Transition. Part 3

And it energises you, gives you what feels like ambition and ability in one easily snorted package. Suddenly nothing's impossible. You can talk and think your way round any problem, batter down anybody's resistance, see the clear, clever way to make any challenge work for you. It's a doing drug, an enabling drug.

Back where I came from they were all into dope, or H, or speed, which is the poor man's c.o.ke, and they were starting to get into E. Speed's like laminate instead of real wood, or faux fur not pukka, or a hand job instead of proper s.e.x. It'll do if you can't afford the real thing. Ecstasy's pretty good, but it's not immediate. You have to commit to it. Not as much as kosher old-fashioned acid, though, cos I've heard people old enough to be my dad talk of these trips that lasted eighteen hours or more and just turned your whole world inside out, not always in a good way, and you needed to organise everything, too, like where you were going to spend the time you were tripping, and even who with. Support staff, practically. Like, carers! How the f.u.c.k did hippies ever get that f.u.c.king organised, eh?

Anyway, compared to that time-consuming nonsense E isn't that bad, like drinking spritzers instead of whisky sodas or something, but you still need to organise everything to come up at the right time and it really is mostly about dancing, being loved-up in amongst lots of fellow travellers and boppers. Fine for that long drawn-out moment of collective euphoria, but it's more like part of a sort of rite, a ritual. What was that song that went, "This is my church"? Something like that. Like a service. Bit too collective, too chummy for my taste.

Cannabis was sort of similar in some ways in that it made you mellow, didn't it? Though how that squares with the f.u.c.king Hashisheen I've never quite understood. But it's all that lying around like old hippies, wreathed in smoke and talking b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, that I could never take. All that claggy brown tar gumming up the cigarette papers and your brains and making you choke and splutter and wrecking you to the point where it seemed like a great idea to drink the old bong water for the final hit that'll really take you over the edge into some other realm of understanding. What a load of b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. I can see it was a great Sixties drug when everybody wanted to smash the system by having love-ins and painting flowers on their b.u.m, but it's all too hazy and vague and sort of aimless, know what I mean?

H is proper hard-core, got to respect that. It's a serious lifestyle commitment for most people, and it's like discovering the mother-lode of pure pleasure that all the other drugs including the legal ones like drink have all come from, like finding something utterly pure beyond which there can't possibly be anything better, but it's a selfish drug. It takes you over, it becomes the boss, everything else becomes about the next hit and it takes you away from the real world, seems to say that the one where the H is is the real world and the one you've lived in all this time and where everybody else still lives, the poor fools, and where the money is, sadly, annoyingly, is just a sort of game, a kind of grey, grainy shadow-place where you have to go back to far too often to make these sort of robotic responses that'll let you get back to the t.i.ts-out Technicolor of the wonderful and enchanting world of the H. Proper commitment, H is, and the way it's served up is potentially lethal too. Bit like joining the army or something.

Plus, all that melting the mucky-looking stuff in ancient-looking spoons and searching for a vein and pulling ligatures tight with your teeth and having to draw your own blood out to mix it up in the syringe. Messy. You don't need that. Not clean like c.o.ke. Exact opposite. And you need a bucket by you cos the first thing that happens when it hits is you chuck your guts up! Call me old-fashioned but I thought drugs were supposed to be about fun! What sort of f.u.c.king fun is that?

Like I say, respect to people prepared to suffer that sort of degradation for the sake of the river of warm bliss you end up submerged in, but f.u.c.k me, it's not a drug you take to make your life better, which is what I'm looking for, it's a drug that empties you out of one life and pours you wholesale into another one completely where it's all very f.u.c.king wonderful but the drug is the only way into it and the only way of staying there. It's like becoming a deep-sea diver in one of those old bra.s.s-helmet jobs with the porthole grilles and the air hose leading back to the surface. The H is the air hose, the H is the air. Total dependency.

No, give me c.o.ke every time. Not crack, though. Not cos it's instantly addictive, that's another load of b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. It's just overrated, that's all, and because you smoke it it's got that messiness factor again, know what I mean? Something a bit sordid about crack, frankly. It's like c.o.ke for junkies.

Proper, pukka c.o.ke is clean, sharp, accelerating, and like a smart drug, a precision munition you take exactly when you want it and need it and delivering for as long as you keep taking it. Of f.u.c.king course it's the drug of choice of your masters of the universe, your financial wizards, your high-financiers. It's like just-in-time exhilaration, isn't it? A toot in both barrels and suddenly you're a f.u.c.king genius and totally invincible. Just what you need when you're juggling telephone numbers of money about and making bets with everybody else's dosh. Not without its downsides, obviously, though for most people these days loss of appet.i.te is brilliant. I mean, who wants to be fat? Collateral benefit, kind of. But the runny nose and paranoia and risking losing your septum and, so they say, having a heart attack, that's all a bit toss. Still, no gain without pain and all that.

So it's funny that I hardly ever took the stuff myself, given that I loved it, and still do, and I had access to the purest supplies at the best prices. Still do, too, through my contacts, of course. Just being cautious, basically. Also proving to myself who's the boss, know what I mean? It's called keeping things in proportion, keeping things balanced. I treat drink the same. I could guzzle vintage champagne and ancient cognac every day but that'd be giving in to that particular monkey, so that has to be rationed too. Same with the girlies.

I do love the ladies, but I wouldn't want to be totally beholden to one of them, would I? True love and wanting kids and settling down and all that, it's fine for most people and it makes the world go round and all like my old man said, but apart from the fact no it doesn't, it's gravity that does that, well, all right maybe it does make the world go round in the sense of creating the next generation, but it works just fine and dandy thanks as long as most people do it. Not all. Doesn't need to be compulsory, doesn't require every single person to take part, just most, just enough. What was that song, "Love Is The Drug"? Never a truer word, know what I mean? Just another temptation, another way of losing yourself. Making yourself vulnerable, that's what it's doing, giving in to all that romantic guff. Just putting your head on the chopping block, isn't it?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not stupid and I know it can happen to anybody and maybe one day it'll happen to me and I'll be giving it all that It Just Feels Right and She's The One and This Time It's Different, and if it does then I just hope I don't make a complete c.u.n.t of myself, excuse my language but you know what I mean. Even the mighty fall, they say. n.o.body's invulnerable, but you can at least show yourself the respect of holding out as long as possible, know what I mean?

The Transitionary.

Temudjin Oh, Mr Marquand Ys, Snr Marquan Dise, Dr Marquand Emesere, M. Marquan Demesere, Mark Cavan; Aiman Q'ands. I have been called many things and I have had many names and though they sometimes sound very various they tend to gyrate round a certain set of sounds, cl.u.s.tering about a limited repertoire of phonemes. My name changes each time I flit, never predictably. I don't always know who I am myself. Not until I check.

I tap a tiny white pill into my espresso, rearrange the table condiments a little, drink my coffee in two gulps and sit back, waiting (another part of my mind isn't waiting at all, it's concentrating furiously, darting down a single filament of purpose within an infinitude of possibilities, a lightning strike zigzagging its way through a cloud, searching). I'm outside another pavement cafe, in the 4th, looking out across a branch of the Seine to the Ile St Louis, just entering the trance that will guide me to exactly the right place and person. Meanwhile, s.p.a.ce to think, to review and evaluate.

My meeting with Madame d'Ortolan was most unsatisfactory. She was sitting asquint in the booth, and the tablecloth was off-centre, hanging down twice as far on one side as on the other. The only way I felt able to compensate was by jiggling one leg up and down, which was really no help at all. And then she treats me like an idiot! Self-satisfied salope.

"Plyte, Jesusdottir, Krijk, Heurtzloft-Beiderkern, Obliq, Mulverhill," I find myself muttering, for these things must be fixed in the mind. A waiter, scooping change from the next table, turns and looks at me oddly. "Plyte, Jesusdottir, Krijk, Heurtzloft-Beiderkern, Obliq, Mulverhill," I mutter at him, smiling. In theory a security failing, but so what? In this world, essentially, these are nonsense words. Meaningless to anybody who knows only this reality, or any single world for that matter.

The little aluminium tube lies inside my chest bag. Amongst other things it holds a tiny mechanical one-time reader; a metal device like two miniaturised measuring tapes joined by a short collar, a sort of slide with a gla.s.s window in it. One of the spools has a little pull-out handle on it. You deploy this, wind it up and let it go; it starts to pull the paper strip from the other spool past the little window. You need to watch this very carefully. You can read about a dozen letters at a time before they're gone, into the other spool, where the specially treated paper comes into contact with the air and turns to dust, its message for ever unreadable. The clockwork mechanism, once started, cannot be stopped, so you need to pay continuous attention. If you miss any part of the message, well, you're stuck. You will need to go and ask for another set of instructions. This does not go down well.

I read my orders in the toilet. It was a little dim so I used a torch. Taken with the highly irregular verbal changes to the instructions, it would seem that certain elisions, as we call them in the trade, are called for. I am to elide. Rather a lot of eliding required, in fact. Interesting.

A sneeze, and when I open my eyes again I am a dapper gent in a frock coat with a hat, cane and grey gloves. My skin is a little darker. A language check reveals Mandarin is back and Farsi is my third language after French and English. Then German, then a smattering of at least twenty others. A much-divided world. Paris has changed once more. There is a ca.n.a.l through the breadth of the Ile St Louis, the street is full of gaily dressed hussars on clopping, head-tossing horses being politely applauded by a few pa.s.sers-by who have stopped to watch and everything smells of steam. I look up, hoping for airships. I always like it when there are airships, but I can't see any.

I let the troop of hors.e.m.e.n pa.s.s, then hail a sleek-looking steam cab to take me to the Gare Waterloo and the TGV for England. "Plyte, Jesusdottir, Krijk, Heurtzloft-Beiderkern, Obliq, Mulverhill," I mutter once more, and wink at the uncomprehending look of the cabbie. There is a mirror in the b.u.t.toned lining of the cab's pa.s.senger compartment. I look at myself. I am well turned out, with a very neat haircut and an exquisitely trimmed little goatee, but I am otherwise undistinguished, as usual. The cab is number 9034. These numbers add up to 16, whose own numbers then add up to 7, which as any fool knows is by convention the luckiest of lucky numbers. I adjust the sleeves of my chemise where they protrude from my coat until they are exactly equal in length.

I allow myself a deep sigh as I settle into the plush of the cab's seat, positioning myself as centrally as possible. Still with the OCD, then.

The Perineum Club sits on Vermyn Street, off Piccadilly. It is late afternoon by the time I arrive and Lord Harmyle is taking tea.

"Mister Demesere," he says, holding my card as though it might be infected. "Oh well. How unexpected. I suppose you'd better join me."

"Why, thank you."

Lord Harmyle is a gaunt, spare figure with long white hair and a face that appears halfway to being bleached from his skull. His thin lips are pale purple and his small eyes rheumy. He looks ninety years old or more but is apparently only in his early fifties. The two schools of thought regarding this anomaly cite either predisposing familial genes or an especially outre addiction. He eyes me beadily from the far side of the table. The Perineum is as calm, reserved and spa.r.s.ely occupied as the Cafe Atlantique was frenetic, rowdy and crowded. It smells of pipe smoke and leather.

"Madame d'Ortolan?" the good lord enquires. A servant wafts to our side and dispenses weak-looking tea into an almost transparent porcelain cup. I resist the urge to swivel the cup so that the handle points directly towards me.

"She sends her regards," I tell him, even though she did no such thing.

Lord Harmyle sucks in his already hollow cheeks and looks as though somebody has laced his tea with a.r.s.enic. "And how is that... lady?"

"She is well."

"Hmm." Lord Harmyle's fingers hover thinly, like the claw of a predatory skeleton, over some crustless cuc.u.mber sandwiches. "And you. Do you bring a message?" The claw retreats and lifts a small biscuit instead. There are seven of the small, anaemic-looking sandwiches on one plate and eleven biscuits on the other. Both primes. Added together, eighteen. Which is not a prime, obviously. And making nine, the throwaway number. Really, this sort of thing could be both distressing and distracting, over time.

"Yes." I take out the little ormolu sweetener case and shake free a tiny white pill. It disappears into the tea, which I stir. I lift the cup to my lips. Lord Harmyle appears undisturbed.

"One is supposed to lift the saucer and cup together to one's mouth," Lord Harmyle observes distastefully as I drink my tea.

"Is one?" I ask. I replace the teacup on the saucer. "I do beg your pardon." I lift both saucer and cup this time. The tea tastes diffident, whatever flavours it might possess holding back as though ashamed of expressing themselves.

"Well?" Harmyle asks, frowning.

"Well?" I repeat, permitting myself a look of polite puzzlement.

"What's the message you bear, sir?"

I hope I shall never lose my sincere admiration for those able to invest the word "sir" on the face of it a genuine honorific with the level of brusque contempt that the good lord has just achieved.

"Ah." I put cup and saucer down. "I understand you may have expressed some doubts regarding the direction the Central Council might be taking." I smile. "Concerns, even."

Harmyle's already pallid complexion appears to lose whatever blood it previously contained. Which is rather impressive, really, given that all this is basically an act. He sits back, glances around. He puts his own cup and saucer down, rattled. "What on earth are you talking about?"

I smile, raise one hand. "Firstly, sir, have no fear. I am here to ensure your safety, not threaten it."

"Are you indeed?" The good lord looks dubious.

"Absolutely. I am, as I have always been, attached, inter alia inter alia, to the Protection Department." (This is actually true.) "Never heard of it."

"One is not supposed to, unless one has need to call upon its services." I smile. "Nevertheless, it exists. You may have been right to feel threatened. That is why I am here."

Harmyle looks troubled, and possibly confused. "I understood that the lady in Paris was unflinchingly loyal to the current regime," he observes. (At which I look mildly surprised.) "Indeed, I was under the impression she herself formed a significant part of that regime, at its highest level."

"Really?" I say. I ought to explain: in terms of Central Council politics, Lord H is a one-time waverer who is now a d'Ortolan loyalist but who has been instructed by Madame d'Ortolan to seem to grow remote from her and her cabal, to speak out against her and, by so gaining their confidence, try to draw out the others on the Central Council who would oppose the good lady. She would have a spy in their midst. However, Lord H has been conspicuously unsuccessful in this endeavour and so fears he is caught between two very slippery stepping stones and is in some danger of skidding and falling no matter which way he tries to go a-leaping.

"Yes, really. I'd have thought," he continues cautiously, still glancing around the quiet, high-ceilinged, wood-panelled room, "that if she heard I was that I had any doubts regarding our... prevailing strategies... that she would have been my implacable opponent, not my concerned protector."

I spread my hands. (For a moment, my brain chooses to interpret this movement as one hand diverging into two different realities. I have to perform the internal equivalent of a mind-clearing shake of the head to dispel this sensation. My mind is in at least two different places at the moment, which even with the rare gift I have and the highly specialised training I've benefited from requires a deal of concentration.) "Oh, she is quite placable," I hear myself say. "The good lady's loyalties are not entirely as you might have a.s.sumed."

Lord Harmyle looks at me curiously, perhaps not sure how good my English is and whether he is somehow being made fun of.

I pat my pockets, appear distracted (I am am distracted, but I'm holding it together). "I say, d'you think I might borrow a handkerchief? I think I feel a sneeze coming on." distracted, but I'm holding it together). "I say, d'you think I might borrow a handkerchief? I think I feel a sneeze coming on."

Harmyle frowns. His gaze shifts fractionally towards his breast pocket, where a white triangle of handkerchief protrudes. "I'll ask a waiter," he says, half turning in his seat.

The half-turn is all that I need. I rise quickly, take one step forward and while he is still swivelling back to look at me his eyes just beginning to widen in fear slash his throat pretty much from ear to ear with the gla.s.s stillete I have been concealing up my right sleeve. (A pretty Venetian thing, Murano, I believe, bought on Bund Street not ten minutes ago.) The good lord's earlier alabaster appearance deceived; in fact, he held quite a lot of blood. I ram the stillete into him directly underneath his sternum, just for good measure.

I have not lied, I feel I must point out. As I have already stated, I am indeed attached to the Protection Department (though I may have just constructively dismissed myself, I admit) it is simply that said Department is concerned with the protection of the Concern's security, not the protection of individuals. These distinctions matter. Though possibly not here.

Stepping delicately away as Lord Harmyle tries with absolute and indeed near-comical ineffectiveness to staunch the bright blushes of blood pulsing and squirting from his severed arteries, while at the same time seemingly attempting to wheeze a last few bubbling breaths or who knows? words through his ruptured windpipe (he doesn't seem to have noticed there's a pencil-thin knife protruding from his chest, though perhaps he is just prioritising), I sneeze suddenly and loudly, as though allergic to the scent of blood.

Now that really would be a handicap, in my line of work.

4

Patient 8262

A small bird came and sat on my window ledge this morning. I heard it first, then opened my eyes and saw it. It is a fine, clear day in late spring and the air smells of last night's rain on new leaves. The bird was smaller than my hand, beak to tail; mostly a speckle of two-tone brown with a yellow beak, black legs and white flashes along the leading edges of its wings. It landed facing me, then jumped and turned so that it was facing outwards again, ready to fly off. It rotated and dipped its tiny head to observe me with one black sparkling eye. small bird came and sat on my window ledge this morning. I heard it first, then opened my eyes and saw it. It is a fine, clear day in late spring and the air smells of last night's rain on new leaves. The bird was smaller than my hand, beak to tail; mostly a speckle of two-tone brown with a yellow beak, black legs and white flashes along the leading edges of its wings. It landed facing me, then jumped and turned so that it was facing outwards again, ready to fly off. It rotated and dipped its tiny head to observe me with one black sparkling eye.

Somebody pa.s.sed the open door of my room, shuffling down the corridor, and the bird flew away. It fell initially, disappearing, then reappeared, performing a series of shallow bounces through the air, fluttering energetically for a few seconds to buoy itself up, then bringing its wings tight into its body so that it resembled a tiny feathery bullet, dipping down like some falling sh.e.l.l on an earth-bound trajectory before deploying its wings again and fluttering busily to gain height once more. I lost sight of it against the bright green shimmer of the trees.

We live in an infinity of infinities, and we reshape our lives with every pa.s.sing thought and each unconscious action, threading an ever-changing course through the myriad possibilities of existence. I lie here and ponder the events and decisions that led me to this point, the precise sequence of thoughts and actions that ended for now with me having nothing more constructive or urgent to do than think about those very eventualities. I've never had so much time to think. The bed, the room, the clinic, its setting: all are highly conducive to thinking. They impose a sense of calmness, of things remaining unchanged and yet being reliably maintained, without decay or obvious entropy. I am free to think, not abandoned to rot.

In Detroit I played pinball, in Yokohama pac.h.i.n.ko, in Tashkent bagatelle. I found all three games enthralling, fascinated by the randomness that emerged from such highly structured, precisely set-up machinery knocking shining spheres of steel from place to place within a setting where, in the end, gravity always won. The comparison with our own lives is almost too obvious, yet still it gives us an inkling into our fates and what drives us to them. It is only an inkling, because we are submerged within a vastly more complicated environment than the clicking, bouncing steel b.a.l.l.s and the pins and bands and buffers and walls they collide with our course is more like that of a particle within a smoke chamber, subject to Brownian motion, and we are at least nominally possessed of free will but by reducing, simplifying, it allows us a grasp of something otherwise too great for us to comprehend in the raw.

I was a traveller, a fixer for the Concern. That is what I was, what I made myself into, what I was groomed for and made into by others, what life made me. Across the many worlds I roamed, surfing that blast-front of ever-changing, ever-branching existence, dancing through the spectra of plausible/implausible, hermetic/connected, ba.n.a.l/bizarre, kind/cruel and so on; all the ways that we'd worked out a world or deck of worlds could be judged, evaluated and ranked. (This world, here, is plausible, hermetic, ba.n.a.l, kind. Yours is the same except closer to the cruel end of the relevant spectrum. Quite a lot closer. You had the misfortune to have a singular ancestral Eve and I guess she just wasn't a very nice person. Blame volcanoes or something.) Of course, I cannot tell anybody here this, though I have thought to. I could talk to them in my own first language, or even English or French, which were my adopted tongues and operational languages and the chances are high that n.o.body here would understand a solitary word I said, but that would be foolish. It would be an indulgence, and I am not sure that I can afford even so modest a one. I have even been reluctant to think about my past life until this point, which is now starting to seem almost a superst.i.tion.

At some point I suppose I will have to.

I wish the little bird would come back.

Adrian.

I suppose Mr Noyce was a sort of father figure to me. He was a decent bloke, what can I say? Old money, which made him unusual among the City people I knew at the time. Come to think of it, so did the being-decent bit, too.

I'd supplied his son Barney with enough dust to sink a cruiser, though I'm not sure Mr N ever knew this. I mean, he certainly knew Barney did toot by the sackful, or he must have guessed, because he was sharp, n.o.body's fool, that's for sure, but I don't think Barney ever told him he'd got so much of it through me. Getting introduced properly to Barney's dad was one of the favours I called in when I decided to make the transition to relative respectability. Barney owed me money and instead of taking it in folding I suggested that he might like to invite me to the Noyce family pile for a weekend in the country. I'd thought Barney might resist this idea but he jumped at it. Made me think I'd priced the deal far too low, but there you are.

"Sure, sure, there's a bunch of people coming down next weekend. Come down then. Yeah, why not."

We were glugging Bolly in a newly opened champagne bar in Limehouse, all glitzy chrome and distressed leather, both of us c.o.ked to the eyeb.a.l.l.s, jittery and voluble. Much drumming of fingers and over-quick nodding and all that sort of s.h.i.t. I'd taken a lot less than he had but I've always had this thing where I start behaving like the people I'm with even though I'm technically not in the same state they are. I've been a designated driver once or twice and drunk nothing stronger than fizzy mineral water all night with no drugs at all and people have taken one look at me and tried to take the car keys off me because I'm slurring my words and have gone all giggly and smiley.

Same with the white stuff. I would take a little with clients just to be chummy while they got stuck in up to their eyebrows but I'd end up just as high and wired and frenetic as them. Thing is, I can always snap out of it p.r.o.nto, know what I mean? I'd be sober the instant after somebody accused me of slipping vodkas into my Perrier, which, once they'd realised I was straight, meant they were happy to let me drive, but that came with its own problems cos you look like an actor, like you're taking the p.i.s.s, just pretending to be drunk, know what I mean? People resent that. Especially drunks, of course. Caused a few arguments. I never was taking the p.i.s.s, though. It wasn't something I did deliberately, it was just something that happened. Anyway, I learned to tone down this getting drunk/whatever on the atmosphere effect, but it still came into play.

"What sort of people?" I asked, suspicious.

"I don't know," Barney said, looking round. He smiled at a table with three girls. There was a fair amount of talent in the place. Barney was tall and blond to my average and dark. He worked out, but there was a sort of pudginess to his face that made you think he'd be a bloater if he ever stopped gyming every day. Or gave up toot. I've been called wiry. "Just people." He frowned at me, trying to smile at the same time. He waved one arm. "People. You know; people."

"Sorry, mate," I said, "I don't fink I can cope with this level of detail. Can you be a bit more vague?" I was doing the barrow-boy bit then, which was why I said "fink."

Barney struggled. "Just, I don't know..."

"Tramps? Kings?" I suggested, annoyed that we still weren't getting anywhere.

"Oh for f.u.c.k's sake," Barney said. "People. I can't say. People like me, people like you. Well, maybe not like you, but people." He sounded frustrated and glanced at the door to the Gents. It was only about fifteen minutes since his last toot but I sensed he was getting ready for more.

"People," I said.

"People," Barney agreed. He patted the pocket where his wrap of gear was and nodded emphatically.

Barney never was very good on specifics. It was one of the things that made him not very good as a trader. That and the over-fondness for the c.o.ke.

"This weekend?" I asked.

"This weekend."

"Sure there'll be room?"

He snorted. "Course there'll be f.u.c.king room."

There was lots of room cos it was a f.u.c.king mansion, wasn't it? Spetley Hall's in Suffolk, near Bury St Edmunds. One of those places where you pa.s.s a nice but deserted-looking gatehouse like something out of a fairy story and start off down the drive and begin to wonder if it's all a giant wind-up cos the gentle rolling parkland and distant vistas of follies and herds of deer just seem to go on for ever with no actual dwelling in sight.

Then this cliff of stonework dotted with statues and urns and tall windows with ornate surrounds and looking like a barely miniaturised version of Buckingham Palace heaves into view over the horizon and you suspect you're finally nearing the gaff. Still didn't get greeted by no butler or footmen or anything, though. Had to park me own car, didn't I? Though actually there was a servant of some description who did help me with my bags once I'd tramped up the steps to the front doors. He even apologised for not being there to greet me, just taken some other guests to their room.

It was all the wife's, Mrs Noyce's, really. She was something double-barrelled and a proper Lady with a capital L and had married Mr N and they'd inherited the place. There were at least twenty guests that weekend. I'm still not sure I saw all of them all together in the one place at any one time. Mrs N was a lovely old grey-haired girl, not stuck-up but seriously posh and she tried to get everybody to dinner and breakfast at the same time but what with one couple needing to stay the Friday night in London, somebody having a cold, a couple of children to be got ready for bed early and all that sort of stuff, I don't think we were ever totally quorate, know what I mean?

Plus I wasn't even that far off with the meant-to-be-facetious question to Barney about there being kings there, as one minor royal and his lady friend were present.

I'd left my own current main girl back at the flat. She was lovely, a dancer called Lysanne and all legs and gorgeous long real blonde hair but she had a Scouse accent you could have etched steel with. Plus she'd have been a distraction, frankly. And also Lysanne was one of those girls who never really managed to hide the fact she was always on the lookout to trade up. I was definitely a catch compared to her earlier boyfriend, another dealer a level or two down the chain of demand, but I never fooled myself that she thought I was the best she could do. Bringing her somewhere like Spetley Hall when it was full of our richers and betters would be too tempting for her, no matter what she might tell me about how much she really loved me and how she was mine for ever. She'd have made a nuisance of herself. Probably a fool of herself too, and me, and ended up getting hurt.

Worst of all, of course, she just might have succeeded, skipping off with some doolally trustafarian and leaving me ditched, looking like a w.a.n.ker. Couldn't have that either, could I?

It was through touching on this sort of stuff over a game of billiards late on the Sat.u.r.day night that I got to know Mr Noyce. It was just us two by this time. Everybody else had gone off to bed. All done without chemical aid on my part, too. Billiards is what the toffs play instead of snooker.

"You really see it so coldly, do you, Adrian?" he asked, sketching the tip of his cue with green chalk. He blew the excess off and smiled at me. Mr N was a biggish, twinkly sort of guy, light on his feet for a portly gent. He had greying straw-coloured hair and bushy black eyebrows. He wore the big-framed gla.s.ses that were still just about fashionable at the time. Give him a cigar and he'd have looked like Groucho Marx. We'd both hung our proper dinner jackets over chairs. He'd loosened his bow tie. I'd unclipped mine. I'd made a mental note to buy a proper bow tie. Even if I couldn't be bothered going through the whole rigmarole of tying it up at the start of the evening I could keep it in my pocket, wear the clip-on and just replace the fake one with the untied real one at the end of the evening, leave it hanging. Looked much cla.s.sier. Like Mrs N, Barney's dad had that way of looking perfectly relaxed in the sort of ultra-formal gear most of us feel dead awkward in.

The rich love dressing up, I'd realised that weekend. It has to be within a strict sort of framework, though. They have specialist clothes for morning, afternoon, eating dinner, riding, hunting (actually different sets of clothes for different sorts of hunting, not to mention fishing), boating, general tramping around the country, popping into the local town and for going up to London. They always went up to London, even if they'd started far north of it. Something to do with trains, apparently. Seen in this light, even their casual clothes became like Casual Clothes rather than just stuff you liked knocking about in or that made you feel comfortable.

"What, relationships, Mr N?"

"Please, call me Edward. Yes, relationships." He had a soft, deep voice. Posh but not fruity. "That's a terribly unromantic outlook, don't you think?"

I grinned at him, cued up, whacked a white ball around a bit. I'd picked up the rules of billiards easily enough, though it still seemed a pretty pointless game to me. "Well, they say everything's a market, don't they, Edward?"