THE INFORMATION

trussed and pouch-swathed figure interposed itself between the two men.

'Not sure.' Richard named some names. 'Thanks for coming along. On your birthday and everything.'

But now without turning to him the photographer with frantic fingers was making quelling gestures behind her back and saying,

'Good: I'm getting something. I'm getting something. Higher. Stay. That's very good. That's very good. That's beautiful.?

On the way out they encountered Lady Demeter Barry in the hall. She was twenty-nine, and had the abstracted and disorganized air you might expect from somebody who was related to the Queen. Like Gina Tull, she had no connection with literature other than marriage to one of its supposed practitioners.

'Got a lesson, love?' said Gwyn, moving up close.

Richard waited. 'My dear Demi,' he then said, giving a brief stiff bow before kissing her on either cheek.

The orange van was still out there-the soiled orange van, with its soiled white trim, and its soiled cream curtains fringing the windows side and back. Steve Cousins sat there, alone but for Giro, having sent 13 off for more Tings.

A monkey. A pony. Cockle and hen: ten. Why the animal imagery for proletarian money? Lady Godiva: fiver. Then the back slang. Rouf, nevis: sounds stupid. A carpet stood for three (and its multiples). And six was half a stretch, and a stretch was twelve, and a double carpet was thirty-three, and sixty-six was a … Jesus. That was type talk, and prison talk, and you shouldn't use it. And Steve had never gone to prison. He had never gone to prison, being (as many lawyers on many occasions had wearily reminded many courtrooms) of stainless record … At this juncture Steve was reading a magazine called Police Review but he also had a book on the dash: Crowds and Power, by Elias Canetti. Funnily enough, in Steve's circle (and Steve's circle was elliptical and eccentric), reading books like Crowds and Power was tantamount to a proclamation that you had gone to prison-and for a very long time. Beware the convict with his Camus and his Kierkegaard, his Critique of Pure Reason, his Four Quartets…

Steve. Steve Cousins. Scozz.

Scozz? Scozz had dyed hair, worn spiky-the color of syrup or even treacle; but the roots were black (sedimentary dye from a slightly earlier phase). His hair resembled damp ripe hay that had undergone reckless chemical enrichment. Where the colors merged they looked like the creases between a smoker's teeth. Scozzy didn't smoke. You don't smoke: what you do is stay fit and healthy. His face was long, despite the absence of chin (his chin was about the same size as the Adam's apple on which it perched); and in certain lights his features seemed to consist of shifting planes and lenses, like a suspect's face 'pixelated' for the TV screen: smeared, and done in squares; blurred, and done in boxes. Scozzy wore two wire-thin silver rings in either ear. His pre-violence stare featured the usual bulged eyes-but the lips also widened and parted in avidity and amusement and recognition. Not tall, not stocky: he surprised peo-pie when he took off his shirt, revealing himself like an anatomical demonstration. He excelled at surprise. In fights and frightenings, the surprise was always inordinate. Because Steve didn't stop. When I start, I don't stop. I don't stop. He was the kind of criminal who knew what recidivist meant. He was good. He had the ism.

Unsmilingly Scozzy rotated his neck muscles as 13 slid the door open and climbed back inside. Giro, lying further back now in his huge fur coat, sighed hotly in sleep.

13 said, 'He come out?'

'Both did. Hopped in a cab. Account.'

'Size of that racking gaff.'

Scozzy turned to him, and exhaled, and said indulgently, 'Oh, Thirt. Thirt, mate. What do you think we're here for? Think we come to screw it? Run round the house nicking stuff and fucking everything up?'

13 smiled with lowered head. He had had something of the sort in mind.

'Get a life. Get a century.'

'Hey.'

'Hold up.'

They watched.

'The wife,' said Scozzy, with conviction. 'Off to her lesson.'

'Big girl,' said 13. 'Yat,' he added, with admiration.

Yeah: Lady Demeter certainly looked like a brother's dream pull: blonde, rich, stacked. But she wasn't Steve's type. No human woman was. No, nor man, neither.

13 reached for the ignition and looked up expectantly but Steve's slow blink was enough to tell him they were going nowhere for now. With Scozzy, you were always doing much less than you thought you'd be doing. Much less, then much more.

'Crash said she was a big girl.'

Steve spoke neutrally. Come to think of it: 'The Queen's got big tits. Oi. These ain't Tings. They Lilts!'

'Pineapple-grapefruit crush,' said 13 petulantly. 'Jesus. Same difference.'

An hour into lunch in this fish restaurant for rich old men and something extraordinary was about to happen. Nothing from the outside world. It was just that Richard was on the verge of passionate speech.

Yes: passionate speech.

You don't think that's extraordinary? Oh, but it is. Try and think of the last time you did it. And I don't just mean 'Well I think it'sabsolutely disgraceful' or 'You're the one who brought it up in the first place' or 'Get straight back into your room and get into bed.' I'm talking speech: passionate speech. Speeches hardly ever happen. We hardly ever give them or hear them. See how bad we are at it. 'Marius! Marco! The pair of you-are a pair!' See how we fuck it up. We salivate and iterate. Women can do it, or they get further, but when the chance of tears presents itself they usually take it. Not having this option, men just shut up. They are all esprit d'escalier. Men are spirits on the staircase, wishing they'd said, wishing they'd said … Before he spoke, there in the buttoned plush, Richard hurriedly wondered whether this had been a natural resource of men and women-passionate speech-before 1700 or whenever Eliot said it was, before thought and feeling got dissociated.The sensibility of men was evidently much more dissociated than the sensibility of women. Maybe, for women, it just never happened. Compared to men, women were Metaphysicals, Bonnes and Marvells of brain and heart.

So, his passionate speech. Passionate speech, which unrolls, with thoughts and feelings dramatized in words. Passionate speech, which is almost always a bad move.

How can we explain this' After all, Richard was here to impress people. He wanted a job.

Was it the place? A semicircular banquette, full of food and drink and smoke- and, beyond, little bunkers full of old men patiently jawing their way through the money extorted by their forebears?

Was it the company? Financier, male columnist, female columnist, publisher, newspaper diarist, newspaper profilist, photographer, captain of industry, Shadow Minister for the Arts, Gwyn Barry?

Was it the alcohol provided and consumed? Actually Richard had been very good, managing to get through a Virgin Mary and a lite beer before his pre-lunch whisky. Then a ton of wine. But before that, while everyone was still milling around, he had gone to the pub across the road with Rory Plantagenet-the newspaper diarist. Richard and Rory sometimes described one another as schoolfriends, which is to say that they