The familiar voice spoke.
“Early to work.”
Steve looked up to meet Quaid’s pin-prick eyes.
“I’m impressed, Steve.”
“What with?”
“Your enthusiasm for the job.”
“Oh.”
Quaid smiled. “What are you looking for?”
“Something on Bentham.”
“I’ve got ‘Principles of Morals and Legislation’. Will that do?”
It was a trap. No: that was absurd. He was offering a book; how could that simple gesture be construed as a trap?
“Come to think of it,” the smile broadened, “I think it’s the library copy I’ve got. I’ll give it to you.”
“Thanks.”
“Good holiday?”
“Yes. Thank you. You?”
“Very rewarding.”
The smile had decayed into a thin line beneath his —”You”ve grown a moustache.”
It was an unhealthy example of the species. Thin, patchy, and dirty-blond, it wandered back and forth under Quaid’s nose as if looking for a way off his face. Quaid looked faintly embarrassed.
“Was it for Cheryl?”
He was definitely embarrassed now.
“Well…”
“Sounds like you had a good vacation.”
The embarrassment was surmounted by something else.
“I’ve got some wonderful photographs,” Quaid said.
“What of?”
“Holiday snaps.”
Steve couldn’t believe his ears. Had C. Fromm tamed the Quaid? Holiday snaps?
“You won’t believe some of them.”
There was something of the Arab selling dirty postcards about Quaid’s manner. What the hell were these photographs? Split beaver shots of Cheryl, caught reading Kant?
“I don’t think of you as being a photographer.”
“It’s become a passion of mine.”
He grinned as he said ‘passion’. There was a barely-suppressed excitement in his manner. He was positively gleaming with pleasure.
“You”ve got to come and see them.”
“I—”
“Tonight. And pick up the Bentham at the same time.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ve got a house for myself these days. Round the corner from the Maternity Hospital, in Pilgrim Street. Number sixty-four. Some time after nine?”
“Right. Thanks. Pilgrim Street.” Quaid nodded.
“I didn’t know there were any habitable houses in Pilgrim Street.”
“Number sixty-four.”
Pilgrim Street was on its knees. Most of the houses were already rubble. A few were in the process of being knocked down. Their inside walls were unnaturally exposed; pink and pale green wallpapers, fireplaces on upper storeys hanging over chasms of smoking brick. Stairs leading from nowhere to nowhere, and back again.
Number sixty-four stood on its own. The houses in the terrace to either side had been demolished and bull-dozed away, leaving a desert of impacted brick-dust which a few hardy, and fool-hardy, weeds had tried to populate.
A three-legged white dog was patrolling its territory along the side of sixty-four, leaving little piss-marks at regular intervals as signs of its ownership.
Quaid’s house, though scarcely palatial, was more welcoming than the surrounding wasteland.
They drank some bad red wine together, which Steve had brought with him, and they smoked some grass. Quaid was far more mellow than Steve had ever seen him before, quite happy to talk trivia instead of dread; laughing occasionally; even telling a dirty joke. The interior of the house was bare to the point of being spartan. No pictures on the walls; no decoration of any kind. Quaid’s books, and there were literally hundreds of them, were piled on the floor in no particular sequence that Steve could make out. The kitchen and bathroom were primitive. The whole atmosphere was almost monastic.
After a couple of easy hours, Steve’s curiosity got the better of him.
“Where”s the holiday snaps, then?” he said, aware that he was slurring his words a little, and no longer giving a shit.
“Oh yes. My experiment.”
“Experiment?”
“Tell you the truth, Steve, I’m not so sure I should show them to you.”
“Why not?”
“I’m into serious stuff, Steve.”
“And I’m not ready for serious stuff, is that what you’re saying?”
Steve could feel Quaid’s technique working on him, even though it was transparently obvious what he was doing.
“I didn’t say you weren’t ready—”
“What the hell is this stuff?”
“Pictures.”
“Of?”
“You remember Cheryl.”
Pictures of Cheryl. Ha. “How could I forget?”
“She won’t be coming back this term.”
“Oh.”
“She had a revelation.” Quaid’s stare was basilisk-like.
“What do you mean?”
“She was always so calm, wasn’t she?” Quaid was talking about her as though she were dead. “Calm, cool and collected.”