THE INFORMATION

As they queued for Marble Arch, Gwyn jerked his head back and told Richard that Phil had been thrown out of the SAS for being too vicious. Phil grunted leniently. Phil? Lamp-tanned, rubbery, big-lipped, with capped teeth and clear eyes-their age. Phil's full name was Phil Smoker. Richard thought it might save a lot of trouble to be called Richard Smoker, particularly when you were in America. Or Richard Smoking. Phil smoked-so Richard smoked. Gwyn was now filling Phil in about their years of rivalry-on the tennis court, the snooker table, the chessboard.

"And today's the day I clean his clock."

"He's never beaten me at anything," said Richard.

"Sport," said Gwyn, "provides release. There aren't many areas of transcendence left to us now. Sports. Sex. Art.?

"You're forgetting the miseries of others," said Richard. "The languid contemplation of the miseries of others. Don't forget that."

Their destination was not the Warlock but the Oerlich. "I'm paying for all this," said Gwyn. "And I'll have to pay your guest fee. You can get the balls at least." Phil, who had done a lot of staring on their way in from the car park, now did some more staring before settling down with the newspaper. Staring, Richard decided, was what bodyguards were really good at. He bought the balls: they were Swedish, and internally pressurized, and cost a bewildering amount of money. On the way down the cold green tube to their court Gwyn came to a halt and said, "Look. I've arrived." There on the wall was a framed photograph of Gwyn in his whites (together with his semiliterate signature). Nearby there were framed photographs of a dress designer, a golfer, a boxer, and the great Buttruguena.

"How long have you been a member here? What's it cost?"

"Thousands. Quite a while. This is where I play all my real tennis."

After the first changeover Richard said, "What happened to the fourth ball?" They searched for it, and failed to find it. This was an indoor court, and there was of course nowhere for the ball to go. But there were plenty of places for the ball to hide. And tennis balls long to be lost. It's their life; they long to be lost. .. After the second changeover Richard said, "Where'd the third ball go?" They searched for it, and didn't find it. Gwyn, in the keel of whose leather sports bag the two balls now nestled, asked Richard if he wanted to go and buy some more. But Richard shrugged, and played on.

He didn't understand how it was happening. Was it possible to hate too much? At all times he hated Gwyn on the tennis court, even when he was winning easily: even when he sent him from corner to corner like a lab rat (and then put him on his backside with a simple wrong-foot); even when, after a long alternation of lobs and dropshots, he had him gaping over the net, and, with big windup and loud puppy-yelp of racket on ball, drove a topspin forehand straight into his mouth. Hatred was part of his game but something had gone wrong with it-wrong with his hatred, wresting it beyond all focus and all utility. There were reasons for this.

Usually pretty matter-of-fact on court, Gwyn seemed to have converted himself, for the occasion, into a one-man band of affectations and tics-all of them hopelessly and inexpiably repulsive. Every time he won a point he clenched his fist and hissed "Yes" or, even more unbearably, gulped "Yup." Yes, the yup was very much worse than the yes. When they changed ends he could be heard to deploy a deep-breathingexercise: he sounded (Richard thought) like a pre-fire caveman warding off hypothermia. If Gwyn's first serve hit the net and plopped to the ground or rolled unobjectionably into the tramlines, he would reshape, as if to continue, then hesitate, then stand there for a couple of beats with his hands on his hips before trudging forward to retrieve it-while Richard said, for example, "What is this? The Princess and the Pea?" And Gwyn never knew the score. He kept asking what the score was: that tedious shibboleth-fit for hackers and literalists-called the score. "What's the score?" he would say. Or, "Where are we?" Or, "What's that now?" Or, more simply, "Score?" Finally and self-fulfillingly Gwyn was doing something else he had never done. He was winning.

After half an hour Gwyn had set point. Then, toddling forward on a typical piece of junk, he got an inch of racket handle onto Richard's skittish pass. The ball hit the tape, and climbed over it, and died.

"How's your thumb?" said Richard as they sat down. "Thumb all right?"

"It was an angled drop volley. And I was aiming for the tape."

"Don't worry about that thumb. Over the coming weeks that thumb will start to heal. Jesus, how could we lose two balls'?"

Gwyn didn't answer. He had placed a towel over his head-as they do at the Australian Open when the courtside temperature reaches 140 degrees. Richard lit his customary cigarette. Gwyn peered out of his tepee and told him that the Oerlich was no-smoking. Then he added,

"You can't play for peanuts."

"How do you mean?"

"Or for toffee." Gwyn explained. "By the way, did you ever wonder how you got that black eye, at Byland? Or are black eyes just a matter of routine?"

"I did wonder. But given my condition …" And given the locale: an adventure playground for those in need of a black eye. If you were tumbling around it in the dark, on your hands and knees.

"You tried to get into bed with Demi at three in the morning. It was a right hook, I think she said."

"This is disappointing news."

"She doesn't hold it against you. And I think it turned out rather well."

Halfway through the second set the wall telephone rang. Gwyn answered it: Gavin, as arranged, calling to confirm the date of a pro-celebrity doubles tournament. For charity. And for Sebby.

"That was the manager," Gwyn said. "He said you've got to stopscreaming and swearing or they're going to sling you out on your ear. And I must say I think he's got a point."

Ten minutes later Gwyn said, "Score?"

"Forty-love,"said Richard, coming to the net so that he wouldn't have to shout. "To you. Forty-love, and five-one. First set: six-two. To you. That means triple match-point. To you. That means that if you win this point or the next point or the point after, you will win the set and the match. Which you've never done before. Okay? That's the score."

"Gosh. Only asking," said Gwyn, who made that point too.

Richard took it like a man. "Well played," he said as they shook hands over the net post. "You're rucking useless and if I don't win love and love next time I'm giving up the game. Who'd you pay to teach you all that crap anyway?"

"Ask me no questions," he said, "and I'll tell you no lies."

The second set, like the first, had concluded with a dead net cord. Yellow ball hit the white tape: Richard had already forgotten who sent it there. Which didn't matter. The ball teetered on the high-wire of the net and even spun laterally across it for several suspended centimeters before it fell. In tennis, with the dead net cord, you want the ball to come down on the other side. Not your side. You are always wishing it away. But the ball fell toward him, and died. The ball never liked him. The world of the seamed and fuzzy ball never liked him anyway.

They drove back to Holland Park. Richard's tennis wear fumed softly of detergent and family wash, in opposition to the humid tang of Gwyn's cologne-and Phil's Man-Tan and Right Guard. Demi was out. "She's at Byland," said Gwyn. "Dad's dying." After a brief bonding ritual with his charge, Phil disappeared. Richard was shown into a basement toilet which had a shower in it somewhere, as well as various padded boilers and bouncing clothes-dryers. Then for a while, in his wet hair, he inspected the carpentry corner beneath the staircase. Nothing seemed to be under construction, but there was an antique bookrest whose varnish had been mostly scraped off with sandpaper: Gwyn, evidently, was trying to make it look like his own work. Richard went on up.