Go for it, Champ, said Oannes.
Melissa’s eyes were frightening. ‘Jesus, Harold, you’re turning out to be a right bastard.’
‘I never promised you unlimited old foolery.’
‘The hell you didn’t! You said you were going to take care of me financially and you strung me along so Leslie and I would move in with you, and now that we’ve given up the Camberwell flat you suddenly cop out on me. That’s really shitty, Prof. If dumping Leslie was part of the deal you should have said so before this.’
‘I honestly didn’t know his presence was going to affect me the way it does. And it’s deliberate on his part — he knows he’s the alpha male around here and he rubs my nose in it with the way he talks to me and the looks he gives me and his body language. I might be old but I realise now that I’m just as territorial as he is and you happen to be the territory. I’m sorry but that’s just how it is.’ What a lot of testosterone there is in my cerebral cortex, he thought.
Melissa’s face became something pale and grim that was all angles and no curves. ‘Look at you, you useless old fart — I could easily finish you off with my bare hands and you’re feeling territorial about me? That’s really a laugh.’
‘So laugh, but get rid of Leslie or the deal’s off.’
‘But I need Leslie — he’s so good with computers and he knows the drill for the project. How am I going to break in somebody new at this stage?’
‘Easily, I should think. There must be a million Leslies out there ready to step into the breach as soon as you drop your knickers. But not in my front bedroom.’
‘You want to play hardball? How about if I let the tabloids know about the secret life of a respected art historian?’
‘Go ahead, sweetheart. Not only will it give my books a new lease of life but I can sell my side of the story for a lot more money than I usually get in advances.’
‘Good God, he’s greedy as well.’
‘This doesn’t have to be a long drawn-out discussion, Lola. I’ve grown accustomed to your base but if you’re determined to carry on with Leslie you’ll have to do it without my financial help and in some other venue.’
He could see her thinking through various scenarios and discarding them until she had none. The deadliness went out of her eyes and she leant her head on his shoulder like a tired child. The lamp over the kitchen table backlit her hair and one side of her face and she was adorable in her defeat.
‘I don’t believe this is happening,’ she said softly. ‘I thought we were good friends and fond of each other.’
‘I am fond of you, Melissa, but now that I’ve loosened up a bit I think I could become fond of someone else rather easily. Leslie’s going to be here soon, I expect. Do you want to break it to him or shall I?’
‘Don’t do anything right away, Harold — give me a little time to think.’
‘Certainly, but it’s got to be tonight. While you’re thinking we can have a drink. What’s your pleasure?’
‘Whisky.’
He poured a large Glenfiddich for both of them and raised his glass to her. ‘Happy days, Melissa.’
‘Whatever you say, Prof.’ She closed her eyes and retired into a reverie while the frost did its nightly sparkle on the parked cars under the pinky-yellow lamps. Both glasses became empty quickly and Klein refilled them.
After a while Leslie’s feet were heard on the outside stairs and he came in by the basement door. ‘Honey, I’m home,’ he said, and unslung his sports bag from his shoulder.
‘We’ve done that one,’ said Melissa.
‘But not this one,’ said Leslie. He put his hand between her legs and kissed her wetly.
Are you just going to keep taking this shit? said Oannes.
I’m thinking about it, said Klein. To Leslie, ‘How was your day at the office?’
‘Hard, which is how they want it,’ said Leslie. ‘And how was yours? Did you write lots of exciting words?’
‘Not really.’
Well? said Oannes. Cowardice is OK but this is your turf.
‘Good-looking salad,’ said Leslie. ‘You do that all by yourself, Prof?’
‘Don’t call me Prof.’
‘Oh yes, I forgot. I’ll try not to let it happen again.’ He poured a Glenfiddich for himself and raised his glass to Klein. ‘Here’s to the world of the arts,’ he said. He downed the whisky, poured another, set the glass on the drainingboard, opened the fridge, took out the vegetables, got a large knife and a bowl, and began to make coleslaw. ‘We wrapped up Dickerydoo today,’ he said to Melissa, ‘so I’ll be able to give you more time.’
‘Right,’ she said to his back. Looking at Klein, she shrugged.
Leslie was graceful and efficient. As he laid out what he needed without apparent thought he made a tidy little still life, then he peeled off the outer leaves of the cabbage, quartered it with professional speed, picked up the slicer, and sliced the cabbage into a bowl. He cleaned and grated the carrots, peeled a large onion and chopped it up fine, peeled and chopped an apple in, added some chopped parsley, black pepper, a pinch of salt, a dash of vinegar, then stirred in yoghurt and mayonnaise and a pinch of sugar. Everything he did was pleasing to the eye; his touch was deft and sensitive and his hands performed as stylishly as those of a TV chef. Melissa noticed Klein watching him. ‘He’s good at what he does,’ she said.
‘You know it,’ said Leslie.
While Leslie was occupied with the coleslaw Melissa caught Klein’s eye and looked towards the stairs. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’m going up to the word machine. Give me a shout when it’s eating time.’
‘You got it, Mr Harold, sir,’ said Leslie.
Once at his desk, Klein put up on the screen the page he called NEXT, and sat looking at Jimmy Durante’s words:
Sometimes I think I wanna go,
And then again I think I wanna stay.
‘No Klimt today,’ he said. ‘The Klimt is off. We can recommend … What?’ He’d always tried to have a new project in mind to follow whatever he was working on — something to look forward to, but now he could think of nothing but Melissa and the conversation she was having with Leslie at this moment. He heard no raised voices from the kitchen but he wanted to make a little space around himself with music, so he put on the Charlie Byrd Trio with Ken Peplowski, The Bossa Nova Years. The songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim, instead of being soothing, seemed to be getting between him and something he wanted to look at. Or was it something that wanted to look at him? The Knochenmann with the red sceptre, was it, offering the next project?
He went to the window, looked at the frost-sparkling cars, thought of the seasons revolving inexorably while metal rusted and flesh decayed, thought of the trees across the common, now bare, how in the summer dawns they swayed their leafy tops in the early breeze, indifferent to humans who slept and woke and slept again.
From the trees on the common his mind went to the olive tree on Paxos, the olive tree he had drawn when Mrs Lichtheim tested him. He saw the flash of silver as the summer wind stirred its leaves; he stood under it in the green-lit shade of the olive grove and looked at the ancient wrinkled trunk that was not dead and the dark opening out of which the naked Persephone had stepped, her body pale as moonlight, her face shadowed by her hair.
He was holding the Paxos stone, round and heavy, in his right hand, feeling in it the lapping of the sea on the pebbled strand, the flat blue of the sky, the Ionian sunlight. He read the Greek words he’d written on it, KINESIS/ ANAPAUSIS: MOTION/REST, and tried to recall the balance of the moment when he had written them, tried to hear Hannelore’s voice, tried to feel her body under his hand, felt instead the warm and pitted stone. What was his motion, where was his rest?