Jonathan nodded again.

‘You shouldn’t have got away with that, you know.’

Jonathan nodded once more. ‘What about you?’ He still held himself rigid against George’s unexpected win, and his voice showed it.

But College laughed happily, anyway: happy to be alive, happy Jonathan was alive, happy to have so fascinated an audience as the bartender. ‘If it wasn’t the damndest thing: when that coupling snapped, I – the bravest man on the railroad—’

‘For Christ’s sake, tell the truth for once!’

‘I always tell the truth—’

‘You say the first thing that comes into your head.’

‘That’s always truth.’

‘It’s never truth.’

‘Don’t quibble, Johnny. Have another drink. Now listen: I grabbed at the brake wheel with one hand.’ The bartender’s ears were dangling down on the bar and College’s voice soared. ‘One hand! I made a complete revolution with the wheel, swung all the way around, up and over. The momentum threw me clear.’ He paused. The bartender stood riveted to the spot. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

Jonathan sighed.

‘And I the only man who knows and sees all—’

‘Then why don’t you say something about my coat?’

‘Your what?’

‘My coat, damnit.’

College stepped back from the bar. ‘Coat?’ he said, puzzled, trying to focus on this thing that seemed to him to bear no relevance to anything at all. Then he bowed, seeing the object at last but not even remotely understanding what it could mean. ‘My dear sir, I know it might be thought an imposition between gentlemen, but would you be good enough to give me the name of your tailor – such style – such craftsmanship – such—’

Jonathan’s irritation swung into anger; he turned away abruptly.

‘But you are wrong,’ College said, at ease with my grandfather’s sticky temperament. My grandfather knew his anger was dangerous to him; he fought to hide it from his enemies, but he let his allies see it – an odd way to show trust. That’s what it was, though: a tribute of sorts. Not that Jonathan figured it that way. The way he saw it, he himself was only half the audience tonight; College had the bartender as well, and it was against a clown’s code to bow to the ill-temper of one customer when there was still another in sight. ‘I know all about tailors,’ College went on, ‘they are part of any gentleman’s past, and I, my good sir, am a gentleman. May I introduce myself? My name (since you have always been too polite to ask) is Rayner Hogg Malloy, and I am a member of the great middle classes. The, uh, pardon me, upper middle classes. What I don’t know about frock coats is more than a clod like you – I ran away to be a railroadman when I was eighteen. Just about your age right now, I’ll bet.’

Jonathan shrugged.

‘My father’s name is Sebastian,’ College ran on. ‘Sebastian Malloy. He’s just like his name – round, fat, soft in the underbelly. He was born in Devon – over in England – and he went to Peterhouse at Cambridge because his mama wanted him to be an English gentleman like his daddy before him. He was going to eat mutton chops and walk down country lanes in a bowler hat. But he had asthma and went to America instead.’