When she had gone he lingered in the doorway a moment, then went quickly to the table and opened Oxygène to the last page (Hammer blows, steel on rock ...), where a twist of newspaper was Sellotaped to the inside of the card binding. He unpicked the tape with his nail, unwrapped the capsule, and rolled it into his palm. He heard Ella’s voice, and looked up to the window in time to see her go by, hand in hand with Kirsty. They were a good thirty feet away, and he didn’t think they could have seen anything. What could they have seen? They were probably planning to water the garden together, now it was cooler.

He placed the manuscript back on to the shelf beside the dictionaries and briefly laid his head against the spines of the books, as if the mere touch of them were helpful in some way. Consoling. Everything was in its place now. In his hand he held the thread that ran through the labyrinth; he had only to follow it. There were no more decisions to make or to unmake; no more of the vile anticipation. He felt a calmness, a quietness on the far side of thinking, that was immensely restful. He looked at Lázár, who stared back from his winter’s day in the Luxembourg. Would he understand all this? How nobody could be expected to be weak all the time. One day, thought Alec, he would confess it to him in some Paris bar or London hotel, then see how this man who had handled tommy-guns reacted.

Going into the house, he met his brother coming out.

‘Seen Kirsty and Ella?’

‘Bottom of the garden,’ said Alec. He saw that Larry had put on a clean shirt, and carried, almost hidden behind his thigh, a posy of a half-dozen small blooms and herbs – honeysuckle, lavender, rosemary – the stems wrapped in a scrap of baking foil. He looked chastened, excited.

‘Catch you later,’ he said, grinning, and they crossed, one brother stepping out into the light of the terrace, the other going into the house, going up the stairs, and opening the door to his mother’s room.

16

So what was left to be done? Lâszlô had returned to find himself forgiven, understood, well loved, an Odysseus with bloodshot eyes and no rivals to scatter. Of his adventures he had told whatever could be safely told, and answered, honestly, the few questions Kurt had put to him. He began to think he might welcome a reproach. Such largesse, such big-heartedness, was slightly daunting. To be so trusted! Was he not escaping too lightly? But when he took the young man’s face between his hands, searching out some reservation, something undeclared, he found there only the clear blue depths, the eye-part of a smile.