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French that I detected the tiniest trace of something that may have been from the north of England. (Had he a Brummy French teacher in school?) He despised rave culture – the Happy Mondays and Stone Roses and even before that the Smiths. The sensitive socialist Morrissey was maybe his public enemy number one, which may have been more evidence to prove that he was born within a mile of the man’s home. As he would not discuss his parents or childhood, disclaiming it all as ‘just so much Freudian nonsense’, I was left none the wiser. Perhaps his quest to be a new person was the product of some deeply embarrassing truth about himself, a childhood of squalor in Manchester perhaps, a single mother, a working-class background (which may have explained his hatred of the proletariat; maybe his father had been one of the miners that Thatcher crushed?). He did after all frequently say, ‘Art saves us from the prison of history.’ But as soon as I started examining I would hear him incanting: ‘The truth of oneself is not hidden inside, it has yet to be invented!’
    As I waited for her arrival Saul declared that he had changed his mind and did not want to meet the ‘incumbent’. I was to handle all the practicalities of her move as he would be gathering his thoughts and was not to be disturbed. He went to his room and put on a record. As the cheesy synths jangled through the flat I knew it was the dreaded one. ‘Disparu’ by the Duchamps. They were some long-disbanded failed eighties band a bit like Spandau Ballet meets Stockhausen meets a karaoke singer doing Pavarotti. It had audio samples of animals played backwards and the keyboards sounded like a kiddie’s home computer. As I tried to shield my ears from it, the vocals came on. The notes were flat and the voice was of a sick androgyne singing falsetto and mispronouncing French lyrics with a trace of a Yorkshire accent.
    ‘
J’ai disparu, nous avons disparooo, vooo disparooo
.’
    It was possibly the worst and definitely the most pretentious album of all time. An album so up its own bottom that no one perhaps other than Saul could have ever found it; that symbolised Saul’s ethos of rebellion against the forces of mass culture, the elevation of obscurity to a virtue and his belief in worshipping failure in a world based on the cult of success.
    He had played it to me that first time I met him, as a test, and somehow maybe in a kind of fucked-up way I had gone from fearing, to loathing, to kind of loving it. I had to laugh at what the girl called Dot’s first reaction would be upon hearing the sounds of ‘Disparu’.
    It was surreal, this company she’d hired, three men in matching overalls, carrying in her possessions in identical boxes: a music stand for, maybe, a violin; eight or so boxes of books or CDs; a large television. She apologised profusely for her many things: a cappuccino machine; easel; surround-sound stereo; teak bookshelf; one of those new Apple Macintoshes and a printer.
    Saul’s door was locked throughout, ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ blaring from within. The council clone came again to the door and the scene was impossible but beautiful. Him demanding the back rent and Dot extending her hand to shake.
    — Hello, my name is Dorothy. Who are you?
    Her posh voice must have freaked him — and the Wagner and the wad in her wallet. He called her ‘ma’am’ then, said thank you again and again as she gave him the dosh, then backed away, his lowered shoulders and posture that of a subservient dog. She had paid our arrears. I chatted to her after, helping her plug in things and apologising for the lingering smells and Saul’s absence and his Valkyries.
    — He’ll maybe say hello in a few days.
    As if hearing me he strode past us both as if on a catwalk, wearing his bare-bottomed leather cowboy chaps, a Winnie-the-Pooh pyjama top and ballet pumps, without even casting a glance at Dot.
    — Hello . . . she tried to say: — Saul?
    But he