THE INFORMATION

On the steps of Number 49 he rang the bell marked Tull. He waited. He looked at his watch, and at his fingernails.

'Hello?'

'It's me.'

There was a silence. The buzz sounded and he went on up.

Gina was waiting by the door at the top of the stairs in her pink towel dressing gown. She said,

'Are you going to stop?'

Lizzete released Marco's hand as she stood on the street checking her change.

'Hey.'

It was 13. Marco was pleased. He liked 13. And he sensed the cool of black. Lizzete was black, but she was a girl. 13 was black, but he was a boy.

'Where've you been, man?' said Lizzete.

'Angela wants you.' He pointed with a bent finger, meaning: round the corner. 'In the Black Cross.'

Marco backed off as Lizzete flusteredly shifted her weight: Angela was her oldest sister. She transferred the shopping bag from her right hand and reached out for Marco.

'You can't take a kid in a pub. We'll wait here.'

Lizzete looked hard at 13.

13 said, 'Give us him.'

'Now here, Gina, we encounter an ambiguity. You being from Nottingham. Am I going to stop. I love it when you say that. Am I going to stay? Or am I going to desist?'

'Well which?'

'Both. I'll stay this time, if I may. And then I'll desist. So I'll stop- and then I'll stop.'

'You say that but you keep coming back. Please-desist, and don't stay. Go.'

Gwyn sighed. He said, 'Fine. So you don't mind me telling Richard. I wonder how I'll break it to him. Will it make it easier or harder for him, do you think, that you did it for the money??

'I didn't do it for money. I did it for revenge.'

'Oh yes. Poor Anstice. I met her once. Unbelievable.'

'I'm surprised he hasn't guessed already. I always told him I'd do the worst thing.'

'Ah but he thinks you don't like me.'

'I don't.'

He turned his head away. And he actually said it. He said: 'Women!' He sighed again. Then he reached for his wallet and produced four notes of high denomination. 'Nevertheless money was involved. I like to think of myself as Richard's patron. Keeping his family struggling along while he completed his last and, some say, his greatest novel. What was it called?'

'Enough. Stop. Desist.'

'Why do you stop? Meaning stay. I must say, these days I find his presence . . . entirely soiling. But of course you have this wonderful love life, don't you. This raging sea of hysterical sex. Why don't you just chuck him out? He'd go.'

And he would go. With a suitcase, to the callbox.. . He would go quietly. One thing about Richard. She sensed all the violence, all the verbal violence, he contained. But he had never turned it on her. And she knew he never would.

'One last time,' said Gwyn. 'And just beauty and the beast.'

It was naturally the phenomena of his own eye-level that claimed the lion's share of Marco's attention. For example, the cavernous murk beneath the stalls where an apple or a turnip might have rolled: between the gutter and the shadow-edge. The inner glisten of things under there, where he could easily go, bending in under there, where the small was better than the tall.

He looked up. He turned a full circle. 13 was gone. Immediately Marco's ears started humming at him. He wheeled and his vision wheeled, wheeled for a face to form out of the swings and roundabouts, the costumed impostors, the taffetaed dissemblers-the kings and the queens and the jacks.

A bus stood at the crossroads. Behind it, Marco's father, accompanied by his friend, walked past, continuing down Westbourne Park Road to Ladbroke Grove.

'There was this novelist,' Richard was saying, 'who taught a creative-writing course at Brixton Prison. He went away for six months and when he came back all the lags had written a novel each. Or transcribed a novel each. But there were only about five novels in the prison library for themto plagiarize. Three of them had done The Cruel Sea.'

Rory frowned. They walked on.

'Jesus. I'd better pick up the vacuum cleaner. Do you mind? It's been there for weeks and I get hell at home.'

Three days of weather were stacked in the sky. Here was today. And there was tomorrow. And over there, the day after.

'Beauty and the beast,' said Gina. 'And that's it. For ever.'

'Amazing that women find that less intimate. Particularly when they're swallowers, like you. It always seems more intimate to me.'

'Except it's got nothing to do with babies. Why don't you and Demi have a baby? It would suit you. It would shut her up.'

'But it wouldn't shut the baby up.'

'But it might shut you up. You need a change.'

'Well I might get one whether I want it or not. Demi's changed since her dad popped off. She's chucking Pamela out. She's talking of chucking me out. She's really changed. She's dead flash. Take your dressing gown off at least.'

'Quick now. I don't want you running into Lizzete on the stairs.'

Gwyn stood up and took his jacket off and said, not altogether truthfully, that he would be as quick as he possibly could.

A figure stepped out between the market stalls-instantly dismissed by Marco as playing no part in Marco's world. But then Marco's world was already falling away, falling, falling through the curved heavens. That was what he could hear in his ears: the friction of the falling world.

Persisting in their address, the face and the figure came nearer.

'Marco. It's Steve, remember? I know your dad.'

The face held out its hand toward him. Marco declined it. But he went on standing there, abjectly, with his neck bent. A modern child, he knew the kinds of things the world could contain: local-personal-disasters. It was like a shadow falling, but a shadow made of uneasy light. Storm light, and summer thunder.

'Marius is waiting round the corner. I want to tell you a story. Come on, I got some kittens in the back of the van.'

A hand was offered again, and declined again. They started off. To keep up with his minder, and his minder's brisk stride, Marco didn't jog or trot but walked and ran, walked and ran.

'Need any help with that?'

'It's easier if one person carries it. Funnily enough.'

They had drunk more wine than they were young enough to drink; and then there was the large brandy that Richard had successfully consumed while Rory settled the bill. After the