Now you bloody wake up. God knows why. Why?' he asked.
'Doesn't matter why,' he answered. 'You don't know why. I don't know why. But when you suddenly realize what the world is like, then you go around destroying all the people who've known all along. Why do you want to destroy me?'
It was five minutes to four, five minutes before Harry had to leave the room. Now Alex's hand was twisting his shirt just the way Hastings had done. Alex was a big man. He stood over Harry and twisted his shirt with more strength than anyone would have guessed him capable of.
'Why do you want to destroy me?'
A look of indescribable contempt passed over his soft fleshy face, turned in on itself, and collapsed into nothing. His hand unclenched and he left Harry with only pain.
Alex lowered himself into the chair, letting himself drop the last six inches. 'I drove round all night because I was frightened to tell you. Why should I be frightened of you? You're pathetic. You're not worth being frightened of. I'm going to work at Ogilvy's. They like me. They damn well like me. Adrian Clunes phoned me and asked me if I would handle his account. You see, it's amazing isn't it? It's bloody amazing. All these years I've handled the account and you've taken the profit. Well now they're making me a director. That's what I'm worth to them.'
'I fired them for you,' Harry said, and came and sat opposite him in just the way he had, a week before, sat opposite Adrian Clunes. 'I fired them to save you, damn it. Don't you remember? I fired them because you were a Captive and ...'
'Ah,' Alex waved a hand and spilt whisky down his shirt. 'Captives…'
'Were you trying to trick me? Did you trick me into firing them?'
'Harry...' He opened his big pink palms and held them out.
'Because if you did…'
'Harry.'
' ...I don't mind.'
'You're looking at your watch and I'm trying to tell you I'm sorry.'
'I've got to go soon.'
'Everything's shut. I'm fucking saying I'm sorry. Doesn't that mean anything? I've got to live, that's all. I've got to make money. You would have fired me in the end. You would have had to. Don't blame me.'
'I'm putting you to bed.'
'I'm not an Actor, Harry. I’m just Alex, fuck it,' he sniffed. 'Fuck it.'
He did not resist when Harry led him into the bedroom and he began, without any hesitation, to get undressed. 'I betray you, you betray me,' he said. 'Oh, fuck.' He fell over one leg in his trousers and Harry helped him out of his big grey socks and his surprisingly fine silk underpants. He registered, in a moment of shock, the enormous size of his flaccid penis and, as he tucked him into bed, he thought how unused it looked, fed on doughnuts and cream cake.
It was three minutes past four.
Doctors Hennessy and Cornelius travelled up in the lift bound for the twenty-first floor. They did not like each other. Cornelius's squashed little face was hidden behind a trimmed black beard and his shirt was open to reveal a hairy chest. He looked up at Hennessy and winked for no reason.
'How is it, Ace?'
Hennessy regarded him from pale, pale blue eyes. 'Well enough,' he said coldly, 'well enough.'
On the twenty-first floor they knocked, and when they were not admitted, entered with the key which had been provided. They found their mark sitting up with the sheet held the way women do when they want to hide their breasts.
'Good morning,' Hennessy said formally, 'I am Dr Hennessy and this is Dr Cornelius.'
'You've come for Harry, haven't you?'
'Yes,' Cornelius said, and opened his bag on his unmade bed, looking at the mark and guessing his weight at 200 lbs or 400 mgs of Pentothal.
'He's really gone crazy.'
'So they say,' said Cornelius, drawing up the required 400 mgs into the hypodermic.
'Well ... are you going to wait ... or what?'
'Or what, I should think,' Hennessy said drily, taking his papers from his bag, watching while Cornelius fitted the charged hypodermic into the dart gun he had personally invented.
'Now, Mr Joy,' Cornelius said, 'we would like you to come with us very quietly and we will take you somewhere where they will make you better.'
'No,' Alex said, 'you don't understand.'
The bedclothes trailed out into the corridor like guts from the disemboweled room.
Neither Harry Joy nor Honey Barbara said a word. They stood for a moment and listened. Only the muffled noise of the lift dropping down the shaft broke the stillness.
Harry entered the room first. When he saw the broken chair in the doorway, the blood on the floor, the gaping guts of the television set, and the hunk of hair on the bathroom basin which looked pubic but had actually come from Dr Cornelius's bleeding face, he merely nodded, and although he was shocked he was not surprised.
Honey Barbara put down the box of food on the ruined bed. 'Poor man,' she said. 'He fought them.'
Harry nodded. He felt ill. He stood the bedside lamp upright and put the phone back on its hook.
'Come on,' she said, 'other room.'
They pulled the blankets back into the bedroom and shut the door on it.
'Want food?' she asked, carrying the box.
He shook his head.
'He fought them,' she said. 'Good on him.'
They both looked ill. They didn't know whether to sit or stand. Honey Barbara finally put the box down at the table and sat there in a chair. Harry leant against the window.
'They'll let him go,' he said, 'when they find out.'
She shook her head. 'Don't count on it. The hospital gets a subsidy. They'll try and keep him.'
He picked up the phone.
'What you doing?'
'I'm going to ring my family and tell them.'
'What?' She was already standing and walking towards him.
'They got the wrong person.'
She snatched the phone from his hand and put it gently back on the receiver. 'No.'
'I can't have this on my conscience. I've got to.'
'Darling, they'll come and get you.'
'They can't get me. I get up too early.' He picked up the phone and began to dial. He had more confidence in Honey Barbara's theories than Honey Barbara did.
'Hello,' Joel said sleepily.
'It's Harry Joy here,' Harry told his junior partner. 'I am phoning you that whoever you sent to lock me up has just taken Alex Duval instead.'
He could hear Joel laughing. 'Really? Really? Oh Harry... '
'Did you hear me?'
'Harry you don't know how funny it is.'
'I said you got Alex Duval...
' ...instead of you.'
He hung up. 'What happened?' she said.
'He laughed.'
It was like a room in which someone has died.
They made love but it was somehow funereal and they looked into each other's eyes with sadness and nuzzled each other for comfort. Everything had suddenly become full of insurances and precautions. He ran off sixteen Diners Club bills for her while she watched tearfully.
'I should take you back home with me.'
