— Well if he doesn't he'll be more polite about it than you are Christina, is that why you finally came all the way out here? just to criticize whatever I…
— You've been begging me to come out for days, for weeks haven't you? telling me you were having a seizure and the house was on fire? While you're simply sitting here with your Pinot Grigio putting on weight like a, sitting here behind this barricade of books and folders and papers it looks like you're running a little store here like you wanted to when you were seven and made me buy those horrid shreds of coloured ribbon on safety pins you said were badges because I couldn't tell a penny from a dime, at least you're almost sitting up like a human being and not rolled in like a fish on a platter, at least you're getting your money's worth from this therapist aren't you?
— I got rid of the therapist.
— You get rid of the one person who's doing you any good, I should have guessed shouldn't I.
— Well you guessed wrong. Ilse's been doing my, those things, handling those things she…
— Handling what things. Does it ever occur to you to simply try to get up and walk, Oscar? Where is she.
— She's gone to do the shopping.
— You still have her riding around in a taxi to order your groceries? There must be a less extravagant way of buying a bunch of carrots. There is such a thing as the telephone.
— Well you don't have to eat them Christina! I just thought Mister Basic might like something a little diff…
— He's not coming all the way out here to eat carrots is he? I thought all these court papers were filed and you were just waiting for a decision.
— We are, but we, but he has some things he wants to talk to me about and, and he said he thought the two of us should sit down together.
— Well there is such a thing as the telephone, Oscar. For the two of you I mean, maybe you'd rather I didn't join you?
— I didn't say that did I? I just meant that I, that sometimes when I'm trying to…
— Well you do seem to get things rather muddled sometimes and need someone to step in and move them along, I'm sure he keeps the clock running even when he's eating carrots. I'm going for a walk, I'll be back for lunch. I wouldn't think of missing it.
Swans, a whole fleet of them, rumpled the still surface of the pond where she came down to follow the sandy edge of it, giving way finally to reeds and mud sending her up to the road past one silent hulk of a house well beyond a stone's throw from another closed, most of them, for winter, leading her on to the dunes, the shock of a wind borne in from the restless waves out there urging her down the empty beach all the way to the cut where the sea turned the pond brackish, harassing her every retraced step to the road till by the time the driveway led her in under those mangled pines she brought the chill right into the house and stood there shaking it off. — Oscar? Voices reached her rising on a tide of garlic and olive oil.
— Only problem there Oscar, see your only problem is you've got right there in your original complaint where you're alleging professional distress for your second cause of action.
— I'm sure that's not his only problem Mister Basic, how are you? She waved off a handshake across the room, — please don't get up. What has he done now.
— Just talking about this letter he's writing to the…
— It's nothing Christina, it's just, give it back to me!
But she'd lifted it lightly from his hand, coming round behind him, — this? scanning it, — is it a joke?
— I said give it back to me!
— Who in God's name is Sir John Nipples.