shred of neurological evidence. Repression? Empirically, no such mechanism had been shown to exist. On the contrary, unwanted memories were hard to forget. Sublimation? Likewise, a fairy tale that no serious investigation could sustain. Attending to the toilet needs of her father could just as likely have put her off older men for life, and then there would have been an equally confident Freudian confabulation. Many women who had never nursed a dying father, or had any analogous experience, preferred older men. Why were Melissa's lovers (with one exception) only fifteen or twenty years older, when her father was thirty-seven the day she was born? Could her unconscious, so literal in other regards, not do the simple adding-up?
The truth was simpler. Women knew it in their hearts. Since he was too tactful to say it to her, he was obliged to set it out impartially for himself. Repetition was helpful. Older men were better companions, they were seasoned lovers, they knew the world, they knew themselves. Unlike younger men, they held their emotions in balance. They had read more, seen more, they were warmer, kinder, less boastful, more tolerant, less violent. They were more interesting, they could choose the wine. They had more money. Besides, it irked him to believe that it might not be him she was drawn to, but some symbol of seniority of which he was an acceptable approximation. He was further irked to hear that when she met her first serious love, the errant golfer, he was the same age as her father when he died.
He took a taxi from the Strand to Primrose Hill and was twenty-five minutes early on Fitzroy Street when he rang her bell. He did not have a key – that was a line he did not wish to cross. When she came to the door, in the moment before they embraced, he sensed that something was not right, or was different. Or she was different. He thought he saw the vestiges of an expression being modified to greet him. Then, they were in each other's arms and the idea was gone. She drew with her out onto the cold stone front step a draught of indoor warmth and beeswax from the apartment and, with it, a scent of spices which mingled with her perfume. One of his presents from some bright airport hell. She exclaimed his name, he hers, they kissed, and held apart to take in the other's face and then embraced again.
As he held her, he felt on his palms the heat of her skin through her red silk blouse. How fogged and monochrome memory was against the living moment. When he was away from her he could only recall in shadow play, or was too busy to attempt to recall, the full vibrancy, the plain and overwhelming fact of her. He forgot the particular touch of her mouth and tongue, her frame, and the way she held herself to dissolve their difference in height when they kissed, the fit of her fingers between his, their degree of springy resistance at the joints, their cool smoothness, length, diameter, the bump of a mole below the knuckle of her left pinkie, and how, when they embraced, his chest was alive to the pressure of her breasts. And this was merely the realm of sensation. How she looked, sounded, tasted – familiar, of course, all of it, but only now that she was here, right in his grasp. Memory, or Beard's memory, was a second-rate device. When he thought of her from Berlin or Rome, it was all relation and generalised desire, it was her nature he considered, herself in abstract, and his own pleasure, not the warm honey smell of her scalp, the surprising taut strength in her arms, how low her voice was pitched when she said his name.
'Michael Beard. Get in the house this minute!'
This old joke summoned a certain kind of crusty old-fashioned parent. He never had cause to say it to her – his stew of a flat was not a place to invite a woman like Melissa Browne. She would not feel comfortable there until she had organised it for him, and that was another line he did not want crossed. She took his bag and he followed her in. When the door was closed they stood in the clean expanse of her sitting room, she put her arms around his neck, he drew her firmly to him and they kissed again. For once, it seemed they might dispense with the obligatory fine-tuning small talk, postpone dinner and go directly to her bedroom. But then, at the sound of a hiss followed by a whip-like crack, a vital prompt from the kitchen, she rushed away with a hiss of her own, a staccato 'shit!', and he made his way to the sofa. He was no longer an ardent young man. He could wait patiently.
By the time she returned five minutes later, his scotch and soda in her hand, he was sprawled on his back reviewing a proposed submission from his Imperial team to Nature. The customary detritus of shoes, coat, jacket, tie, open briefcase, papers, open suitcase, spilling clothes and a plastic bag extended across the floor. Tipped so suddenly from the charge of their reunion to the intricacies of molecular plant life, and knowing that, however it happened, he and Melissa would make love within an hour or so, with a meal in prospect too, he felt a rare and settled contentment.
She stood over him, free hand on her hip. 'Make space, Professor.'
He liked her wry, tolerant, lopsided smile. With a grunt, he struggled upright and patted the space beside him and took the glass from her. As she nestled against him, he put the monograph aside and said, 'Just think, your humblest pavement-crack weed has a secret that the best dozen labs in the world are only just beginning to understand.'
He sipped his scotch while her hand lay between his legs. She was caressing him with an abstracted air.
'I've missed you, Michael. Why weeds?'
'I must have told you before. A leaf is a kind of solar panel for splitting water and fixing carbon dioxide. We could imitate it and make hydrogen. I've missed you too.'
Had he? Now that he was kissing her he realised that he should have, for he was excited and happy. But he had not missed anyone, not since the dark summer of 2000, when he pined like a dog for his last, his final, wife. There were people he vaguely looked forward to seeing, but not since that time had he been afflicted by an absence. These days, as soon as he was alone, he read, he drank, he ate, he was on the phone, on the internet, watching TV, travelling to a meeting – or asleep. He was self-sufficient, self-absorbed, his mind a cluster of appetites and dreamy thoughts. Like many clever men who prize objectivity, he was a solipsist at heart, and in his heart was a nugget of ice, which Melissa sensed and intended to melt.
Of course, it was necessary before they made love to have a conversation about their respective lives these past weeks, their states of mind, their day. His fault for not keeping in touch, hers for not holding him to account. So she told him her news. A musical about a working-class lad wanting to be a ballet dancer was keeping turnover above the seasonal average. But few boys came in. It was all down to girls dreaming of such a boy. She told him of the recent death of a respected choreographer who was never quite famous enough for his own taste. At the memorial service, five dancers performed in the narrow aisle of a Soho church, and even the old man's enemies wept.
Michael's arm was around her shoulders, and she was pressed against him, talking into his chest. She looked after her shops, her customers, her staff, her lover, and she wanted someone to take care of her. As he listened, he looked about him – at the brown chaise longue against the wall, the maquette, the eighteenth-century drypoint of dancers in a Utrecht street, a bowl of smooth stones in a copper dish – hoping to identify what it was that appeared to his unobservant eye so subtly altered. Something was out of kilter. He was sure it was not his own possessions. The air itself seemed disordered, the way it does after a smoker has left and his smoke has cleared.
'I love you,' she interrupted her account of the funeral to say, and she bit him playfully on his arm.
He felt tenderly towards her, perhaps as much as he ever had, but one day he might have to disentangle himself, and it would be harder for both of them if he had once said he loved her. But how he would begin to give her up, and when, was beyond him, and he drew her closer to him. What he whispered sounded lame, but it would do.
'You're beautiful, Melissa.'
She went on with her story and he stroked her head and thought that for the first time since he had thrown up behind the velvet curtain, he could imagine himself hungry, perhaps within the half-hour. He was beginning to wonder about the spices in the air. Was it tamarind he could detect, and garlic, limes, ginger, chicken? Her voice was musical and soft, and even, he thought, a little sad. From time to time she drew his head down for a kiss. She was talking about the shops again, drifting into another story, this time about a hole in a ceiling or a floor and something falling through it, about a bad-tempered dachshund left behind by an ancient prima donna with Alzheimer's. And now he too was drifting. He thought he was an average type, no crueller, no better or worse than most. If he was sometimes greedy, selfish, calculating, mendacious, when to be otherwise would embarrass him, then so was everyone else. Human imperfection was a large subject. Consider just a few of the defects. S-shaped backs that easily buckled, breathing and swallowing recklessly sharing a passage, the
