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idea?”
    “I think it’s a very good idea.”
    I went out of the office, poured myself a drink, carried it through to my dressing room and began to change into one of the suits that had just been sent over from Rome. While I was doing that Jean came into the room and in the mirrored walls I watched from about forty-eight different angles as she took off her slacks and sweater. Then I watched her progress as she walked over to me and leant against me and put her arms round my waist and dug her fingernails into my stomach. When shespoke it was no longer in the businesslike tone she’d used in the office.
    “What happened to Arthur?” she said.
    I turned to face her. Now her hands slid up to my shoulderblades and the nails dug in again as her hands trailed slowly back down my spine.
    “Mickey’s seen to him.”
    The nails dug deeper and she pressed herself even closer. Her eyes were intense but at the same time her eyelids drooped, hooded like a goshawk’s. I knew what she wanted to say to me, what she wanted to express, but to put it into words would be to reveal her feelings too nakedly. I knew the feeling well; it’s like when you have your finger on the trigger and as you breathe in to squeeze, you hold the breath as if to freeze the second before firing, before the final act of commitment. But, in any case, I knew exactly how she felt; her body was telling me, and my own body was recognising the signals with ease, because it was reacting in exactly the same way. The Steering Wheel could wait.

THE SEA
    I DROP MY CIGARETTE into the well of the turret and take another pull at the flask. I look at my watch. It’s a quarter past eight. By the time I walk back to the bungalow and drive the Marina into Mablethorpe the parts of the town that are open out of season will be open. I have a final pull at the flask, put it back in my pocket, jump down from the tank and begin to add another line of footprints in the sand to keep the others company.
    As I walk I light another cigarette and the image of Mickey Brice comes into my mind, not as I saw him the second before he died, but at Ling House, Courtenay’s place, a few miles out of Newmarket. It wasn’t only the races we’d gone there for.
    As long as someone like myself is successful and safe enough to be respectable, like a firm star or a singer or a footballer, there will always be people like Courtenay. He liked to associate with people at the height of their particular profession. Not having a profession himself, just a title and a few thousand acres and houses in and out of London and a fortune he needed help in spending, Courtenay liked collections of those who’d had to work for their glittering prizes under his various roofs. Of course, he chose his house guests very carefully. Even with all his money, he felt the indiscreet could lead to costs far beyond mere financial ones.
    Even so the entertainments Courtenay provided for his guestshad gained a guarded reputation among the select; to be invited to a Courtenay weekend was both an honour and a challenge to the sexuality of the people behind the personalities.
    Myself, I didn’t go all that often. It was coals to Newcastle. Mickey was quite a regular visitor, though. He and Courtenay got on extremely well, being the way they were. I didn’t mind. Whatever Mickey did in his own time was his own business.
    When I got the invitation for this particular weekend, I accepted. I’d known Jean for just over a year. It had seemed a suitable occasion to demonstrate that what was indulged in by people in private was not unique, and was often publicly demonstrated in the best of circles. And as Mickey was going as well, his presence and participation would perhaps ease her from one concept to another.
    This particular weekend, Courtenay had a large square of coconut matting on the floor of what he smilingly referred to as his Games Room. Silk cushions big enough to accommodate three or four people at a time had been