When at last I went downstairs, since there was only the one hotel in the place it was inevitable Johnny should be waiting for me.

“Ouzo, Wilf, to take the look of anguish off your face.”

“God forbid. I keep my own galoni in the bar. It’s drinkable. Minos.”

“I must say, my dear, it can only be those famous wanderings of yours that keep your figure even reasonably within bounds the way you positively rape the bottle.”

“Famous?”

“You and Ambrose Bierce. Quote, where is Wilfred Barclay whose recent novel Horses at the Spring, unquote.”

“Oh shut up. If it comes to that, what are you writing yourself?”

“Little me? A huge picture book for the rainbow people. About Sappho, of course. I’m undecided whether to call it Ladies of Lesvos or Burning Sappho. I wish someone had really burned the wretched girl. There’s nothing known about her, nothing at all. Besides it’s nominally history and I’m not feeling creative.”

“That your best one-liner to date.”

“Funny or not, whenever I turn to the thing I get in such a pet!”

“You’re not a classical scholar.”

“I’m an erotic scholar. You wouldn’t believe the information I’ve managed to amass from my women chums, to say nothing of guesswork. You’ll swear, I know, not to pinch the idea, but what do you suppose neolithic ladies used those dinky little carvings of the earth mother for? I’ve even embarked on bogus philology—rather like canting heraldry—and claim that ‘Lesbos’ is derived from ‘Olisbos’, classical Greek for what the ads call a Sex Aid. How do you get on in your wanderings, Wilf? Still in the missionary position?”

“How do you?”

“One doesn’t ask for permanence.”

He fell silent and during that silence I drifted off into a dreary brood only to surface when I heard Johnny speak again.

“Why are you deadly sick of all this?”

He was eager again and scanning the various visible areas of my face for information. It came to me that his next move would be to tell Rick where I was. Come to that, he could sell the information to the press or any or all of the bloody media.

“Where is he now?”

“Who, Wilf?”

“My—my would-be biographer.”

“Aren’t you the lucky thing? Displaying one’s all! Nobody has offered to write my life, alas. I shall have to do it myself, such a thankless task, a sort of literary masturbation which, say what you will—”

“In my case—”

“Yes, yes, I know. You are about to proclaim your complete heterosexuality like silly young Keats. Do you remember? I think it’s in ‘Lamia’. Dear, dear Wilf! You must have it as an epigraph for your Collected Works. Let me see—yes.

Let the mad poets say whate’er they please

Of the sweets of Faeries, Peris, Goddesses,

There is not such a treat among them all,

Haunters of cavern, lake and waterfall,

As a real woman—

What a vulgarian! One can see why it got itself called the ‘Cockney School’.”