The View from Here Read Free

shield only the upper half of the body. He was leaning against the molded exterior and I could see his face. What was it about him, about his manner, that warned me, even across the acres of strangers and hospital-lit serviceable surfaces? His eyes were dipped, almost closed, and his expression was intense, urgent even, utterly engrossed. Suddenly, sensing my gaze perhaps, he lifted his head and hung up, and then he roved his eyes, scanning for mine. On catching them, he sent me a cheerful, childish wave that I felt myself hate him for and he lumbered toward me, battling with the luggage trolley. Then we left together, he leading the way to the taxi stand.
    That night we stayed in a hotel in London and ate supper in our room at one of those tables that waiters wheel in and prop up and dress with white linen and vases of candy-colored blooms and foliage that do not belong. As we began Phillip said, “The books are doing very well,” and smiled, as if he were awarding me some sort of prize. He has always smiled like that.
    Phillip is an attractive man, but his looks are quiet—long legs and a sprinkle of gray at the temples—so the smile takes you by surprise because there is so much self-confidence in it. Just then, aware of its attractiveness and the effect that that surprising smile could have, even on me, even after all these years, I felt a bit sick. All the more sick because I wanted to ask, and yet desperately did not want to, whether this news about the books was based on some fresh information gleaned during a hushed and passionately vital telephone call to his editor. That’s who Josee was, is—Phillip’s editor. Well, Phillip’s and Tom Creel’s.
    Phillip and Tom are partners in a small, but very successful, advertising agency—Creel & Grace. There are two other partners now, but their names only feature on the letterhead. Phillip and Tom, on the back of some ideas that were boozily sketched out over a long Sunday lunch at the Creels’ house at which I was present along with Tom’s wife, Alice, have written two books about marketing together. The reviewer for the Times’ Weekend Supplement called these books the “rare sort that change the way you think” and a lot of other people said similar things. Phillip and Tom have been on the radio and on the television and are quoted now in all sorts of places. They have had their photographs in the papers.
    Josee has one of those photographs in a frame on the bookcase behind her desk. I saw it there when, joining Phillip for lunch once, I met him at his publisher. I have wondered since whether it was already happening then. Whether they stood in the same room as me, a pair, smiling. Knowing.
    â€œSo I thought I might do another one,” Phillip went on, “only without Tom. I’ve spoken to him and he agrees. In fact, it would work out well because then he’d be in the office while I was at home.” Another smile was awarded here. “What I mean is that I could stay at home for the next few months, with you.”
    I had too many conflicting thoughts to reply straightaway. Phillip lifted his soup spoon again from the side plate where he had rested it while he spoke and held it in midair for a moment, waiting.
    â€œIn case you needed me,” he explained, unnecessarily.
    Phillip and Tom had, for several years now, shared a two-bedroom, two-bathroom flat at the less expensive end of one of the more expensive areas of London. Alice and I never went there, preferring to stay in hotels, or with friends, when we were in town. We spoke of “the flat” as if it were “the dorm”; it had that sort of association for us, studenty. But Phillip and Tom each spent about three nights a week there, more or less happily, not making the journey in from home on the other days, their seniority having afforded them this luxury, and a bevy of keen young assistants. Reflecting on this arrangement I