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can’t bear it that you won’t.”
    And this was the wife he had left! If she had a failing, it was that she didn’t give blow jobs. (His own eccentricity was that he hated having the top of his head touched during the act of love.) If she had a failing, it was that she had so acute a sense of smell that she made him feel as if he stank the place up. (As a result, however, he had begun to wash more often.) If she had a failing, it was that she bought things without ever asking what they cost, an extraordinary trait in a woman who did not, as the British say, come from money. If she had a failing, it was that she had grown accustomed to being kept, and could spend more money on Christmas than half the population earned in a year. If she had a failing, it was that her mother-love blinded her to the rest of humanity’s desires, including, to be blunt, Professor Solanka’s. If she had a failing, it was that she wanted more children. That she wanted nothing else. Not all the gold of Araby.
    No, she was faultless: the tenderest, most attentive of lovers, the most extraordinary mother, charismatic and imaginative, the easiest and most rewarding of companions, not a big talker but a good one (reference that first phone call), and a connoisseur not just of food and drink but of human character, too. To be smiled on by Eleanor Masters Solanka was to feel subtly, pleasingly complimented. Her friendship was a pat on the back. And if she spent freely, what of it? The Solankas were unexpectedly well-off, thanks to the almost shocking worldwide popularity of a female doll with a cheeky grin and the cocky insouciance that was just beginning to be called “attitude,” and of whom Asmaan Solanka, born eight years later, uncannily looked like the fair-haired, dark-eyed, sweeter-natured flesh-and-blood embodiment. Though he was very much a boy, preoccupied by giant diggers, steamrollers, rocket ships, and railway engines, and captivated by the I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can-I-thought-I-could-I-thought-I-could determination of Casey Jones, the indomitable circus-hauling little engine in Dumbo, Asmaan was constantly, infuriatingly, taken for a girl, probably because of his long-eyelashed beauty, but possibly also because he reminded people of his father’s earlier creation. The doll’s name was Little Brain.

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    Professor Solanka in the late 1980s despaired of the academic life, its narrowness, infighting, and ultimate provincialism. “The grave yawns for us all, but for college dons it yawns with boredom,” he proclaimed to Eleanor, adding, unnecessarily as things turned out, “Prepare for poverty” Then to the consternation of his fellows, but with his wife’s unqualified approval, he resigned his tenured position at King’s, Cambridge-where he had been inquiring into the development of the idea of the state’s responsibility to and for its citizens, and of the parallel and sometimes contradictory idea of the sovereign self-and moved to London (Highbury Hill, within shouting distance of the Arsenal Stadium). Soon afterward he plunged into, yes, television; which drew down much predictably envious scorn, especially when the BBC commissioned him to develop a late-night series of popular history-of-philosophy programs whose protagonists would be Professor Solanka’s notorious collection of outsize egghead dolls, all made by himself.
    This was simply too much. What had been a tolerable eccentricity in a respected colleague became intolerable folly in a craven defector, and The Adventures of Little Brain was unanimously derided, before it was ever screened, by “intellos” both great and small. Then it aired, and within a season, to general astonishment and the knockers’ chagrin, grew from a sophisticated coterie’s secret pleasure into a cult classic with a satisfyingly youthful and rapidly expanding fan base, until at last it was handed the accolade of being moved into the coveted slot after the main evening news. Here it