Whip Hand

'I telephoned.'

'How organised! One room or two?'

'One.'

She smiled as if that suited her well, and we were shown into a large wood-panelled room with stretches of carpet, antique polished furniture, and a huge fourposter bed decked with American-style white muslin frills.

'My God,' Louise said. 'And I expected a motel.'

'I didn't know about the fourposter,' I said a little weakly.

'Wow,' she said, laughing. 'This is more fun.'

We parked the suitcases and freshened up in the modern bathroom tucked discreetly behind the panelling, and went back to the car: and Louise smiled to herself all the way to the new address of Nicholas Ashe.

It was a prosperous-looking house in a prosperous-looking street. A solid five-or-six-bedroomed affair, mellowed and white painted and uninformative in the early evening sun.

I stopped the car on the same side of the road, pretty close, at a place from where we could see both the front door and the gate into the driveway. Nicky, Louise had said on the way down, often used to go out for a walk at about seven o'clock, after a hard day's typing. Maybe he would again, if he was there.

Maybe he wouldn't. We had the car's windows open because of the warm air. I lit a cigarette, and the smoke floated in a quiet curl through lack of wind. Very peaceful, I thought, waiting there.

'Where do you come from?' Louise said.

I blew a smoke ring. 'I'm the posthumous illegitimate son of a twenty-year-old window cleaner who fell off his ladder just before his wedding.'

She laughed. 'Very elegantly put.'

'And you?' 'The legitimate daughter of the manager of a glass factory and a magistrate, both alive and living in Essex.'

We consulted about brothers and sisters, of which I had none and she had two, one of each. About education, of which I'd had some and she a lot. About life in general, of which she'd seen a little, and I a bit more.

An hour passed in the quiet street. A few birds sang. Sporadic cars drove by. Men came home from work and turned into the driveways. Distant doors slammed. No one moved in the house we were watching.

'You're patient Louise said.

'I spend hours doing this, sometimes.'

'Pretty unexciting.'

I looked at her clear intelligent eyes. 'Not this evening.'

Seven o'clock came and went; and Nicky didn't.

'How long will we stay?'

'Until dark.'

'I'm hungry.'

Half an hour drifted by. I learned that she liked curry and paella and hated rhubarb. I learned that the thesis she was writing was giving her hell.'

'I'm so far behind schedule,' she said, 'and… oh my goodness, there he is.'

Her eyes had opened very wide. I looked where she looked, and saw Nicholas Ashe.

Coming not from the front door, but from the side of the house. My age, or a bit younger. Taller, but of my own thin build. My colouring. Dark hair, slightly curly. Dark eyes. Narrow jaw. All the same.

He looked sufficiently like me for it to be a shock, but was nevertheless quite different. I took my baby camera out of my trouser pocket and pulled it open with my teeth as usual, and took his picture.

When he reached the gate he paused and looked back, and a woman ran after him calling, 'Ned, Ned, wait for me.' 'Ned!' Louise said, sliding down in her seat. 'If he comes this way, won't he see me?'

'Not if I kiss you.'

'Well, do it,' she said.

I took, however, another photograph.

The woman looked older, about forty; slim, pleasant, excited. She tucked her arm into his and looked up at his eyes, her own clearly, even from twenty feet away, full of adoration. He looked down and laughed delightfully, then he kissed her forehead and swung her round in a little circle onto the pavement, and put his arm round her waist, and walked towards us with vivid gaiety and a bounce in his step.

I risked one more photograph from the shadows of the car, and leaned across and kissed Louise with enthusiasm. Their footsteps went past. Abreast of us they must have seen us, or at least my back, for they both suddenly giggled light-heartedly, lovers sharing their secret with lovers. They almost paused, then went on, their steps growing softer until they had gone.

I sat up reluctantly.

Louise said 'Whew!' but whether it was the result of the kiss, or the proximity of Ashe, I wasn't quite sure.

'He's just the same,' she said.

'Casanova himself,' I said dryly.

She glanced at me swiftly and I guessed she was wondering whether I was jealous of his success with Jenny, but in fact I was wondering whether Jenny had been attracted to him because he resembled me, or whether she had been attracted to me in the first place, and also to him, because we matched some internal picture she had of a sexually interesting male. I was more disturbed than I liked by the physical appearance of Nicholas Ashe.

'Well,' I said, 'that's that. Let's find some dinner.'

I drove back to the hotel, and we went upstairs before we ate, Louise saying she wanted to change out of the blouse and skirt she had worn all day.

I took the battery charger out of my suitcase and plugged it in: took a spent battery from my pocket, and rolled up my shirtsleeve and snapped out the one from my arm, and put them both in the charger. Then I took a charged battery from my suitcase and inserted it in the empty socket in the arm. And Louise watched.

I said, 'Are you… revolted?'

'No, of course not.'

I pulled my sleeve down and buttoned the cuff.

'How long does a battery last?' she said.

'Six hours, if I use it a lot. About eight, usually.'

She merely nodded, as if people with electric arms were as normal as people with blue eyes. We went down to dinner and ate sole and afterwards strawberries, and if they'd tasted of seaweed I wouldn't have cared. It wasn't only because of Louise, but also because since that morning I had stopped tearing myself apart, and had slowly been growing back towards peace. I could feel it happening, and it was marvellous.

We sat side by side on a sofa in the hotel lounge, drinking small cups of coffee.

'Of course,' she said, 'now that we have seen Nicky, we don't really need to stay until tomorrow.' 'Are you thinking of leaving?' I said.

'About as much as you are.'

'Who is seducing whom?' I said.

'Mm,' she said, smiling. 'This whole thing is so unexpected.'

She looked calmly at my left hand, which rested on the sofa between us.

I couldn't tell what she was thinking, but I said on impulse, 'Touch it.'

She looked up at me quickly. 'What?'

'Touch it. Feel it.'

She tentatively moved her right hand until her fingers were touching the tough, lifeless, plastic skin. There was no drawing back, no flicker of revulsion in her face.

'It's metal, inside there,' I said. 'Gears and levers and electric circuits. Press harder, and you'll feel them.'

She did as I said, and I saw her surprise as she discovered the shape of the inner realities.

'There's a switch inside there too,' I said. 'You can't see it from the outside, but it's just below the thumb. One can switch the hand off, if one wants.'

'Why would you want to?'

'Very useful for carrying things, like a briefcase. You shut the fingers round the handle, and switch the current off, and the hand just stays shut without you having to do it all yourself.'

I put my right hand over and pushed the switch off and on, to show her.

'It's like the push-through switch on a table lamp,' I said.

'Feel it. Push it.'

She fumbled a bit because it wasn't all that easy to find if one didn't know, but in the end pushed it both ways, off and on. Nothing in her expression but concentration.

She felt some sort of tension relax in me, and looked up, accusingly.

'You were testing me,' she said. I smiled.

'I suppose so.'

'You're a pig.'

I felt an unaccustomed uprush of mischief.