There was a silence.
'You're the first person I've told. I don't know who to trust. I've been trying to work out what to do.'
'You mean you know you're in Hell.'
'Yes,' Harry said.
'Oh Christ,' Harry.
'You think I'm crazy.' Harry stood up. He looked bereft. His face was suddenly very white.
'No,' Alex Duval said quietly. It did not for a second occur to him that Harry meant everything he said literally. He was distressed merely because Harry was the last person he had ever expected to reveal deep unhappiness.
'Since when?' he asked.
'Since,' Harry smiled encouragingly but his voice was choked off with emotion. 'Since I was in hospital.'
'Ah yes.' Alex remembered that it was at about this time that Joel and Bettina's affair became public knowledge.
'It's good to talk to you, Alex.'
'It's good to talk to you, Harry.'
The two men lapsed into an embarrassed silence. Alex Duval finally lit his cigarette and Harry ate the ice in the bottom of his glass.
'I have a theory,' Harry announced when he had finished the ice.
'Tell me.' Alex lit a cigarette.
'There are three sorts of people in Hell. Captives, like us. Actors. And Those in Charge. What do you think?'
'Who are the Actors?'
'Most of them. They work for Those in Charge.'
'To persecute the Captives?'
'Yes.'
'They're Actors; acting; not what they seem.'
'Mmmm. What do you think?'
'Brilliant,' said Alex Duval pouring himself another Scotch. 'Exactly right.' As he sipped the Scotch he wondered if he and Harry might finally end up being friends, real friends, after all these years. He liked Harry's theory. There was no room for optimism in it.
'Joel is an Actor?' he asked.
'Definitely.'
'And Bettina?'
'Yes.'
'We are Captives?'
'Yes.'
'Have some more Scotch, Harry.'
'Thank you, Alex. The question is,' Harry dropped a fist full of ice into his glass, 'the question is who are the Captives and how can they be freed?'
'Harry,' Alex said, 'it is good to see you. It is nice to talk to you. We haven't talked like this since the Old Days. Remem-ber how we used to sit around till all hours and talk?' Alex stuffed tobacco into his little bent pipe and lit it. When he had it glowing he leant back in his chair. 'You old bastard,' he said. 'It's so nice to talk to you.'
'Let me ask you a question,' Harry said. 'An opinion… '
'Yes,' Alex settled down comfortably.
'The relative merits of Goodness and Originality… what do you reckon?'
'Harry,' he shook his head, 'you're amazing. I don't believe it.'
The two men smiled at each other proudly.
'Originality, without Goodness,' Alex said at last, 'is nothing, of no worth.'
'That's what I was thinking,' Harry said. 'Originality, by itself, is nothing?'
'Not a pinch of shit.'
'But with Goodness?'
'Dynamite.'
'I think we should fire Krappe Chemicals,' Harry said.
'I think that's the place to start.'
'Yes… ' Alex said cautiously.
'How much are they billing?'
'Just under two million.'
Alex began to feel that there was something in the conver-sation he had not heard, as if he had dozed off and missed some vital piece of information. He sat for a while puffing on his pipe and looking at the hockey match in the park across the way. Harry fished a piece of ice out of the bucket and crunched it up.
'Why?' Alex said at last.
'Why what?'
'Why fire Krappe Chemicals?'
Harry looked at him in astonishment, 'So you don't have to write your extra conference reports. I'm damned if I'm going to be punished for ever. Do you want to be punished for ever?'
Alex took the pipe out of his mouth. 'No,' he said, and held the pipe about three inches from his mouth, where smoke issued forth from both ends. 'Still,' he said, 'it's a lot of money… ' And, when Harry didn't comment: 'It might seem a little inconsistent... '
'How inconsistent?' said Harry through another mouthful of crunching ice.
'To suddenly, after all these years, fire them.'
, Ah, but they weren't doing it before.'
'Doing what?'
'Making you unhappy.'
Alex blinked. 'Harry, I've been doing these for ten years.'
'Mmmm,' said Harry Joy vaguely and poured himself a Scotch. 'Here's to us,' he said, 'we're going to be good.'
At night, lying in bed, Alex read Rousseau and Pascal, Bertrand Russell and Hegel, Marx and Plato, but now looking at Harry Joy, whom he had worked with for fifteen years, he was frightened that he had understood him.
'You mean Good, don't you? Capital G?'
'Capital G,' grinned Harry and wet his moustache in the Scotch.
'You mean GOOD.'
'Bet your arse.'
As a dream, as a possibility, this would have made Alex smile. Reading at night while his wife snored beside him he would have luxuriated in the ridiculous possibility of Harry Joy deciding to be Good. But now, facing the possibility of it in this stuffy Saturday office, he was filled with fear.
'You're really serious?'
'Sure. Why not.'
'You'll go broke.'
'Who cares.' Harry felt as if he had opened the windows in a locked-up house. He could smell fresh-mown grass.
Alex smiled a hurt ironical smile. 'Well I might. I need a job.!
Harry stood up and put both his hands on Alex's soft shoulders. 'You'll have a job. I'll make sure you have a job. We don't need a lot of money.'
Alex had always been given strength by Harry's enthusiasms but they had always promised him safety, not danger. And besides, there was something in him that was irritated by Harry's new discovery of morality and punishment, as if he were moving in on a territory that didn't belong to him, a territory where he, Alex, was much more familiar with the nuances of right and wrong, the details of the crimes of their clients, the exact nature of their own criminal compliance. It was Alex's field and he resented Harry's crude enthusiasm and his childish
