‘Everybody has a birthday. You can’t—’

‘Everybody but Johnny Carrick.’

College frowned into his whiskey. ‘You are confounding me.’

‘Good. It’s about time somebody did.’

‘There’s nothing like a man with a flexible past, is there?’ College drank from his glass and then said, suddenly caught off balance by the thought, ‘You know, I know nothing about your past, absolutely nothing—’

‘That’s good, too.’

‘I do know you ran away from somewhere. From the look of you, you had to have been a runaway: you had to be. Frank Fleming – he was a good guy, Frank, wasn’t he? – he said—’

‘Forget it.’

‘Forget it? Even that? Why?’

‘Just forget it. Please.’

‘Okay, okay,’ College said. ‘Well, if you really mean what you say – and I know you well enough to know you always do mean what you say (unlike most people) – suppose I pronounce today your birthday? December the fifteenth? Any objections?’

This is one of those odd coincidences that sound made-up but that happen all the time: this is my birthday, too. We share this day in December, my grandfather and I. I am delighted by it, entranced. As for Jonathan, he was delighted, too, as entranced as I. He writes in his diaries that it had never occurred to him that he might have a birthday all to himself. I would imagine that one of those rare smiles crossed his face because College laughed. ‘You really do mean it, don’t you? No birthday at all. So’ – he tapped out a tattoo on the bar – ‘today, December 15th 1881, is Johnny Carrick’s twenty-first birthday. And I, Rayner Hogg Malloy, will – to celebrate this coming-of-age—’ He clicked Jonathan’s glass with his own. ‘I’m going to give you a birthday present.’

The pride of men is a remarkable thing, responsible for much both little and large. A brakeman’s light was red. Every brakeman had his own light, and every light was as identifiable as a calling card. Whenever a brakeman went anywhere – but especially to a whorehouse – he left his light outside to mark the spot: here fucks Brakeman Flynn, here fucks Brakeman Blake. This is why a red light district is called a red light district: for no other reason at all. Jonathan and College put their lights on the boardwalk outside Olympia LeCleve’s, the largest and most solidly built whorehouse in town.

Olympia LeCleve herself opened the door, a tall woman in a bustled damask gown with a row of tiny buttons running from neck to waist.

‘My name is Rayner Malloy, Missis LeCleve—’

‘Miss,’ she said. Her tone was polite but clipped. ‘Miss LeCleve.’

‘—Miss LeCleve,’ College went on without a pause, ‘and my friend Elder French suggested I call on you next time I passed through Mogul.’

‘I know Elder,’ she said, standing aside. ‘Come in. Tell me your name again – and take off that dreadful fisherman’s coat.’ Not long after Jonathan bought his frock coat, College had bought himself a fisherman’s coat in New Orleans, a heavy, bulky, oilskin affair; he’d bought it to provoke Jonathan’s disdain, which it did and which amused him endlessly. The power of icons is too often underrated. Besides, College had worn the coat for three years. The joke was wearing thin. ‘And your friend’s name? Do come in.’