«So you weren't expecting me?»
«Don't be silly. Do you mind if I take off my tie?»
«Don't be silly.»
I took off my tie and undid the top two buttons of my shirt. Then I did one of them up again. The hair on my chest is copious but grizzled. (Or, if you prefer, a sable silvered.) I could feel the perspiration trickling down my temples, down the back of my neck, and winding its way through the forest on my diaphragm.
«You aren't sweating,» I said to Julian. «How do you manage it?»
«I am. Look.» She thrust her fingers in under her hair and then stretched her hands towards me across the table. The fingers were long but not unduly slim. They were faintly dewy. «Now, Bradley, where were we. You were saying Hamlet was the only-«Let's fold up this conversation shall we?»
«Oh Bradley, I knew I'd just bore you! And now I won't see you again for months, I know you!»
«Shut up. That dreary stuff about Hamlet and his ma and pa you can get out of a book. I'll tell you which one.»
«So it's not true?»
«It is true, but it doesn't matter. A sophisticated reader takes such things in his stride. You are a sophisticated reader in ovo.»
«In what?»
«Of course Hamlet is Shakespeare.»
«Whereas Lear and Macbeth and Othello are-«Aren't.»
«Bradley, was Shakespeare homosexual?»
«Of course.»
«Oh I see. So Hamlet's really in love with Horatio-«Be quiet, girl. In mediocre works the hero is the author.»
«My father is the hero of all his novels.»
«It is this that induces the reader to identify. Now if the greatest of all geniuses permits himself to be the hero of one of his plays, has this happened by accident?»
«No.»
«Is he unconscious of it?»
«No.»
«Correct. So this must be what the play is about.»
«Oh. What?»
«About Shakespeare's own identity. About his urge to externalize himself as the most romantic of all romantic heroes. When is Shakespeare at his most cryptic?»
«How do you mean?»
«What is the most mysterious and endlessly debated part of his ceuvre?»
«The sonnets?»
«Correct.»
«Bradley, I read such an extraordinary theory about the sonnets-«Be silent. So Shakespeare is at his most cryptic when he is talking about himself. How is it that Hamlet is the most famous and accessible of his plays?»
«But people argue about that too.»
«Yes, but nevertheless it is the best known work of literature in the world. Indian peasants, Australian lumberjacks, Argentine ranchers, Norwegian sailors, members of the Red Army, Americans, all the most remote and brutish specimens of mankind have heard of Hamlet.»
«Don't you mean Canadian lumberjacks? I thought Australia-«How can this be?»
«I don't know, Bradley, you tell me.»
«Because Shakespeare, by the sheer intensity of his own meditation upon the problem of his identity has produced a new language, a special rhetoric of consciousness-«I'm not with you.»
«Words are Hamlet's being as they were Shakespeare's.»
«Oh what a noble mind is here o'erthrown.»
«How all occasions do inform against me.»
«Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice.»
«Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I.»
«Absent thee from felicity a while.»
«I played Hamlet once,» said Julian.
«What?»
«I played Hamlet once, at school, I was sixteen.»
I had closed the book and had my two hands flat on the table. I stared at the girl. She smiled, and then when I did not, giggled and blushed, thrusting back her hair with a crooked finger. «I wasn't very good. I say, Bradley, do my feet smell?»
«Yes, but it's charming.»
«I'll put the boots on again.» She began to point one pink foot, thrusting it into its purple sheath. «I'm sorry, I interrupted you, please go on.»
«No. The show's over.»
«Please. What you were saying was marvellous, though I can't really understand much of it. I do wish you'd let me take notes. Can't I now?» She was zipping up the boots.
«No. What I was saying is no good for your exam. That's esoteric lore. You'd plough if you tried to utter that stuff. In fact you don't understand any of it. It doesn't matter. You'd better just learn a few simple things. I'll send you some notes and one or two books to read. I know what questions they'll ask you and I know what answers will get you top marks.»
«But I don't want to do the easy stuff, I want to do the difficult stuff, besides, if what you say is true-«You can't conjure with that word at your age.»
«But I do want to understand. I thought Shakespeare was a sort of business man, I thought he was really interested in making money-«
«He was.»
I got up. I felt suddenly exhausted, almost dazed, damp with sweat from head to foot as if I were outlined with warm quicksilver. I opened the window and a breath of slightly cooler air entered the room, polluted and dusty, yet also somehow bearing the half-obliterated ghosts of flowers from distant parks. A massed-up buzz of various noise filled the room, cars, voices, the endless hum of London's being. I opened the front of my shirt all the way down to the waist and scratched in my curly mat of grey hair. I turned to face Julian. Then I went to the walnut hanging cupboard and brought out glasses and the sherry decanter. I poured out sherry.
«So you played Hamlet. Describe your costume.»
«Oh the usual. All Hamlets dress the same, don't they. Unless they're in modern dress, and we weren't.»
«Do what I ask please.»
«What?»
«Describe your costume.»
«Well, I wore black tights and black velvet shoes with silvery buckles and a sort of black slinky jerkin with a low opening and a white silk shirt underneath that and a big gold chain round my neck and-What's the matter, Bradley?»
«Nothing.»
«I thought I looked a lot like a picture I saw of John Gielgud.»
«Who is he?»
«Bradley, he's an actor-«
«You misunderstand me, child. Go on.»
«That's all. I enjoyed it ever so much. Especially the fight at the end.»
«I think I'll close the window again,» I said, «if you don't object.» I closed it and the London buzz became indistinct, something internal, something in the mind, and we were alone again in a warm small thingy solitude. I stared at the girl. She was dreamy, combing her layers of greeny-golden hair with long fingers, seeing herself as
