“You can see the continuity even in the names,” St Columba said. “I mean, my name is Dodsworth. That’s pure Saxon. It means the Homestead of Dod.”

  “Hang on a minute.” When he thought of it afterwards Benson could not be sure just what led him to intervene at this point. Alcohol had something to do with it, his obsession even more; then there was Robinson’s overbearing manner, the way he assumed he could speak for them all; but it was Slater at the end of the table, dominant even in his modest impassivity, that made the silence of assent suddenly impossible. He felt the tremors of speech in his lower jaw.

  “Not quite all of us,” he said rather loudly and met Robinson’s cold, fishlike stare. “I don’t disagree for a moment with what you say about Mr Slater’s talents as a presenter of entertainments. I know more about that than anybody here, I should think. No, it’s this business of property, of a property-owning democracy. The thing about the notion of a property-owning democracy is that it can come to seem like a definition – only the people that own the property have a share in the democracy, and the more they own the bigger their share. To see it in all its beauty you have to go back to the eighteenth century. As a matter of fact the Liverpool slave trade provides the best example of a property-owning democracy that I know. If you had a bit of extra cash you could buy into it quite easily. A lot of the ships they used were quite small, they could only pack in a hundred slaves or so. These were fitted out by small tradesmen – drapers, grocers, tallowchandlers, barbers, notaries, people like yourself, sir, or Athelstan here. What used to be called the shop-keeping class. Some had as little as a one-thirtieth share – say five slaves. Just a flutter really. Like buying a few shares in British Telecom. I suppose it was what you’d call a volatile market. But if your cargo didn’t die you could make a nice little profit.”

  Benson paused. He was running out of steam. He could feel a slight, continuous quivering of the nerves somewhere within himself. “Enough to buy a bijou homestead for Dod,” he said, glancing at St Columba. “Enough to pay Francini for the stucco work and still have something left over for a Chippendale or two.”

  A hush had fallen over the table. He saw that Erika was looking at him indignantly. Slater was not looking at him at all.

  “I understand you are a journalist?” Robinson said coldly.

  “Well, not exactly. I’ve written things for newspapers.”

  “He is a writer, a novelist,” Sylvia said, speaking for the first time. “I’ve got one of his books.” She smiled brightly round the table. “It’s very good.” It came to Benson that Mrs Slater was enjoying the situation.

  “Fiction?” The look of disapproval on Robinson’s face deepened.

  “I hope you brought your costume,” Slater said to St Columba. He still had not looked at Benson. “I want to do a full-dress rehearsal today, you know.”

  The conversation didn’t really pick up again after this – Benson had cast a blight. Quite soon Slater suggested coffee. They went for this into what Slater had called the Saloon. After some brief hesitation Benson sat near Mrs Belmont: obsessed as she seemed with the fortunes of her daughter, she might not have noticed so much how the tone had turned against him. “You didn’t finish telling me about Gerald,” he said. “You stopped at the point where he bought Erika the rubber plant.” Glancing up he met the gaze of Sir William Biggs on the wall; there seemed an extra shade of severity now in the merchant’s expression. “What happened?” he said.

  He had been right. Mrs Belmont resumed at once, as if there had been no interval. “Oh, well, he behaved quite disgracefully of course. She told him she wanted to go away for a while to think about their love, she tried to be tactful you see, but he lost control of himself completely, he attacked the rubber plant, he began chopping it up with karate blows, knowing full well how much that would hurt her. There was an Alsatian in the apartment and it began to get terribly excited.”

  But he was destined never to hear the end of the Erika-Gerald story. Slater approached at this point and asked him if he could spare a few minutes. “I thought we might use the study,” he said. “Why don’t you bring your coffee with you?”

  The study was on the same floor, down a short passage. It was done out in mahogany and dark red leather. Slater seated himself at the desk and motioned Benson to a chair. There was no trace of a smile now. “I’m not going to beat about the bush,” he said. “I haven’t much time – I’ve got a lot to do this afternoon. The fact is I don’t want you at these rehearsals. I’ve changed my mind about you, Benson. You offended my guests. You practically called Robinson a shopkeeper. You haven’t shown the right spirit at all. I want you off the premises as soon as may be.”

  “I see.” Benson looked at the straight-browed, heavy face before him. There was no particular expression there, no displeasure; the face was grave, dispassionate. So might Slater have looked in terminating the account of one of his bank’s less satisfactory clients. “I’m just supposed to march off, am I?”

  “I thought you were a bona fide journalist.” Slater placed his hands together on the table, looked down at them a moment, then back at Benson. “You gave me a false impression,” he said.

  “It was a confusion.” There was a little stack of printed sheets, blue in colour, near him on the desk and in the tension of his feelings he picked one up. “I was thinking of the other Show, the Beachhead Buddies,” he said. “You took it for this Athelstan business. That is because your own purposes are so important to you that what is in the forefront of your mind you assume must be in the forefront of everybody else’s. As a matter of fact, I don’t think you asked me here because you thought I was a bona fide journalist.”

  “Don’t you?”

  The voice was very cold now. Benson felt fear of the man before him, so much more powerful and richer than himself, here among the visible evidence of his success, the thick carpet, shining wood and dark leather, the array of books on the shelves. “No,” he said, making a conscious effort to control his breathing, keep his voice steady. “No, I think I was a portent for you, I think you took me for a good augury. It must have seemed like that, my phoning just then, after forty years, just when you were putting another show on. Little Benson again. Like a mascot. I was the one you asked to go with you to the Company Commander that night, the night you got the idea for the Beachhead Buddies. You remember, don’t you? We had just been relieved. They were shelling the German lines. Then of course, when I came today, you wanted the same loyalty again, because you have to have that, don’t you? But I was only a boy then.”

  “You were a girl, as far as I remember. What do you think you are now?” Slater put his hand flat on the desk preliminary to hoisting himself up. “I’ve no time for any more of this,” he said. “I’ll see Meredith runs you back to the station.”

  “I’m not going yet.”

  “Not going?” The slight frown had returned to Slater’s face, as at something insignificant but obstinate lodged in his path.

  “There are one or two things I must ask you about.”

  “Do you really think I’m going to waste my time answering your questions? You’d better clear off while you can still do so with some dignity.”

  “It would only take a few minutes.” Benson could feel his hands trembling slightly. He put them between his knees. “Supposing,” he said, “just for the sake of argument, supposing I did write the article after all, I mean an article about both the shows, how I have come back after forty years to find you doing the same thing, still dealing in the commodities market…” Nervousness made him lose the thread for a moment. “Sugar and rum, you know. People would make the connections.”

  “Sugar and rum? What on earth are you talking about? You’d better get out.” For the first time a definite note of anger had come to Slater’s voice. “I don’t think you are in your right mind,” he said. “You seemed mad to me at the table just now, as well as offensive, making those pathetically over-simplified analogies.”

  “Too complicated to understand, is it? Market forces. That’s what Hogan says too.”

  “Who the devil is Hogan?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” The trembling had ceased now. He felt shame at what he was going to say but no longer any fear. “I could say how you used us at Anzio, set us to work for your glory, how some of us were killed or wounded or so on and the gaps were filled with new acts, but you, alone of us – you managed to get out before the offensive, before the Beachhead Buddies were finally shot to pieces, and now I find you doing the same sort of thing. It wouldn’t look too good, would it?”

  There was a short silence. Slater’s face had flushed dark red. His eyes were fixed in a look of furious contempt. “You little shit,” he said. “I’ve a good mind to bounce you off the wall. Do you really think you can threaten me like that, a man in my position? Do you think I’m afraid of that sort of scurrilous rubbish?”

  Benson made no reply. He was aware that the threat was a weak one, as well as dishonourable. But he had wanted so much to know. He was about to get to his feet, when Slater said, “I don’t need to answer any of your questions, I hope you understand that.”

  “Yes,” Benson said, “of course I understand.”

  The first flush of rage had left Slater’s face now. Benson saw him look briefly away. Then his mouth loosened a little, settled into an expression of more amicable contempt. “Well, since you say it won’t take long …”

  “It’s about a man called Walters. You remember him, don’t you?”

  “Walters, Walters …”

  “You must remember him. He was in the show too. I was Velma and he was Burlington Bertie. He was killed not long before the break-out. He told me that you had offered to get him a posting to Naples, as part of a new show. He was the only one. I’ve always wondered why.”

  The lie agitated Benson, even though he knew there was no possible way that Slater could know it for one.

  “Yes, I seem to remember that,” Slater said.

  “Why Walters? It was a double act. Why not both of us?”

  But even as he asked the question he realised that Slater had already answered it – the admission was all that had been needed. Slater had seen how close they were, how they were always together.

  “I remember him as being very talented,” Slater said. “He was a gifted actor.”.

  “There were others who were talented. Why not them?”

  Slater’s face still wore the same half-amicable disdain. “I really don’t remember now.”

  “It must have been because you wanted to break us up. You were alone there in your own way. You wanted to divide us.” Benson laughed suddenly in release of tension. A distant, destructive impulse, converse of his own jealousy — no more than that. His treacherous tendency to tears again threatened him. “The Beachhead Buddies,” he said. “And now your great theme is unity. You must admit there is irony there. Or was it just motiveless malignity, to coin a phrase?”

  “You are talking hysterical rubbish.”

  Slater had spoken coldly and abruptly but the dislike in his eyes was not for the present only and Benson knew in that moment that the other had never forgotten Walters, that the refusal still rankled. He got to his feet. “There’s just one other thing. What gave you the idea – in the first place I mean.”

  “The idea for the Show? That’s easy. I always knew there was a need for it, of course. Then that day, that night when we spoke about it, I had been watching a rather ridiculous scene a bit earlier on, before we were relieved. Someone had brought back a German helmet for some reason and one of the men put it on and got dried blood in his hair. There was a Welsh chap whose nerve had given way the night before. I had come over for a runner to go back to Company HQ and I came upon this scene with this lout cursing and trying to wash the blood out and the Welshman gibbering away and that old woman – Baxter was his name – holding forth about how much blood you’d need to make so much powder …”

  Slater paused. His face had softened with the reminiscence. “It was pure comedy,” he said. “I thought what a first-rate sketch it would make. That started me thinking.”

  The smile faded. Slater looked at him with a sort of contemptuous impassivity. “Well, are you going?” he said. “If you try to write anything about me after this, I promise you I’ll make you suffer for it.”

  Benson could think of nothing to say. He looked for a moment or two longer at the face of the man before him. Into his mind there came the memory of the day Slater had come to see him in the hospital. “It’s strange,” he said. “The last time I saw you was in the military hospital in Naples. You were on a routine visit to members of the unit – part of your job, wasn’t it, though I’m not quite sure how it fitted into the entertainments business. You were very neatly turned out, I remember. The ward was full of surgical cases, some of the men there were dying, some of them were off their heads. I remember all those bandaged, hardly recognisable shapes and you in the middle. I remember thinking, any moment now he’s going to start waving his cane about, directing us all.”

  Do I really remember that? he wondered, going down the steps to where the car was waiting, or did I just invent it as a parting shot? From somewhere above him Verdi was issuing loudly, Aida urging Radames to flee with her.

  “Là tra foreste vergini

  Di flori profumati …”

  *

  “We got a deal then?” Meredith said.

  “No, we haven’t got a deal. I just said we would talk about it.”

  “I was present at his wedding. When he got married to Yoko. Keeping the press at bay. She was a one. No inhibitions, Mr Benson, know what I mean?”

  Meredith’s pale, broad face was full of emotion. His eyes sought Benson’s eagerly. A tiny trickle of perspiration had run down from the brim of his cap and stopped at the temple. It was hot here on the station platform, full in the sunshine, and the chauffeur’s large body seemed uncomfortable and constricted in its livery. They had walked to the far end, away from the little knot of people waiting for the train.

  “I got the facts, you got the gift of words,” Meredith said. “We could make a bomb. The title is there already, we wouldn’t need to lose any time over that. I Was John Lennon’s Bodyguard. What do you think of it?”

  Benson glanced down the platform at the station clock: a good ten minutes yet before the train; Slater had packed him off early. “It’s a good title,” he said. “But the fact is, you know, I don’t do ghost writing. I wouldn’t be any good at it.”

  It was the third time he had said this and each time Meredith came up with a new offering from his past.

  “I was in the army before that,” he said now. “Five years in the Coldstream Guards.” He looked quickly up and down the platform. “After that I did three years in the SAS. I seen a lot of things, believe you me.”

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Benson said. “It’s just that I wouldn’t be the right—”

  “Aden,” Meredith said, “the Yemen, Northern Ireland. You name it.” He had assumed again that congested look, combined result of the intensity of his feelings and the confinement of his tunic. “You’re not supposed to say, they make you take an oath. But what the fuck, Mr Benson, if you’ll pardon the language, what the fuck? It teaches you to keep your eyes open. I keep my eyes open on this job. A person learns a lot of things driving other people around. He hears things, he picks things up, he puts two and two together.”

  “What sort of things?”

  But Meredith had heard the eagerness in his voice. “We got a deal or not?” he said.

  “Listen,” Benson said, “I’ll be quite honest with you. I’m not the man to do this particular job. I can’t even do my own stuff these days. To tell you the truth I haven’t been able to write anything for well over two years now. But I know a few people still and I promise you I’ll do my best to find someone – someone good – and put him in touch with you. Okay?”

  Meredith held out a huge hand. “Shake on it,” he said. “I’m a judge of character, I always have been.”

  “What did you mean just now?”

  “She’s the only one worth anything. Mrs Slater. She’s got human feelings. If it was up to her, I could go into shirtsleeves. I get heat rash in this uniform. But he wouldn’t have it. Full livery at all times. Today is a Saturday but I had to put on full gear – just to come out for you. And look how he treats her. Bringing that woman into the house.”

  “Erika, you mean?”

  “Her, yes. Actress,” Meredith said with great disgust. “I bet the only acting she done is bum and tit poses for the porno mags. And that mother of hers, looking out for the highest bidder. You know what he’s after, don’t you?”

  “Slater? I imagine he wants to get Erika into the sack.”

  “Sure, but I don’t mean that. He’s a man that has never got just one thing in mind. I am friendly with Miss Parks.” In spite of the earnest confidentiality of his manner, Meredith managed a slight smirk. “That’s the secretary. She doesn’t do his accounts, but she does a lot of the correspondence. She once let fall that he’s been giving a lot of money to Conservative Central Office over the past five years. And I mean a lot,” she said. “Then there’s this show he’s putting on. He’s invited half the county, all the bigwigs. The Lord Lieutenant is coming, the Chief Constable is coming, the Master of the Hunt is coming. He’s got people coming up from London. He’s asked Sir Geoffrey Howe. ‘We’re going to put this place on the map, Meredith,’ he said to me once. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  Benson saw the train approaching in the distance. “No,” he said. “What does it mean?”

  “How many real locals will be there, tell me that? It’s by invitation only. It’s a society event, Mr Benson. There’ll be donations. There’ll be caviar and champagne. Why do you think Erika and her mum are so interested? He did more than the agent to get their candidate in last time. Spent a fortune on it. You know what it adds up to, don’t you?”