‘If he had what?’

  ‘No, that’s the point – if he didn’t have . . . if he had . . . if he didn’t have . . .’

  ‘If he didn’t have what, then?’

  ‘If he didn’t have . . . If he had . . .’

  ‘Say it, Giles. Christ.’

  ‘Well, you see, what my cousin wants to know, actually, is could you marry someone who had . . . who didn’t have . . .’

  ‘Jesus. WHAT?’

  ‘Who didn’t have teeth. Who had false ones. Could you?’

  ‘If I loved him, of course I could!’

  Giles sank against the door. ‘Gosh. I never thought I should marry,’ he said to steady himself.

  Giles poured out a glass of Hock and said to Roxeanne, ‘They say Keith is well again.’

  Roxeanne said that she thought he probably would be. ‘You can get away with most things these days.’

  Celia stood up and, with Diana’s assistance, began to load the dishwasher. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if he is he’s going to have to find somewhere else to live.’

  ‘Right,’ said Diana. ‘I’ve got no time for suicides. It’s just too boring. A schoolfriend of mine was in a crash once and I went to see her every day for three months. A year later the bitch stuck her head in the oven because her guy couldn’t kick being queer. Did I go to hospital once? No way. I told her why not, too.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Celia. ‘It’s selfish, stupid and utterly boring.’

  ‘Well,’ said Giles. ‘I don’t know, I just feel . . . That drug and everything . . . I just feel terribly relieved.’

  And then Giles Coldstream did something he had not done for five years. He turned full-face to Roxeanne and he smiled – not his habitual tragi-comic-mask, thin-lipped stripe, but a bright, frank, boyish, ripple-eyed grin.

  Roxeanne leant forward sharply and frowned up at him. ‘– Hey, man, what’s with your teeth? They’re all, you got wires and shit in there—’

  Upending his glass and knocking his chair over, Giles backed away from the table, his face stunned with a look of guilty dismay.

  ‘Here, let’s . . .’ said Roxeanne, bearing down on Giles, who retreated gesturing with his hands like an entertainer quelling applause. ‘The fuck, how old are you? And your teeth are all dead.’

  Containing his tears, a frightened child, Giles bolted from the room.

  ‘Round and round the garden,’ sang Quentin and Andy, two prop-forwards to Keith’s dangling hooker, ‘ran the teddy bear. One step, two steps, tickly under there. Round and round the garden ran the—’

  ‘Hey,’ broke off Andy, ‘it’s pretty knackering, this. Where the fuck are those Yanks? Why can’t they have a go for a bit?’

  Keith began to groan. It was a reedy, cat-like sound.

  ‘At least he’s alive,’ observed Quentin. ‘We’re not completely wasting our time.’

  ‘No,’ said Keith, pronouncing it ‘Mo’ through pulped lips.

  ‘Mo who, you little wreck?’ Andy asked.

  ‘Mo,’ said Keith. ‘Mot in the well. Doan frow me in the well. Dome drowm me.’

  ‘Don’t throw you in the well? Quentin, he talks as if we throw him inna well every night. We’ve a bloody good mind to, Keith. There’s gratitude for you.’

  ‘“Don’t drown me”,’ repeated Quentin. ‘That reminds me – Keith never got the antidote, did he?’

  Keith started crying, crying in painfully snatched falsetto, crying like a baby.

  Quentin and Andy turned to each other with bulging eyes.

  Giles was crying too. He was doing so at his desk while he assembled his writing-paper and pencils. Fat tears smudged the sheet as he wrote:

  Dear All. God knows I have had a hard enough life since my accident. It has not been easy but I have tried to muck along as best I could. But now, with these remarks of Rocks-Ann’s, I really do not know what I shall

  He sniffed wetly. He stood up. There was something else in his gait when he walked towards the drinks cupboard.

  ‘Round and round the . . . Jesus. My arm’s fuckin dropping off. Look – Quent – there they are. Hey! The fuck over here, you lazy shits!’

  Skip and Marvell merged into the garage light, buckling their belts. They ambled towards the rocking trio.

  ‘What kinda shape’s he in?’

  Andy unhitched Keith’s arm from his shoulder and swung the naked body forcefully at Marvell and Skip. ‘Where you been. Crapping or screwing or what?’

  ‘What difference does it make?’ asked Marvell urbanely.

  ‘Fuck-all to you guys, that’s for sure,’ said Andy, pacing back towards the house with Quentin at his side.

  They settled on the steps outside the french windows. Fifteen yards away Skip, Marvell and Keith marched round in the half-light like jagged clockwork figures in a silent film. Andy produced his hash-kit and within half a minute had rolled two one-paper joints. ‘Hey, man,’ he said reflectively, handing one to Quentin and lighting them both. ‘That guy Keats. How old was he when he checked out?’ ‘He was twenty-six,’ said Quentin. (‘Walk right, walk right!’ they heard Skip holler at the crippled Keith.) ‘Oh really?’ said Andy rather snootily. ‘I mean, that’s not bad. What was all the . . . gimmick?’ ‘I expect people thought he had yet to realize his full potential.’ Unimpressed, Andy protruded his lower lip and nodded a few times. ‘Fuck potential,’ he said.

  ‘Quentin?’ asked a new voice.

  Quentin turned to the french windows, whence Giles falteringly emerged. ‘My good friend Giles,’ he said.

  ‘How’s Keith? Is he well again now?’

  ‘He’s as well as can be expected. Rather better, as it happens.’

  ‘Oh. I see. So you won’t be taking him to the hospital.’

  ‘We do hope we may be spared that embarrassment, yes.’

  ‘Oh, actually. I see.’ Giles turned to go.

  ‘Why do you ask, Giles?’

  ‘Only that . . . that I’ve done it too. But I don’t want to be a nuisance. Or a bore. I’ll simply go back upstairs.’

  ‘You’ve done what too.’

  ‘Sort of killed myself, actually. I had, I’ve just drunk two litres of brandy – in one. Well, no, actually in two, cos—’

  ‘– Giles, are you serious?’

  ‘Mm. The book says I ought to die in twenty-five minutes, apparently. Seems silly now. But if you’re not . . . I mean, I don’t . . .’

  Quentin leapt to his feet.

  ‘Welcome to the gang, kid,’ said Andy, flicking his cigarette high into the air.

  66 No More Games

  Within twenty seconds Quentin was on the telephone to Hampstead Central Hospital, where a nurse of Irish provenance assured him that the patient, as described, had no chance whatever of reaching them alive. The only suitably equipped unit in mortal range, she said, was the Psychiatric Casualty Wing of the Blishner Institute, Potters Bar. She would now ring there herself and ask them to ready a stomach-pump in B4, to which ward the patient should be rushed as soon as he arrived. Throughout the conversation Giles sat smiling shame-facedly on the sofa. Lucy was beside him, stroking his hair and saying as little as she could.

  Quentin slapped down the telephone.

  ‘Right. Skip – which is faster – the Chevrolet or the Jaguar?’

  ‘The Chev,’ said Skip. ‘I tune it. It, it’ll hit—’

  ‘Get in it and rev. Lucy, Roxeanne, get Giles in there. Andy, come on. Let’s get Keith in there too. No more games.’

  In noisy formation, the Appleseeders crowded into the drive.

  ‘Dump little Keith in back,’ said Marvell. ‘He still stinksa rat.’

  ‘It’s the mercy-dash express!’ said Andy, picking Keith up by his hair and the back of his belt and lobbing him into the boot.

  ‘Get up front, honey,’ Roxeanne told Lucy. ‘Tell Skip the way. I’ll take care of Giles.’

  Andy joined Roxeanne and Giles in the back seat while Lucy ran round to join Skip in the front. The Chevrolet was already in gear when Quentin raced forward from the remaining group on the porch. He put his head through the driver’s window and handed Skip an envelope. ‘Here are the details. I know the head man there and it might speed things up. Open it when you get there.’ Skip put the letter into his flying-jacket and zipped it up. Quentin smacked the car roof twice.

  ‘Now gun it!’

  With a wide squirt of gravel the Chevrolet ground off into the night.

  ‘Beat me, beat me,’ said Andy (for Skip had switched on the tape). ‘Beat me, beat me – aw, chop my head off.’

  As the car straightened on to the road Giles slumped from his seat to the floor. Andy was about to draw this to Roxeanne’s attention when he noticed that her hand was busy on his lap. His eyes swelled.

  ‘You fork off here?’ said Skip.

  ‘Fuck off yourself,’ said Andy.

  ‘Yes. Here,’ said Lucy.

  Skip pulled them on to the dual-carriageway at 75 m.p.h. The heavy car rode high up the verge before stabilizing again. Andy looked down at Roxeanne’s head, which bobbed rhythmically over his groin.

  ‘Christ,’ he said elatedly. ‘We’re all dying here. We’re all dying!’

  67 Spring Clean

  Quentin allowed Celia to embrace him momentarily before he shooed her back into the house. Diana and Maryell stood nervously in the hall.

  ‘Now,’ he began. ‘Incompetent as we know the authorities to be, I don’t imagine they’ll let two contiguous suicide attempts go completely unremarked. So shall we make a start? Marvell, may I make you responsible for the drugs? Round them up and come to me. Don’t worry about the hash and what-not – just the hard stuff. Celia, Diana: could you, as it were, spring clean? Banish, at any rate, the grosser evidences of debauchery. I’ll get the lion’s share of the bottles into the garage and recky the garden. If we could reconvene in the drawing-room in, say, fifteen minutes . . . ?’

  By then it was three-thirty. From the one remaining vessel in the room Quentin poured four small glasses of Benedictine. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Now we wait.’

  Marvell glanced at his watch. ‘Oughta be there by now.’

  For a moment they all sat back and let the tiredness pound through them. Then Diana stood up. ‘I’m going to bed,’ she announced.

  Quentin got to his feet. He kissed Diana deftly on the lips. ‘Good night, Diana. Thank you for your help.’ He conferred silently with Marvell and Celia. ‘I think, however, that we’ll stay up and see this through.’

  ‘O.K.’ Diana hesitated as she turned to leave. ‘Wait . . . isn’t there something else? Isn’t there – haven’t we forgotten something?’

  Quentin spread his arms. ‘I fail to see what.’

  The effort of recall flickered once more in Diana’s eyes.

  ‘The weekend – it’s over then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Quentin, ‘what else it could be.’

  68 White Room

  The Chevrolet came to a grilled halt broadside an ambulance in the Blishner Institute Psychiatric Casualty forecourts. As the five spilled from the car a tall young intern with long black hair noosed in a headband promptly wheeled a stretcher from between the sliding doors. ‘This him?’ he asked, levering Giles on to the white sheeting. ‘Yeah.’ They had started back to the building when Andy abruptly snapped his fingers. ‘Fuck,’ he remarked to Lucy. ‘We forgot little Keith again.’

  He ran back to the car, exhumed Keith from its boot, and trotted back with the body slung over his shoulder.

  ‘What’s with this one?’ asked the intern, staring at Keith’s blood-bubbled face.

  ‘Uh . . .’ said Andy. ‘Uh, he just took this great load of aspirins.’

  ‘Like hell he did,’ said the intern. ‘You boys had better stick around.’

  He led them between the automatic doors, through the dim vestibule, along a corridor and into a small white room.

  ‘Stay here,’ he told them.

  Andy watched him go. ‘That guy wants a fight,’ he said, letting Keith’s body drop from his shoulder to the floor.

  ‘I’m not staying here,’ said Skip. ‘That guy means business and I’m loaded.’

  ‘Relax,’ said Andy. ‘I tellya, he’s—’

  ‘Hey!’ said Roxeanne, opening a cupboard door to reveal four shelves of bottles and phials. ‘Get this!’

  ‘Christ,’ said Andy. ‘Look. Mandies! Adrenalin! Amyl nitrate!’ He spun round to Skip. ‘– Get inna car, turn it round. We’ll be right out.’ He began loading his pockets, Roxeanne hers. Skip kicked Keith out of the way and hopped into the corridor.

  – And there was Keith, looking as if he had been dead for a week. And there was Giles, drowning, dying and dying in the white room. Lucy crept nearer the stretcher. She held his limp hand in both of hers. Her face burned with incredulous disgust. ‘Andy,’ she whispered.

  Andy turned, wide-eyed, a jar of pills held up in either hand. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Andy. What are you doing?’ Lucy’s voice trembled. ‘Get out of here and leave us alone. Get out.’

  His hands dropped to his sides. ‘Ah, what the hell, Lucy? I mean, really – what the hell any more?’

  69 Wrong Yesterdays

  In the smaller of the Appleseed Rectory sitting-rooms, Quentin reclined on a pink chaise-longue with Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau dandled on his thighs. But he wasn’t reading. His forefinger placed in either nasal cleft, Quentin’s head was tilted backwards in a meditative posture.

  In the larger of the Appleseed Rectory sitting-rooms, unaware of Quentin’s presence behind the half-closed partition doors, Celia and Marvell were together on the sofa.

  ‘Yeah, that,’ Marvell was saying. ‘That’d be the time I was over here before. When I stayed at a, at Quentin’s people’s home?’

  ‘Oh. So you visited Tallbury.’

  ‘Nah, not “Tallbury”. What was it . . . fuckin great country place. It was . . .’

  ‘Tallbury,’ said Celia. ‘So you met them before they got killed?’

  ‘They did? All of them?’

  ‘In an aeroplane crash,’ said Celia neutrally.

  ‘What, some sorta charter flight?’

  ‘Probably. They are more dangerous. The brother survived.’

  ‘The brother? Oh, right – the “brother”, yeah. Ah, that’s too bad. I liked them really a lot. Quentin never said.’

  Next door, the book slid from Quentin’s thighs. He made no attempt to retrieve it.

  ‘You liked them?’ said Celia. ‘They and Quentin never got on.’

  ‘Nah, well – but they liked him, huh, Cele?’

  ‘He only put up with them because of the trust money.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Marvell. ‘That was the gimmick.’

  ‘Hardly a gimmick. The money is rightfully his.’

  ‘Guess you could put it that way.’

  Next door, Quentin’s eyes closed. A bleached light played on the corners of his eyes.

  ‘When was this?’ asked Celia.

  ‘Uh, early last year.’

  ‘Last year? But Quentin’s parents died four years ago.’

  ‘Parents? Parents? No no, Celia. This was a “people’s home”? It was a gimmick Quent had an interest in then. You know, one of the de luxe old-fag joints? Quent financed it. Get the queers along, screw their cash, and maybe they leave you something when they pop off?’

  ‘Quentin’s “people”?’

  ‘Yeah. Inna home. He never had any parents far as I knew. It was a good gimmick. It was a very good gimmick. We were, I was pulling down 400, maybe 500 a—’

  ‘– Quentin?’

  Quentin’s eyes opened. He sighed, and a great weight seemed to slide upwards from his body. Then it hit him, like newly-fallen snow, all the blank wrong yesterdays.

  ‘Quentin?’ Celia called. ‘Quentin.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Johnny.

  Part Three • Sunday

  LXX Johnny

  did all kinds of jobs – Mondays he was bucket-boy at Greek Charlie’s down-river abortion factory, sold O.K. piss-samples Tuesdays for the semi-legal immigrants to smuggle into the Health Board Centre, evicted widows and cripples from South London tenements Wednesdays, Thursdays it was pet-napping for the para-vivisectionists, removed anti-syndicate fingernails Fridays, the weekends his own – so then it was drugs, four acid plants run by him, as many trips to Tangiers a month, dealt direct with Chinese heroin agents, cornered the coke concessions in three continents – into the sex-market full time, so incredibly good-looking that when he hit the street courting couples snarled with lust and reached out to steady each other, lorries and girl-driven minis alike mounted the pavement and cannonaded shop windows, people of all ages dropped to their knees in his wake, championed the fuck-farms and pioneered the boyhire networks, two hundred a trick by the time he was through – until all these dreams began to slow down on him, all these pornographic, hallucinatory and mercantile dreams – and suddenly it is not he who sits in a darkened room but flashing this way and that far to go through the night looking for a name, and so—

  ‘Quentin?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Johnny.

  Celia came through the door and with a hideous, inhuman leap Johnny was on her back, a lithe-limbed insect accelerating her fall to the ground. Holding his wife by the hair Johnny smashed her face into the stone floor, smashed until it went all runny and sweet in his hands. Without looking round he jumped and swivelled his right arm backwards and upwards and shattered the approaching Marvell’s jaw with the side of his fist. Johnny kicked, and stopped when the twitching stopped.

  Diana had felt the disturbance from below and was already in her dressing-gown when she heard the gentle footfalls on the stairs and the soft knock.

  ‘Who is it?’ she said.

  ‘It’s Quentin,’ said Johnny.

  Diana opened the door: ‘You,’ she said as he closed it behind him.

  ‘Oh no. Johnny, don’t kill me,’ said Diana. ‘Please don’t kill me, Johnny.’

  71 The Coming Lights