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as the young man did not speak, he hummed the beginning of a tune. He
then said, ‘You know, Luke, Ella and I are really fond of each other. We met
when she was sixteen and I nineteen, after all. She comes from Manchester,
like me.’
    Luke
said, ‘Ella’s a real fine woman. I wouldn’t deny it for the world.’ Luke was
doing a postgraduate course at London University having graduated from
Rutgers in the United States. His home was New Jersey. He had always found his
education through grants, and made his spending money by serving at table in
restaurants and private houses several evenings a week. He would be serving
three weeks hence at the dinner in Islington given by Chris Donovan and Hurley
Reed.
    A key
sounded in the lock: ‘Hallo,’ said Ella. ‘Oh, hallo, Luke,’ she said. ‘What
lovely flowers. ‘Ella was tall, well-groomed, with her shiny, very fair blonded
hair hanging loose about her long face. She had small blue-grey eyes. Her age
was forty-two. She was obviously very pleased to see good-looking Luke. She
kissed both him and Ernst, who exuded a great deal of good humour on her
arrival.
    It was
Ella who had introduced Luke to Ernst when a few months ago she had asked him
to supper in their rented flat; she had met Luke in the university library.
Ernst had arrived from Brussels that night. The young man appealed to Ernst, in
fact amused him, especially by his way of boasting about some of his perfectly
banal academic achievements at the same time as he was positively retiring on
the main question about which he could justifiably have put on airs: his
courage and independence in putting himself through his universities.
    Ernst
was tall with partly grey hair, thick black eyebrows, rather glittering eyes so
dark that it was difficult to see what colour. He had a good, wide mouth, a
newly grown grey beard, a longish nose. It added up to good looks. He was
forty-five. He had thought at first that Luke was sleeping with Ella during
those odd days and weeks when she came to London on her own, leaving him in
Brussels. He had not greatly minded since he had thought it would be, anyway,
understandable. Now he thought it only, barely, possible that Luke could be his
wife’s lover since the young man showed such a decided disposition towards
himself.
    ‘We
should be careful not to spoil him,’ Ella said when Luke had become a very
constant visitor, especially during her husband’s absences.
    Ernst
said, ‘Don’t give him money.
    ‘I
won’t. He hasn’t asked for any,’ said Ella.
    ‘Good.
Give him a drink, a meal, it’s quite enough. Let him lay the table and wash
up.’
    ‘He
generally does that. I’m hoping he’ll help me to look for a flat.’
    Ernst
and Ella had one child, a daughter, recently married and now living in New
York. Luke was, in a way, filling the gap that she had left. Ernst, so clever,
so good at languages, with his Continental connections, preferred his life in Brussels,
but since Ella had determined to follow a career in London he was fairly happy
to see Luke on his London visits which sometimes lasted as long as a week.
Fairly happy the first month of their meeting and now, at the end of the second
month, he was becoming strangely delirious. The old madness, the old excitement
was affecting Ernst, all he did and thought, there lurking at the back of his
mind: young Luke; at those serious meetings and conventions, at those private
business lunches: young Luke. I am mad about him, mad, thought Ernst, slashing
on his seat-belt and driving away from Heathrow through the traffic towards
Luke, with Ella there also, in and out of the furnished flat: ‘What lovely
flowers.’ Sometimes they telephoned down to room-service for their meal,
sometimes they prepared it there in the flat’s galley-kitchen and ate it at the
kitchen counter.
    ‘Stay
for supper,’ said Ernst to Luke.
    ‘I
can’t,’ said Luke, looking at his watch. ‘I’m booked for a party, helping
behind the buffet, eight