‘I’d like to,’ he said. ‘I’m feeling pretty alone down here. At least you have clients and/or patients coming in.’

  ‘We can talk about that, too,’ she said. ‘I’ll be finished by seven. There’s something in the fridge. If I’m not up already I shouldn’t be long.’

  Returning to the rear room he sat in the chair beside the bed and contemplated the houses opposite: still half asleep, he reflected on the morning’s conversations, glancing at the diminutive clock on the desk to discover, surprisingly, it was mid-afternoon: he must have been asleep longer than he’d thought.

  He was, he recalled, constructing an agenda – a structure of some sort – conceivably to his life, one comprising elements which had, other than his possession of them, and the use to which they had been put, little, if anything, in common – recollecting, too, at that instant, a bench in the overgrown, bush-shrouded garden at St Albans, a bench his father had constructed towards the end of his life, assembled from miscellaneous pieces of wood which, aimlessly, or so it had seemed, he’d been collecting for some time. ‘Something,’ his father declared, ‘I’d like to sit on. Something,’ he’d gone on, mysteriously, ‘I’ve always wanted to do.’

  ‘But you can buy one,’ his mother had protested. ‘Buy two, or even three, if you want.’

  ‘I’d like to make it,’ his father insisted, until then having shown no interest in woodwork. ‘Living tissue,’ he’d remarked to Maddox on the one occasion he’d watched him at work, his shirtsleeves rolled, his jacket off (itself an unusual sight), hammering and sawing, Maddox’s sole contribution being the suggestion his father use screws rather than nails. ‘Otherwise,’ he told him, ‘at some point it will come apart.’

  ‘This will do well enough,’ his father had responded, complacently almost, despite his application, hammering, if anything, even harder.

  In the end an asymmetrical, lop-sided structure stood against a sunny section of the wall at the rear of the house, a bench which, having sat on it once, he rarely, if ever, sat on again. After his death, a few months later, it stood against the wall in a half-collapsed condition, a testimony of some sort – to transience, Maddox suspected – a singularly transient gesture – which was finally broken up by a refuse collector, on his mother’s insistence, and taken away.

  Much of what he was endeavouring to assemble from elements of his own life, he concluded, was of the same disparate nature, obscure, confusing, resistant to identification. He was, furthermore, acquiring the characteristics of a hermit, reluctant to go out unless he was obliged to and, once out, immediately aware of his anxiety to return. A life, he reflected, without dynamic, other than the one provided by Simone, she, even then, a partial element – one, however, without which he wondered if he’d survive. Without the promise of her house, her flat, her work, her, on the whole, imperturbable nature, he doubted there was sufficient left of his own resources to sustain him until, during, and after what, even now, he conceived as the next, inevitable attack.

  By what? A presence, he knew from previous experience, could seize him without warning and precipitate an event over which he assumed he would have little or no control; a presence which had separated itself from, or been expelled by, a power he associated with a detached, disassociative creative force – less a term, or a description, than a sensation, a fluctuating awareness of which came and went similarly without warning; one he could scarcely conjure up or sustain by mental application, a welcome diversion, nevertheless, from the malignant and oppressive one he associated with the ‘other’ – or, alternatively (demystifying its source), with ‘himself’, in this evaluation a self-divided entity where observer and observed were inseparably combined – each confounded by the other, each clamouring for release (each clamouring for expression), each immobilised by a desire, or so it seemed, for a separate existence.

  He had long ago abandoned ‘organisation’: that system of beliefs, assumptions (conclusions, even) which afforded grace and peace and understanding – in his view, of a specious nature (something his brother Paul was, or had been, addicted to, having, in his late teens, ‘gone into’ the Church), a metaphysical attribution to what, in Maddox’s own case, he was convinced was a pathological condition, a neurological exclamation, a conflagration – an abomination, as he’d finally come to know it, the preliminary ingredient of a final stage of terror and the sudden, irrepressible impulse to bring it, and everything with it, to an end: a diurnal arrangement intended to preserve a mental equilibrium balanced between terror on waking and what he recognised as ‘normality’ (peace of some sort) before he went to sleep each night.

  There was, on the one hand, feeling, on the other the thing that felt: the thing that felt was at the mercy, or so it seemed, of the feeling it sensated, if not engendered, a tortured mutuality which functioned without intrusion from ‘himself’, the ‘nature’, the ‘presence’ of this experience the embodiment of something which extended itself, helplessly, into everything around.

  He was, he reflected, in an indeterminate state – life, of one sort, was coming to an end, another, more obscure, more indefinable, more unpredictable, about to begin – he thinking, in the first instance, of his marriage, his children, the end of his ‘career’, in the second of what he had started and was seeking to sustain with Simone. The chimera, if it had been one, of art had been superseded by something he recognised as ‘nature’, urgency, not reflection, in this interim period, preoccupying him more and more. Otherwise, a cumbersome, unauthenticating process in which thoughts succeeded one another without any conclusions being drawn, or decisions being arrived at. He was taking on board a cargo without designation, he and Viklund, he had assumed, earlier that day, fingering each other’s load with a view, conceivably, to lightening it or lightening their own. ‘Salvation’ had never been further from his mind: the liberation celebrated and expounded by others had extended itself so far it had disappeared: a sense of longing, of attachment, had only been appeased by the appearance of Simone. How much might he rely on that; how long would it last? With it came the remembrance of an attachment even more profound, the severance of which had been the precursor to so much he was feeling now, ‘limbo’, he reflected, a portent of worse to come.

  Simone, to this extent, was a recapitulation of his past; at least, in those first encounters when he was scarcely aware of her as a person, merely as an agent, a facilitator, something, even, of a voyeur, looking on, gratuitously, at what, misleadingly, he was encouraged to expose – she an attraction, after this introduction, promising fulfilment of a familiar kind, an extension of much of what had gone on before – the ‘melting-pot’, he had told her, in which the viscosity produced by the process provided the material, the foundation, even, of what he was to become, a suitable opponent of what he had determined was, and had described as, the Demon King, the metamorphosis of something, presumably, hidden in his nature.

  So Simone represented something to sustain, to encourage, there to reinforce, there to endorse his otherwise recalcitrant and despairing nature, Viklund’s presence still uppermost in his thoughts, the evocation of a more sensitised, creative, revelatory figure in conflict with or transcending what he had hitherto considered to be his own, behind it all and, to some degree, formulated from it, an indifference which, on the tube station platform, had almost overwhelmed him.

  All that, he reflected, despite the security of a house, together with a pension and someone to clarify what lay ahead – and what might have lain behind – he as unsure of her, however, as he was of himself, she an arbiter and dispenser of common sense, he of something peculiar only to himself: he dismayed by the vulnerability of a woman who meticulously ‘made up’ her face each morning, who chose and assessed her dress each night for the following day – asking his view of her final decision but rarely, if ever, changing it: a woman who attended to her hair, her skin, her clothes as conscientiously as she did to her appointments, lectures and meetings with friends.

  And the time, too, she spent on her e-mail and faxes, more of the former than the latter, her messages on her answering machine, the formal way she stood to receive these communications, distanced from the screen in the first instance as she might be from a stranger encountered at the door, examining her faxes with the same detachment, listening to her phone messages with her gaze abstracted, distant, remote, as if summoning a voice from the end of a passage, her eyes downcast, the pencil, moments later, busy in her hand as she listed the calls in order of importance.

  And he himself: where did he fit in, a silent attendant, insight suspended, bemused, by her inclusion of himself in something whose complexity, at first sight, precluded his participation? Detached, fragmented, on one side, cohesive and articulate, on the other: her detachment, his fragmentation; her cohesiveness, their joint articulation, the endless flow of her imagination into areas represented by other people, not paintings, artefacts, but flesh and blood – Doctor Death prominent amongst them.

  His mind flowed back to the skeletal figure and the wisdom of being there or not: the consanguinity of her engagements realised by a coherent – in his experience, novel – perception of where she stood, an experience, mesmerically, in his case, shared with others.

  All this, he reflected, and therapy, too, ‘we are our relationships’ a dictum she considered to be almost true, the dividing line between this absorption in lives other than her own – something, in this sense, of a self-reflecting mirror – and what, in isolation, alone at night, for instance, she experienced (she ‘almost’ experienced) as herself – a division neither she nor he could clearly distinguish, perception and cognition bewilderingly apart. A societal compulsion, on the one hand, an inclination – on his part, for instance – towards self-enclosure, on the other, he almost seeing it as a confrontation, compulsion-v-absorption, with the suspicion they might, in reality, be the same thing, nature consistent with circumstance.

  So, he concluded, he was of her as she was of him, a conjunction of dissimilar natures, ironically, drawing them together – divergent yet complementary elements, if only they could see it, of the same thing.

  It was his ‘knowing’ of his perception that drew him on, almost, in effect, a consistency with much if not all that had gone on before set aside, the sum and the cogito vividly apart. Division was, he conceded, inseparable from his nature, an ironic coloration of who or what he was; or, he further reflected, an attribute of what otherwise could only be described as an aberration, a chemo-neurological function inside his skull which appeared, in many respects, to have little if anything to do with ‘him’ at all: everyone experienced ‘themselves’ in a similar way: what, paradoxically, couldn’t be considered as peculiar to himself sublimated by an awareness of others (her).

  He was ‘into’ a suspended part of himself, something which, he suspected, he had held in abeyance throughout his life, function determining everything, an aimless submission to whatever came to hand, not least within himself – to the extent that he perceived an interior necessarily different from the exterior which contained it.

  The telephone, at this point, rang again and, no more composed than when he had lifted the receiver to hear Viklund’s enquiring voice, he lifted it once more to hear Devonshire say, ‘I’m worried,’ the sound echoing inside his head: no mention of a name identifying the caller, the presumption that Maddox would be preoccupied by no one else.

  ‘I rather liked it,’ Maddox said, assuming assumption his best defence.

  ‘I’m not sure like, or dislike, come into it,’ Devonshire said: a blond, close-cropped creature, he recalled, with a predilection for wearing round-lensed, wire-framed glasses tucked in behind comically recessive, almost absent ears: a moon-like face which, without the glasses, suggested the persona of a twelve-year-old child: a kindergartenic effect which the glasses, presumably, were meant to disguise: shirtsleeves, no tie, open-necked: a convivial, domestic personality, the new demos in action.

  Maddox cleared his throat; having returned from the back bedroom to pick up the phone, wondering, not for the first time, why he didn’t have an additional extension by the bed, he was breathless (a lack of strenuous exercise): anxiety thickened his voice, and intensified further at the presumptuous nature of the sound in his ear, someone young enough, he reflected – almost – to be his grandson: Devonshire, less than half his age, hadn’t been born when he, Maddox, had been at what, euphemistically, he might have referred to – retrospectively – as the height of his career.

  ‘“Let’s face it, it’s not painting, it’s illustration.” The collegiate chumminess apart, Freud happens to be recognised as one of the most outstanding representational painters of our time.’

  An expansion at the end of the line of Devonshire’s lungs: he daily cycled to work and played football, or was it cricket? with a journalists’ eleven. ‘His Christian name is spelt with an “a” not an “e”.’

  ‘Surely you mean given name,’ Maddox said, flinging out the bait.

  ‘Another thing,’ Devonshire said. ‘Everything, or almost everything, comes in as an e-mail, if not a fax, if not,’ he went on, ‘directly to setting. A typewritten sheet sent by post is a method of communication we have, apart from writs and injunctions, largely abandoned. I don’t understand why you have to be different. There’s surely a fax machine in Camden High Street, or Chalk Farm, or you could even get on a bus, or a bicycle, or the tube, and bring it down without undue inconvenience to yourself. You have, I take it, heard of the internet?’

  A helicopter – he assumed a police helicopter – was circling overhead, the oscillation of its blades vibrating the glass in the windows. The sound drifted away and returned, several times, while Devonshire was speaking, Maddox sensing this was the prelude to a more pertinent enquiry, if not a declaration, and not inclined, as a consequence, to ask him to repeat what he’d missed.

  ‘“The paintings might well be likened to strips of wallpaper expensively framed and gratuitously isolated against a white wall in order to insinuate their relevance.” Hodgkin happens to be one of, if not the most highly considered of our lyrical abstractionists. If I’m not mistaken he has, or is about to be given, a knighthood.’

  ‘There you are,’ Maddox said. ‘The whole system is corrupt.’

  ‘“A scene-painter given to portentous effects. The closer you observe them, the more they fall apart.” Thank God he’s dead. Normally, Bacon is considered the greatest British, if not European, if not global post-war artist, as close to, if not the equal of Moore, as makes no difference. He also you have a word for. “Fibreglass monstrosities, as close to form without content as anyone might reasonably manage.” I’m only relieved you’ve been kind to the maquettes.’

  ‘And carvings.’

  ‘And carvings.’

  ‘And bronzes.’

  ‘And bronzes.’ Devonshire inhaled, lustily, the other end. ‘You do realise this “Millennial Exhibition of British Art” would be the envy of any major gallery in the civilised world? I stress “civilised” for obvious reasons. The Metropolitan would give its eye-teeth for the loan of it, as would the Musée d’Art Moderne.’

  ‘Or the Louvre.’

  ‘Not the Louvre.’

  He inhaled again; perhaps, recently, he’d had a cold – conceivably, still had it: his voice gurgled, as if asphyxiated, the throat obstructed. ‘“Wall-coverings”. Do you know how grateful the Tate were to receive those paintings? “Vacuity eclipsed”. Rothko could have given them to any gallery in the world. Do you realise how pissed off, for instance, were the Metropolitan when he chose the Tate, at virtually no cost to themselves? They’ll form a central, if not the central part of the Bank Tate’s collection.’ Checking the copy before him, he paused, his voice a lowered murmur.

  The police helicopter chuntered once more overhead.

  ‘Your dismissal of the whole of post-war American painting, as, indeed, the whole of American painting as “literary” and, what is it?’ he murmured again before adding, ‘“sentimental”, “sound without content”. I choose the phrases at random. “Noise without form”. So it goes on. “Sloppy”, God help us. You realise our proprietor has a unique and much-admired collection of post-war American art and if he doesn’t take this as an attempt to lower its value and villify his taste I’ve no idea what conclusion he, and a lot of other people, will come to.’

  He paused.

  ‘And another thing.’

  He paused again.

  ‘“Much of his painting is dreary. Uniform tones, uniform brush strokes, repetitive colours. The product,” you describe it, “of stigmatic vision, a medical not an aesthetic imperative. The whole of twentieth-century art reduced to an aberrant eye condition.” This is Cézanne you’re talking about.’

  He liked Devonshire: he was an enthusiast (something which, as with Taylor, earlier, he’d always relished), enthusiasm, in Devonshire’s case, indistinguishable from ambition, ambition, similarly, from opportunism, opportunism from predictability. He liked him, he reflected, because he didn’t trust him; if he didn’t trust someone he knew precisely where he was – in a ‘real’ world as opposed to one of his imagining. With people he could trust, like Simone, like Viklund, each in their separate ways, like his former wife, whom, despite her loyalty, he’d betrayed on several occasions, like his sons, whom he loved and didn’t understand, he invariably felt at ease, unable to decide, because of their veracity, what precisely they were up to. He wondered – had wondered – to what degree this reflected adversely on himself, or whether it was a sense of reality – his sense of reality, a valuable if elusive property – which was so finely, so astutely tuned that it gave him an inadvertent advantage over everyone else.

  ‘“Conceptual art,” to which you say the British cognoscenti are inevitably addicted, “is an oxymoron, ‘moron’ the operative word.” Apparently, if it’s conceptual it can’t be art, if it’s art it can’t be conceptual. As for heading the article, which may well be my job, “Neo-Philistinism in British Fin de Siècle Art”, likening it to the facile illustrative traits in Victorian painting, “the end of a century seems to bring out the worst in us”, it gives the feature a wholly negative ring. What standards are you referring to? Sienese? Florentine? Quattrocento? Cinquecento? The overall tone is regressive. Singularly so. Overwhelmingly so. I wondered if you’d like to amend it? It will have to be faxed in by the end of the day.’