The man steered Lucky towards a booth in the hotel bar but did not himself sit down. He soon returned with drinks, holding out the tray as if presenting a prize. It was another minute before Lucky understood that he’d got away with it, that he was free of Frank and Harry. The police played no further part in the story. They’d taken the money, left the hotel, and allowed Ian Asquith to meet Benny Goodman.

4.

A half-hour later, or so it seemed, Gregor came to the table and introduced himself as Benny Goodman’s manager, never bothering to explain his red and swollen nose. Gregor sat next to Asquith and listened to what he had to say about Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall recordings. Meantime, Lucky finished four glasses of booze, after which he refused all further drinks. (There was a time, before he enlisted, when Lucky tended to overdrink, because only in a drunken stupor did he believe he was a real musician.) All three of them smoked Asquith’s cigarettes. The bar was full but nobody approached Benny Goodman.

‘Here, I’ve decided something,’ said Gregor, when Asquith had finished his critique. ‘I want to join a submarine crew. What do you think about that?’

‘Bravo,’ said Asquith. ‘Very brave indeed to leave your current duties. I don’t think it’s foolish at all. You know, I’ve been in Sydney since 1940. Rather a quiet way to spend the war.’

‘I may die in a submarine,’ said Gregor.

‘It’s a real possibility,’ said Asquith, now turning to Lucky. ‘Tell me, Benny, if it’s not too awkward a question, what is it like to be a success?’

‘I don’t often think of myself as a success.’

‘Oh, come, how does it feel?’ said Gregor. ‘We need a full and fitting answer.’

‘Some days I feel lucky, privileged, like I’ve gotten away with something but with the permission of people who could take it back at any moment. If they did take it back, I would go be a mess steward, or a soldier, or I’d work at a diner. At times I see only the mistakes I’ve made. Those mistakes tell me what I should do better next time. I know I’ve got a ways to go, and maybe I’ll think like this when I’m an old man still. On the best days I feel like I’ve paid some debt to myself. I’m meeting the terms of my personal contract.’

Lucky did not find it difficult to imagine what being a person of exception might feel like. You well know your dreams, whether possible or impossible, banal or extravagant, abandoned or tightly or foolishly held.

‘I wonder about the terms of my own contract,’ said Asquith. ‘I wonder what I’m supposed to do better.’