“Good dog, Rick, good dog!”

He leapt to his feet and hurled the saucer in my face but I knew Who I was and the saucer passed by my ear. It hit a curtain and fell to the floor. The pile of the carpet was thick enough to receive it gently. The saucer didn’t even break but rolled round in diminishing circles then fell over the right way up. Tucker collapsed in the chair. He deflated further than I have ever seen, seeming to come in on every side so that his very clothes hung on him like sails that have lost the wind. He put his face in his hands. Only then could I see that he had begun to shudder like a man in deep shock. A dog. He sat there, leaning forward, face in hands, elbows on the polished table.

I turned my attention back to the intolerance and insolently interrogated it.

How’s that?

Water was coming through between his fingers. Sometimes single drops fell straight down on the polish but sometimes they would be included in the sobbing and through a shake they would be flicked out into the air and thus come halfway across to my side. His weeping became noisy. I have never heard a sound from as deep down and as hard to get out, like bone breaking up. It took the will of his body away so that he slumped, his elbows sliding back off the table, hands open on either side, cheek flat.

“Can you hear me in there?”

His hands slid off the table too. I could imagine his arms hanging straight down, knuckles perhaps on the floor, like an ape’s.

“I said, ‘Can you hear me in there?’”

“I can hear you.”

“Right. Let’s get round to business.”

He heaved himself up so that he was sitting, hunched. He didn’t look at me. All the same I could look at him. His face was streaming wet, eyes red, but no longer with engorgement. It was more like smears.

“Must we now? I guess I want to sleep or something.”

“Have another drink.”

He shuddered.

“No, no!”

I looked at my paper again.

“I shall make you my literary executor, probably in association with my agent and either Liz or Emmy—Emmy, perhaps. I shall authorize you to write my biography while I am still alive but with reservations I have not yet detailed.”

Rick yawned. He really did!

“Pay attention, son!”

“Sorry.”

“After I have taken legal advice on the proper form of the document you will sign, I shall communicate with you again, appointing a place for us to meet. Is that all clear?”

He nodded.

“Well, there we are then. Remember me to Helen if and when you see her again. Give Halliday my best wishes as from one banker to another. I imagine he has a bank.”

“Quite a few.”

“Tell him to keep up the good work. A wit, your Mr Halliday. Or have I said that before?”