"You passed your holiday in Mykonos with Alastair, but in your secret heart you were waiting desperately for me, Michel." He darted into the bathroom and returned with his holdall. "Not Joseph--Michel. As soon as the holiday was over, you hurried to Athens. On the boat you told your friends you wanted to be alone for a few days. A lie. You had an assignation with Michel. Not Joseph--Michel." He tossed the holdall into the grip. "You took a taxi to the restaurant, you met me there. Michel. In my silk shirt. My gold watch. Lobsters ordered. Everything you saw. I brought brochures to show you. We ate what we ate, we talked excited sweet nothings in the manner of secret lovers reunited." He unhooked the black kimono from the door. "I tipped lavishly and kept the bill, as you noticed; then I took you up to the Acropolis, a forbidden journey, unique. A special taxi, my own, was waiting. I addressed the driver as Dimitri--
She interrupted him. "So that was the only reason you took me up the Acropolis," she said flatly.
"It was not I who took you. It was Michel. Michel is proud of his languages, of his abilities as a fixer. He loves flourish, romantic gestures, sudden leaps. He is your magician."
"I don't like magicians."
"He also has a genuine if superficial interest in archaeology, as you observed."
"So who kissed me?"
Carefully folding the kimono, he laid it in the grip. He was the first man she had met who knew how to pack.
"His more practical reason for taking you up the Acropolis was to enable him to take discreet delivery of the Mercedes, which for his own reasons he did not wish to bring into the city centre during the rush hour. You do not question the Mercedes; you accept it as part of the magic of being with me, just as you accept a clandestine flavour in whatever we do. You accept everything. Hurry, please. We have much driving to do, much talking."
"What about you?" she said. "Are you in love with me too, or is it all a game?"
Waiting for him to answer, she had a vision of him physically stepping aside to allow the shaft to speed harmlessly past him towards the shadowy figure of Michel.
"You love Michel, you believe Michel loves you."
"But am I right?"
"He says he loves you, he gives you proof of it. What more can a man do to convince you, since you cannot live inside his head?"
He had set off round the room again, poking at things. Now he stopped before the card that had accompanied the orchids.
"Whose house is this?" she said.
"I never reply to such questions. My life is an enigma to you. It has been so since we met and that is how I like it to remain." He picked up the card and handed it to her. "Keep this in your new handbag. From now on I expect you to cherish these small mementoes of me. See this?"
He had lifted the vodka bottle halfway out of its bucket.
"As a man, I naturally drink more than you. I don't drink well; alcohol gives me a headache, occasionally it makes me sick. But vodka is what I like." He dropped the bottle back into the bucket. "As for you, you get one small glass because I am emancipated, but basically I do not approve of women drinking." He picked up a dirty plate and showed it to her. "I have a sweet tooth, I like chocolates, cakes, and fruit. Particularly fruit. Grapes, but they must be green like the grapes of my home village. So what did Charlie eat last night?"
"I don't. Not when it's like that. I just smoke my post-coital fag."
"I'm afraid I do not allow smoking in the bedroom. In the Athens restaurant, I tolerated it because I am liberated. Even in the Mercedes, for you, I occasionally allow it. But never in the bedroom. If you were thirsty in the night, you drank water from the tap." He began pulling on the red blazer. "You noticed how the tap gurgled?"
"No."
"Then it didn't gurgle. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't."
"He's an Arab, isn't he?" she said, still watching him. "He's your archetypal Arab chauvinist. It's his car you've nicked."
He was closing the grip. Straightening, he gazed at her a second, partly in calculation and partly, she could not help feeling, in rejection.
"Oh, he is more than just Arab, I would say. He is more than just chauvinist. There is nothing ordinary about him at all, least of all in your eyes. Go over to the bed, please." He waited while she did so, watching her intently. "Feel under my pillow. Slowly--take care! I sleep on the right-hand side. So."
Cautiously, as he commanded, she slid her hand under the cold pillow, imagining the weight of Joseph's sleeping head pressing down on it.
"You have found it? I said take care."
Yes, Jose, she had found it.
"Lift it carefully. The safety catch is off. Michel is not in the habit of giving warnings before he shoots. The gun is a child to us. It shares every bed we sleep in. We call it ‘our child.' Even when we are making passionate love, we never disturb that pillow and we never forget what is underneath it. That is how we live. Do you see now that I am not ordinary?"
She contemplated it, how it lay so neatly in her palm. Small. Brown and prettily proportioned.
"Have you ever handled such a gun?" Joseph asked.
"Frequently."
"Where? Who against?"
"On stage. Night after night after night."
She handed it to him and watched him slip it inside his blazer as easily as if he were putting away his wallet. She followed him downstairs. The house was empty and unexpectedly cold. The Mercedes stood waiting in the forecourt. At first she just wanted to leave: go anywhere, get out, the open road and us. The pistol had scared her and she needed movement. But as he started down the drive something made her turn and gaze back at the crumbling yellow plaster, the red flowers, the shuttered windows and old red tiles. And she realised too late how beautiful it all was, how welcoming just as she was leaving. It's the house of my youth, she decided: one of the many youths I never had. It's the house I never got married from; Charlie not in blue but white, my bloody mother in tears, and goodbye to all that.
"Do we exist as well?" she asked him as they joined the evening traffic. "Or is it just the other two?"
The three minute warning again before he answered. "Of course we exist. Why not?" Then the lovely smile, the one she would have tied herself to the railings for. "We are Berkeleyans, you see. If we do not exist, how can they?"
What's a Berkeleyan? she wondered. But she was too proud to ask.
For twenty minutes by the quartz clock on the dashboard, Joseph had barely spoken. Yet she had sensed no relaxation in him; rather a methodical preparation before the attack.
"So, Charlie," he said suddenly, "you are ready?"
Jose, I am ready.
"On the twenty-sixth of June, a Friday, you are playing Saint Joan at the Barrie Theatre, Nottingham. You are not with your regular company; you have stepped in at the last minute to replace an actress who defaulted on her contract. The scenery is late arriving, the lighting is still on its way, you have been rehearsing all day long, two of the staff have gone sick with influenza. The occasion is so far clear in your memory?"
"Vivid."
Mistrusting her levity, he threw a questioning glance at her, but apparently could find nothing to object to. It was early evening. The dusk was falling fast, but Joseph's concentration had the immediacy of sunlight. This is his element, she thought; this is what he does best in his life; this remorseless momentum is the explanation that was missing till now.
"Minutes before curtain-up, a sprig of gold-brown orchids is delivered for you at the stage door with a note addressed to Joan. ‘Joan, I love you infinitely.' ‘
"No stage door."
"There is a back entrance for stage deliveries. Your admirer, whoever he was, rang the bell and put the orchids into the arms of the janitor, a Mr. Lemon, together with a five-pound note. Mr. Lemon was suitably impressed by the large tip and promised to take them to you instantly--did he?"
"Barging into ladies' dressing-rooms unannounced is Lemon's best thing."
"So then. Tell me what you did when you received the orchids."
She hesitated. "The signature was ‘M.' ‘
"M is correct. What did you do?"
"Nothing."
"Nonsense."
She was stung: "What was I supposed to do? I had about ten seconds before I was on."
A dust-laden lorry was careering towards them on the wrong side of the road. With majestic unconcern Joseph guided the Mercedes on to the soft shoulder and accelerated out of the slide. "So you threw thirty pounds' worth of orchids into your waste-paper basket, shrugged your shoulders, and went on stage. Perfect. I congratulate you."
"I put them in water."
"And what did you put the water in?"
The unexpected question sharpened her recollection. "A paint jar. The Barrie doubles as an art school in the mornings."