“Is it coming along well?”

“We’ll have to see.”

*

Mark Kozelek sings the last note of “Onward”. The group of friends applauds softly. Fred does not join in. He takes his leave of Jimmy. “It’s getting late for me.”

“Not for me.”

Fred grins. Jimmy raises his fingers to his temple, giving Fred a playful military salute.

Fred heads off with the unsteady gait of the elderly. Jimmy takes a drink and studies Fred as he walks away.

4

Fred Ballinger is standing in the hotel lobby next to the reception desk, waiting for the lift.

A young night porter is staring vacantly at a small television screen with the sound turned down.

A petite, dignified woman, looking older than her sixty years, rings at the hotel door. In a habitual gesture, without taking his eyes off the television, the porter presses a button to let her in. She enters and sits down on a bench staring into empty space, looking resigned.

Fred Ballinger has followed the whole scene without comment. Finally the lift arrives. A traditional cage with a sliding grille for a door. He steps in and goes up.

*

He reaches his floor and meets a plumpish twenty-year-old girl waiting to go down in the lift. She is not beautiful; pimples stand out here and there on her face, clashing with her scanty attire and aggressive demeanour. We can ascertain that she works as an escort, though atypical for the role.

Fred neglects to glance at her and she pays him no attention.

He sets off on his own with short, slow steps. Outside the room doors, guests’ trekking shoes are arranged in a tidy fashion to air.

In the nocturnal silence an elderly man in a motorised wheelchair overtakes him and disappears round a bend in the corridor.

A sound from one of the rooms brings Fred to a halt. Someone is practising the violin. He turns, looking for the source of the sound. The piece starts again from the beginning, two notes played badly, and yes, it is an exercise, one of those tiresome ones.

Fred takes a step in the direction of the sound, but the instrument has been put down.

He is about to set off again when he sees his reflection in a mirror. He examines his face briefly and places a finger on a fresh liver spot spreading across his temple.

5

Those notes on the violin become a soft, distinctly melancholic tune.

We are in a bedroom suite filled with a confusion of papers, notes and laptops lying everywhere, all still switched on.

Four men and a woman, all aged under thirty, are curled up and scattered about on various armchairs and the bed, enjoying the sleep of the just.

Standing in the same room are Fred Ballinger and another elderly gentleman, also in his eighties, still handsome, his hair slightly on the long side, his eyes bright and shining, very much alive and devouring everything he sees. His name is Mick Boyle.