Echo

indeterminate age, muffled like him in heavy overcoats, with nothing to show who they were or what their backgrounds were, and whatever assumptions he made about them would probably be as wrong as their assumptions about him. Deacon was struck again, as he had been when he met Terry, by how unremarkable most faces were for he realized that he would not recognize these men in a different setting. Ultimately the various arrangements of eyes, nose, ears, and mouth had more in common than they had apart, and it was only adornment and expression that gave them individuality. Change those, he thought, and anonymity was guaranteed.

'So what's your verdict, Michael?' asked a quiet voice beside him. 'Are any of us worth saving or are we all damned?''

Deacon turned to the frail old man with silver hair who had slipped quietly onto the bench beside him and was studying the industry on the shore with as much concentration as he was. He frowned, trying to recall the face from his past. It was someone he'd interviewed, he thought; but he talked to so many people and he rarely remembered their names afterwards. 'Lawrence Greenhill,' prompted the old man. 'You did an interview with me ten years ago for an article on euthanasia called 'Freedom to Die.' I was a practicing solicitor and I'd written a letter to The Times pointing out the practical and ethical dangers of legalized suicide both to the individual and to his family. You didn't agree with me, and described me unflatteringly as 'a righteous judge who claims the moral high ground for himself.' I've never forgotten those words.'

Deacon's heart sank. He didn't deserve this, not when he'd been through one guilt trip already this morning. 'I remember,' he said. Rather too well in fact. The old bugger had been so complacent about biblical authority for his opinion that Deacon had come close to throttling him. But then Greenhill hadn't known how touchy he was on the whole damn subject. Suicide in any form is wrong, Michael ... We damn ourselves if we usurp God's authority in our lives...

'Well, I'm sorry,' he went on abruptly, 'but I still don't agree with you. My philosophy doesn't recognize damnation.' He stubbed out his cigarette, while wondering if he even believed what he was saying. Damnation had been real enough to Billy Blake. 'Nor does it recognize salvation because the whole concept worries me. Are we being saved from something or for something? If it's the former, then our right to live by our own code of ethics is under threat from moral totalitarianism, and if it's the latter, then we must blindly follow negative logic that something better awaits us when we die.' He glanced pointedly at his watch. 'Now you'll have to excuse me, I'm afraid.'

The old man gave a quiet laugh. 'You give up too easily, my friend. Is your philosophy so fragile that it can't defend itself in debate?'

'Far from it,' said Deacon, 'but I have better things to do than stand in judgment on other people's lives.'

'Unlike me?'

'Yes.'

His companion smiled. 'Except I try never to judge anyone.' He paused for a moment. 'Do you know those words by John Donne? 'Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.' '

Deacon finished the quote: ' 'Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.' '

'So tell me, is it wrong to ask a man to go on living, even though he's in pain, when his life is more precious to me than his death?'

Deacon experienced a strange sort of dislocation. Words hammered in his brain. Devourer of thy parents ... now thy unutterable torment renews ... Is any man's life so worthless that the manner of his death is the only interesting thing about him... He stared rather blankly at Lawrence. 'Why are you here? I remember going to Knightsbridge to interview you.'

'I moved seven years ago after my wife died.'

'I see.' He rubbed his face vigorously to clear his head. 'Well, look, I'm sorry but I have to go now.' He stood up. 'It's been good talking to you, Lawrence. Enjoy your Christmas.'

A twinkle glittered in the old man's eyes. 'What's to enjoy? I'm Jewish. Do you think I like being reminded that most of the civilized world condemns my people for what they did two thousand years ago?'

'Aren't you confusing Christmas with Easter?'

Lawrence raised his eyes to heaven. 'I talk about two thousand years of isolation and he quibbles over a few months.'

Deacon lingered, seduced by the twinkle and the outrageous racial blackmail. 'Enjoy Hanukkah then, or are you going to tell me that that's impossible, too, because there's no one to enjoy it with!'

'What else can a childless widower expect?' He saw hesitation in the younger man's face, and patted the seat. 'Sit down again and give me the pleasure of a few minutes' companionship. We're old friends, Michael, and it's so rare for me to spend time with an intelligent man. Would it relieve your mind if I said I've always been a better lawyer than I've been a Jew, so your soul is in no danger?'

Deacon persuaded himself that he sat down only out of curiosity but the truth was he had no weapons against Lawrence's frailty. Death was in the old man's face just as clearly as it had been in Alan Parker's, and Deacon's sensitivity to death was always more acute as Christmas drew nearer.

'In fact I was thinking how alike we all are and how easy it would be to drop out of our boring lives and start again,' said Deacon, nodding towards the men on the shore. 'Would you recognize them, for example, if the next time you saw them was in the Dorchester?'

'Their friends would know them.'

'Not if they came across them in a different environment. Recognition is about relating a series of known facts. Change those facts and recognition becomes harder.'

'Is a new identity what you want, Michael?'

He scraped the stubble on his chin. 'It certainly has its attractions. Did you never think about dropping out and wiping the slate clean?'

'Of course. We all have midlife crises. If we didn't, we wouldn't be normal.'

Deacon laughed. 'To be honest, Lawrence, I'd rather you'd said I was different. The last thing a red-blooded male with unrealized ambitions wants to hear is that he's normal. I've done damn all with