THE INFORMATION

had been at the same school at the same time. The school was Ridding-ton House-well known to be the least good public school in the British Isles. For some years now Richard had been selling Rory literary gossip. How much that advance had been. Who would win that prize. Occasionally, and more and more often, he sold him gossip about literary divorces, infidelities, bankruptcies, detoxifications, diseases. Rory paid

for the information, and always for all the drinks, as a kind of tip. He paid for the gen and the gin, the shrugs, the cheap jokes. Richard didn't like doing this. But he needed the money. While he did it, he felt as if hewas wearing a cheap new shirt-one from which he had failed to remove the packager's pins.

Was it the provocation? The provocation, some might think, turned out to be considerable. It was sufficient, in any case.

London weather was also bound to play its part: a hot noon gloom. Like night falling on the interior of the church, the lunchers hovered and gathered …

Gwyn Barry had his photograph taken. The financier-Sebby-had his photograph taken. Gwyn Barry was photographed with the financier. The publisher was photographed with Gwyn Barry and the captain of industry. The captain of industry was photographed with the Shadow Minister of the Arts and Gwyn Barry. Two speeches were given, read from pieces of paper-neither of them passionate. The captain of industry, whose wife was interested in literature more than enough for both of them (Gwyn often dined there, Richard knew), gave a speech in praise of Gwyn Barry on this, his fortieth birthday. That took about ninety seconds. Then the financier gave a speech during which Richard smoked three cigarettes and stared tearfully at his empty glass. So the financier was trying to get something back for his money. It wasn't just going to be a free meal with a bit of slurred shop over coffee. The financier spoke about the kind of literary magazine he would like to be associated with- the kind of magazine he was prepared to be the financier of. Not so much like magazine A. Not so much like magazine B. More like magazine C (defunct) or magazine D (published in New York). Gwyn Barry was then asked about the kind of magazine he would like to be associated with (the kind that had high standards). Ditto the captain of industry, the Shadow Minister for the Arts, the female columnist, the male columnist. Rory Plantagenet was not consulted. Neither was the photographer, who was leaving anyway. Neither, depressingly, was Richard Tull, who was struggling to remain under the impression that he was being groomed for the editorship. The only questions that came his way were about technical matters-print runs, break-even junctures, and the like.

Would there be any point, the financier, Sebby, was saying (and his public popularity owed a great deal to this bandied diminutive: never mind, for now, all the fellow sharks and vultures he had left shivering over their visual display units), would there be any point in getting some market research under way? Richard?

'What, reader profile stuff?' He had no idea what to say. He said, 'Age? Sex? I don't know.'

'I thought we might press a questionnaire on, say… students reading English at London? Something of that kind??

'To see if they like high standards?'

'Targeting,' said the male columnist, who was about twenty-eight and experimentally bearded, with a school-dinner look about him. The column the male columnist wrote was sociopolitical. 'Come on, this isn't America. Where the magazine market is completely balkanized. Where, you know, they have magazines,' he said, already looking round the table to garner any smiles that might soon be cropping up, 'for the twice-divorced South Moluccan scuba diver.'

'Still, there are more predictable preferences,' said the publisher. 'Women's magazines are read by women. And men …'

There was a silence. To fill it, Richard said, 'Has anyone ever really established whether men prefer to read men? Whether women prefer to read women?'

'Oh please. What is this?' said the female columnist. 'We're not talking about motorbikes or knitting patterns. We're talking about literature for God's sake.'

Even when he was in familiar company (his immediate family, for instance) it sometimes seemed to Richard that those gathered in the room were not quite authentic selves-that they had gone away and then come back not quite right, half remade or reborn by some blasphemous, backhanded, and above all inexpensive process. In a circus, in a funhouse. All flaky and carny. Not quite themselves. Himself very much included.

He said, 'Is this without interest? Nabokov said he was frankly homosexual in his literary tastes. I don't think men and women write and read in exactly the same way. They go at it differently.'

'And I suppose,' she said, 'that there are racial differences too?'

He didn't answer. For a moment Richard looked worryingly short-necked. He was in fact coping with a digestive matter, or at least he was sitting tight until the digestive matter resolved itself one way or the other.

'I can't believe I'm hearing this. I thought we came here today to talk about an. What's the matter with you? Are you drunk?'

Richard turned his senses on her. The woman: gruff, sizable, stalely handsome; and always barging through to her share of the truth. Richard knew the type-because literature knew the type. Like the smug boiler in the Pritchett story, the Labour politician, up North, proud of her brusqueness and her good big bum. The column the female columnist wrote wasn't specifically about being a woman. But the photograph above it somehow needed to have long hair and makeup-for it all to hang together.

The Shadow Minister for the Arts said, 'Isn't this what literature is meant to be about? Transcending human difference??

'Hear hear,' said the female columnist. 'Me? I don't give a damn whether people are male, female, black, white, pink, puce or polka-dotted.'

'And that's why you're no good.'

'Steady there,' said Sebby. And then he added, as if the very appellation refreshed him: 'Gwyn.'

Everyone turned to him in silence. Gwyn was staring at his coffee spoon with a fascinated frown. He replaced it in its saucer and looked up, his face clearing, his green eyes brightening.

Gwyn said slowly, 'I find I never think in terms of men. In terms of women. I find I always think in terms of… people.'

There was an immediate burble of approbation: Gwyn, it seemed, had douched the entire company in common sense and plain humanity. Richard had to raise his voice, which meant that his cough kicked in- but he went ahead with his passionate speech.

It was the little rapt pause before the word people: that was what did it.

'A very low-level remark, if I may say so. Hey, Gwyn. You know what you remind me of. A quiz in a color magazine-you know, Are You Cut Out To Be a Teacher? Final question: Would you rather teach (a) history, or (b) geography, or (c) . . . children. Well, you don't get a choice about teaching children. But there is a choice, and a difference, between history and geography. It must make you feel nice and young to say that being a man means nothing and being a woman means nothing and what matters is being a … person. How about being a spider, Gwyn. Let's imagine you're a spider. You're a spider, and you've just had your first serious date. You're limping away from that now, and you're looking over your shoulder, and there's your girlfriend, eating one of your legs like it was a chicken drumstick. What would you say? I know. You'd say: I find I never think in terms of male spiders or in terms of female spiders. I find I always think in terms of… spiders.'

Richard sank back, rhythmically sighing or whinnying with all that this had cost