Returning downstairs, he paused to listen to the voice audible in her consulting-room, failing to recognise it, male again, taking something of its resonance with him as he walked, a feeling of retreat – of alarm, of obfuscation – persuading him, when he got to the house, to lie on his bed.

  Through the back window the afternoon sun was glowing on the houses opposite, shadowing the concertina-like configuration of the terraced roofs. Birds fluttered amongst the shrubs, an aircraft lumbered overhead, its fuselage alternately glinting and shadowed by clouds gathering, unseen, on the other side of the house. High above it, a vapour trail pencilled in a pointed orange beam moving, a pinpoint, to the north.

  It was time, he reflected, to go back to St Albans, the Roman apostate turned Christian – to what purpose, he had no idea; and wondered, too, what he might tell Paul, other than not to waste his money; or what, more remotely, he might tell his sister.

  He fumbled in the pillboxes by his bed, took out two thioridazine, managed to swallow them without water and, some twenty minutes later, feeling their effect, a haziness he didn’t like and which drove his spirits down, turned on his side and, curled in something of a foetal position, went to sleep.

  In his dream he was summarising his life to a figure mounted on a platform set on the roof of Simone’s house. The feet of the figure came level with his head: one moment it was Taylor, the next someone he didn’t recognise, an abstracted version, perhaps, of Isaacson, possibly of a teacher or the headmaster at Quinians – even Pemberton from the Drayburgh – aware, in the dream, of negotiating the identity of this figure as he went along, first one person, then the next, unable, in this respect, to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

  His summarising consisted of his listing events which should have taken place but hadn’t; when he was reproached by the figure on the platform, the phrase, ‘But none of this is true’, came floating down, he aware of the falsity of his claims, as well as his incomprehension at having made them. ‘Surely all you’re trying to assert,’ came the voice, ‘is something you’ve no right to,’ the tone contemptuous, jeering. ‘Ask Simone,’ he heard himself responding. ‘She lives here,’ anxious, looking round, aware, behind him, of a very long drop, the area of the roof contracting, a process which, he realised, had been underway since the dream had begun, the stage, similarly, in the process of floating away, he clinging, finally, to a rail, the roof reduced to a single set of tiles, then to a sliver down the side of which his feet began to slip.

  The phone woke him as he fell; by the time he’d got to the other bedroom it had stopped. The street outside was dark, the sun having set beyond the houses: a livid light, pink, deepening to ochre streaked with purple, occupied a clouded sky.

  Half awake he went downstairs: an awareness of something abject in his nature, and which, in this mood, he was convinced nothing could reverse, brought him into the kitchen. Unlocking the back door he went out to the yard, looking for something, he wasn’t sure what, gazing up at the rear of the house, at the weed-strewn flower-beds on either side, the weeds indistinguishable from the indigenous plants cultivated by the previous owner. The sky was now flooded with red, its source invisible beyond the house: it was as if, in reality, he were still asleep, struggling into consciousness, plagued by doubt and then, more certainly, by fear: a feeling that the whole of his life had been – was in the process of being – rejected.

  By whom? a commentator of some sort, presumably a part of himself, authority – significance: order, even – lying somewhere else. Authenticity is what he lacked (what Taylor had inferred he lacked), a commitment to something which, dextrously, he had avoided throughout his life: marriage, children, job.

  Against that was opposed a force he recognised in Isaacson, in Simone, particularly during that last moment on her roof: a force that pointed upwards, rather than down, north, rather than south, a force whose inversion had seized him on the tube station platform, a malignancy he recognised in Taylor and now, fatally, blindly, horrifically, within himself.

  When he returned to Simone’s a note on the stairs told him she’d rung, had got no answer and, unable, after all, to cancel her appointment, had gone out.

  He thought of waiting until she returned, found the emptiness of the house without her daunting, the cat, mewing, following him around, waiting, anxious, as always, to be fed.

  He put food in its bowl and returned downstairs: finding the door to her consulting-room locked, he began to reflect on the force of her anger, on her independence, that part of her which, in many respects – his own, perverse calculation – appeared menacingly indisposed towards himself.

  The door to the room opposite was open, the desk, behind which Mrs Beaumont invariably sat, with its computer terminal and answering machine, visible inside, the house, without Simone’s presence, something of a hulk, the significance of what she meant to him defined by her absence, an alternately bemusing and terrifying force, seductive, challenging, oppressive, the emptiness he felt in endeavouring to oppose it equally strong.

  Perhaps it was his age – exhaustion, even – which left him feeling like this, then, recalling Kavanagh’s insistence that age had little if anything to do with it, he let himself out of the front door.

  Lamps were lit along the street, culminating in the glow of the public house at the opposite end: figures were scattered on benches against its façade. The studio window opposite Simone’s was also illuminated, a shadow thrown across it of someone moving inside.

  Descending the steps to Heath Street, he waited in the High Street for the bus to take him back in the direction of Camden Town.

  It was the phone ringing that brought him hurriedly into the house, snatching it up, the front door left open – not Simone’s voice, as he had been anticipating, coming back on the bus – but his brother’s.

  ‘Do you know how many times I’ve called? Get a fucking answering machine. What’s the matter with you, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘How many times?’ he asked.

  His brother paused. ‘Twice,’ pausing again. ‘This is the third time. How did you get on?’ Conciliatory, the tone: the news better be good.

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Do you think he can help?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Are you going again?’

  ‘I assumed he was willing. Particularly since he saw it as an opportunity to talk exclusively about himself. He should be paying you.’

  ‘He’s highly thought of.’

  ‘Who by?’

  His brother waited.

  ‘Everybody.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Everyone I’ve asked.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘How many does it fucking take? He’s supposed to be a genius.’

  ‘You even got his name wrong.’

  ‘Oh, fuck you,’ his brother said.

  The gap between himself and Paul had widened: prolixity, on his brother’s part, had always been a problem: prolixity had taken him into the Church and, just as swiftly, brought him out again – presumably to take him on to where he was at present: talk long enough and anything might happen. Familiarity had taken the edge off that. There was a challenge here, too, to which he had never responded, Paul blaming him for a problem the solution of which only he, Maddox, could supply.

  No reciprocal reproach, he concluded, was evident in himself: he owed Paul nothing – the ‘gift’ of the sessions he might have with Isaacson something he could well afford himself, recognising only the benefit to Paul in his agreeing to receive it.

  ‘I’m really appreciative – really appreciative – of what you’ve done,’ he said. ‘Even if it goes nowhere it’s been a reassuring gesture.’

  ‘Fuck the gesture,’ Paul said. ‘Make it go somewhere. It’s up to you.’

  For a while the two of them were silent.

  ‘So what’s his name?’

  ‘Isaacson.’

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘Isaacs.’

  ‘So what’s the difference? Maybe I should go and see him.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Ask him what he thinks. Maybe the two of us together will make more sense.’

  ‘And Sarah.’

  ‘And Sarah, too, if she wants to.’

  Still his brother waited.

  ‘Did he suggest you might get better? That you are better. Not be tempted to try again.’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t work that way. Cures are not, I suspect, what he’s about.’

  ‘Your brains, his reputation, you ought to be able to produce something,’ his brother said.

  ‘My reputation and his brains, too,’ he said. ‘On the whole, as I understand it, he hands the conclusions back to you.’

  ‘I’d like this thing to work out,’ Paul said, something other than the stated, other than the obvious, involved in his response: his sudden, uncharacteristic deference.

  ‘I’m sure it will,’ he said. ‘One way or another.’

  ‘It’s the other I’m concerned about,’ Paul said.

  ‘The person who recommended him didn’t happen to be Dan?’ he said, and added, when his brother didn’t respond, ‘Viklund.’

  ‘Why should it be Viklund?’

  ‘They know one another. Or did.’

  ‘First I heard of it,’ Paul said. ‘It was someone I know from work. I thought I’d mentioned that.’

  ‘I’ll probably see him again.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I’ll let you know how it goes.’

  ‘Do,’ his brother said. ‘I want this to work out right. We deserve it of one another.’

  Then he was gone, the phone put down at the other end.

  No sooner had he replaced the receiver than the telephone rang again.

  ‘I shouldn’t have left you so quickly,’ Simone said. ‘I was angered you’d spoken to Isaacson about our situation, though there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been talking to Paul. He’s disappointed about the outcome, too. He doesn’t, by nature, hang around. If it doesn’t happen now it never will, more or less his motto.’

  He wondered why he had sought to reassure her so quickly: there were voices in the background. She wasn’t talking from home.

  ‘It was you reporting Norman turning up that threw me,’ she said. ‘I wonder how long he’s been seeing Isaacson. Did it come as news to him that you and I were together?’

  ‘I’d have thought so,’ he said. ‘Apart from that, he doesn’t know your name. Nor did he ask for it, either.’

  ‘If he talks about other clients to you, presumably he talks about you to them.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘He told you Cavendish, so-called, was full of good intentions. That breaches confidentiality, for a start.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’ve hired a detective.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I’m curious to know what he’s up to. Symonds recommended him.’

  ‘Who’s Symonds?’

  ‘The lawyer I told you about. He came with a barrister friend to see me this morning.’

  ‘Don’t you normally go to see them?’

  ‘He wanted to see what the set-up was.’

  ‘What set-up?’

  ‘How we live. The lay-out.’

  Voices drowned out a further remark.

  ‘Where are you calling from?’ he asked.

  ‘A restaurant. I’m having supper with a friend. I wanted another view. She’s been stalked herself and knows precisely what to do.’

  ‘Is this stalking?’ he said.

  ‘Obsessive behaviour of this nature, I’d have thought, comes pretty close,’ she said.

  Voices once again intruded: she must have been phoning in a passage, people, at intervals, passing by.

  ‘I came without my mobile. I’ll probably be exhausted by the end of the evening, but my friend will see me home. If you want to go up and wait I’ll try and get back sooner.’

  ‘I’ll hang around here,’ he said. ‘And come up tomorrow.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I presume you’re working all day?’

  ‘There’s lunchtime.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Then again, there isn’t. I’m booked.’

  ‘I’m also booked. I’ve got the life-class.’

  He would have given it up, he reflected, if she’d been free as well.

  ‘How about the evening?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I love you.’

  He wanted to respond, but didn’t know how, resisting, he discovered, a similar declaration. Why, at that moment, he had no idea.

  ‘I’m not sure what love means,’ he said.

  ‘Even now?’

  Distress, if only at his silence, was indicated at the other end.

  ‘I believe Isaacson has disturbed you,’ she said. ‘Which wouldn’t be unusual, even if he were normal.’

  ‘How abnormal?’ he said.

  ‘He was involved in the anti-psychiatry movement in the sixties. Knew Szasz. Foucault. Illych. Not that any of them agreed. They never do. He was sectioned at one time. In the seventies. I don’t suppose he mentioned that.’

  ‘He mentioned a breakdown in Jerusalem, after the war.’

  ‘He was in a locked ward at night and teaching in medical school during the day. Have you heard anything more ridiculous? Have you heard anything more irresponsible?’

  His heart warmed to Isaacson, suddenly, unequivocally: it had warmed to him, he realised, from the moment he had entered his house, despite Cavendish, aka Death, aka Norman: the home of another soul, he reflected, with nothing left to lose: the home of another soul who, for the fuck of him, didn’t know any more what he ought to do.

  It also warmed him, he realised, to Simone: her protestations, her concern, her disapproval: her hiring a detective. Her sturdy, determined – to him, unnecessary – effort to stay in control: how abandoned – how unliveable, how unlikeable – how meaningless, his life would be without her: a dependency coming out of nowhere, alarming, dismaying, exhilarating in its intensity.

  ‘He’s quite a card,’ he told her.

  ‘He practises reverse therapy. He must have told you.’

  ‘He didn’t put a word to it,’ he said. ‘If that’s what it was.’

  ‘Something he cooked up in the fifties with Allied prisoners-of-war returned from Korea. Not many, of course, care to use it. It’s been much discredited since.’

  ‘I’d better look out when I see him,’ he said.

  ‘If you see him,’ she said.

  ‘I think I will,’ he said. ‘After your recommendation, it would be hard to refuse.’

  ‘When shall I see you, Matt?’ she said.

  ‘Tomorrow evening,’ he confirmed.

  ‘I’ll have to go. I’ve already been longer than I said.’

  ‘Don’t get back too late,’ he said.

  ‘If you’d have been there I’d have got back all the sooner,’ she said. ‘Goodnight, my love,’ the phone put down the other end.

  The house was in darkness, Berenice’s voice reverberating through the building, coming through the windows, penetrating the walls: ‘If somebody grasses on you you have to teach them a fucking lesson. Right? If somebody grasses you up you know what you have to do. Right?’ A pause, the suggestion, presumably, digested by a silent interlocutor. ‘Roight?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll kill the fucker if he comes again.’

  ‘I’ll kill him for you, Benny. Just give the fucking word.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Just give the fucking word.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Give me the fucking word.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll kill the fucker.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll kill the fucking cunt.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘If somebody grasses on you.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll kill the fucker.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Right.’

  A door closed: the building shook. Glass trembled in the windows. The conversation continued, inaudibly, in another room, ‘Roight!’ alone vibrating through several successive walls.

  Remembering that his own front door was open, Maddox went out to the hall. Closing it, he locked it, putting on the chain. Energy, which had previously drained out of him, had suddenly returned: all as a result, he reminded himself, of her ringing him up: her apology, her confession: her extrapolation: his life. Everything!

  Passing through the house, he reassured himself that the back door, too, was locked, securing the bolts at the top and the bottom.

  From an open window in the adjoining yard came the sound of Berenice speaking on the telephone: ‘Nobody grasses on me and gets away with it. Right? His life isn’t worth a piece of shit.’ Pause. ‘I’m going to cut his fucking balls off and shove them down his fucking throat. Right? Isaiah is going to cut his fucking balls off. Right? Just tell him that from me. Right?’

  Why did he insist on living in this egalitarian nightmare, conceived, executed, supervised by no one who troubled to live in it themselves? He could be living somewhere else. He didn’t have to listen to all this crap. But where? With whom? With what? Not up the hill, for instance, with Simone (he couldn’t afford it: social conformity, too, prohibited it).

  He was lucky – fortunate – on the other hand, to be living at all, saved by forces which, at one time, were no more explainable than the one which, spontaneously, had disposed him to self-murder, he finding his way, with these reflections, to his room upstairs, Berenice’s voice echoing across the backs; what of other neighbours tuned in to this decibel-crunching sound, ahuman, splenetic, intransigently enquiring?

  Was it those on the other side to whom she was referring, or was it him? Had he given the impression (loaded, as he was, with the evidence) of someone grassing? He had rarely troubled to call at her door: not him at all, he concluded (safe at least), easing himself into the chair beside his bed, picking up the block of wood on which he rested his paper, retrieving a pen from the floor, one of several lying there, his typewriter shrouded on the desk before him, the room providing little space for anything else, something the size, he reflected, of a prison cell, twelve feet by eight – getting up, after a moment, opening the window to the evening air, the reading-lamp clamped to the top of a radiator controlled by a switch in the skirting-board behind the chair, settling his thoughts, noting the pointed style of the pen, thinking what was he thinking? What was he thinking he was thinking he was thinking? A recapitulation of his life: car-showroom to the Drayburgh to a back room in a backstreet close to the market of Camden Lock, an attempt at self-murder intervening: an aircraft hurtling up from Heathrow, the metallic whining roar as it passed above his head, its fuselage suspended between bowed wings, its navigation lights twinkling green and red, Berenice’s voice summoning the dead: ‘I’ll cut his fucking balls off,’ he assuming that the noise of someone moving – or so it seemed – in the bedroom at the front was the distortion of a sound from the street beyond, convinced, moments later, that the sound of someone breathing, heavily, could only have come from the room itself, getting up, slowly, going to the door where, on the landing, he saw the access to the roof space, a small trapdoor, had been pushed aside, the sound of breathing, more nearly panting, coming from the bedroom – stepping inside to find a man standing there, black, in jeans and a sweatshirt, a knife in his hand, his hair ringleted around a bulbously featured head.