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Chapter One

Stainless Steel

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Early one summer evening, nine months after the operation she had begun to fear would leave her permanently listless, Kitty Crozier was overcome by the sweet scent of angels' trumpets. She looked about her to find the source of the smell, so familiar from childhood, before she came to understand it was of her own imagining. There were no flowers in the room. There were no datura plants in the garden, or in any of the other gardens along the street. Memory, and memory alone, had brought the loved and hated perfume to her.

    She had been thinking of her mother. The dark-haired Eleanor Crozier was taking her two small daughters, Daisy and Kitty, to their new home, their stately home, in the country. 'You have to thank your dear dead grandfather for this,' she told them as they stared in wonder at the grand house. 'I bought it with the money he put in trust for me. The money he made in India.'

    (Daisy and Kitty were to believe for years what their mother and grandmother would have them believe — that Kenneth McGregor had died, as many settlers did, of malaria. Daisy Hopkins, visiting Darjeeling in middle age, learned from an elderly missionary how the dedicated tea planter had occupied his last hours on Christmas Day 1938. He had eaten porridge, prepared by his Nepalese cook, for breakfast. He had bathed — the bath drawn by a servant — and dressed. The morning being fine, he had walked to St Andrew's, the Presbyterian church where he and his fellow Scots regularly worshipped. Hehad joined in the singing of carols and heard the rector warn from the pulpit of the terrible trouble fermenting in Europe. The service over, Kenneth McGregor was given lunch by Gavin and Elsie Anderson, friends of his parents. No meal of Mrs Anderson's was complete without broth, and the broth that day — the missionary remembered, for he had tasted it — was one of her rarities. Mrs Anderson, God rest her, had stored the smoked fish that was its glory in her larder, beneath a muslin food cover that debarred even the smallest insect. When she lifted the lid of the tureen and revealed the precious flakes of haddock, it was as if the four of them — they each remarked on it — were near the faraway North Sea again. The next moment they were laughing at their foolish fancy.

    'I do meander,' confessed the missionary. Then, sensing her impatience, he said: 'Your grandfather took his life, Mrs Hopkins. We used to say there were two things that sent white people to their deaths — mosquitoes and misery. Poor Kenneth was afflicted by the latter. He wanted to be with his wife and child, and they weren't here. He wasn't always at his ease on the McGregor plantation. That much I saw in his grey-blue eyes, but never learned from his lips. He was a man of discreet feeling. On that worst of Christmases he drank whisky and sang with us around the piano, and some time that night he went up to a spot on what we used to call Suicide Hill and put a pistol to his head. It was, if I may be flippant, a popular place with the seriously depressed. Indeed no, Mrs Hopkins, he did not die of malaria.')

    Kitty Crozier asked her mother why she had bought them a palace to live in, and Eleanor replied that she had always dreamt of living somewhere with great big rooms and with a great big garden, and now her dream had come true. 'You can share it with me, Kitty. And you, Daisy. The three of us are going to have wonderful fun at Alder Court.'

    They were standing together, hand in hand, on the back terrace. Kitty, breaking free, saw flowers that looked like bells. She wondered if you could ring them and whether they made a noise.

    'They're angels' trumpets, Kitty. They're silent angels' trumpets. I should imagine nobody hears them except angels.'

    'I can smell them,' Daisy said. 'Can't you smell them, Kitty?'

    'Yes,' she answered, and began to cry. She was suddenly aware that her father was missing, and as the strange smell became more powerful so did her sense of the loss of him increase.

    'What's the matter, Kitty? What's wrong?'

    'It's him's the matter. I bet it's him,' Daisy ventured.

    'It isn't, it isn't.' Kitty glowered at her sister. 'There's no matter. Nothing's wrong.'

    Eleanor Crozier praised her lying child for being brave: 'You are my brave girl.' Those five words, lightly and tenderly spoken, caused Kitty's tears to stop, her anger to vanish. Hearing them in London, in her mind, on another July evening, she was struck once more by her own childish percipience, for she had recognised her mother's praise, bestowed upon her at the age of five, as the surest evidence of love.

'It is you.'

    The man who called out to Kitty Crozier as she walked distractedly in Green Park was picking up litter from the grass with a long spike.

    'It is you,' he repeated, approaching her.

    'Yes, it's me,' she responded. 'Whoever you suppose I am.'

    'You are the beautiful woman in the bed. I watched you sleeping.'

    'I'm not, and you didn't. You've been watching in someone else's bedroom, not mine.'

    'It was a bed in the hospital. I was working there as a porter. I stopped doing my work to look at you. I thought you were beautiful. I still think you are beautiful.'

    She remembered him now — as the stranger who had taken his glinting smile out of the ward.

    'It pleases me to see you again. I call myself Virgil Florescu.'

    He pronounced his first name in a way she hadn't heard before, and she knew at once that she would be using his way of saying it in the weeks, months and, perhaps, years to come. 'Virgil,' she said. 'I'm Kitty. I'm Kitty Crozier.'

    'Now I must tell you, Kitty Crozier, what I have to tell you. I wish to be with you. I am sincere. I wish to be with you, if you will allow me, if you will please grant me the honour.'

    His words came in a rush. When she was sure they had ceased, she said she couldn't stay and talk to him as she had an appointment to keep. 'Let me give you my address and number. I have a pen, Virgil, but no paper to write on.'

    'I have plenty of paper, Kitty Crozier.' He lifted up the spike and picked off the wrapping for a bar of Swiss chocolate. 'Take this. It is large enough.'

    (She would see the Lindt wrapper again, after he was gone from her life. It would fall out of his copy of Miorita, the little book of songs and ballads that once belonged to his mother. She would resist the urge to tear it into pieces.)

    'Please, Kitty Crozier, make my back your desk.'

    A moment passed before she did so; before she pressed the scrap of paper against his bumpy spine and wrote on it. In that moment, she wondered if she ought to be cautious, sensible, reserved. She decided, instead, on recklessness.

    'I will telephone you, Kitty Crozier.'

    'Yes,' she replied and added, 'You really must. I'll be at home tomorrow evening, Virgil.'

    She imagined her sister admonishing her as she headed towards the gate near the Ritz. She made Daisy remind her that she had been foolish, worse than foolish, all those years ago with that kaftanned creature, Freddy, and now here she was, losing her senses over a stranger from a foreign country, from Romania by the sound of it; a man with no prospects, no future, who was working in the lowliest of jobs. He's a labourer, Kitty, she could hear Daisy insist; a picker-up of other people's rubbish: whatever is possessing you?

    'I hope I'll discover,' she answered aloud.

Virgil Florescu phoned Kitty Crozier shortly after six that Tuesday evening and arrived at her house less than an hour later. 'I have seen a man with rings in his ears and rings through his nostrils and a ring on his lip,' he told her excitedly, as she opened the front door. 'On his lip, Kitty Crozier. On his upper lip, on his top one, he wears a ring. Think of him eating, think of him drinking, think of him kissing —' He paused. 'I think, and I am confused. I am in total darkness thinking of a ring in such a spot. I invited him to enlighten me. I asked him why he has the ring on his lip, and he shrugged his shoulders and said "Because". Then he stopped. I repeated my question and got the same response: "Because, because, because." I shall never know his reason, Kitty Crozier — the because he is hiding behind his "because". It was a delightful encounter, though — especially delightful.'

    'Come in, Virgil.'

    'You could have given me a false address and a false number. But you didn't.'

    'No, I didn't. Of course I didn't.'

    'I am glad. I was happy to hear it was you when I telephoned. I almost expected to hear the voice of someone else. I almost expected to hear no one at all.'

    (He had wholly expected that the numerals would end for him in nothing. Why should he have expected otherwise? He had embarrassed her, and from that embarrassment had come the mythical house in a mythical street with a phantom telephone and, probably, a made-up name for its owner as well. He had doubted that the beautiful woman he had first seen sleeping in the hospital was even called Kitty Crozier. The 'Kitty' and the 'Crozier' had rushed into her head while the madman with the spike was staring at her — of that he had convinced himself as he watched her walk briskly away. It was too much to expect that she had been completely honest with him.)

    'You are Kitty?' he asked when he was in the hallway.

    'Yes, I am Kitty. I was definitely Kitty when I last looked in the mirror.'

    'Kitty Crozier?'

    'Yes, yes, yes. Yes, and yes, and yes. A thousand times yes, Virgil — if it really is Virgil Florescu I'm trying to convince.'

    'I am he.'

    'I don't think it actually worries me what your name is. But I do like the sound of Virgil.'

    He took her hands and kissed them, and then they embraced. 'I assume we have sorted out our identities,' she said, leading him upstairs. 'Some sad people never seem to.'

    She wiped the tears from his face with the edge of a sheet when they had finished making love. He assured her, again and again, that they were tears of gratitude. He was not unhappy. He was thankful.

    'Are you hungry, Virgil? Have you eaten today?'

    'Some fruit. Some biscuits.'

    'That's not enough. I shall cook us supper. Do you like steak? Beef steak?'

    There was a silence before he answered. 'I cannot.' He shook his head slowly. 'Not beef. Not lamb. Not pork. I cannot eat such meat. I have a reason, Kitty. Perhaps, one day, I will tell it to you. Please do not ask me to do so now, not now that I am happy.'

    'I can make you an omelette, Virgil. I can make you a delicious Spanish omelette.'

    'That I should prefer. Fish I can eat, and any bird that has flown free. But not those others.'

    In the kitchen, she gave him a bottle of Saint Amour to open. She drew his attention to the label and laughed. 'I bought it this afternoon. In anticipation, I suppose.'

    He watched her prepare the meal. 'You are serious with food, as my mother was.'

    'Was? Is she dead?'

    'She is.'

    (If he had stated, as he nearly stated, that she had died in life, Kitty would have stopped doing her delicate work with onions, peppers and potatoes, and asked him what he meant. It was best, at present, to say, simply, that yes, she is dead.)

    'Will it upset you, Virgil, if I have steak? I'm eating it once a week, on my doctor's instructions.'

    'You must do as your doctor commands. You must understand, beautiful Kitty Crozier, it is my problem only.'

    'An allergy, is it? An aversion?'

    'An aversion. Precisely.'

    'When you come here again there won't be any meat. I promise.'

    'You wish me to come here again?'

    'I do.'

    'You are kind to me.'

    'I'm being kind to myself, I hope, Virgil. I haven't been so kind to myself in ages.'

    (Not, she might have said, since the days with Freddy — the days that came to an abrupt end when he decided, against everything she thought she knew of his character, to become a responsible person. He'd left her a note with the message that he'd seen the light and for the good of his soul he had to follow it to north-east Africa.)

    'Where are you living in London?'

    'In rooms. In lots of rooms. At the moment I am in a room in Hammersmith. The property is owned by Mr Nicos Razelos, an Athenian Greek with a magnificent belly. He calls it his promontory, Kitty, and he laughs when the buttons on his silk shirts give up the struggle of containing it. Last Saturday morning he lost three all at once — pop, pop, pop, they went, like three tiny bullets being fired. He has this vast stomach, this promontory which he strokes and caresses, and yet he moves on his dainty feet with the grace of a ballet dancer. He is a diverting individual.'

    'Why rooms, Virgil? Why lots of them?'

    'I do not care to grow attached to a place. I fear becoming, as you say, settled. I fear most the sadness of leaving. That is why I leave each room without anguish, without melancholy. I go on to the next one in a spirit of discovery, though what I discover is not always — which English word shall I use? — inspiring. Inspiring, yes. I am not always inspired when I open the door on the latest room. I am often greeted with nothing to inspire inspiration.' He smiled his full, glinting smile. 'I shall be gone from Hotel Aphrodite very soon.'

    'Is it made of silver, Virgil?'

    'Silver? Is what made of silver? The hotel?'

    'Your tooth. The one that glints when you smile.'

    'Silver,' he shouted. 'Silver! Silver, Kitty? You think the dentist worked with silver? You think I have precious silver in my mouth?'

    'I wondered if—'

    'If it was silver. I'm sorry, Kitty, but I must laugh.'

    He sniggered to start with, then he began to splutter, then he said 'Silver' to himself and this released the promised laughter. It started deep in his throat, but in an extraordinary moment became almost falsetto. It was the noise of a boy soprano, his voice not yet broken, his laughter high-pitched and pure. Then the noise was a man's noise once more, followed by a man's loud, satisfied sigh.

    'I assume that the tooth is not made of silver,' she remarked when he was finally silent.

    'You are correct in your assumption, Kitty Crozier. My shining tooth, my Communist tooth, my tooth that is the gift of the kind and merciful state, which is now led by the kind and merciful Conducãtor, is made of a more lasting metal than silver.'

    (The Conducãtor, whose name Virgil Florescu refused to speak, was to become a presence in her life for two whole years — a familiar, absent presence. He would be the subject of stories, of cautionary tales, of fantasies Virgil insisted were true in every detail. 'I am a truth-teller, Kitty,' her lover would remind her, 'even when I am allowing myself the luxury of a little invention.' The Conducãtor's lady, the renowned scientist, would be there at her husband's side, offering him on all occasions, public or private, the approving look, the encouraging gesture. The Conducãtor's consort had also sacrificed her right to a merely human name — a name such as Virgil Florescu, or Kitty Crozier, or that of any person who wasn't the Conducãtor or the Conducãtor's wife.)

    'A much, much humbler metal than silver. My tooth is composed of steel, Kitty, of stainless steel. Silver stains, but not stainless steel. My other teeth will decay in time, but not this one. It is impregnable. It is stronger than nature. It is resilient, as the dentist told my parents. I shall take it to my grave, and if that grave is opened in a thousand years nothing of me will be visible except my eternal Communist tooth. Let me predict that it will shine forth from the earth.'

    'Drink your wine, Virgil.'

    'Yes, yes. I have been talking, haven't I? I have been rhapsodising about my tooth.'

    'You have. What kind of artist are you?'

    'I am an artist at whatever I do. I am an artist when I sweep floors, when I push trolleys in hospitals, when I pick up litter on a spike. I try to be artistic in each of my endeavours, Kitty.'

    'Say.'

    'I have written poems. I am writing poems. Now I am hungry.'

She awoke in the night to find herself alone. Virgil's clothes were no longer where he had left them, slung across the chair. His socks and shoes weren't on the bedroom floor. There was no sound of him anywhere in the house.

    He had written her a note. It was propped up against the empty Saint Amour bottle on the kitchen table.

Beautiful Kitty Crozier [she read]. I have to return to the Aphrodite. I rise early most days in order to begin my artistic activities in the park as promptly as I can.

Kitty Crozier, you have far too many books.

I will be in touch with you.

Your Virgil.

    It was already that terrible hour, she noticed as she slid back into bed, when certain discontented people find themselves denied of sleep; when their minds are alert to nothing but the inadequacies, the failings, of the past. She was one of those people as a rule, but not on this Wednesday morning. The usual crop of nagging memories was in abeyance, was out of mind, and she felt radiant.

    She ought to have felt irresponsible, but was unconcerned about it. She had twice made love — and it seemed like love, not just that other matter, sex — with a man whose looks, whose awkward bearing, had immediately attracted her and whose genuineness she had as immediately taken on trust. She felt she knew she was right to have faith in him.

    She slept contentedly.

An aversion? Let us keep it an aversion, Kitty, for the sake of politeness. For simplicity's sake, let my private horror — my most particular horror — of slaughtered flesh remain an aversion. An aversion will do. 'Aversion' is a paler word for 'horror'. Let us use the paler word, if we have to.

    Virgil Florescu walked slowly down deserted streets. He was in no hurry to reach the Aphrodite. 'You may wonder, Mr Florescu, why I call this place a hotel,' Nicos Razelos had said as he puffed his way up the stairs in front of him. 'I mean to say, the Savoy it isn't. And never will be. No, I call it Hotel Aphrodite because Aphrodite Guest-House and Aphrodite Boarding-House don't sound right. They sound all wrong. You look like a scholar to me, Mr Florescu, and I'm sure I don't have to remind you that Aphrodite was one real classy lady. She was a goddess and ladies don't come classier than that. That's why hotel. Enjoy your stay at the Hotel Aphrodite.'

    He would be sharing the second-floor bathroom, Nicos Razelos revealed, with three other gentlemen: Mr O'Brien, Mr Taylor and Mr Khan. They had a system, a rota — first in, first out, second in, second out, and so on and so forth — which prevented unpleasant skirmishes, bangings on the door, any lowering of the tone of the establishment. He would have to fit in with the rota. 'Otherwise pandemonium.'

    'Miss Eunice, who occupies the ground-floor suite, is the only tenant with a personal bathroom. Miss Eunice is a very special lady, very special indeed, if you grab my meaning. You look like you're red-blooded to me, Mr Florescu, but I'm sure you won't take offence if I give you a friendly warning. Miss Eunice is a hands-off zone.'

    Lucky Mr Razelos, Virgil Florescu thought, to have the world reduced so; to live with the single fear that someone might steal away Miss Eunice, the frightened pet he fed with baklava. Fortunate man, to be so simply and dedicatedly jealous.

    A woman with a ruined face — a face, he could see in the half-light, a surgeon had somehow reassembled — slithered out of a shop doorway and asked him for the price of a cup of tea.

    'I have only this,' said Virgil Florescu, giving her a fifty-pence coin. 'I am not rich in money.'

    The woman grunted in reply and retreated into what he assumed must be her nightly resting place: there was a canvas chair, of the kind film directors are photographed sitting in, and a sleeping bag, and beside it a tall vase of dried flowers. Her home, such as it is; her portable home.

    'You do not have a carpet.'

    'I did have,' the woman answered. 'It wore away. It wore itself to a frazzle.'

    'Explain for me, please, "frazzle".'

    'You must be foreign if you haven't come across "frazzle". When we say a thing is frazzled, we mean it's worn-out, it's threadbare, it's frayed. You follow? Kaput, it's kaput.'

    'Thank you, madam.'

    'My poor little welcome mat had known too many feet.'

    He said good night to the woman, who was now seated in her chair, and moved on. He commanded himself not to let the words 'home' and 'carpet' do their hurtful work. He spoke the name Kitty Crozier under his breath, and shouted it once and heard what he recognised as joy in his voice.

Kitty Crozier had only ever received postcards from her father. At intervals of months, or years, he sent her the briefest of loving messages, assuring her that he was alive and well, and as happy as a king with his newest wife or latest partner. He had never been alone or anything but perfectly contented, the cards implied, untruthfully, in all his time abroad.

    She looked incredulously at the backward-sloping writing on the envelope. He had written her a letter. He had picked up his expensive pen and written her a letter. 'How is my Baby Cordelia?' it began. 'How is my one loving daughter?'

    (She had been his Pretty Kitty for all her childhood. She'd become his Baby Cordelia when she and Daisy were twenty, after he'd seen a performance of King Lear in New York. He hadn't cared for the play; had endured it, he told her later, merely to keep the third Mrs Crozier — the 'culture-crazy' Linda — sweetly disposed towards him. The rantings and ravings of that tiresome old cove had made him squirm in his seat, while the Fool's jokes, if such they were, had brought everything except a smile to his face. He was more amused, he admitted, by the antics of Regan and Goneril, because they reminded him, the girls, of his own malevolent four-hours' first-born: 'Slightly, Kitty, slightly.' Daisy had applied herself to the business of hating him with a stamina that inspired her father's envy, and as he watched Shakespeare's prize pair of bitches turning nastier and nastier a bell of recognition started ringing wickedly in his head. 'They might be Daisy' was the thought that came to him. He'd tried to banish the thought, but it wouldn't go away. Then, late in the endless evening, with the corpses piling up on-stage, including Cordelia's, he'd realised that Lear's youngest had been as loyal and as true to her terrible dad as Pretty Kitty was, he hoped, to hers. 'You're my Baby Cordelia now, my dearest darling. You're your terrible daddy's one loving daughter.')

I hope Life is treating you kindly. I long to hear what you have been up to. Any Love Interest, perchance? You must be over forty now, my dearest darling, but I will bet a million you have not lost your looks! I hate to think of your Beauty going unappreciated. I hope you are not wasting your Sweetness on the Desert Air.

As you can see from the Address I have written above, your terrible absent Papa is back in his Mother Country. And what is more, Kitty, he intends to stay. FOR EVER, which probably will not be very long. I do not want to die in America and I most certainly do not want to be buried there either. Now you know what I do NOT want, I must tell you what I DO. I want you to pay me a Visit soon. The Person who is caring for me is an excellent Cook and suggests you come for Lunch, preferably on a Sunday, as Dinner is too much of a Strain on the Pair of us.

So my dearest darling Kitty, would the last Sunday in the Month be suitable? Please write and say Yea or Nay. We are only an Hour from London by Car. I can trust you (CAN'T I?) not to let your frightful Sister know where I am living. Of course I can. Unnecessary Request. If she found out I was back in England, she would bombard me all over again with her awful Accusations. She has not exhausted her Supply of Insults yet and never will.

I have Lots and Lots of Monkey's Bums to give you and I hope you have saved up a Few for me as well.

Your ever loving Daddy.

She had monkey's bums and to spare for him — she wrote back immediately — and when they had finished exchanging them, his Baby Cordelia would listen while her terrible daddy brought her up to date with his terrible news. Why, she wondered, was he being coy, since coyness wasn't in his nature, about the person caring for him? Who was this ministering angel? Was she a mature woman, or someone younger? A pretty nurse who had fallen for his charms?

    And yes, perchance — why was he using that antiquated word? — there was some 'love interest' in her otherwise dull life. She had met a Romanian. She would say no more than that.

    Would he and the caring person mind very much if she brought the Romanian with her that suitable Sunday?

    Needless to add that she sent her love.

He was in a field on the other side, the earth lit only by the morning star, when he remembered that the stretch of the Danube he had just swum across had once been spanned by Trajan's bridge — the greatest, his history teacher had said, in the vast Roman Empire. The Emperor's cavalry had clattered over that mass of intricate woodwork on its way to besiege Decebalus.

    'You are Roman Romanians,' their father had instructed him and his brother Aureliu when they were boys. 'You must always be conscious that you have Roman blood in your veins.'

    For Constantin Florescu that precious blood might have belonged to Trajan himself — or if not Trajan, then a soldier near to him, an officer in the Imperial Legion. Their father had them imagine a noble warrior, a man of learning as well as strength, fighting for five arduous years against the superstitious, ignorant Dacians, who had the courage of beasts. They were to think of themselves as that warrior's descendants: proud, strong, fearless. It was more than probable that the Florescus' share of Barbarian blood had been refined down the centuries to the point of vanishing.

    'How does blood vanish, Papa? Where does it go?'

    'Ah, Virgil, when you and Aureliu are older, and know of men and women, and love and marriage, and blood joining blood, what I have said will not be a mystery.'

    He heard a shot in the near distance and shouting, and then the squawking and shrieking of panicking birds. A red-legged falcon flew low above him, low enough to be captured in his upraised hands. But his hands were clasped about him, because he was wet and cold and naked, impatient for the still unrisen sun to dry and warm his shivering flesh. He had used up all his strength and fearlessness, and craved only the light and heat of the coming day.

    He rose, now, from the London grass, his short rest over, and picked up his spike and pretended for a ridiculous moment that it was a javelin and he was Don Quixote, and then he saw a keeper approaching and decided not to charge.

She lifted his head from her breasts and told him she had a twin sister. 'Her name is Daisy, Virgil.'

    'She looks like you? She is — what is, the word — identical?'

    'Not exactly. It's easy to tell us apart.'

    'I am relieved.'

    'What do you mean? Why relieved?'

    'I am not happy to see you in another. Please assure me that Daisy cannot be mistaken for Kitty.'

    'I do assure you, sweetheart.'

    (She would remember, when he was gone from her, calling him sweetheart for the first time and the strange pleasure she had felt on hearing him say: 'I am not happy to see you in another.')

    'Daisy is older than me by four hours. She has always, and I do mean always, behaved as if those four hours were four years. From when we were very little she treated me as her junior. I was the helpless younger sister who needed protecting.'

    'Four hours? How painful for your mother.'

    'Yes, Virgil. Daisy rushed into the world. Even then she was anxious to set it to rights and as quickly as possible. I'm not unkind. That's her character. I was different. I was reluctant to leave the safety and security of Nelly's womb. I had to be coaxed out. Enforced.'

    'You call your mother Nelly?'

    'Yes.'

    'Not Mother? Not Mama?'

    'Oh, no. The three of us had to be friends, so it seemed natural to call ourselves Daisy and Kitty and Nelly.'

    'Had to be? Why had to be?'

    'Why? Because our daddy, Eleanor's husband, left us, abandoned us. Daisy and I were five years old and Nelly was still young. We had to be friends and we were.'

    'Your father fell in love with someone else? Was that the reason he left you?'

    'That's the reason he gave Nelly. That's the reason he gave Muriel, I should imagine, and Joan, and Linda, and Carol, and — well, all of them.'

    'He is a Casanova, a Don Juan?'

    'Not quite, Virgil. He usually marries the women he loves. Do you want to meet him?'

    'Do you want me to meet him?'

    'I think I do.'

    Her father was back in England, she said, after spending most of his life in America, where he had worked — thanks to his excessive good looks — as a model. He had a new companion, who was caring for him, so he might be frail at last — though it was hard for her to associate him with frailty.

    'We have talked enough, Kitty Crozier, and I have asked too many questions.'

'I am a wanderer, Mr Razelos. I do not care to remain long in one place.'

    'It upsets me that you are going. What is your next destination? Port of call?'

    'I am staying in London.'

    'Well, well, well, then — you do not have to leave the Aphrodite. There is no necessity. There is no problem. Why move from here if you don't need to?'

    'I am a peculiar man, Mr Razelos—'

    'None more peculiar than myself and don't I know it. You cannot excuse yourself on grounds of peculiarness. You are the least peculiar of all the peculiar persons who have come to the Aphrodite. That is the solemn truth.'

    'Thank you. You are kind. Mr Razelos, I wish to move because —'

    'You have found somewhere better? More luxurious?'

    'No, I have not.'

    'I am confused, Mr Florescu. If there is nowhere better, then why are you trying to tell me you wish to move?'

    Virgil Florescu, unable to answer, began to laugh. Nicos Razelos patted him on the shoulder and laughed too.

    'I am trying to tell you—'

    (That I cannot, will not, tell you of sadness and anguish and melancholy; that I cannot mention a carpet from Oltenia and an icon of St Peter and a mother reading the story of Harap Alb to her two alternately incredulous and frightened sons; that I cannot talk of not wanting to be attached, however tenuously, to any room in any building in any country — and that all these things are mine not to reveal, dear Mr Razelos.)

    'I am prepared to lower the rent a fraction, Mr Florescu. I hate to see the back of a clean-as-a-whistle tenant who makes no noise and brings no drugs on to the premises. I have not met too many of your kind, believe me. Think again. Reconsider. I shall have an unhappy Miss Eunice on my hands otherwise.'

    'Miss Eunice? Unhappy?'

    'Certainly. She hasn't stopped speaking about you — in glowing terms — since you had your conversation.'

    (Miss Eunice had opened her door one evening to introduce herself to the Romanian gentleman her friend Mr Razelos had told her about. She was elegantly dressed in dark-blue silk and wore a pearl choker like the one Virgil Florescu's mother had kept in her 'box of treasures'. 'I am pleased to meet you, Madame,' he said, to which she responded with 'Are you wondering why Nicky calls me Miss Eunice rather than plain Eunice?' and before he could say 'Yes', she was providing him with the answer.

    'When Nicky was first courting me — and it was courting, despite his being married, as he still is, bless him, to a lovely woman, Irene, who understands — when he was first courting me — Mr Florescu, isn't it?' He nodded. 'When he was first courting me, Mr Florescu, he used to take me wining and dining, no expense spared, restaurants and night-clubs, smart places filled with the famous people of the day, and once a week, a Wednesday, we caught the latest big film at a very clean cinema where one of Nicky's friends — a Greek, of course — was manager. This particular Wednesday I'm concerned with, they were showing a picture — I can't remember the title, always have been hopeless with titles — set right down in the Deep South, in America, in a huge house with verandas and whirring fans overhead in every room, and there was this lady of the house played by that tall actress with blonde hair and greeny eyes whose name escapes me, and she was having this affair — "torrid" was the word they put on the posters — with a man who'd come to do some work for her, manual work, which meant he never had his shirt on, and naturally she looked at his rippling muscles from behind her shutters and that's when the idea of being torrid came into her head. What I do recall is the name they gave her in the film. She was Miss Geraldine. Not Geraldine, as with Geraldine here in England, but Miss Geraldine. Everyone addressed her as "Miss Geraldine" — her servants, the sheriff and even the man with the muscles who broke her heart, but he said it with a sneer. Anyway, Mr Florescu, when we were coming out of the cinema, Nicky said to me "You're going to be Miss Eunice from now on" and I said "Come off it, Nicky, don't be a fool" and he said he was serious, I deserved the respect of Miss and he wouldn't listen to me telling him it was daft — I wasn't a Southern belle — and he was that insistent, the Miss Eunice stuck, he calls me nothing else, except for very personal endearments, and I have to tell you, Mr Florescu, it does embarrass me a bit. Does that answer your question?'

    'Yes, yes, it does,' he replied, adding his thanks for the explanation.

    'I can't leave this house any more, Mr Florescu,' she continued in a quieter voice. 'I'm frightened of the outside world. I can't even stand on the front steps. The traffic terrifies me. A man came at me once with a knife and I've had no courage since. Still, Nicky's nice to me, bringing me that delicious baklava, which ought to make me fat but doesn't, due to my phobia. Nicky's promised me that if Irene dies first, which I shouldn't hope for, he'll sell all his London properties and buy a country mansion in the middle of fields, way away from cars and strangers. One fine day, perhaps.'

    'Yes,' he said, pitying her. 'Yes.'

    'You must excuse me for not inviting you over my threshold, but if Nicky turned up earlier than usual he'd go mad if he found you sitting in my flat, especially with me dressed the way I am, in his favourite wining-and-dining outfit. He's very possessive of me and I'm grateful; it's wonderful to be loved, but I wouldn't want to encourage his jealousy, because it's not worth the awful trouble. I mustn't keep you, you look tired, it's been a real pleasure talking with you.'

    'Yes, it has. Good evening.'

    'Good evening to you, Mr Florescu.')

    'Ah yes, our conversation in the hall.'

    'There aren't many people she gets to talk to, apart from yours truly.'

    'I do understand.'

    'She's given the other residents the cold shoulder. Their faces aren't sympathetic to her, like yours is.'

    'Mr Razelos, I will leave eventually, but not as soon as I intended.'

    'Weeks are you considering? Months?'

    Days, Virgil Florescu thought. It has to be days. 'Weeks or months, months or weeks, whichever, whichever.'

(Continues...)