He farted, closing one eye and scrunching up his face at the side. At Sophie’s soft laugh he started in fright and peered wildly at her over his shoulder.
‘Jesus!’ he cried. ‘Do you want to kill me?’ He waggled his fingers at her as if he were sprinkling water. ‘Sitting there like a ghost!’
She laughed again. He was a game old brute: when she had stumbled on the bridge and he caught her his big hands had been all over her. She shivered, remembering the feel of his old man’s arm, the slippery, fishy flesh inside the sleeve and beneath it the bone hard and sharp as an ancient weapon. Now he paced agitatedly in a little circle, mumbling to himself and shaking his head. He halted, looking down at his feet.
‘My shoes are wringing still,’ he said and did his phlegmy laugh. ‘Leaky as an unstanched wench. Ha!’ He peered at her but she said nothing and he resumed his pacing. He stopped at the window and looked out again balefully at the rain. The world out there had turned to an undulant grey blur.
Silence. Picture them there, two figures in rainlight. Something, something out of childhood.
‘I was trying to think,’ Croke said, ‘of the name of that thing they keep the host in to show it at Benediction. What do they call that? The thing shaped like the sun that the priest holds up. Did you ever see it? What is it, now. I’ve been trying to remember all morning.’ He sighed. ‘And I was an altar boy, you know.’ He turned to her stoutly, expecting her to laugh. ‘I was.’
But she was not listening. She sat and rocked herself in her arms, her eyes fixed on the floor. Croke shrugged and turned away and fiddled with the knobs of a huge, old-fashioned radio standing on a low table beside the window. The green tuning light came on, a pulsing eye, and as the valves warmed up a distant crackling swelled, as if it were the noise of the past itself that was trapped in there among the coils and the glowing filaments. He spun the dial, and out of the crackling a faint voice emerged, speaking incomprehensible words, distantly. Croke listened slack-eyed for a moment and then switched it off.
Felix came in. When he saw Sophie he hesitated and let his gaze go blank and wander about the room. Croke he ignored.
‘What a place!’ he said. ‘You know there is no telephone?’
She watched him, her eyes narrowed against the smoke of her cigarette. She had heard him creeping about in the hotel corridor last night, until that little bitch had let him in, she was sure of it. She had been using her cupped hand as an ashtray and now she held the swiftly smoking stub of her cigarette aloft and looked about her with a frown. Felix stepped smartly to the mantelpiece and found a saucer there and brought it to her. He watched with what seemed almost fondness as she leaned forward and crushed out the butt. The last, acrid waft of smoke was like something swift and bitter being said. She raised her eyes briefly and then looked away.
‘You know who he is,’ he said, ‘the Professor? You recognised him?’ She shrugged, and he shook his head at her reprovingly. ‘O Fama …!’ He heaved a histrionic sigh.
‘Tell me, then,’ she said, stung. ‘Tell me who he is.’
‘Someone famous. A famous man.’
She looked sceptical.
‘Oh yes?’
He nodded with mock solemnity and laid a finger to the side of his nose. She felt herself flush. She said brusquely:
‘Should you not go and see if the Princess is sleeping soundly?’
Still he leaned above her in his buttoned brown suit and stringy tie, a pent-up, parcelled man, his smile twitching and one eyebrow arched, studying her. She drew the collar of her jacket tight about her throat.
‘Am I,’ he said, ‘the charming Prince, I wonder, or the Beast?’ She did not answer and he advanced his smiling face close to hers and softly asked: ‘Are you jealous?’
She laughed out loud.
‘What, of her?’
He shook his head once.
‘I meant of me,’ he said.
She opened wide her eyes and looked at him steadily with a formless smile and said nothing. Croke stood motionless with his head lifted as if he were listening to something in the distance, an echo of that voice out of the ether. (That gold thing, like a sort of sunburst, with the big gold knobs on the handle and the big square base, and the price tag still on the instep of the priest’s shoe when he genuflected; smell of incense and of candle-grease, the fleshy stink of lilies — what was it called?) There was a gust of wind, and the rain whispered softly like blown sand against the glass. Felix turned from Sophie with a flourish and strolled up the room and down again at an equine prance, seeming pleased with himself, humming lightly under his breath and smirking. He stopped to examine the stuffed owl, his narrow head lifted at an angle and his lips pursed. A spot of silver light gleamed in the hollow of his temple. He took a dented, flat gold case from his breast pocket and extracted from it a black cheroot and lit it carefully, holding it clipped between the second and third fingers of his left hand.
‘I see you kept your baccy dry, anyhow,’ Croke at the window said, and still was ignored.
‘We have not had a real talk, you and I,’ Felix said to Sophie over his shoulder, making a frowning face at the owl. A ribbon of harsh smoke trickled out at the corners of his mouth. The bird stared back at him with apoplectic fixity. ‘We should, I think, don’t you?’
Abruptly the rain stopped and the sun came out shakily and everything outside shimmered and dripped.
‘Talk?’ Sophie said. ‘Talk about what?’
‘Oh, anything. Everything. I am trying to be friendly, you see.’
Sophie considered his narrow back for a moment thoughtfully.
‘Who is he?’ she said. ‘That old man.’
‘What? I told you: a famous person. From the past. A professor of fine arts.’ He seemed to find that very funny. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, laughing without sound, one bony shoulder shaking, ‘a great appreciator of the fine arts!’
She studied him with her head held on one side.
‘Is that why you came here,’ she said, ‘because of him?’
He laughed almost shyly this time and touched a hand to his dyed hair.
‘No, no,’ he murmured happily. ‘Chance — pure chance!’
She nodded, not believing him.
‘He does not seem to have heard of you,’ she said.
‘He has — oh, he has. But perhaps he prefers to forget.’ He cast a smiling glance at her. ‘Maybe you will make him famous again?’ He took the cheroot from his lips and lifted an invisible camera to his eye. ‘Snap-snap, yes? The great man at his desk.’ He was mimicking her accent.
She rose from the couch, smoothing the lap of her dress, and crossed the room and stood with one hand on the doorknob and the other still holding her jacket closed at her throat.
‘What a fraud you are,’ she said.
‘A fake, yes,’ he answered swiftly, pouncing, with his fierce, tight-lipped smile, ‘but not a fraud. Ask the Professor: he knows about such things.’ He advanced a step towards her eagerly and stopped and stood with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and his head thrown back, looking at her along his nose and smiling genially, the cheroot held in his teeth and his curved mouth oozing smoke. ‘What do you say,’ he said, ‘shall we fight?’
She hesitated, her eyes lowered, looking at the spot where he was standing. She pictured herself striding forward without a word and beating him to his knees, could almost see the blood-dark shadow in her head and feel the irresistible exultation shake her heart; she would cross the space between them at a run, one arm drawn back like a bow, fleet-footed, winged, taking a little skipping step halfway, the floor like firm air under her tread, and then feel the crack of fist on flesh and hear his laughter and his cries as he fell in a clatter with limbs askew, like a wooden doll. She trembled, and turned abruptly and went out, letting the door shut behind her with a ragged click.