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burnish of a country childhood in the pink glow of his cheeks and the chestnut hanks of his thick fringe.
    Gerard did something in publishing. That was what accounted for his willingness to pronounce on the current state of English fiction. It wasn’t anything editorial or high profile. Rather, when he talked to me of his work – which he did only infrequently – it was of books as so many units, trafficked hither and thither as if they were boxes of washing powder. And when he spoke of authors, he managed somehow to reduce them to the status of assembly line workers, trampish little automata who were merely bolting the next lump of text on to an endlessly unrolling narrative product.
    ‘. . . spry old women’s sex novels, Welsh novels, the Glasgow Hard Man School, the ex-colonial guilt novel – both perpetrator and victim version . . .’ He was still droning on.
    ‘What are you driving at, Gerard?’
    ‘Oh come on, you’re not going to play devil’s advocate on this one, are you? You don’t believe in the centrality of the literary tradition in this country any more than I do, now do you?’
    ‘S’pose not.’
    ‘You probably buy two or three of the big prize-winning novels every year and then possibly, just possibly, get round to reading one of them a year or so later. As for anything else, you might skim some thrillers that have been made into TV dramas – or vice versa – or scan something issue-based, or nibble at a plot that hinges on an unusual sexual position, the blurb for which happens to have caught your eye – ‘
    ‘But, Gerard’ – despite myself I was rising to it – ‘just because we don’t read that much, aren’t absorbed in it, it doesn’t mean that important literary production isn’t going on – ‘
    ‘Not that old chestnut!’ he snorted. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me next that there may be thousands of unbelievably good manuscripts rotting away in attic rooms, only missing out on publication because of the diffidence of their authors or the formulaic, sales-driven narrow-mindedness of publishers, eh?’
    ‘No, Gerard, I wasn’t going to argue that – ‘
    ‘It’s like the old joke about LA, that there aren’t any waiters in the whole town, just movie stars “resting”. I suppose all these bus boys and girls’ – he flicked a hand towards the epicene character who had been ministering to our meal – ‘are great novelists hanging out to get more material.’
    ‘No, that’s not what I meant.’
    ‘Excuse me?’ It was the waiter, a lanky blond who had been dangling in the mid-distance. ‘Did you want anything else?’
    ‘No, no.’ Gerard started shaking his head – but then broke off. ‘Actually, now that you’re here, would you mind if I asked you a question?’
    ‘Oh Gerard,’ I groaned, ‘leave the poor boy alone.’
    ‘No, not at all, anything to be of service.’ He was bending down towards us, service inscribed all over his soft-skinned face.
    ‘Tell me then, are you happy working here or do you harbour any other ambition?’ Gerard put the question as straightforwardly as he could but his plump mouth was twisted with irony.
    The waiter thought for a while. I observed his flat fingers, nails bitten to the quick, and his thin nose coped with blue veins at the nostrils’ flare. His hair was tied back in a pony-tail and fastened with a thick rubber band.
    ‘Do you mind?’ he said at length, pulling half-out one of the free chairs.
    ‘No, no,’ I replied, ‘of course not.’ He sat down and instantly we all became intimates, our three brows forming a tight triangle over the cruets. The waiter put up his hands vertically, holding them like parentheses into which he would insert qualifying words.
    ‘Well,’ a self-deprecatory cough, ‘it’s not that I mind working here – because I don’t, but I write a little and I suppose I would like to be published some day.’
    I wanted to hoot, to crow, to snort derision, but contented myself