Echo

'You ain't got the first idea of fashion, have you? Everyone wears things big these days.' He tried the next size down. 'Tight stuff's what guys like you pranced around in n the seventies, along with flares and beads and long hair and that. Billy said it was good to be young then, but I reckon you must've looked like a load of poofs.'

Deacon lifted his lip in a snarl. 'Well, you've got nothing to worry about then,' he said. 'You look like a paid-up member of the National Front.'

'I ain't got a problem with that.' Terry looked pleased with himself.

Barry stood in the doorway and watched the back of his mother's head where she was slumped on a chair in front of the television, her feet propped on a stool. Sparse, bristly hair poked out of her pink scalp and cavernous snores roared from her mouth. The untidy room smelled of her farts, and a sense of injustice overwhelmed him. It was a cruel fate that had taken his father and left him to the mercies of a ... his fingers flexed involuntarily ... PIG!

Terry found a shop that was selling Christmas decorations and posters. He selected a reproduction of Picasso's Woman in a Chemise and insisted Deacon buy it.

'Why that one?'' Deacon asked him.

'She's beautiful.'

It was certainly a beautiful painting, but whether or not the woman herself was beautiful depended on taste. It marked the transition between Picasso's blue and rose periods, so the subject had the cold, emaciated melancholy of the earlier period enlivened by the pink and ochre hues of the later. 'Personally, I prefer a little more flesh,' said Deacon, 'but I'm happy to have her on my wall.'

'Billy drew her more than anyone else,' said Terry surprisingly.

'On the pavements?'

'No, on the bits of paper we used to burn afterwards. He copied her off of a postcard to begin with, but he got so good at it that he could do her out of his head in the end.' He traced his finger along the clear lines of the woman's profile and torso. 'See, she's real simple to draw. Like Billy said, there's no mess in this picture.'

'Unlike the Leonardo?'

'Yeah.'

It was true, thought Deacon. Picasso's woman was glorious in her simplicity-and so much more delicate than da Vinci's plumper Madonna. 'Maybe you should become an artist, Terry. You seem to have an eye for a good painting.'

'I've been up Green Park once or twice to look at the stuff on the railings, but that's crap. Billy always said he'd take me to a proper gallery, but he never got round to it. They probably wouldn't've let us in anyway, not with Billy roaring drunk most of the time.' He was flicking through the poster rack. 'What d'you reckon to this? You reckon this painter saw hell the same way Billy's lady did? Like being alone and afraid in a place that doesn't make sense to you?' -M-yi0* *

He had pulled out Edvard Munch's The Scream, with its powerful, twisted imagery of a man screaming in terror before the elemental forces of nature. 'You really do have an eye.' said Deacon in admiration. 'Did Billy draw this one as well?'

'No, he wouldn't have liked it. There's too much red in it. He hated red because it reminded him of blood.'

'Well, I'm not having that on my wall or I'll think about hell every time I look at it.' And blood, he thought. He wished he and Billy had less in common.

They settled on reproductions of the Picasso (for its simplicity), Manet's Luncheon in the Studio (for its harmonious symmetry-'that one works real good,' said Terry), Hi-jronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights (for its color and interest-'it's well brilliant,' said Terry), and anally Turner's The Fighting Temeraire (for its perfection in every respect-'Shit!' said Terry. 'That's one beautiful picture.')

'What happened to Billy's postcard of the Picasso?' asked Deacon as he was paying.

'Tom burnt it.'

'Why?'

'Because he was well out of order. He and Billy were drunk as lords, and they'd been having a row about women. Tom said Billy was too ugly ever to've had one, and Billy said he couldn't be as ugly as Tom's missus or Tom wouldn't've walked out on her. Everyone laughed and Tom was gutted.'

'What did that have to do with the postcard?''

'Nothing much, except Billy really loved it. He kissed it sometimes when he was drunk. Tom was that riled at having his missus insulted, he went for something he knew'd send Billy mad. It worked, too. Billy damn near throttled Tom for burning it, then he burst into tears and said truth was dead anyway so nothing mattered anymore. And that were the end of it.'

It was six years since Deacon had last visited the Red Lion. It had been his local when he and Julia had lived in Fulham, and Hugh had been in the habit of meeting him there a couple of times a month on his way home to Putney. The outside had changed very little over the years, and Deacon half-expected to find the same landlord and the same regulars inside when he pushed open the doors. But it was a room full of strangers, where the only recognizable face was Hugh's. He was sitting at a table in the far corner, and he raised a tentative hand in greeting when he saw Deacon.

'Hello, Michael,' he said, standing up as they approached. 'I wasn't sure if you'd come.'

'Wouldn't have missed it for the world. It might be the only chance I ever get to flatten you.' He beckoned Terry forward. 'Meet Terry Dalton. He's staying with me for Christmas. Terry, meet Hugh Tremayne, my brother-in- law.'

Terry gave his amiable grin and stuck out a bony hand. 'Hi. How'ya doing?'

Hugh looked surprised but shook the offered hand. 'Very well, thank you. Are we-er--related?'

Terry appraised his round face and overweight figure. 'I don't reckon so, not unless you were putting it about a bit in Birmingham fifteen years ago. Nah,' he said. 'I think my dad was probably a bit taller and thinner. No offense meant, of course.'

Deacon gave a snort of laughter. 'I think Hugh was wondering if you were related to my second wife,