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Auntie’s senile. She’s got completely gaga. She thinks she’s a Russian princess. She talks some sort of gibberish she thinks is Russian.’
    ‘Funny how mad people go for titles. By the way, is your other cousin still out of work?’
    ‘Will Boase! He’s not even trying to get work! He just draws National Assistance. They give them too much.’
    ‘He could do that painting job for us. He needn’t tell the National Assistance people.’
    ‘He went to grammar school. So did Nigel.’
    ‘I daresay, Adelaide, but I’m afraid I haven’t any intellectual work to offer him just at the moment!’
    ‘He ought to be in a proper job. You paid him far too much last time.’
    ‘Well, one likes to help. He’s quite unlike Nigel, isn’t he. It’s odd to think they’re twins.’
    ‘They’re not identical twins. I wish you hadn’t got Nigel to work here. It wasn’t my idea.’
    ‘Well, that was not for charity. He’s terribly good with Bruno. It’s almost uncanny.’
    ‘What are Bruno and he always talking about?’
    ‘I don’t know. They shut up like clams when I come in.’
    ‘I think they’re talking about sex, about girls.’
    ‘Girls? Nigel? Mmmm.’
    ‘Fancy Bruno being interested in sex at his age.’
    ‘A topic of enduring fascination, my dear Adelaide.’
    ‘But he can’t do anything.’
    ‘We all live in a private dream world most of the time. Sex is largely in the mind.’
    ‘I’ve never noticed that you thought it was! I think Nigel knows all about it.’
    ‘About sex? No one knows that, my dear. You have to specialise. I intuit an interesting and unusual specialist in our Nigel.’
    ‘You’d need to be an odd sort of man to want to be a nurse.’
    ‘It’s a very honourable profession, Adelaide.’
    ‘Don’t be silly. Do you think Nigel takes drugs or something?’
    ‘He is a bit mystical. But I doubt it. One has enough creepycrawlies in one’s mind without positively encouraging them. Nigel has some sense.’
    ‘Well, I’m sure he takes something or other. His face is getting all lop-sided.’
    ‘I think Nigel’s rather beautiful.’
    ‘You’re mad. He’s a demon.’
    ‘I rather like demons, actually.’
    ‘He gives me the creeps. I wish he wasn’t here. I’m terrified he’ll guess about us.’
    ‘We’re quite shut off in this part of the house, dear kid. Don’t be so anxious about Nigel. He’s sweet and perfectly harmless.’
    ‘He isn’t. I know him. He’s bad. He’d tell people.’
    ‘Well, it wouldn’t matter.’
    ‘It would. You know I don’t want people to know.’
    ‘All right, kid, all right. Sleepy-byes, sleepy-byes.’
    The image of Gwen moved upon Danby’s closed eyes. She was slowly turning her head towards him. Her heavily curled dark brown hair crept on her shoulder, tangled in her cameo brooch. The great-eyed brown glance gathered him into its close attention. ‘Here comes your old comic relief, Gwen my darling.’
    There was another image which sometimes came with sleep and which was terrible. Gwen had been drowned in the Thames. She had jumped off Battersea bridge to save a small child which had fallen from a barge. The child swam to the shore. Gwen had a heart attack, became unconscious and drowned. Danby identified her dripping wild-haired body at the mortuary. It was just like Gwen, he told himself over the years, to jump off Battersea bridge in March to save a child who could swim anyway. It was just the sort of lunatic thing she would do. It was typical. Comic, really.
    Adelaide said, ‘Bruno told me yesterday that spiders existed a hundred million years before flies existed.’
    ‘Mmmmm.’
    ‘But what did the spiders eat?’
    Danby was asleep, dreaming of Gwen.

3
    N IGEL, WHO HAS been sitting cross-legged on the floor outside Danby’s bedroom, listening in the darkness to Danby and Adelaide talking together, rises silently, elegantly, his legs still crossed. There is nothing more now to be heard within except a counterpoint of