 
'I was photographing her.' 
'But how did you find the girls?' 
'Tony sorted all that out, but he got caught as well.' 
Mackintosh looks baffled. 
'Let's have another drink,' says Dylan, and Mackintosh does not disagree. 
* 
Rob and Sue walk back to the office absorbed in their own preoccupations. Rob tries to decide how he will respond when Jeanne goes to her next meeting. He dislikes the way decision-making has been thrust upon him. This is the sort of occasion when Mackintosh's freewheeling life seems enviable. 
When Sue glances at Rob, she is not surprised that he does not notice. She is resigned to not having the sexual power which compels men's attention. In buses, men show more interest in their newspapers than in her. No heads turn as she walks along the street. She used to look at herself in the mirror, hoping to discover what elusive quality was lacking; she does so less often now. 
Fiona would take the opportunity to seduce Rob. Sue toys with the notion without being quite sure how to go about it. Getting him to talk about his problems and them making sympathetic noises seems a better proposition, but she is not even very good at that. Her sympathetic noises sound contrived. Suggesting a drink after work sounds forward, though Fiona would have no qualms. Sue wishes that she could be more like her flatmate. There comes the fantasy of taking Rob to the flat. That would make the others envious. They would see her in a new light. Sue's older man. The thought makes her look at him speculatively. She has to admit that he would be a catch.
Rob knows that he ought to do something about the situation with Jeanne, though he is not sure what. He does not like scenes, though the circumstances demand one. A dignified silence is an alternative, though he suspects that Jeanne might not notice: she complains about his silences already. So what is he to do? He longs to walk on Hampstead Heath instead of going back to the office. There, he can put his problems into perspective. He suspects that if he did take the afternoon off, nobody except Sue would notice, but finance controllers are dutiful people and Rob dismisses the notion of abandoning his responsibilities. His despairing gaze rises to the warehouses flanking the road. Their grimness echoes his mood. Where other areas have grown prosperous, this street has continued its decline since industry moved away, achieving a peaceful dereliction. The yard of the factory they are passing has recently been used for car repairs; now the gaudily-painted gates are chained again. Water from a long-neglected overflow has left a green trail down the wall from the third storey and across the pavement, so that pedestrians have to walk in the road to avoid the slime. Rob  watches her averting her eyes from the gates where obscenities are sprayed across the peeling posters. Her touches of gentility are endearing. He feels guilty at not giving her a box of chocolates as a token of appreciation for her work on Saturday. He wonders whether the opportunity has passed. 
Sue cannot decide whether to suggest going for a drink after work. With nobody else around, it is the ideal moment to ask. It would be a friendly gesture to a working colleague, yet part of her wants the offer to be taken as something more. Sue the seductress. She tries to think herself into the role as though she is acting in a play, but the attempt fails miserably. Guilt rears its head. She hates that happening when there is nothing to feel guilty about. Her puritan conscience is alive and well and ruling her life, yet the notion of taking Rob to the flat still generates enough excitement for her not to abandon the idea easily. She would have to invent a story for Dylan and Mackintosh to explain why she was not leaving the office on time; then she would have to go out just before Rob, so that she could meet him outside. Another pathway strewn with lies and deception opens before her and she approaches it warily, not sure whether the pleasures glimpsed at its end are really for her. When she next glances surreptitiously at Rob, he shows no signs of noticing. Men never behave like they do in films, she concludes ruefully. 
Rob is wishing that he were on his own. He cannot think properly with other people around him. From the corner of his eye he notices Sue looking at him, expecting him to say something. That makes him feel guilty for being morose. 
* 
What should have been a simple task is turning out to be complicated. The director knows that he should set a good example by getting back on time after lunch, but as Mackintosh and Dylan will be in the pub for another hour, his gesture will remain unnoticed by those who would most benefit from it. 
His first stumbling block was that the subject did not appear in the index. He could have asked the librarian, but he was afraid that a request for books on arson might linger in her memory. Instead he looked under Crime, which yielded nothing suitable and Fire which listed technical papers on preventing fires, but nothing on started them. Biographies on famous arsonists might contain useful tips, but the only name which springs to mind is Guy Fawkes. He stares at a paper on the fire-resisting properties of wall boards and wonders where he might find a professional arsonist. They must exist in the shadowy corners of society, though it should not be difficult to start a fire himself given that hundreds start every day by accident. Electrical faults are a common cause, but the director is hazy about things electrical, preferring to leave such matters as wiring plugs to Judith. Any electrical fire he managed to start would be by accident. A gas explosion is more promising, if less easy to control. He will take Judith out for the evening. Once he has bought tickets for a play, she can hardly refuse to go. When they reach the street, he will find some excuse to go back to the flat, where he will reset the timer to switch on the boiler an hour later and turn on the oven without lighting it. Whether he should turn on the hob taps as well occupies the next few minutes of his reverie. It would make things more certain, but if gas leaked out to the street, somebody might raise the alarm. Better not to take the risk. He leans back, savouring simplicity of the plan. As he dines with Judith, the flat will be filling with gas. They might even hear the explosion from the West End. While they are watching the play, fire tenders will be racing to what it left of the warehouse. He smiles; then the smile is dampened by regret as he remembers the little things which mean so much to Judith and which will be lost: the jewellery which belonged to her mother and the photographs of her childhood. The loss of his own possessions is something which he dare not contemplate. The temptation is to move some of his books to the office beforehand. He decides that he lacks the single-mindedness of the true arsonist. 
* 
However unwelcome it might be, closing time at least imposes its own discipline. Mackintosh freely confesses that on several occasions it has saved him from total inebriation. With pubs remaining open all the afternoon, the temptation to stay at the bar can be overwhelming. Only some prompting on the part of Dylan who is playing the director manqué and the thought that John might be back at the office make Mackintosh turn his back on an afternoon's drinking. As he stands outside the Rising Sun, he finds to his disappointment that he can still focus on his companions. 
The editor coughs at the traffic fumes. 'So you two are returning to the office we know and love.' 
'It's been a useful discussion,' Dylan declares. 
'That's the sort of crap the director says,' Mackintosh complains. 
'May I never be thought of in the same breath,' Dylan says, shuddering. 
'Then cut the platitudes.' 
'Changes are coming, I'll tell you that.' 
'Changes,' echoes Mackintosh, wondering how he figures in them. It was a long discussion on the feasibility of a reincarnated Ecowatch, though he cannot recall anything positive coming from it. Except for the director's absence, it was little different from the more formal Ecowatch meetings. He gazes towards St Pancras, trying to decide whether it is an alcoholic fantasy. 
'We may have changed the whole course of the green movement in this country,' declares the editor, who is more of an optimist. 'Momentous decisions have been made. Is it worth going back to the old Ecowatch? Has it anything left to offer?' 
'Money,' says Mackintosh. 
'There's the rub.' 
'We hope there's some money,' Dylan cautions.
'We three are spearheading a new movement,' the editor continues. 'It may not be impossible that the future of this country depends on us.' He focuses on his companions, which requires considerable effort while he is swaying. 'So farewell my friends. We must pursue this next time.' 
Mackintosh takes the proffered hand. He does not like to say farewell lest it sounds too final. He is not sure that he wants to pursue anything. 
'Farewell,' repeats the editor without letting go. 'We must work out our strategy.' 
'Must have a strategy,' Mackintosh agrees, meekly letting his hand be pumped until the editor is satisfied. 
'A strategy,' the editor repeats, turning his unsteady gaze on Dylan and grasping Dylan's hand. 
'I'll write a paper,' Dylan assures him. 
'Typical,' says Mackintosh. 
Dylan breaks off shaking hands with the editor to glare at his fellow researcher. 'What's that mean?'
'Typical Ecowatch approach. If there's a problem, generate so much paperwork that you lose sight of it.' 
'So what do you think we ought to do?' 
'Ah.' Mackintosh grins inanely. 
'You don't contribute.' Dylan turns to the editor for support. 'He doesn't, does he?' 
'Eh?' 
Dylan's face creases with contempt. 'None of you fucking care what happens, do you?' 
'A sad fact of life you have to learn sometime,' says Mackintosh. 
'Bastard.' 
Mackintosh wonders what he will do for the rest of the afternoon. Even as he considers the matter, his legs are carrying him away from the pub. He hears Dylan calling, but he does not take any notice. If he turned his head, he might fall over. 
* 
Alone in the office with Rob. Sue knows that such an opportunity may not come again, but she cannot bring herself to take advantage of it. She can hear Rob taking the cash book from the safe. She longs to turn, so that she can look at him openly. The silence between them becomes unnatural, so that she knows she has to find something to say. 
'Do you want some coffee?' she asks at last.

chapter nine

Jeanne is home. Rob hears her in the kitchen and wishes that the flat was empty, so that he could build up enough righteous indignation to confront her later.
'Hi—had a good day?' She has come to the kitchen doorway. She is smiling. 
'All right.' Out of habit he tries to smile back and feels annoyed with himself for being hypocritical. Jeanne's greeting is always the same. It used to be the signal for them to talk about what they had been doing. Now it irritates him. He has the satisfaction of seeing her look disconcerted when he makes no move to kiss her.
'Is something the matter?' she asks.
'No.'
She brightens. 'I'm making something special.' 
'Are you.' 
'I thought it was time we started eating more healthily.' 
'I thought we were.' 
'I know we don't eat badly and we're both pretty health conscious. It's just differences of emphasis, isn't it? You see exercise as more important and I'm more keen on diet.' She hesitates, waiting for his agreement which does not come. 'What I was thinking—if we could improve our diet just for a while and see how we feel. Is that okay?' 
Rob tries to give nothing away in his expression. He waits for what else is coming. Jeanne is always leading up to something when she talks a lot. 
'It's cooking that destroys most nutrients,' she explains. 'We can still have some cooked food if it's steamed or lightly boiled and we don't have too much.' 
'Your guru allows that, does he?' 
'It's not like that.' 
'Good. So what's for dinner?' 
'I've made a salad.' 
'You need a three-month course plus discussion groups for making a salad?' 
'You haven't seen it. Salads can be just as attractive and filling as cooked meals.'
'You think?'
'Do you want to change first?' 
He wants to say that a salad is hardly worth changing for, or that he would prefer fish and chips, but he remains silent, overcome by visions of eating salads every day until Jeanne tires of the experiment. Part of him accepts she is right, but that does not make the prospect any more enticing. 
'Rob—do you want to change first?' 
'I might be going out.' 
She frowns. 'Where?' 
'Does it matter?' 
'You don't usually go out in the evening.' 
'Can't I do something different if I want? You go to your discussion group.' 
Her puzzlement satisfies him. 
'I don't understand what's the matter,' she says. 
'Why should anything be the matter? Let's have this meal you're going on about.' 
Jeanne looks crestfallen as she turns away. Rob reflects that at other times he would be apologising to her if he talked to her like that. He sinks onto a chair to stop himself from walking out of the flat. 
'I've made rice to go with it,' she calls. 'It's savoury rice. I know that's what you like.' 
'I'm sure that's always a major consideration,' he murmurs. 
'Eh?'
'I presume you're cooking the rice?' 
'You've got to.' 
'I thought the idea was that we weren't having cooked food because it destroys the nutrients.' 
'It doesn't all have to be raw.' The breathless enthusiasm has ebbed from her voice,  leaving a more defensive tone. 
'Right.' He knows that the rice will be brown. It always is. He can remember the last occasion when he ate white rice. It was when he went into a restaurant on his own one lunchtime. He enjoys eating alone. Suddenly, white rice seems almost as desirable as sponge pudding. All the pleasures of life belong in the world of unhealthy eating which is being denied to him. 
'We can try it for a couple of weeks, can't we?' Jeanne is saying above the clatter of saucepans. 
'Is there a choice?' 
'There we are.' She emerges from the kitchen carrying two plates piled with salad on a bed of rice. He shows no response as she puts one plate before him. The anger which he wants to show is locked inside him. She is watching his face, still not realising what she has done. 
'You don't mind changing your diet, do you?' she asks.
'What I'd like is a proper hot meal.' He is aware how provincial and chauvinistic he sounds, but he does not care. 
'The savoury rice is hot. I thought you'd like it.' When he does not answer, she ventures, 'What we were talking about on the course was using sprouting seeds and beans as a protein source. If we had about six jars of beans sprouting then we could rotate them and have something different every day: things like mung beans, aduki beans, fenugreek and chick peas. I don't know how you feel about that.' She hesitates in the face of his silence. 'Do you want to give it a try?' 
'No.' He has the satisfaction of seeing her look deflated. 'What I want is some proper food.' 
'This is proper food.' 
She is humouring him, which only irritates him further. He explains, 'I mean something like steak and kidney pudding.' 
'I thought you were interested in healthy living?' 
'So you keep telling me.' 
'What about the running?' 
'What about it?' 
'You must be interested in your health if you go running every morning.' 
'Must I?' 
'I should have thought so.' 
'Perhaps I just like running. Have you thought of that?' 
'What's the matter?' 
'I've had a rotten day and I want a proper meal.' 
'When I asked you before what sort of day you've had, you said it was all right.' When he does not answer, she continues, 'I'm sorry about your day, but we are having a proper meal as far as I'm concerned.' 
'What your nutrition guru calls a proper meal.' 
'You can at least try it before you start complaining.' 
He pushes back his chair and gets up. 'I'm going out.'
'Don't you want anything at all?' 
Her look of hurt makes him feel remorseful until he reminds himself of what she has done. He announces, 'I'll have something out—something I want.' 
He slams the door as he leaves. It is only when he is outside that he remembers his coat, but it is too late to go back. 
'Bugger,' he murmurs aloud, shivering in his jacket. 'Bugger.' 
* 
The director does not take off his coat when he gets home. He finds Judith in the kitchen. 
'We're going out tonight,' he announces. He waits for Judith to show her excitement in some way—any way—but she looks up from cooking without any evident enthusiasm. 'If you'd like to, that is,' he adds in more muted tones. 
'Where? What are you talking about?' 
'I thought we could go for a meal.' 
She sounds more exasperated than pleased as she announces, 'If you'd let me know earlier we could have done, but I've already cooked something.'  
'Perhaps we could go to a show.' 
'There's not going to be time if we've got to eat, change, and then get over to the West End. It's seven o'clock now.' 
'I wanted it to be a surprise. We haven't been out much lately.' 
'It's certainly a surprise, John. The trouble is we can't make it in time.' 
'I suppose not.' 
'I appreciate you wanting to surprise me, but I need some notice.' Her tone has softened.
'I'm sorry.' 
'How about coming home earlier? That would surprise me. I thought you were supposed to finish at half past five?' 
'That's for junior staff.' 
'I don't see why you have to stay late every night.' 
'I am the director. Somebody's got to take responsibility for the place.' 
'I should have thought that if you're the director, you could delegate.' 
'There's nobody I can delegate to!' The director scratches his head—an unfortunate habit which reminds him how little hair he has left. The argument is taking on a familiar ring.
'What you mean is you mean you don't trust anybody else to do the job properly.' 
'How about going out tomorrow evening?' he suggests. 
'That sounds better. I can meet you from the office if you like.' 
'I'd rather come here first.' 
'I just thought it would save time if I met you straight from work.' 
'I'll want to change,' he improvises. Inconsequentially it occurs to him that if he had another woman, he would always be making up stories. He wonders how bigamists stand the strain. 
'You could always take another set of clothes to the office.' 
'It's easier to come back. Anyway, I want a shower.' 
'It's up to you, but I think it's rather silly to come home when you're almost in the West End already.' 
'It's not far to come. So is it on for tomorrow?' 
'I don't see why not.' 
'We can have a meal and see a show. Is there anything you particularly fancy?' 
'It's not my birthday, you know.' 
'I do know your birthday by this time.' 
'I wondered if you'd made a mistake. So what's all this for?' 
'Does there have to be a reason behind it? I told you: we haven't been out much lately.' 
Judith leaves the hob and comes to him, putting her arms around him to kiss him. 'I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I'm sorry.' 
'You haven't told me what you'd like to see.' 
'I think it's more a question of what we can get tickets for at short notice.' 
'Let me worry about that,' he says magnanimously. 'What do you want to see?' 
'I'd like to see Phantom of the Opera, but it's booked for months ahead.' 
'Leave it to me.' 
'You'll be wasting your time, John.' 
'You don't know me when I get going.' 
'I thought I did.' 
'I've got qualities of tenacity you haven't plumbed yet.' 
She nuzzles against him. 'Perhaps we should spend this evening plumbing them.' 
'I've got some work to do first,' he demurs. 
She draws back. 'You wanted to go out just now.' 
'If we're going out tomorrow, I'll have to get some work done tonight.' 
She presses against him again. 'Sure you've got to?' 
'I must.' 
'If you say so.' She releases him. 'Dinner's going to be in ten minutes.' 
'Do you want any help?' 
'No—you go and change.' 
Instead of going into the bedroom, the director goes into his study to commune for the last time with everything he has accumulated since grammar school. A few items he will put in a suitcase in the morning and take to the office, unbeknown to Judith. The rest will perish in the flames. It is a dramatic prospect which makes him draw breath. What will he save? His own works might provide a passport to an academic world—he cannot lose those. Looking at his collection of books lovingly accumulated over the years fills him with nostalgia and a sense of imminent loss. He can remember the circumstances in which he bought almost every one. The trouble is that there are too many to rescue. His Charlie Parker records are few in number, but they are too bulky to go in the case. Can he bear to consign so much of his past to the flames? Tomorrow looks like being devoted to finding tickets for Phantom of the Opera. He tells himself that if he does manage to buy them, there will be no more prevarication; if he cannot get tickets, the plan will have to wait. 
* 
Mackintosh wishes that he had discovered where the editor met his prostitutes. A walk along Holloway Road towards Islington makes him doubt that it was there—not that he ever seriously considered the area to be a hotbed of sex and depravity. With this possibility excluded, he resists the lure of the pubs and waits for a bus to King's Cross. This gives him time to reflect on his quest. Since Sickert roamed the streets of North London at the turn of the century, no artist has so thoroughly chronicled the world of the prostitute. It is his duty to recapture lost artistic territory. The irony is how close he comes to that forbidden world every working day without seeing it. So much for the artist's eye. 
London in the nineties lacks the glamour of Toulouse-Lautrec's Paris or Sickert's London. Almost as soon as the notion occurs to Mackintosh, he dismisses it as unbecoming to a former lecturer in town planning. Not that he is indulging in nostalgia. What he approves of is an age which took art seriously. There were rich benefactors in those days; now the struggling artist has to turn to the welfare system. A morning spent in a social security office cannot compare with an evening of courtly love as a means of paying for one's supper. 
Once Ecowatch comes to its inevitable end, he knows that he ought to promote himself in the burgeoning network of galleries outside the West End. He views the task with trepidation, remembering his assault on the drawing rooms of Hampstead and Golders Green. Six months were spent in cultivating rich widows who went to art galleries, but to no avail. His image was wrong, he told himself afterwards. He is more of a rough diamond. Accordingly he changed his target to rich girls who wanted to sample the low life. The trouble was that they showed more liking for the idea than for its reality—and they never gave him any money. The memory of one girl in particular steals back to him in unguarded moments. Rosemary was in love with the world of La Boh me, which was easy when she did not have to confront its more sordid aspects like syphilis and bad sanitation. How earnestly she assured him that she wanted to experience his lifestyle. At the time he was renting a room in Holloway; even the name seemed romantic to Rosemary who was patently a naive girl. She came of well-off Catholic parents in Cheshire. She wanted to go to art school, but her talent was uncertain so she had drifted into being a nursery nurse. Not a beautiful girl, but her melting brown eyes were bewitching, even though she seemed scarcely aware of her powers. Having long legs was her other asset. She had trouble squeezing into cinema seats. Once or twice he took her to cinemas just for the pleasure of watching as she folded her legs sideways like some ungainly foal. Thinking of her conjures her scent, making the memory of her all the more vivid. What made her endearing was how she strove for complete honesty. When he invited her to his room, she talked excitedly all the way from the underground station. The flow of words faltered when she saw the house, but it was only when they were in his room that her enthusiasm ebbed away. Her look of horror as dreams of the Bohemian life came up against reality was one of those moments which has never dulled in his memory. She gazed around with the expression of an explorer who had strayed into the lair of some particularly noisome animal. It was not as though his room was particularly wretched—he has sunk lower since then—but the visit changed everything between them, much to his bafflement at the time. His only subsequent contacts with her were the few desultory telephone calls which he made in the hope of reviving their relationship. She was polite but distant, as though fending off a persistent salesman without wanting to give offence. He was tempted to ask what she had expected, but he never did. 
It was a pity that things ended with disillusion on her part: Rosemary was one of the few people to be enthusiastic about his art. That was three years ago. In idle moments he fantasises about what might have happened had he never taken her to his room, or if he had been living somewhere more to her liking. She might be Mrs Mackintosh by now and he might be proud co-owner of a detached house in Wimbledon, bought with daddy's money. Mackintosh wonders whether her innocence has survived. He suspects that it has not: rich and attractive girls are easy game. 
The journey to King's Cross is so much quicker than during the rush hour, providing Mackintosh with a rueful reminder of his project on London traffic which aroused so little interest at the meeting. Sometimes he hates his fellow workers. 
As he heads for the streets opposite the station, it occurs to him that a strategy is needed. A camera would be a useful accessory, but he does not have one. All he carries is his sketch pad. He draws it from his pocket and clutching it with the determination of a priest wielding a crucifix, he prepares to face his devil. 
The garish array of illuminated hotel signs pressing upon the narrow street is like a town planner's nightmare. He saunters towards the darkness at its end, feeling like the sheriff in one of the westerns from his childhood. 
'Hello,' the woman calls. Mackintosh smiles as he surveys his quarry. She wears a shiny red plastic raincoat of the kind which was fashionable when he was a student and which he has never seen since. For a moment he thinks that he has strayed into some fantasy from his past. She has a gaunt face. The disturbing thing is how it seems to age as he gets closer. Her blonde hair has been treated with something which gives it the appearance of a petrified forest. He wonders idly whether the edifice collapses when she rests her head on a pillow—and whether he will have the opportunity to find out.
'Want to come in, luv?' she asks. He looks at her bare legs. Charitably he hopes that the redness is a reflection from the coat rather than their true colour. 
'Want to come in?' she repeats, making it sound more like an order. An enterprise which he should not have embarked upon so lightly, Mackintosh concludes, thinking with regret of the £2.27 in his pocket and wondering what he might get for his money. He suspects that it is better not to ask. He gives what he hopes is an enigmatic smile, but it is misinterpreted judging by the scowl which darkens her face. 
'A friend of mine was taking some photographs here a few weeks ago,' he begins. 
'You want to take photographs?' 
'I wondered whether you knew Tony.' 
'Fuck off.' 
'You don't know him then?' Mackintosh persists, looking for some sign of humour in her features without finding it. 'I'm in the same line.' 
'Are you deaf? I said fuck off.' 
'My dear girl ...' He backs away, half expecting a minder to emerge from the doorway of a nearby hotel. Other girls have appeared seemingly from nowhere to watch the exchange. 
'You'd better fuck off or my fella's gonna make you.' 
'Does anyone know Tony?' Mackintosh appeals to the others. 'I'm a photographer.' 
No eyes light up at then mention of his vocation. A siren wailing from Pentonville Road leaves the girls unruffled. 
'I'd better be going in that case.' He glances warily along the street, checking his escape route. 'Thanks anyway.' 
He backs away, straining his face into a smile. None of the girls smiles back. He turns on his heel and walks from them with all the dignity he can muster, stuffing the sketch pad back in his pocket. From the safety of the station, he breathes a sigh of relief. How did the editor manage to photograph whores? For Mackintosh the enterprise seems doomed. Perhaps it was just that the editor offered them money. The very thought of Mackintosh's own parlous finances makes him clench his hands. If he drinks at his usual rate, he will be walking to and from work until pay day—assuming that he gets paid. One consolation of the demise of Ecowatch is no more having to enter the portals of Bishop Desmond Tutu House each morning and then counting the hours till he leaves again. That is worthy of celebration, in spite of the prospect of having to make further economies. His spirits lift a little as he makes his way to the Rising Sun. 
* 
The editor looks around his room as he tries to sum up his life's achievements. It is a spacious room. His work adorns the walls: poster-sized, black and white prints of cast-iron street furniture, forgotten Victorian buildings and details of buildings. A few blown-up photographs of prostitutes survive—grainy images of girls bleached into the darkness. As a reminder of his predicament, gaps show where police have removed the enlargements of nudes. His greatest regret is that for so many years he concentrated on photographing buildings to the neglect of the human body and the elusive beauty of women. 
His gloom is not lifted by looking into the side room. It used to be the kitchen until he converted it into a dark room, making do with an electric ring in the living room for his culinary needs. Now that the police have seized his photographic equipment, only discarded film containers and empty packets which once held photographic paper betray the room's use. He could turn it back into a kitchen again, except that there seems little point in bothering if he is going to prison. He wonders what will happen to the flat if the worst happens. The thought so depresses him that he puts on the radio and slumps into an armchair to lose himself in the music of Louis Jordan. The attempt is not entirely successful. His gaze keeps stealing towards the prints on the walls. He can recall the circumstances of taking each one. The doorway in Clerkenwell he discovered one spring Sunday. Long morning shadows betray the early hour. Most of his architectural photography is done before people are about. The canal bridge in York Way he shot after a storm. It was the images of cars and railings reflected in the puddles on the towpath which attracted his attention. Why should he be sentimental about such things, he asks himself. There is no sentimentality in images. The important things are the mute testimony of the photographs and the emotive charge which they generate. The circumstances of their creation should not matter, yet they are his children and he loves them for all their faults and yearns for the ones which have been taken from him. 
There is still so much to express that he bangs his fists on the arms of the chair in frustration. All his lovely equipment languishes in a police station, being pawed over by ignorant policemen. He regards this as petty vindictiveness. He stares ahead, suddenly afraid of what lies ahead and unmoved by the bubbling happiness of the clarinet. His muscles tense to the point of pain. 
When the spasm breaks he breathes deeply, as though after a great exertion. The room seems dim. The music had changed to something more suited to his mood. With the gravelly voice of Alexis Korner to keep him company, he settles back in his chair, a folder of black and white prints on his lap. Colour film has never appealed to him. It lacks subtlety. The colours are false. Only black and white can reveal the full compass of shades and textures. He studies each photograph, trying to see it as a stranger might, not only for what it expresses about the environment he has fought for in his daily life, but for what it says about the mind of the photographer. Ten years of his work is stored in boxes around the room. Except for what the police have taken, the whole of his adult life is there. What he sees in the earlier pictures is a bleak, sad, decaying city curiously empty of people. Then came the sea change. Nothing dramatic happened to precipitate it. He hardly understands it himself. It was serendipity. He looks at the first of his prostitute photographs. The police have left him that. He stares at her image, recalling the excitement of his new quest. Her face is expressionless. He leans forward to study her more closely, wishing that he had his magnifying glass to hand, but not wanting the bother of finding it. The absolute blankness of her features intrigues him: he does not remember it striking him so forcefully before. What came across as he looked through the viewfinder was her vulnerability. Which interpretation is correct? Is the blankness an artefact, or something which he responded to subconsciously? Assuming it is real, was it a way of coping with her experiences, or did they genuinely not affect her? He wishes that he could go back to King's Cross to be sure, but now he has no camera, he feels vulnerable: the girls will treat him like any other punter. 
Buildings are easier to photograph. There is more time to solve the technical problems. The police ignored the architectural photographs, yet in their own way they can be just as shocking. The decay of fine buildings is obscene. The uprooting of Victorian street furniture is obscene. He stares at a photograph of a horse trough in Mornington Crescent, wondering how many decades have passed since a horse drank there. In the fine-grain print, the low winter sun shows every detail: the crisp packets and drinks cans in the dry, granite trough, the graffiti sprayed on the side and the miniature basin at ground level for dogs. The houses on the far side of the road must already have been there when the trough was erected. He can make out the plaque on the one where Sickert lived. 
That Saturday morning walk around Camden when he was getting to know the area lingers in his memory. He had not been to the market at Camden Lock before. Though the name should have forewarned him, the discovery of a canal winding through a densely-built part of inner London came as a surprise. Walking along the towpath was to be in a world where modern traffic was kept at bay. Away from the market the only people using the towpath were fishermen. He revelled in that pleasure also experienced on train journeys of being able to look into back gardens and for a few seconds to share other people's private lives. But that was not the only discovery to be made. Further on, the banks were lined with derelict factories and warehouses. He tried to capture the desolation of an industrial world which had died, cutting away the hopes and ambitions of so many workers; yet within him was the excitement of encountering something for the first time and knowing that he could never again see it through innocent eyes. 
All the photographs taken on that day are in cardboard wallets. He worries about what will happen to his collection if he is found guilty. The thought of abandoning it to an uncertain fate is almost as alarming as the prospect of being incarcerated. Throughout his career, taking photographs has predominated over promoting his work. It is an ironic situation for a journalist. He thinks back to the time spent gathering the gossip of the environmental world: awards promoted by the undeserving for the deserving, who is taking over an agency or an interest group and withdrawals of grants. It means little. Investigative journalism is more satisfying. He can look back with pride on his exposés of aluminium smelting in Wales and the role of European companies in the destruction of the Brazilian rain forest; but he should have paid more attention to interesting the Sunday supplements in his work, or bringing it together in an exhibition. He stares at the photographs spread across his knees. As he shifts, they slither to the floor. 
'Fuck,' he says to the invisible audience. 'Fuck.' 
* 
The meal is expensive, but Dylan does not care. He loves the buzz of having a companion who draws everybody's eyes. He watches Paula Ann himself, his smile broadening when she notices. 
'Am I supposed to read your expression?' she asks, smoothing back her hair. 
'I was thinking about you.' He basks in the look of pleasure in her eyes. 'You look stunning.' 
'Thank you, kind sir.' 
'My Scandinavian princess.' He forbears to mention that she has incredibly long legs and that her short dress shows them off to advantage. He watches her twisting strands of long blonde hair in the way which excites him. Eminently watchable, he decides. Eminently fuckable. 
'What do you think of the food?' he asks.
'Perfect.' 
The delicacy of her features can make her seem unreal. There is a poise about her, as though everything in her life is under control, including her passions. He looks at her speculatively, wondering how he might draw them out. 
'What do you keep looking at me like that for?' she asks lightly. 'Have I got something on my nose?' 
He gives his endearing grin which always softens girls' hearts. 'I'd say you've got a perfect nose. I was thinking how lucky I was.' 
Her lips move as though she is enjoying a secret smile. 'That doesn't sound desperately original.' 
'Sorry.' 
'Do you have a whole repertoire of compliments for your girlfriends?' 
'Heresy!' 
'How many have you got?' '
Compliments?' 
'Girlfriends.' 
'You think I keep one for each day of the week?' 
'I shouldn't be surprised.' 
'I'm very faithful, believe it or not.' 
'What can I say to that?' She gives that secret smile again, as though it crosses her mind to ask him to prove it. Instead she says, 'Tell me about your work.' 
'Nothing too grand. Researcher—environmental stuff.' 
'Sounds interesting.' 
'Not really.' 
'At least you get taken seriously. When you meet people socially and you say you're in public relations, you can see them thinking you a bimbo with a non-job.' 
'I didn't.' 
'True.' 
'I've never met a public relations consultant before.' 
'We're just like other people. We bleed.' 
And make love, Dylan wants to add. And look beautiful. He touches the wine bottle. 'Shall we have another one?' 
'You can if you want. I've got to drive, remember.' 
'We can get a taxi.' 
'You've got it all planned, haven't you?' 
Rather more worldly-wise than Samantha. Dear Samantha. It is her evening at home. He can imagine her in her dressing gown, curled on the rug before the gas fire and letting her hair dry as she watches television or talks to a friend on the telephone. The tenor of his thoughts disturbs him: it is a bad sign when they stray from his current companion.  All the same, he cannot help speculating which girl has the more money. Samantha's parents are titled. From what she has said there is money in the family, but he does not know how much she will inherit. Paula Ann must be on a good salary to drive a Porsche and own a flat in Ealing. He has yet to see it, but he can visualise it from what she has said and what he knows of her tastes: uncluttered, the few furnishings simple and of high quality. And somebody with a Porsche is not likely to skimp when it comes to buying a bed. He is expecting a king-size bed. 
'I need the car first thing in the morning,' she is saying. 'I shan't have time to come into town to collect it. Anyway, I don't think I'd chance leaving it around here.' 
'Fair enough.' 
'Have I upset your plans for the evening?' 
'I haven't got any plans. You're a free agent.' 
She raises her eyebrows. 'What an opportunity.' 
Sometimes she seems to be laughing at him from behind that veneer of control. The excitement of the chase comes back, banishing thoughts of Samantha. 
'We ought to have a day out together,' he suggests. 
'When were you thinking of?' 
'Don't know. How about Sunday?' 
She shakes her head. 'I've already got something arranged.' 
'Nothing you could get out of?' 
''Fraid not.' 
'Pity.' He waits, but she does not elaborate. That disappoints him. He cannot totally suppress his curiosity of his jealousy. 'How about the one after?' 
'Okay.' 
'We can sort out the details later. We'll be seeing each other before then.' 
'Will we?' 
'I rather think so.' He watches her giving that secret smile again which he finds so intriguing. 'You are incredibly beautiful. I'm sure you've been told that before.' 
'I can stand flattery.' 
He sips wine, thinking of the ways in which the evening might progress and liking them all. 
'A good wine,' he remarks. 
'Handsome, talented and a connoisseur of wine.' 
'That's me.' 
'How could I be so lucky as to meet you?' 
'Somebody's got to.' 
'And modest with it.' 
'A paragon of all the virtues.' 
She raises her eyebrows. 'All of them?' 
'One or two I miss out.' 
'I can believe it.' 
He is not sure that to make of that. 
* 
Helen is with her boyfriend, so Sue, Fiona and Jane go to the wine bar without her. Fiona gets the drinks while Jane and Sue find seats. Sue wishes that she had pretended to have a date with Gavin. It is flattering that the others should ask her, but she feels uneasy in their company. Not that anything terrible happened last time—she was not sick and she never dropped food on the restaurant table. It was just that she never really felt at ease with them. 
'There you go.' Fiona puts down the drinks. 'Much more ladylike than Guinness.' 
Sue takes the wine and sips it cautiously. It lacks the sweetness of wines she tried at home, though it is less vinegary than the wines which Rob buys for Ecowatch meetings. She resolves to ask for her customary bitter lemon next time. 
'I'm getting to like this place,' Fiona says, sitting. 'What do you think, Sue?' 
'It's quite nice.' 
'We've got to find some fellas tonight. I'm feeling horny.' 
Jane raises her eyes despairingly. 'Sometimes I wonder whether it's all an act with you, or whether you really go for any male who isn't on a zimmer frame.' 
'I like fellas. What's wrong with that?' 
'We all like them. It's just that some of us like to be choosy, that's all.' 
'I need one.' Fiona bangs on the table with her fist. 'I need one, I need one.'
'You're sex obsessed, that's your trouble.' 
'I'm not obsessed. I like it, that's all.' 
Sue thinks of the boyfriends Fiona brings back to the flat. The kissing, fondling and whispered conversations are the prelude to going to the bedroom. The image comes unbidden of the couple making love. The thought is so disturbing that she tries to think of something else. 
'What's the matter?' Fiona asks. 
Sue shakes her head. 
'Come on—tell us.' 
'She's probably shocked by you,' Jane answers. 
'Are you?' 
Both girls are looking at Sue who tries to smile. She feels the quivering in her cheeks. She knows that she has to say something. 
'I was thinking about work,' she excuses herself. 
'Leave it behind when you walk out of the office,' Fiona advises. 'You don't get paid to worry.' 
'I think they might be going broke.' 
'Who isn't, these days? Worry about it if it happens.' 
'It almost has.' 
'In that case start looking for something else,' Jane tells her. 'Don't wait till it happens.'
'I suppose so. I'm worried about the rent.' 
'You'll get benefit if you're made redundant. I shouldn't worry.' 
'No more talk about work,' Fiona declares. 'It's forbidden when we're out on the town.' 
'What are we going to do?' Jane asks. 
'Let's go to a club. All the men in discos are creeps.' 
'It doesn't seem to put you off.' 
'If you want to find a decent fella, or three fellas, go to a club.' Fiona looks at Sue. 'You're coming, aren't you?' 
Sue hesitates. 
'You don't have to tell Gavin,' Jane points out. 
'I don't suppose he'd mind,' Sue answers cautiously. 'So long as there's nothing serious.' 
'When are you going to bring him to the flat?' Fiona wants to know. 
'It's a bit difficult.' 
'Why?' 
'He's got to get home afterwards.' 
'He can stay, can't he?' 
'I suppose so,' Sue agrees uneasily. 
'If you don't want him to, he could always get a taxi,' Jane points out. 
'It's just that it's a long way.' 
'That's his problem. He can get a tube.'
'So when's he coming?' Fiona persists. 
'I'll ask him.' 
'Give him a ring now. See whether he can come tomorrow evening—I'll be in then.' 
Sue remains paralysed, unable to think properly. 
'We're never going to meet him otherwise,' Fiona complains. She glances towards the bar. 'Go on, Sue: the phone's free. Ask him to bring two friends—and make sure they're hunky.' 
'He's out tonight.' 
'Ring him at work tomorrow then. Arrange something so we can all meet up next week.' 
'He has to work some evenings.' 
'He must know when: you manage to see him regularly enough.' Fiona sounds irritated. 'Don't you want us to see him?' 
Sue clutches her glass, not knowing how to reply. 
'Don't make a thing of it,' Jane intervenes. 
'Don't you want to see what he's like?' Fiona asks. 'We've heard about him long enough.' 
'I'm sure Sue will bring him round when she can.' 
'I'll see what I can do,' Sue agrees. She knows that she will have to arrange something, even if it is not quite what Fiona expects. There will have to be a row with Gavin and a parting of the ways. It must look convincing. She will lock herself in her room for most of the weekend. Eventually she will allow one of her flatmates to prise the story from her. Helen and Jane will be sympathetic. Fiona's response is more problematic. At least there will be no need to go to evening classes any more. Sue is not keen on continuing with them through the winter. 
'I say!' Fiona is looking towards the doors. The others follow her gaze. Three men have entered. They stand looking around. 
'Our dreams are answered,' she breathes.
The men go to the bar. 
'Didn't I say this was a good place to start?' she says triumphantly. 'I'll have the one with the crinkly hair and the smile. I bet he's Australian. He's got that look.' 
Sue wishes that she had stayed at home.

chapter ten

The director looks at the management committee members and sighs inwardly. The committee is convened as infrequently as possible—usually when there is a crisis. Never in the inauspicious history of Ecowatch has a full complement of members attended a meeting. The writer on environmental matters is busy on her latest book, the senior executive from the property company cannot spare the time from executive decision-making, the spokesman on ethnic affairs is on remand for a drugs offence and the representative of a community group never attends because of the bourgeois tendencies of other committee members. The faithful attenders are the councillor, an academic and a retired person of standing. The councillor, Mrs Montford, is female, fat and hostile. She represents a consortium of London boroughs which provides funding for Ecowatch. She regards the director balefully through thick spectacles. At the last election, her manifesto included withdrawing support for bodies such as Ecowatch. The director prayed that she would lose her seat, but a development of executive flats in her ward and the consequent influx of middle-class voters ensured that she was returned with an increased majority. 
As usual, the academic brings a touch of sartorial elegance to the proceedings with his bow tie and coloured waistcoat. He breathes noisily as he scans papers for another  meeting through his half glasses; the director wonders why he bothered to turn up at all. The same might be said of the distinguished retired person who is already nodding off. Strands of white hair fall across his face. Once he was a leading figure of the environmental lobby, but that was long ago.
The staff of Ecowatch tried to have their views represented. It was the distinguished retired person who accompanied Dylan to the relative anonymity of the Rising Sun. This attempt at lobbying was not a success, though the old man enjoyed the beer. As Dylan said afterwards, the spirit was willing but the intellect failed years ago. Mackintosh's brief of lobbying the academic achieved no greater success. The academic who was too busy to go to the Rising Sun—and he announced that he was teetotal anyway. Teetotallers baffle Mackintosh, who long ago consigned them along with vicars and income tax inspectors to that place where the human spirit is dimmed.
Of a committee supposed to oversee the policies and administration of Ecowatch, two regular members take little interest in the accounts. One is the distinguished retired person, who these days has little interest in anything except his prostate. The other is the academic, who is more concerned with policy. As the director prefers to keep policy to himself, he tries never to stress it in agendas. This causes tension between the two men, though it rarely becomes explicit.
'Who's chairing the meeting?' Mrs Montford gazes beadily at the company. The director speculates what the late Mr Montford was like—and concludes that he would rather not know. 
'Shall I be the chair?' she demands.
'By all means.' The academic puts aside his papers impatiently. 'Let's get on. I've got a faculty meeting at twelve. I seem to spend all my time in meetings. Whether they achieve anything, I don't know.'
'We've got to decide what to do about the financial situation, which I understand is now critical.' Mrs Montford's fixes her gaze on the director. 'I think the first question is why we weren't told before.'
'I needed to be sure of the facts,' the director begins his rehearsed speech. 'That meant getting the books up to date, seeing the bank manager, checking on the situation regarding grants—'
'But if you thought it was necessary to do all this you must have known that something was wrong.'
'There might have been a flaw in our bookkeeping procedures. As I said, I needed to be sure.'
'You don't know how the books are kept?'
He scowls at Mrs Montford. 'Of course I know. I am the director.'
'I must say this sounds most unsatisfactory.'
'So what is the current situation?' the academic probes. 
'It's serious, which is why I've called this meeting,' the director explains, 'but I'd emphasise that it can be retrieved. We've been in worse situations before.' 
'Hardly. Hardly, worse situations.' Mrs Montford is wobbling with indignation. The director watches, fascinated. 
'So what is the situation?' the academic persists. 
The distinguished retired person stirs and pushes back his hair which has fallen across his face—a gesture which won him a host of feminine admirers during the war. As he scratches his crotch, Mrs Montford looks away in distaste. 
'Why haven't the accounts been tabled?' she demands. 'What are we supposed to base our decisions on?' 
'You need at least one campaign about national issues,' says the distinguished retired person. 'Unless you have something near to home, you lose support.' 
'I think the Brazilian rain forest campaign is the sort of thing that catches the imagination,' says the academic. 'Certainly should do. One of our most pressing issues these days.' 
'You've got to campaign on a national issue,' the older man reiterates, emphasising the words by slapping his hand against his thigh. 'River pollution, motorway planning—that sort of thing.' 
'Can we get back to the financial situation?' Mrs Montford pleads. 'Why weren't we sent the accounts beforehand?' 
'Because they weren't ready,' the director answers. 'We are stretched, remember.' 
'This is a perfect example of lack of financial control,' she grumbles. 
'I have copies of the unaudited half-year accounts for you.' 
'Then why didn't you say so?' 
'I was trying to,' says the director mildly, handing them around. Two members of the committee study them intently. The third holds his copy upside down until the director rectifies his mistake. 'What the figures don't show is that we should be getting another grant soon.' 
'From whom?' Mrs Montford demands. 
'We're giving priority to looking for sources of income.' 
'But has any grant been approved?' 
'Not as yet,' the director concedes, which causes Mrs Montford to indulge in a tight-lipped smile of triumph. 
'Find a national issue,' the distinguished retired person repeats. 'That's what you need.' 
'What campaigns have you been trying to get grants for?' the academic wants to know. 'Why weren't we told about this?' 
'Of course you'd be told before any project was accepted,' the director assures him.
'Perhaps we should have been involved at an earlier stage.' 
'I have to make executive decisions in my capacity as director.' 
'We need to know what's going on.'
'I've spent a lot of my own time looking for guarantors for an overdraft.' 
'I'm sure you have—' 
'And have you found any?' Mrs Montford interrupts. 
'There's been some interest,' the director says cautiously. 
'And how much is this guarantee for?' 
'Nothing's definite yet, but it's an approach we can use on a larger scale. It's not even as though it costs the guarantor anything.' 
'So long as the overdraft is repaid.' 
'Of course.' 
'Sounds encouraging,' the academic opines. 
The director waits for somebody to ask who the guarantor is, but he is spared having to confess that nobody has agreed as yet. He is tempted to suggest that committee members should be the first to demonstrate their commitment, but this is not the moment for losing allies, however uncertain. 
'Can we get back to the accounts,' Mrs Montford continues. 'Why haven't we got any cash flow figures?' 
'Rob wasn't able to prepare them in time,' the director lies, omitting Rob's careful explanation that as cash was only flowing out, the safer course was not to table the figures. 
'So judging by the accounts as presented, Ecowatch is insolvent.' 
'Our position could be better,' the director has to admit. 
'How's it going, this Brazilian rain forests campaign?' the distinguished retired person asks. 'I haven't seen anything on it yet.' 
'We're producing a report,' the director assures him. 
'Knew a man who was out there. Wondered if he could be any help to you. First class man. Excuse me.' The distinguished retired person eases himself from the seat and shuffles towards the door with all the speed he can muster. The director wishes that he could abandon the meeting so easily. 
On the other side of the door Dylan moves away quickly. He nods to the emeritus environmentalist as the door opens, but the old man is too preoccupied to notice. 
'John's having a hard time,' Dylan reports to his colleagues when the committee member has disappeared on his quest for the lavatory. 
'Have they decided anything?' Rob wants to know. 
'The black widow's got her knife into him.' 
'What are they saying about the accounts?' 
'Words like insolvency flying around. She's having a go at him for not letting her see the cash flow forecast.' 
Rob buries his face in his hands. 
'Had problems with that, didn't you?' Dylan says gleefully. 
Mackintosh stares at his calendar and dreams of girls, art and life. As he has no camera and little chance of getting one, his reluctant conclusion is that his new-found vocation as a photographer has ended before it has begun. A new life has been shown to him, only to be cruelly taken away. All that is left is painting. Publicity is what he needs. Would a newspaper be interested in his story as the man who worked with the porn photographer? For a moment the flame of optimism burns brightly before spluttering fitfully as usual. Life at Ecowatch is not the stuff of scandal. There is the obvious sort of publicity—climbing up Nelson's column or streaking at a cricket match—but Mackintosh does not like heights and he is too old for taking off his clothes in public. 
'I think she's got him in a corner,' Dylan reports, his ear against the door panel. 'Not that it matters to him. He'll sod off to the States if Ecowatch folds.' 
Rob wishes that he could sod off to the States. He tries to imagine Jeanne's response if he announced his intention of leaving her to go abroad. The thought affords him some satisfaction. 
'All enjoying yourselves?' asks the distinguished retired person returning from his quest. He peers around, puzzled by the frozen expressions, apparently not noticing as Dylan moves quickly away from the door. 'Hope I haven't interrupted anything.' 
Nobody answers. 
'Suppose I'd better get back to this meeting.' The old man smiles benignly on the assembled company and returns to the director's room. 
'Spencer,' he announces to his fellow committee members as he takes his seat again. 'It came to me when I was out there. Bob Spencer. That was his name—this chap who was working in Brazil. Ever come across him?' 
'When was this?' asks the academic. 
'Years ago. Must have been in the fifties. Even then he was speaking out against destroying the rain forest.' 
'Surely there was hardly any destruction going on in those days?' 
'Not on today's scale, of course, but he saw the way things were going.' 
'That I do find surprising.' 
'You ought to meet him. He could tell you a few stories.' 
The director savours the respite. He sees Mrs Montford tightening her lips and he knows that the moment will not last. 
'Can we get back to the accounts, please?' she says in a tone which brooks no argument. 
'I do think we have to put the accounts in the context of overall policy,' says the academic, prompting the director to nod vigorously. 'Ecowatch is a campaigning charity. Money's always going to be tight.' 
'Let's keep in mind what we're trying to achieve,' the director agrees, feeling that things might turn out all right if this new perspective if allowed to take root in the place of crude monetarism. 
'You can't achieve anything when you're insolvent,' Mrs Montford observes. 
'Ecowatch isn't a commercial company making a profit,' the academic insists. 'That was the trouble with the Thatcher years: everything was based on profit.'
'Are you putting your hand in your pocket to pay salaries?' 
The academic laughs. 'I don't think we've got to that point.' 
'We have.' Mrs Montford stabs at the accounts with a finger. 'It's it all down here. Ecowatch has no money to pay salaries, let alone pay the rent and all the outstanding creditors.' 
'The accounts are misleading,' the director intervenes, inwardly cursing Rob for not being more creative. 'As I've explained, we're seeking other grants—actively seeking them, I might say, at the expense of our normal work.' 
'It's not going to help in the short term.' 
'How likely do you think these grants are?' the academic wants to know. 
The director permits himself a smile. 'We do have a lot of supporters amongst the grant-giving bodies, so I'm quietly confident.' 
'Has the auditor been kept abreast the situation?' Mrs Montford wants to know. 
'I thought it only right that you should be appraised first.' 
The distinguished retired person nods approvingly at the director's consideration and settles back to sleep. Mrs Montford looks less approving. 
'It's quite obvious that his advice will be to put Ecowatch into voluntary liquidation,' she pronounces. 
A silence settles on the company. Outside, Dylan turns away from the door. 
'Talking about liquidation,' he mouths to the others. 
Mackintosh looks around for a likely souvenir of his life at Ecowatch without finding one. He regrets not beginning his overtures to Sue earlier. He regrets not spending more time out of the office like the editor. 
'Do you think we should all go down the road?' he suggests. 'Have a quick one.' 
'Wouldn't miss this,' says Dylan. 'You don't go broke every day.' 
Mackintosh leans back in his chair to consider his impending leisure. The lessons of the past must be learned this time: great artists do not idle away their lives working for bankrupt charities. His days must be devoted to painting. He guesses his landlady's response to his new lifestyle: she will ask him to leave. That means wasting time looking for somewhere else to live. He eyes his companions speculatively, wishing that he was on closer terms with them: the best way to find rooms is through contacts. The editor is the one he should have cultivated. A kindred spirit has been lost there. 
The director shifts uncomfortably. There is something of the devil in Mrs Montford, he decides. Her eyes glitter behind those pebbly spectacles. What he has never understood given her views is why she allowed herself to be nominated for the committee at all—unless her intention was to close Ecowatch. In that case, she must be well pleased. 
'There's no alternative,' she insists. 'You're trading while insolvent, which is illegal.' 
The director glances at the other two board members, but they look as lost as he feels. 
'So what do you think we ought to do?' he ventures. 
'You've got to tell the staff they may not be paid and then ask the auditor to begin liquidation proceedings.' 
The academic clears his throat. 'Certainly the situation's very serious. Nobody's underestimating it, but isn't liquidation a bit extreme?' 
Mrs Montford almost smiles 'I've no choice but to inform the council of the situation in my capacity as its representative. We provide a generous grant to Ecowatch which has been frittered away—' 
'Hardly that,' the director protests. 
'And you're charged a token rent for these offices which Ecowatch isn't able to pay. My duty is to safeguard the interests of London taxpayers.' 
The director sighs. He should have devoted more time to looking for that coveted American post. Selling the flat is a diversion. 
'Couldn't we wait to see how the grant situation develops?' the academic suggests. 
Mrs Montford shakes her head. 'I'm sorry, but we can't wait any longer. There's no guarantee that further grants are forthcoming and the debts are only going to mount up if Ecowatch continues trading.' 
The academic nods sadly and looks at his watch. The distinguished retired person is staring at the accounts, though whether in alarm or incomprehension is not clear. 
'So are we agreed?' Mrs Montford asks. 
'It's a damned shame,' the old man murmurs. 
'Hear! Hear!' says the academic. 'Perhaps we should have a campaign—try to get alternative funding.' 
'It's been done!' Mrs Montford cries. 
'Suppose we should call in the auditor,' the old man has to agree. 'Get an expert view.' 
'It's regrettable, but I have to say there's been mismanagement.' 
'In what way?' the director asks warily. 
'Not keeping tight enough financial control, not looking ahead to consider what might happen when the present grant runs out—' 
'That's not true!' 
'—and not keeping the committee informed.' 
'I've already explained why I acted as I did.' 
'I don't think we can blame everything on John,' the old man interrupts. 'Charities  always have money problems. Can't get away from that.' 
'John's in the firing line now,' Dylan reports from the other side of the door. 'Black widow's doing a demolition job and it's curtains for us, I fear.' 
Rob feels the liberation of having no job. It is a heady experience: a time for dreams. His conscientiousness makes him want to tidy the accounts, but his cynical self asks why he should bother if he is not getting paid. 
Sue's hands are shaking. If she moves out of the flat when the others are at work, she will not have to explain. She cannot decide whether to leave a note or to let her flatmates think what they like. Fiona's scorn comes almost tangibly to her. 
'Will we get paid this month?' she asks Rob. 
He pulls a face. 'Unless something comes in soon, I can't guarantee it. The bank manager isn't going to let us run up an overdraft if we're in liquidation.' 
Dylan stares at him. 'I thought you said this month's salaries were okay?' 
'I thought they were. Then I had to pay Inland Revenue to stop them getting heavy.' 
'So we're working for nothing?' 
'Could be, unless they come up with something wonderful in there, or unless we get some decent cheques in the second post.' 
'Then why are we bothering to sit around here?' 
Rob looks uncomfortable. There is silence, broken by muffled voices from the director's room. 
'We could still go the pub,' Mackintosh suggests. 
'We'll be called in there after the meeting so we can be told everything officially,' Rob points out. 
Dylan grins. 'Can't let communication drop, can we—even if we are broke.' 
Sue feels annoyed at her propensity for acting without thinking. First there was coming to London; then came taking a job for a charity which is near bankruptcy. The whole episode came about because she insisted on making a stand against staying late for half an hour. Mr Lewis, the solicitor, was a good employer in every other respect. And at least she got paid. 
'Perhaps we should go out in a blaze of glory,' Mackintosh muses. 
'It's an idea,' Dylan concedes. 'We could have a meal and charge it all to Ecowatch, or set the place on fire—make it into a funeral pyre.' 
Mackintosh likes the idea of a fire, though as it comes from Dylan he does not say so. Ever the pragmatist, he sifts through his desk drawers for anything which might be of use to the struggling artist.
'Or we could have a party,' Dylan speculates. 'It might be easier to arrange. Get the booze delivered here and put on the Ecowatch account. How's that grab you, Sue?' 
Sue looks uncertain. 
'Don't you fancy a rave up into the small hours as a memento of Ecowatch and all paid for?' he tempts her. 
Sue smiles uncertainly. 'It depends what everybody else wants to do.'
Dylan turns back to the others and assumes his serious face. 'We've really got to think about an alternative Ecowatch now. How about it?' 
Sue cannot work out how a reborn Ecowatch might survive if the present one cannot, but she is hesitant about voicing her opinion to people who know better. She glances at Rob and wonders what he thinks. It makes her sad that she will not see him again. 
'What are you going to do?' he asks, noticing her interest. 
'I don't think I'll stay in London.' 
'So it's back to Northampton, is it?' 
She nods, pleased that he has remembered her home town. She knows that leaving London is an admission of failure, but she wants the comfort of her mother's voice and of the bedroom she has known since childhood. Perhaps Mr Lewis will let her have her old job back. 
'Saves having to worry about the rent,' Rob is saying as though he really understands. 
'It's not just that ...' She cannot explain her ambivalent feelings. 'What are you going to do?' 
'I suppose I'll get a job like this,' he says wearily, but his heart rebels. This is his chance to be free. Nobody will be hurt if he does travel: Jeanne earns enough to keep herself. In his dreams is the America seen in films. He remembers his youth when his contemporaries were travelling abroad or finding themselves at university. That was the time when he should have learned to live life to the full, yet all he did was spend his evenings learning the principles of accounts. Now the opportunity has come again, he knows that he must take it. 
'Eh?' Mackintosh is looking at him. 
'Sorry—thinking aloud.' Rob lets his gaze rest on Sue and envies her for her youth. He has the quixotic notion of asking her to come with him, but he knows that she would be horrified by the suggestion. 
Sue sees Rob looking at her and she is pleased. She wants to suggest that they keep in touch, if that does not seem too forward. What interest a telephone call from a man in London would cause at home. The whole family would be pretending not to listen, making her shyness a thousand times worse. Better that he writes to her, if she can pluck up courage to give him her address. 
'Gone very quiet in there,' Dylan remarks. 'Hope it's not hari-kari time.' He applies an ear to the door again while the others fall silent, waiting for further revelations. 
'Director's not the type,' Mackintosh murmurs. 'Paid-up coward.' 
'I can imagine the black widow pushing him to it. She's enough to drive anybody to suicide.' 
'Wonder if that's what happened to Mr Montford.' 
'More likely he got out while the going was good. Wouldn't you?' 
Mackintosh does not answer, allowing Dylan to tune in to the conversation which has restarted on the other side of the door. 
'So what's happening about the campaign?' the distinguished retired person is asking. 
'If Ecowatch is bankrupt there won't be any campaigns,' Mrs Montford explains. 
'I know that—I know what bankruptcy is. I'm thinking about all the work that's been done. And how are we going to get the report out?' 
'I'm sure my department could handle the work,' says the academic. 'That won't be too much of a problem.' 
'If there are no conditions attached to the grant that might be possible,' Mrs Montford agrees. She turns to the director. 'We haven't discussed grants. Perhaps you can remind us which ones you're currently getting and what for.' 
The director smiles now he is on safer ground. 'Apart from what your consortium generously provides, there's the Brazilian rain forests campaign. That's our largest grant at £40,000. Then we have a grant for producing the newsletter and a one for general purposes.' 
Mrs Montford smiles, which is always a bad sign. 
'Perhaps we should break for coffee,' suggests the director who wants to talk to Rob about grants before committing himself further. 
'Not yet,' Mrs Montford commands. 'That might be part of the trouble at Ecowatch: too many coffee breaks. Whenever I come here, all I see is people drinking coffee and reading newspapers.' 
Nobody argues. The director resigns himself for the inevitable. 
'If we take each grant in turn,' Mrs Montford sweeps on. 'The Brazilian rain forests campaign we've been hearing so much about. How much of the money have you had?' 
'All of it.' 
'All of it? That's rather unusual, surely. How did you get all the money before you produced the report?' 
'There were extenuating circumstances.' 
'What were they?' 
'We needed it to pay salaries.' 
'So the grant's spent and yet you haven't produced the report?' 
'That's about the sum of it,' the director agrees reluctantly.
'Going on to the grant for producing the newsletter, I seem to remember that's paid quarterly in advance, which would mean you've been paid for an issue which hasn't been produced. Is that correct?' 
'Some good stuff in there,' says the distinguished retired person. 'Don't know why we can't get the circulation to go up. Can't understand it at all.' 
'We have been trying,' says the director. 
'And you say there's a general purposes grant,' Mrs Montford continues. 'Perhaps you could tell us something about that.' 
'Like what?' 
'If you apply for a grant, surely you have to say it's for a purpose? You don't just ask for money.' 
The director concedes the point. 
'So what was the this one given for?' Mrs Montford presses.
'Improving the financial stability of Ecowatch.' 
She looks incredulous.'You got a grant for that?' 
'Yes.' 
'How much?' 
'Five thousand.' 
'Obviously it hasn't achieved its purpose.' 
The director wants to say that it paid the salaries for a couple of months, but he thinks better of it. 
'And was the committee told about this grant?' Mrs Montford pursues. 
'Not specifically,' the director confesses. 
'You mean not at all?' 
'Only in the sense that the general finances are discussed.' 
'So you've spent three grants without doing any of the work they're intended for and without reference to this committee?' 
'I wouldn't quite put it like that,' the director says carefully. 
'How would you put it?' 
'We've done all we're supposed to do. We've carried out the research on the rain forests campaign and we've been producing newsletters, even if they are a little late sometimes.' 
'The other way of looking at it is that you've deceived the grant-giving bodies and this committee.' Mrs Montford is wobbling with indignation again. 
'I'm sure there's no deliberate deception on John's part,' protests the distinguished retired person. 
'There may be self-deception,' says Mrs Montford ominously. 
'He's done a splendid job. Splendid.' 
'I can't agree. Given this catalogue of mismanagement, I propose that John be asked to resign as director.' 
The director looks to the other two men in mute appeal. 
'And I would suggest that Rob be appointed as acting director whilst things are wound up,' Mrs Montford adds. 
'Damned shame,' the distinguished retired person mutters. 
'Sure we're not overreacting a bit?' asks the academic. 'All this talk of liquidation and getting rid of John. I mean, dash it all, we've been in tight corners before.' 
'We're behaving responsibly,' Mrs Montford assures him. 'Certainly the council isn't willing to let things continue as they are. We have a responsibility to all the bodies which have given money to Ecowatch.' 
'Understood,' says the academic. 'Still, we mustn't be hasty.' 
A bemused Dylan moves away from the door and sinks on the nearest chair. 
'What's going on?' Mackintosh wants to know. 
'John's been given the push.' 
'Bit late for that if we're going broke.' 
'And Rob's been proposed as acting director.' 
'Well, well.' Mackintosh raises his eyebrows as he struggles to conceal his glee. 'Congratulations, Rob.' 
Rob does not look overwhelmed by the news. 
'You could take it as a compliment,' Mackintosh suggests. 
'Or a poisoned chalice,' Dylan offers. 
The director-designate leans back in his chair and stares unseeing at the ceiling where cobwebs cling to the remains of Christmas decorations. Sue gazes at him with rapture, but nobody notices. 
'I suppose we ought to say your every wish is our command,' Dylan suggests, 'though as we're not getting paid, there's not much point in doing anything—unless you've got any bright ideas about making money.' 
'Have you been to the States?' Rob asks. 
'Once. Why?' 
'Were you tempted to stay?' 
'Tempted, but with no money and no work permit it's easy to resist the temptation.' 
Rob's horizons begin to narrow, though his questions seem to have the opposite effect on Dylan, who is saying eagerly, 'We could found an alternative Ecowatch in the States and pull in the money from all those concerned west-coast citizens. There's a lot of potential there.' 
'Didn't you say the M1 ends in Leeds?' Rob asks, looking at Mackintosh.
Dylan looks puzzled. 'Responsibilities of directorship getting to you already?' 
'I was thinking. If you got on the M1 and kept on driving, where would you end up?' 
'Leeds,' Mackintosh agrees. 
Rob dreams of a new life in Yorkshire. It is more realistic than his vision of going to America. From acting director of Ecowatch to accounts clerk. Anonymity in a strange city. It will be like starting again as a teenager. 
'Shall we go down the Rising Sun now?' Mackintosh presses. 'Quick drink to celebrate your promotion and then we'll all sign on together.' 
Rob's first instinct is to demur. His second is to keep what friends he has. 
'And how about young Sue?' Mackintosh asks. 
Young Sue does not want to go to the Rising Sun, particularly during working hours, but she does not want to be in the office when the director discovers that the others have left. 
'Might as well,' she agrees. 
'Splendid. United we stand and united we go out of business.' 
Sue finds it a novel experience to be leaving the office for a drink in the middle of the morning. There is a hint of danger about it, like the time when she slipped out of school early after a games lesson and looked back to see the other girls still at work in their classrooms. Even then she worried about what would happen the next morning. 
'Will I be able to get unemployment benefit?' she quizzes Rob as they walk to the pub.
'Haven't you ever claimed?' Mackintosh asks, overhearing. He puts a fatherly arm around her. 'You're among experts here.' 
Sue is happier about Mackintosh's offer of help than about having his arm around her, but the headiness of the occasion is enough to stop her from arguing. She thinks that she might even try Guinness again. 
The Rising Sun is empty at eleven. Sue is pleased that it is Rob who buys her a drink. The former workers of Ecowatch settle themselves at a corner table. 
'Perhaps our last drink together,' Dylan muses. 'Nostalgic, isn't it? What are we all going to do?' 
'Drink till we're pissed,' Mackintosh answers. 
'I was thinking longer term.' 
'Same—drink till we're pissed.' 
'I know you will, but young Sue's not going to emulate your decadent ways. She wouldn't stand the pace.' 
Eyes turn to Sue, who colours at this unexpected interest. 
'I don't even like Guinness,' she confesses. 
'I thought that was what you asked for,' Rob says. 'Sorry.'
'It was.' 
'Then why did you ask for it?' 
'I thought it might be good for me.' 
Dylan looks amused. 'What do you think it's going to do for you?' 
It passes through her mind to tell, but her courage fails at the last moment. Instead she asks, 'Is there really going to be an alternative Ecowatch?' 
Dylan sips his lager as he contemplates the question. 'It's a tempting idea,' he admits at last. 'It might happen. Who knows?' 
'It's a dream,' Mackintosh declares. 'Won't happen, but we need our dreams.' 
'You might be surprised.' 
'My mother used to say that—and I never was.' Mackintosh looks wistfully at Sue and wishes once more that he had acted sooner. Another thing his mother said was that  a faint heart never won a fair lady. 
Dylan also looks at Sue and concludes that opportunities should never be allowed to slip by, however unpromising. He gives her an encouraging smile. 'So you're thinking of going back home to Northampton, are you?' 
'I might.' 
'Pity, now you've got settled down here. You should be able to get another job in London easily enough.' Seeing Sue's uncertainty, he explains, 'There's always a demand for people with good keyboard skills. It's researchers who have all the problems.' 
Sue sips Guinness and tries not to grimace. What she cannot believe is that anyone likes it. 
'We'll have a word afterwards,' Dylan confides. 
Sue hopes not.

chapter eleven 

'I thought you wanted to go to a show.'
'Yes—Phantom of the Opera.'
'That's why I tried to get tickets for.'
'I told you it's booked for months ahead.'
'You get returns sometimes.'
'So what made you choose Bang!?'
'It's a new musical—just opened.'
'I know that.'
'I thought you'd like something not many people have seen.'
'Not many people have seen it because it's terrible according to the reviews.'
'You can't always go by what the critics say.' 
'I just wish you'd rung me first.' 
'There wasn't time. I only got the tickets on my way home.'  
'What you mean is you didn't remember till the last minute, so you picked up whatever you could get.' 
'Christ almighty!' The director runs his fingers through his thinning hair, no longer caring whether the remaining strands come out. 
'I wish you'd think about something other than work sometimes.' 
'I was,' the director shouts. 'That's the trouble. That's why I got the fucking things.' 
Judith storms into the bedroom, banging the door behind her. 
'Bugger,' the director mutters, regretting his outburst. He puts it down to the tension of the occasion. If Judith insists on not going out, he cannot blow up the flat. 
'I'm sorry,' he calls outside the door, to no evident effect. 'Jude.' 
Still no answer. 
'I thought it would be nice to get out for the evening. We could go out for a meal instead if you like. Jude.' 
Muffled, 'I don't want to.' 
A wheedling, 'Jude.' 
A louder, 'I said I don't want to.' 
'I didn't mean to lose my temper.' 
'Go away.' 
'We've got to go out.' 
'Why?' 
The director tries to think of a convincing reason and fails. 
'Please,' he calls, reverting to his wheedling tone. 
'I don't want to.' 
'Not even for a meal?' 
'I've just told you.' 
The director casts about in desperation, but no revelation occurs to him. 
'Please,' he whines. 
No answer. 
'Now I've got the tickets, we might as well go.' 
'I don't want to go anywhere. I've got a headache.' 
'This is ridiculous!' 
'Buying tickets for a terrible musical is ridiculous. They're probably giving tickets away to get people in.' 
'I want to see it.' 
'You go then.' 
'I can't go without you.' 
'Well I'm not going.' 
'Bugger.' 
'What did you say?' 
'Nothing.' He looks around the flat which has won its reprieve for another night and he hates it even more. There should be something to throw, but all that comes to hand is a book and he still maintains an academic's reverence for the printed word. Instead he vents his frustration by storming out of the flat, slamming the door as he leaves. As he goes downstairs, he is muttering, 'Bugger,' to himself. 
*
A change from the normal routine is refreshing, Mackintosh decides, peering out the bus window. A weekly exploration of another part of London should be a feature of his life. It is something he has always meant to do, but time constrains him. 
Camden Town by night. After a few drinks, it might almost seem magical. He remembers that he has not had a drink since lunchtime, though admittedly it was an unusually long lunch. His last Ecowatch lunch. That marks a giant step in his development. 
Knots of young people congregate outside the station; old men move unsteadily towards the next pub. From the bus, Mackintosh can savour the excitement of a nightlife left untasted. What comedies and tragedies are played out unbeknown to him, a few minutes from home?  Through leafless Harrington Square and desolate Hampstead Road. Euston Road marks the northern boundary of the West End. Behind the office blocks on the north side are the council flats on the site of Cumberland Market. Mackintosh wishes that he had known the old London which provided cheap lodgings for single gentlemen such as himself. Now the remaining pockets of shabby gentility are further from the centre and councils can no longer build housing where office blocks yield more profit. The thought that he was once part of the local government machine makes him shiver. From petty bureaucrat to another unemployment statistic: what a transformation in his circumstances. 
The vista changes from sixties office blocks to the Regency terraces of Regent's Park. After them come the Edwardian mansion flats. Money country. Mackintosh feels there ought to be a sleazy underside to staid Marylebone waiting for an intrepid researcher such as himself to uncover. The bus turns off Marylebone Road. He savours the decline in status as Marylebone gives way to Paddington. The shabby shops remind him of Archway, though without the latter's consoling familiarity. A corner shop has been converted into a dental surgery. It is bright with fluorescent lights, like a stage set with a dental chair at its centre, the net curtains providing a nonexistent screen over the plate glass windows which extend from floor to ceiling. Mackintosh shivers. He is glad to be passing through the area. Even the pubs exude an air of menace. After them, the pretentious terraces of Bayswater come as a relief. 
The bus pulls away, leaving Mackintosh alone in the darkened street. Now that he is alone, he feels the unease which being away from home territory always brings. West London is foreign to him as surely as being south of the Thames. He begins walking, trying to recall the layout of streets from the gazetteer. 
There are pleasures to be had in wandering unknown streets at night. People's lives are on display in lighted windows. This is bedsit country, offering a myriad of lives to explore, so long as people do not draw their curtains. The strange intimacy tantalises Mackintosh as he watches a girl bending over a sink, washing up. She is unaware or unconcerned that she can be seen from the street. He pauses, watching until she hangs up the dishcloth and turns. She gives no sign of noticing him. 
A more esoteric pleasure, less easy to enjoy at night, is to immerse himself in the architecture of the area, thinking himself into the lives of those early Victorians who built with such aspiration. Where Belgravia and Kensington prospered, Pimlico and Bayswater failed to live up to their builders' hopes. Mackintosh can imagine encouraging some earnest student to explore the paradox. Such moments bring back the pleasure of teaching.  He would return to it if so many planning schools had not closed now that comprehensive redevelopment is no longer on the agenda. Among those which remain, the fashion is to employ lecturers who look the same age as their students. Ripe maturity is no longer valued.
The editor looks surprised at this impromptu visit. 
'Thought I'd let you know what's happening,' Mackintosh explains. 
The editor opens the door wider. 'Come on in.' 
The enlargements on the walls give some individuality to what is recognisably a rented room. No woman's touch is evident to Mackintosh's untutored eye. And judging by the temperature, the editor has run out of money for the meter. 
'Sit yourself down. Do you want a drink or something?' 
'Brought my own bottle.' Mackintosh produces a bottle from his coat pocket, which lowers the editor's guard. 
'Got some glasses here,' he volunteers, rummaging in the chest of drawers. 'Don't have a lot of visitors, so I don't use them very often.' 
Mackintosh knows the feeling. He takes the opportunity to study his surroundings in more detail. The furniture is in better condition than in his own room, but uniformly austere, like a job lot from a Victorian chapel. Some of the poster-sized photographs are missing. 
'Mornington Crescent,' he says. 
'Eh?' 
He points to the photograph on the wall. 'The drinking fountain in Mornington Crescent.' 
'Much neglected, alas. Clear yourself a seat.' 
Mackintosh moves wallets of photographs from one of the chairs. The document wallets are those used at Ecowatch. He points to a photograph on top of a pile. 'Is that your girlfriend?'
'Just a whore.' 
'Ah. Sorry.' 
'There were photographs of the other girls—the ones I had the trouble about—but the police took those.' 
Mackintosh searches for suitable words of commiseration and fails. 
'Can't find any glasses,' the editor concludes, closing the last of the drawers. 'Cup all right?' 
'Great.' 
The editor wipes the inside of the cup on the hem of his pullover. 'I don't bother much about gracious living.' 
Mackintosh peels the foil off the top of the bottle. 'Got a corkscrew?' 
'Ah.' 
A further search of the chest of drawers reveals a corkscrew. Mackintosh hands over the bottle and watches with anticipation as the editor wrestles with the cork. It finally emerges with a satisfying pop: a sound indelibly associated with pleasures to come. Mackintosh licks his lips as his host pours generous measures of red wine into the cup and a mug. It is easy to understand how the church had to find a place for so sensual a pleasure in its rituals. 
'There you go.' 
Mackintosh takes the cup and raises it. 
'I don't know what we can drink to,' the editor observes gloomily.
'Doesn't matter, so long as we've got a bottle to get through.' 
Convivial silence settles over the drinkers. 
'So what's happening?' the editor asks when his mug is half empty. 
'We've gone broke.' 
'To be expected.' 
'Had a management committee meeting. The black widow was there.' 
'I bet she was rubbing her hands, metaphorically speaking.' 
'She was putting the knife in, metaphorically speaking, and loving every minute of it.' 
'How about John?' 
'Our revered director was the sacrificial lamb.' 
'That's what he's paid for.' 
'Anyway, he's out. Rob's acting director—not that there's anything left to direct.' 
The editor toys with his mug. 'Interesting experience, working for Ecowatch. Pity it's over in some ways.' 
'What was the interesting bit? I must have missed it.' 
'What the outfit could have done if there hadn't been so many compromises.' The editor breaks off. Mackintosh waits for the revelation which is sure to follow. 'There was one time I uncovered a juicy little scandal about asbestos waste being dumped in a certain left-wing London borough. Unfortunately the said London borough was contributing to our grant, so John deemed that the story couldn't be printed. 
'"You have to understand the political realities," he kept saying.' 
'Did you have a row?' Mackintosh asks, trying to summon up the improbable picture of the editor and the director locking horns. 
'Not really.' The editor gazes at his posters. 'I was too pissed off. Anyway, I got it down to a fine art. Polished off the newsletter in about two days a week and spent the rest of the time on my photography.' 
'We often wondered what you got up to.' 
'Better than sitting around the office doing crosswords.' 
Mackintosh reflects that he should have spent more time away from the office, devoting himself to his painting, but he would only have whiled away the hours in the pub. 
'Didn't feel I fitted in,' the editor is saying. 
'You didn't.'
'You noticed.'
'Mind you, it was easy to feel cooped up there—sort of intellectual claustrophobia. You weren't the only one.' Mackintosh can only dream of how much better he might have felt given the opportunity to photograph nubile girls. 
'I suppose I was the office maverick,' the editor reflects.
Mackintosh always thought of himself in that role, though however much he bucked and kicked, he never threw over the traces. It is a daunting thought: Mackintosh the conservative. A sign of growing older. With his cup refilled, he settles back to contemplate his new-found status. 
'I'm glad you came,' his host confides. 'Needed a bit of company. I'm getting maudlin.'
'I'm not surprised.'
'Never got to know people at the office all that well.' 
'Wouldn't go out drinking with us, would you?' 
'True. Always had other things to do, somehow.' 
'Better than drinking?' 
'It doesn't fire the imagination like going for the perfect photograph or nosing out some piece of news anybody else has discovered.' 
'That's where we're different,' Mackintosh decides. 'I think of all the things I ought to be doing—then I go to the pub and don't do them.' 
'Fatal weakness.' 
'It's the atmosphere in the pub that seduces me. Sucks you in. All human frailty is there. And there's the beer, of course.' 
'You paint, don't you?' 
Mackintosh confesses that he does. 
'Yet you'd rather be in a pub?' 
'One of those paradoxes of life. Why are we such contradictory beings?' 
'Don't think I like people very much.' The editor stares moodily into his mug. 'I'm one of life's loners.' 
'Think I am as well,' Mackintosh admits. 'Loners like pubs: it's a way of enjoying companionship without closeness.' 
'Sounds like a whore's life.' 
'Are they loners?' 
'I can never be sure. Are they searching out a moment of paid companionship, or is the important thing that none of their little liaisons last?' The editor stares at a photograph on the wall: a woman, starkly lit, leaning against railings outside a hotel, with the clock tower of King's Cross station in the background. 'Look at her. What do you think?' 
Mackintosh looks. 
'Can you tell?' the editor wants to know. 
'No.' 
'In the perfect photograph you'd get inside her soul.' 
'Then there'd be no mystery left. You've got to keep the mystery.' 
They stare at the image once more. 'I captured one moment of her life,' the editor muses. 'One moment in the life of a stranger.' 
'You've done better than me. I'm no good at spontaneity.' 
'You'd think it would be easy with a camera—just point it and shoot—but if you're not careful, everything looks contrived.' 
'How about your photographs of girls: the ones that caused all the trouble?' 
'Interesting challenge. You aim for eroticism, but you try to achieve naturalness. That's why I liked it.' 
'And the police took them all?' 
'Together with the Nikon and most of my equipment.' 
Mackintosh feels the pangs of disappointment. 
'I'm having withdrawal symptoms,' the editor confesses. 'I keep seeing things I want to photograph. I feel impotent without a camera.' 
Mackintosh is not sure whether he would feel equally lost without paints or a sketch pad. At least he might go to the pub with less of a guilty conscience. 
'Went wandering around today looking at things I'd photograph if I had a camera,' the editor reveals. 
'Perhaps I ought to do that—just wander around.' 
'Don't you?' 
'Used to.' Mackintosh stares into his wine as he contemplates this further portend of advancing years and wonders how much he will need to drink for it to work its obliterative magic. 
'I can't imagine not doing it. That's how I spend my weekends when I'm not in the darkroom.' 
'How about your girlfriend?' 
'What girlfriend?' 
Mackintosh can imagine the editor's routine: the search for subjects to photograph, the return to the room to snatch a meal at the end of the afternoon and the evening spent on darkroom work. He envies such dedication. 
'And this is the result.' The editor indicates the wallets. 'Take a look. See what you think.' 
Mackintosh puts down his cup to lift onto his lap one of the wallets which he displaced. Countless images of buildings and townscapes slither out. 
'Mornington Crescent again.' He holds up another photograph of the horse trough. 'Just passed it in the bus.' 
'I've done a lot of work around north London. I walk along the canal towpath and see where I end up. Looked around Holland Park and Chelsea too. They've got a different sort of atmosphere. I was hoping to spend more time there. All those classy girls. You've only got to point the Nikon at them and they think they're going to be on the front page of Vogue.' 
'I used to go over the river sometimes to look at the architecture,' Mackintosh recalls. 'Places like Surbiton.' 
'Ah, Surbiton. Suburb of dreams.' 
'Well-preserved station—1930s, Southern Railway.' 
'I'll take your word on it.' 
'You're not into trains?' 
'Not really. Gave away my model railway when I was a kid, which got me into trouble because I'd only just been given it. Didn't interest me for some reason.' 
Mackintosh is sifting through the contents of the wallet. 'You've spent a lot of time in Camden.' 
'I like it. Good atmosphere. Good vibes, as they used to say. The contrasts always get me: tourists' Camden at weekends with its markets and antique shops compared with residents' Camden on weekdays. There's the rich and famous on one side of the High Street, the Cypriots and the council estates on the other, with everybody shopping together in Inverness Street. And there's dossers' Camden among all the trendiness: the hostels and the winos lying in doorways. I get fascinated by the way the underclass thread through ordinary people's worlds. Love it.' A wistful smile comes to his face. 
'We're two of a kind,' says Mackintosh. 
'Kindred spirits.' 
'Have you got the remains of the Bedford in your collection?' 
'The Bedford?' 
'Music hall in Camden High Street. You can still find traces around the back of the Abbey National.' 
'Didn't know anything about it.' 
'You ought to take a look.' 
'If I get off.' 
'Always something sad about black and white photographs.' Mackintosh fingers one of a Camden alley as though expecting to feel the stucco peeling from once-proud houses. Except for the plastic rubbish sacks on the steps, it could be an image from a past age. 
'You're one of nature's pessimists.' 
Mackintosh concedes the point. 
'And you're running out of wine.' 
The mug is refilled. The two men stare at the photographs. 
'There's something about seeing places you know in photographs,' Mackintosh muses, lingering over familiar scenes of Islington and Holloway. 'Gives you a kick.' 
'You try to make people look at them in a different way, otherwise there's no point in photographing them.' 
'I can understand that. There's something about discovering that someone else sees the world in the same way. Gets over the feeling that you're the only sane person in the asylum.' 
'Here are my latest and possibly my last efforts.' The editor presents another wallet to Mackintosh, who sifts through images of West Indians with chins like emery paper in the harsh light, of transvestites in their finery, market stalls, flourishing restaurants and dying cinemas. 'Don't know whether it's still got the atmosphere that Colin MacInnes found.  Plenty of menace when you get up to Ladbroke Grove, but I'm not so sure about the vibrancy.' 
Mackintosh looks at these impressions of the world beneath the flyovers: a place of squalor, drugs, graffiti and violence. The photographs could be of any city the world over. His academic days come back vividly: those long arguments with students and fellow lecturers about the causes of urban decay. Sometimes he scandalised his sociologically-trained colleagues by suggesting that the cause was the people who lived in inner cities. The memory makes him grin. 
'What is it?' the editor prompts. 
'Nothing much. Just remembering what planners used to say about inner cities.' 
'You mean they said something useful?' 
'I was one of them, you know.' 
The editor raises his eyebrows. 
'We thought we were doing right,' Mackintosh remembers, feeling bound to defend his erstwhile profession. 'We were in some ways. We got rid of a lot of substandard housing and built some decent new towns.' 
'That was before my time. All I know are the results.' 
Mackintosh feels older than ever. To change the subject he asks, 'What happened to your photographs of whores around King's Cross?' 
The editor thrusts yet another wallet towards him. Mackintosh hopes for flesh, but is  disappointed to find only portraits. He lingers over the girls lying on beds in hotel rooms. 
'Wonder the police didn't take those as well,' the editor complains. 'They must have spent enough time going through everything judging by the mess they made.' 
'What did you talk about to the girls?' 
'We didn't talk all that much. If you do, they think you're probing. Anyway, the photographs should tell it all.' He watches Mackintosh's face. 'It was interesting getting around the problems: lighting, stopping the girls from going for the obvious poses, that sort of thing.' 
'They didn't mind being photographed?' 
'I think they got used to me in the end.' 
Mackintosh wonders whether he should have persevered in his excursion to the back streets of King's Cross. 
'We seem to have run out of wine.' The editor holds the bottle upside down. 
'Ah.' 
'I think I might have another bottle somewhere.' 
'That's what I like to hear.' 
His host embarks on another search of the chest of drawers. 'Police turned everything over,' he explains apologetically. 'Can't find anything now.' 
'They didn't take the booze, did they?' 
'I wouldn't put it past them. If it is here, I shall find it, never fear.' 
Mackintosh watches anxiously as the editor turns his attention to the wardrobe. It is vast, dark, and the size of a confessional. Inside is a modest array of clothes, all of which Mackintosh remembers from the editor's occasional forays into the office. 
'Told you.' The searcher emerges in triumph clutching a bottle. 'Not the same unfortunately. The cheapest of the cheap, but no matter.' 
Mackintosh wonders if any wine could be cheaper than the bottle he brought. He watches with anticipation as the editor tackles the cork and refills the cup and the mug. Judging by the taste, the wine was cheaper than his own. 
'At least it's alcoholic,' the editor says, pulling a face. 
'Where did you get it?' 
'Down the supermarket. I keep a bottle in case somebody comes.' 
'To make them go away again, you mean?' 
'It's all right so long as you don't start with it.' 
They sample it again. 
'It's somehow appropriate,' Mackintosh reflects. 'Reminds you that things can only get worse.' 
'That sums up how I feel: one of life's failures.' 
'I was being rhetorical. You're a good journalist.' 
'Ex-editor of a tin-pot newsletter that's only produced so the director could get his hands on the grant. He didn't care a toss about it.' 
'You got some stories before the nationals.' 
'Competent journalist, average photographer, prospective jailbird—that's me.' 
'Failed planner, failed lecturer, failed artist and researcher for a failed charity—that's my illustrious career.' 
'Makes life sound pretty pathetic, doesn't it?' 
'You've created a lot.' 
The editor shakes his head. 'Nothing very important.' 
'All these.' Mackintosh taps the photographs. 
'They're nothing.' 
'And you're young.' 
The editor grins. 'That's relative.' 
'I've got on the wrong side of forty,' Mackintosh reveals. 'And what have I done?' 
'What?' 
'Nothing.' 
They contemplate the inscrutable ways of fate. 
'You haven't got another bottle, have you?' Mackintosh asks. 
'No.' 
'We can get melancholy on two bottles, but we'll need more than that to get really plastered.' 
'Means going out to the supermarket.' 
'You don't want to start going out at this stage. It's a very delicate stage in getting plastered.' 
'What do we do then?' 
'We drink this and think about it again.' 
* 
A mistake, Dylan decides. He should learn to let opportunities slip by when they patently will not lead to anything. He let himself be led astray by curiosity: he wanted to see whether Sue was any different out of the office when the sessions in the Rising Sun should have demonstrated that she is not. His only consolation is that he has given her an evening to remember. It cost enough. When his thoughts turn to the dirty clothes piling up in his room, he reflects on the irony of being with a girl and wishing that he had gone to the launderette instead. Not that launderettes are without their pleasures: attractive girls can be captive there for the time it takes to wash their clothes. He has been known to go there three times a week for the right candidate. 
'Have you been here before?' Sue asks. 
'Once or twice.'  He smiles at her unerring choice of the most clichéd line in the book. Good old Sue. 
'The food's nice.' 
'It's pretty good.' 
Sue is pleased that this time she really can tell her flatmates about her evening out, though she has qualms about what might happen after the meal. Dylan is the sort who needs a Fiona to deal with him. 
'What's happening about tomorrow?' she asks. 
'How do you mean?' 
'About work.' 
'There isn't any.' 
'John hasn't said so officially.' 
'No need, is there? Anyway, he's not in charge any more.' 
'Rob might want some help.' 
'If you go in, you'll be the only one.' 
'You think?' 
'I'm certain.' 
She tries to smile, not sure whether he is joking. 
'Go and enjoy yourself,' he urges. 'Go shopping.' 
'What are you going to do?' 
'Sign on and then see a film or something.' 
'What about finding a job?' 
He shrugs. 'Who knows? I might go freelance.' 
Sue tries to put the future out of her mind. She watches Dylan's attention being drawn to the girls at other tables and she looks down at her food, frustrated by her own lack of attraction. Fiona would hold his interest by flirting with him. She would make sure that he found her fun. Sue tries to think of funny anecdotes, but the only ones she knows are those which Dylan told at the office and they are all dirty. 
The night is young, Dylan reminds himself. Samantha and Paula Ann will still be getting ready. There is time to redeem the situation if he rings one of them within the next half hour. And if he draws blank, there is always Julie. 
Sue no longer feels hungry. She puts down her knife and fork and pushes the plate away. The movement attracts Dylan's attention. 
'That was lovely.' She wipes her lips on the serviette and sips the wine as slowly as she can, hoping that he will not press her to drink any more. With the rest of the evening ahead of her, she wants to keep a clear head. 
'Have some more wine,' Dylan urges, emptying the bottle into her glass before she can object. 
'That's enough for me.' She tries to stop him, putting her hand over the glass in the way she has seen done in films. Wine trickles over her fingers. 
'You need it. Relaxes you. Breaks down your inhibitions.' 
She smiles. 
'You look as if you don't believe me.' 
'I do.' 
'You need to lose your hang-ups.' 
She looks down again, embarrassed by having her weaknesses mentioned. 
'You ought to enjoy yourself more.' 
'I do in my own way.' 
'You're too good-natured. You want to tell people to fuck off instead of always going along with them.' 
Silence settles over them again. Dylan tries to decide which girl to phone first. 
'I thought you'd be out with Mackintosh and Rob tonight,' Sue says, draining her glass. 
'Why? 
'I don't know. I just thought ...' 
'We had our goodbye drink, didn't we? We won't be keeping in touch.' 
She stares at him, surprised. 
'Why should we?' he asks. 'Once you leave a job, there's no point pretending you're going to see people again because you never do.' 
She wants to ask whether he wants to see her again, but she cannot summon the courage. 
'Sure you wouldn't like some more wine?' he asks. 
'No thanks. It was lovely.' 
'I suppose we'd better make a move.' 
Sue feels that a fairy tale is ending. She watches as Dylan pays, not sure whether she should offer something towards the bill. Her anxiety heightens as he helps her on with her coat. As they leave she is awed by the informality with which he chats to the restaurant staff. 
'There we are then.' Dylan looks at her quizzically. They are standing on the pavement outside the restaurant.
'Do you want to come back to my flat?' she asks, hoping that her voice does not betray her nervousness. She clutches her bag tightly and prays that one of her flatmates will be home. Otherwise they will not believe that she has had a visitor and she will have to spend the evening alone with him. 
'I've got some other things planned for later on. Thanks anyway.' 
Sue is relieved and disappointed. She tells herself that she is being silly and manages a smile. 'Thanks for the meal and everything.' 
'A pleasure,' Dylan responds.  
'Which way are you going?' 
'Where's the nearest tube station?' 
'Which line do you want?' 
'The Bakerloo, but I can change.' 
'Green Park is your nearest. I'll walk along with you if you like.' 
'If you just point me in the right direction.' 
'Down the bottom of the road to Piccadilly and turn right. You can't miss it. Or I can get you a taxi if you like.' 
'It's all right, thanks.' She steps back from him. 'I'd better be going then. Thanks again for everything.' 
'Good luck.' 
'Thanks. Goodbye.' 
'Bye.' 
She turns away and hurries towards the station, not looking back. Her life at Ecowatch has ended. 
*
Cunning, Rob decides. When Jeanne said she wanted to use the car, he told her that he had to go out. 
'Can't you go on the bus?' she asks.
'No.' 
'I thought you didn't like me walking home alone at night?' 
No answer. Winding her up. 
'Where are you going?' she persists. 
'Just out. One or two things to do.' 
'You use the car for work every day. I only want it a couple of evenings a week.' 
'This happens to be one of the few evenings when I need it.' 
She throws the keys on the table. 
'What time is it your class finishes?' he asks innocently. 
'Why?' 
'I could meet you.' 
'Don't worry—I'll find someone to give me a lift.' 
He smiles, thinking that he detects panic in her expression. 
'It's no trouble.' 
'I don't know when we'll finish—the discussion sometimes goes on after the class officially closes.' 
'Doesn't the caretaker mind?' 
'How do you mean?' 
'They don't like people hanging about after classes finish.' 
'I don't know what you're talking about.' 
'Nothing. Just talking rubbish as usual.' 
'You're in a funny mood.' She studies him for a moment, her brew furrowed. 'I'd better go, seeing as I've got to walk. We'll talk about it later.' 
His calmness surprises him. No following her out to watch her walking down the road. He even finds time to glance at the headlines of the newspaper before going out to the car. Catching her up is easy as he knows where she is going. Less easy is keeping a steady distance between them: he feels conspicuous, driving slowly down a deserted street. He wonders what he would do if somebody did attack her, but he comes to no conclusion. 
Having assured himself that Jeanne really is going to the school, he goes home to pack. A rucksack is more suited to his spirit of the moment, but not being a rucksack type, he has to content himself with a suitcase. There are weighty decisions to be made, for what goes into that case will be all that he is salvaging from his present life. Suddenly so many things which he had not considered before assume importance. He needs a suit for attending interviews, a track suit, his favourite trainers, herbal tablets for his sleeping and cream for his athlete's foot which flares up every few weeks. He spends an hour packing and unpacking. Old habits like having plenty of spare socks die hard. 
With an hour left before Jeanne's return, he roams the flat, trying to decide between going for a drink and being alone. He wants to celebrate, though his last experience of the local puts him off. Now that he is leaving, he feels nostalgia for his home surroundings. Little jobs which remain undone seem to clamour for his attention: sealing around the bath, tightening the loose switch in the hall and repairing the broken drawer in the kitchen. He has to practise his relaxation exercises before such matters assume their rightful unimportance. 
For the last time he slumps in front of the television, his mind only half taking in the images on screen. At least they stop him from thinking about tomorrow. By the time he tires of the programme, there is no time to go for a drink. Quarter past nine. Jeanne should be finishing her class soon. Two competing scenarios run in his mind: meeting her so that he can drive her home and announce that he is leaving, or watching to see who gives her a lift. He chooses the latter. It does not occur to him until he is manoeuvring the Citro n CV into the darkest corner of the school car park that he should have left a note on the bed. If she read it before she drew the curtains, he would have the satisfaction of viewing her reaction through the windows. 
The healthy eating course is the key to their failure of their marriage. Nothing was wrong before it began. It was on the course that she met her lover. He might be the tutor, or one of the students. Rob wonders whether he will catch them together. He settles lower in the seat so that he can keep an eye on the school entrance over the dashboard and pulls the coat more tightly around his shoulders. This is one of those occasions when he wishes that he had a car with better heating and fewer draughts; then he remembers that soon he may not be able to afford a car at all. Nothing is certain any more. 
A few weeks earlier he saw a tramp asleep across a doorway in York Way, beside King's Cross station. It was not an unusual sight, but it lingered in his memory. The man was Rob's age. He wore a mohair suit of the type which had been fashionable ten years ago, but the pockets were torn and it was stained and shiny with grime like his shirt. The soles were coming off his shoes, revealing bare feet ingrained with dirt. He held a wine bottle like a baby clutching a teddy bear in his sleep. Even with the relative security of a job at Ecowatch, Rob could feel how the vagaries of life might sweep him along uncontrollably, so that one day he would occupy that doorway. He shivered. 
The prospect sleeping in a doorway is closer now. The memory of the vagrant disturbs him, but he knows that living at the flat cannot continue now that Jeanne has become a stranger. He has deceived himself. Being happily married was a mirage. Really he is the solitary type. Ecowatch attracted them. The editor was always happier with his own company. Rob has a sneaking regard for the editor and wishes that he had got to know him better. Mackintosh was a solitary, but being like Mackintosh holds less appeal. Sue probably got on better with herself than with other people, judging by the absence of any boyfriend. Dylan was different from the others, but Rob never trusted Dylan. Then there was the director, or rather the ex-director—
The first students appear, buttoning their coats against the cold and hurrying to their cars. Rob watches the swing doors of the entrance more intently, conscious that his heart is thumping. He tries to imagine her new beau. For the first time it occurs to him that he knows little about Jeanne's taste in men. Even before their marriage, he never asked about her previous boyfriends. He wonders whether his lack of interest was abnormal. Perhaps she was expecting him to ask. And should he have made more of an effort to keep their marriage intact? If he had gone to the classes with her, none of the recent events might have been set in motion. 
The students are in groups. Once they are outside, it is easy to miss one person in the darkness. Rob's eyes grow tired from darting between one figure and another. He sits upright to relieve the pressure on his back and stretches. 
The sight of her draws him back to alertness. Now his heart pounds as though he has run twice around Parliament Hill Fields. She is with a crowd of people standing inside the entrance. It is like a mime being enacted before him as the crowd disperses, splitting into twos and threes. Jeanne walks with a man in his sixties: still tall, a neat beard, his hair shining silver in the floodlights. He talks animatedly, throwing the long scarf around his neck as he must have done as a student in his youth. Jeanne is listening intently and nodding encouragement. When she glances at him, she smiles with that expression of wonderment which Rob remembers from the times when she looked at him. How it lifted his heart; how it makes him jealous now. He wants to drive at the couple, but something paralyses him so that all he can do is to watch helplessly. They get into a Volvo. Jeanne sits in the front passenger seat. She is laughing, almost as though she knows that Rob is watching and she wants to taunt him. He hears the engine starting. He ducks, hoping that Jeanne will not notice the Citro n. As the Volvo slows by the gate, he ventures a look over the dashboard: she is talking too animatedly to notice anything. 
There is no point in waiting any longer. Rob stretches. The excitement of his adventure has turned to sourness. If she had left the school alone, he might have gone home and made some excuse for being out, but now it is too late. There is no one he knows well enough to stay with. The notion of going back to the Ecowatch office passes through his mind, but it is a dead place now; he wants nothing more to do with it. The car is too small and cold for sleeping in, even if he could sleep. The pub holds no attraction: he no longer wants to have people around him, in spite of the appealing prospect of losing himself to alcohol. Better to have part of his mind occupied with the mechanics of driving and to distance himself from everything which has happened. It is a strange desire for somebody who does not normally enjoy driving. For once he wishes that there was a radio in the car. Several times talked with Jeanne about getting one, but they decided that it would only be stolen. 
Will he take the A1 or M1? Some of the excitement returns as he toys with the practical decisions. How far north will he get in a night? Yorkshire still appeals—or he might go on to Newcastle. He toys with the idea of ringing Jeanne before he leaves London, but he decides against. She will be with her lover. Better to ring her later from a motorway service area, when it is too late for him to change his mind. Surprise her. He smiles. His colleagues at Ecowatch would be proud of him. 
* 
London pulses with the merry whirl of social and other intercourse mustered to entertain those citizens not watching television. From the red plush womb of a refurbished and almost deserted Clerkenwell pub, the director tries to work out how to make Judith leave the flat without arousing her suspicions—and what he will say to his staff in the morning, should anybody turn up. When he discovered the office was empty after the management committee broke up, he knew that they had been listening. He wonders whether they often listened to what went on in his room. He knows that he ought to show his successor the ropes, but it was a silly decision to appoint Rob as acting director. The accountant has a low-calibre mind, but Mrs Montford can discover that for herself. 
Finding the long-cherished academic post in the States has become a pressing matter, but the director's concentration is not what it was. Everything is spinning, including the bar furniture. With great deliberation he lifts the whisky to his lips—and misses. It drips off his chin and onto his trousers. 
'Bugger,' he says to the world in general. 'Bugger it.' 
*
Similar sentiments are uttered by two ex-Ecowatch workers in an unrefurbished pub in Notting Hill, where the beer is cheap and the clientele mainly Irish. 
'I go on the dole—I paint,' says Mackintosh, trying to focus on his companion. 'You go in prison and you photograph.' 
'I can't when I'm in prison—I haven't got the Nikon.' 
'Ah.' 
'Easier to paint in prison than take pictures.' 
'Fuck all this earning your living business.' 
'It's a pity about all those little girls though.' 
'What—what's a pity about them?' 
'They're not here.' 
'Very true.' Mackintosh tries to take in the salient points of his surroundings. 'Only a few old tarts in here. Perhaps we ought to move on.' 
'We won't ...' The editor searches for the right words. 'We won't get there.' 
'True. Very true. In that case we'll have another one here and dream of little girls. I wish I'd been with you.' 
The editor peers at him. 'You are with me.' 
'With all the little girls, I mean.' 
'Little girls.' The editor lapses into reverie, muttering quietly to himself. Mackintosh stares earnestly at the bar and wonders whether he will be capable of ordering another round. 
* 
In West Hampstead, Sue lies on her bed in the silent flat and cries. The Evening Standard is open beside her. The pencil she used for marking likely jobs and flats has disappeared amongst the bedclothes. She cries for the life she has lost and for her inadequacies. There will be no more men in her life. She will concentrate on her career and become an old maid. Yet even as she makes her decision, she knows the falsity of her position. People like her become typists and secretaries. They do not have careers: they marry and raise children. Whichever way she turns, her future is bleak. 
* 
In the West End, Dylan looks admiringly down Samantha's cleavage. The right decision, he decides. Samantha looks admiringly up at him and smiles, as though the differences have never been. Around them the couples draw closer amongst the flashing lights. The music precludes conversation; Dylan determines to keep it like that. He will make it up to Paula Ann at the weekend. There is some way to go before he knows her as well as Samantha. He looks forward to that fascinating and endless journey. Sometimes he tries to understand why this exploration of the minds and bodies of girls gives some people such anguish and unhappiness. There must be some biological law which embraces it, but he is not too concerned. Time for dancing, for being swallowed in the warm, noisy jungle, where the dramas of the day may be forgotten. What is important is the nearness of Samantha: her scent, her warmth, the way she touches him and the way she looks at him. She belongs to him and for a while he need care about nothing else. Music carries them along and life is good. 
The Ecowatch workers will not meet again.

END