THE INFORMATION

'No lesson,' she announced.

'What? Oh. No driving lesson.'

'Crash has had an accident.'

'A road accident by any chance?'

'He fell down. He had a fall. The reason he has accidents sometimes is he's always trying to do something really difficult in cars. Really challenging. I think it must be quite serious. They offered me Jeff. But I want Crash.'

Gwyn surveyed her with marked indulgence. In fact he was yearning

to go into the kitchen and hobnob with his favorite bodyguard: Phil. But

he lingered, wonderfully, with his wife. Wonderfully, he was being wonderful to Demi. Watch. He even took her in his arms. Why? Because things were rather different now. But what had she done to deserve it?.

The night before, over dinner, here at home, Gwyn, at considerable cost to his own sensitivity, finally goaded Demi into saying, 'You hate me. Why?'

'What is a man .. . How is a man meant to feel? When his wife, when his own wife . . . sneers at his very essence. At his lifeblood. At the thing that gives his life meaning. When she sneers at his soul.'

'I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.'

A moment ago, Gwyn had felt close to tears-close to bottomless self-pity. And it was a reasonably pleasurable state, he found: loose, sensual, oozily calorific. Now he leaned back, raised his chin, slowly closed his eyes, and said,

'You told Richard I couldn't write for toffee.'

'Well you can't.'

'Okay. That's it.'

'Well you can't!'

'Okay. That's it.'

'Well you can't.'

'I suppose the next stage-is separation.'

'But you can't. It just seemed so obvious.'

'This now passes into the hands of my lawyers.'

'If it was wrong to say it in public then I'm sorry.'

'It'll take me a day or two to move out. I trust you will do me the common courtesy-'

'Wait. I honestly don't understand why you're so cross. Let me think.' And again the commentary, the punctuation, provided by Demi's forehead: bracketings, underlinings. 'We were talking about how much you got paid. Not just novels but magazine pieces. You know, so much a word. And Richard said it was a lot. And I said you couldn't write for toffee. Was that so wrong?'

'… Come and give me a kiss. Mwa. Mmm. You mean peanuts, love. Not toffee. Mwa. Peanuts.'

Within seconds he was huskily promising that one day soon he would fill her with their sons. And he spent the night in the master bedroom, and might even have made love to her, tenderly, tearfully, absolvingly, if he hadn't been feeling so fucked out-and worried about getting her pregnant. Demi also told him something else about that weekend at Byland Court with Richard: something he was awfully pleased to hear. Like all writers, Barry was often at the mercy of his. Seeing that light in her husband's eyes, she would know that the. Hypersensitive, but quick to forgive, he could never . . .

Now Gwyn said, 'Crash can't drive for toffee. Eh, love??

'Well his rates are quite high.'

'Ah. Here he comes.'

A minute later Richard was standing in the hall, in his shorts, in his mack, cruelly encumbered, with his racket, his cue case; he was carrying his street clothes in a cheap new sports bag which was clearly made out of plastic (if that). Demi kissed him. He looked lost.

'A lamb to the slaughter,' said Gwyn.

'We're not going to do this, are we?'

Richard took his place in the back of Gwyn's Saab.

Up front, riding shotgun, was the bodyguard, Phil. It might have been pleasant, Richard supposed, to claim and savor responsibility for all this anxiety, expense, inconvenience, and preposterous exoticism. But the author of Amelior and Amelior Regained, dependably and adaptably insufferable, as ever, had too clearly thrown himself into bodyguard culture: here, in Phil, Gwyn had found another reality-softener-a publicity boy who pumped iron. It emerged that he even went to the gym and worked out with Phil's co-bodyguards: Simon, Jake. Gruffly, malely, Gwyn swore as he drove. He even wound his window down to holler at some affront to his territoriality. Another category mistake. Silence, please! We may think we are swearing at others, at traffic. But who is the traffic? The soliloquy is the appropriate form for such language, because what we are doing is swearing at ourselves. Richard didn't miss driving; he didn't miss being plugged into the city. But he missed swearing. He missed being yet another chump in yet another reeking ton of metal in yet another bronchitic defile, swearing at himself.

As they queued for Marble Arch, Gwyn jerked his head back and told Richard that Phil had been thrown out of the SAS for being too vicious. Phil grunted leniently. Phil? Lamp-tanned, rubbery, big- lipped, with capped teeth and clear eyes-their age. Phil's full name was Phil Smoker. Richard thought it might save a lot of trouble to be called Richard Smoker, particularly when you were in America. Or Richard Smoking. Phil smoked-so Richard smoked. Gwyn was now filling Phil in about their years of rivalry-on the tennis court, the snooker table, the chessboard.

'And today's the day I clean his clock.'

'He's never beaten me at anything,' said Richard.

'Sport,' said Gwyn, 'provides release. There aren't many areas of transcendence left to us now. Sports. Sex. Art.?

'You're forgetting the miseries of others,' said Richard. 'The languid contemplation of the miseries of others. Don't forget that.'

Their destination was not the Warlock but the Oerlich. 'I'm paying for all this,' said Gwyn. 'And I'll have to pay your guest fee. You can get the balls at least.' Phil, who had done a lot of staring on their way in from the car park, now did some more staring before settling down with the newspaper. Staring, Richard decided, was what bodyguards were really good at. He bought the balls: they were Swedish, and internally pressurized, and cost a bewildering amount of money. On the way down the cold green tube to their court Gwyn came to a halt and said, 'Look. I've arrived.' There on the wall was a framed photograph of Gwyn in his whites (together with his semiliterate signature). Nearby there were framed photographs of a dress designer, a golfer, a boxer, and the great Buttruguena.

'How long have you been a member here? What's it cost?'

'Thousands. Quite a while. This is where I play all my real tennis.'

After the first changeover Richard said, 'What happened to the fourth ball?' They searched for it, and failed to find it. This was an indoor court, and there was of course nowhere for the ball to go. But there were plenty of places for the ball to hide. And tennis balls long to be lost. It's their life; they long to be lost. .. After the second changeover Richard said, 'Where'd the third ball go?' They searched for it, and didn't find it. Gwyn, in the keel of whose leather sports bag the two balls now nestled, asked Richard if he wanted to go and buy some more. But Richard shrugged, and played on.

He didn't understand how it was happening. Was it possible to hate too much? At all times he hated Gwyn on the tennis court, even when he was winning easily: even when he sent him from corner to corner like a lab rat (and then put him on his backside with a simple wrong-foot); even when, after a