Perry nods. “There is a danger that if Mangan were to attend the private viewing of your exhibition, if people were to see you allying yourself to him, well…”

Mangan finishes the statement for him. “You would be tainted by association. Your career might very well be over before it has begun.”

“But that is appalling.”

Mangan shrugs ruefully. “It is the world in which we find ourselves.”

“Well, it is not the world I slogged through swamp and jungle to protect,” he says, slamming his cup down on the tray with such anger the handle snaps from it. He jumps to his feet. “I would very much like it if you, sir, and your entire household, would do me the honor of attending the first night of my exhibition as my guests.”

Mangan grins up at him. “Do you insist, Bram from Yorkshire?”

“I absolutely insist,” he says. “And the devil take anyone who doesn’t like it!”

*   *   *

Less than a week after their conversation, the day of the private view is relentlessly warm. By the time Bram has overseen the hanging of the final painting and all is arranged to his satisfaction, he can feel his shirt clinging to his back beneath his jacket. He glances at his pocket watch. There is not time enough to go back to Bloomsbury and change.

They will have to take me as they find me. After all, it is my pictures they are coming to see, not myself.

He tries to imagine Mangan caring, or even noticing, that he is in a disheveled state, and the thought makes him smile. The gallery owner and his assistant bustle about instructing the caterers where to set up the drinks. Bram takes the opportunity to pace the three rooms that display the accumulated work of nearly four years. The collection has come about entirely from the sketches and notes he made while in Africa. A half-dozen damp, dirty, battered sketchbooks, carried with him over hundreds of miles, through relentless rain and enervating sun, smudged with charcoal and smeared with fat from campfire meals, these were the seeds that grew into over fifty paintings.