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the studio, before trying to sub-let it; and so on and so forth. After a long wearing sort of day I decided to give myself a drink or two, and possibly some food, at the Arts Club. Now here I ran into a coincidence. It was only a little one, hardly worth calling a coincidence at all, but it has to be mentioned because I’m trying to tell this story as honestly as I can. And this is the point – as I go on telling it we’ll soon run smack into what look like ridiculous coincidences, altogether too big and steep, and I give warning here and now that in actual fact they aren ’ t coincidences at all . But this one at the club was, and all it amounted to was that I happened to see an industrial designer called Semple about to call for a drink, and I stood him a pink gin. While we were talking about nothing I remembered that Semple was one of the names on the list that Joe Farne had sent from Chile.
    ‘Am I wrong,’ I said, firing into the dark, ‘or did you have a brother?’
    Obviously it wasn’t a question he liked. ‘I had a brother,’ he said, about as curt as a man can be to a fellow who’s just provided him with a drink. ‘Physicist. He was at Harwell, then left and after a lot of fuss he took a job in Peru.’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, trying not to sound excited at this mention of Peru. ‘I must have read about it somewhere. What happened to him?’
    ‘His wife went out and brought him back. He’d had a nervous breakdown. Never recovered properly – died soon afterwards.’ Having disposed of his brother, clearly a painful topic, he now warmed up a bit. ‘Odd you should ask because I was just about to ring up my sister-in-law. I promised to look her up tonight and now I find I can’t.’ He swallowed the rest of his gin, and it must have washed away another barrier between us. ‘I’ve been putting off telephoning because I’m glad I can’t go and I have to sound sorry. You know how it is with some people, Bedford. I don’t like the woman, never did. On the other hand, there she is – lonely, miserable, bitter as hell. I’m genuinely sorry for her but hate going to see her and listening to her complaints, and of course she knows it. Have another? I’m going to have one.’
    ‘Thanks. But just a minute. Was it the Arnaldos Institute in Peru?’
    ‘Where my brother went? Sounds like it. Why?’
    ‘I have a cousin whose husband went out there, and she’s worried about him.’ I was very offhand, just a fellow in a club. ‘Would it be all right if I called on your sister-in-law? Tonight, I mean. Where is she?’
    ‘Hampstead. I’ll give you her address. I’ll ring up and ask her, as soon as I’ve got our drinks. Makes it easier for me, anyhow. Incidentally, she paints a bit, but I warn you she’s no good.’
    He brought the drinks, then went off to telephone. He looked happier when he returned. ‘That’s fixed. And I’ve written down the address – here it is. Belsize Park, really. About nine o’clock, I suggested. But don’t expect to enjoy yourself. And be careful what you say – she hasn’t got over Frank yet, not by a long way. Well – cheers!’
    There’s a range of colours, purple madder and magenta to mauve and violet alizarin, that I like to keep away from, and they seemed to be all there, in Mrs Semple’s sitting-room. She was up on the second floor, having invested all her money in the house, which was large, solid and horrible; and she had four students in bed-sitting-rooms above her, and substantial citizens renting what she called ‘maisonettes’ on the two floors below. She told me all this in the first few minutes I was there, for no particular reason I could discover. She was a biggish sagging woman, probably in her later forties, and she had the bulgy sort of very pale blue eyes that I always find disagreeable. Her dress was a cobalt violet shade that was all wrong for her. The various still lifes on the walls, obviously her work, weren’t badly drawn and