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By Root 1122 0

at Jennifer, her eyes narrowed, revolving her pencil abstractedly between her fingers. Bryant was a good subject, short but ponderous, with a long decisive nose in a flushed, rather sensitive face, frizzly grey hair trained carefully from side to side across his pale crown. He stood just beside the lectern, stroking down his tie with his free hand. He said that, as a literary biographer, he’d been asked to talk about Peter’s literary interests, which of course was absurd in a mere seven minutes: Peter deserved a literary biography of his own, and maybe he would write it—anyone with stories to tell should see him afterwards, in strictest confidence, of course. This got a surprisingly warm laugh, though Rob was unsure, after what Jennifer had said, whether he was sending himself up as a teller of other people’s secrets.

Bryant made it clear, in the way Nick Powell had sweetly avoided, that Peter had been his lover—Rob glanced at Desmond, who remained impassive; the thirty-year difference in their ages certainly said something about Peter’s tenacity and appeal. He said he hadn’t had the advantage of a university education, “but in many ways Peter Rowe was my education. Peter was that magic person we all meet, if we’re lucky, who shows us how to live our lives, and be ourselves.” This stirred vague wonderings about the completely unknown subject of Bryant’s private life. “Like … Professor Dupont, I too was brought closer to Cecil Valance by Peter. I well remember him showing me the poet’s tomb at Corley on our very first date—an unusual sort of first date, but that was Peter for you! He even talked at that time of writing something about Valance, but I think we’re all agreed that he would never have had the patience, or the stamina, to write a proper biography—as soon as I started on my own life of Valance he sent me a letter, that was very typical of him, saying that he knew I was the right man for the job.” Rob was looking at Jennifer’s card as she swiftly and elegantly wrote “NOT!” on it. “When I’d made my way somewhat in the literary world, it was a pleasure to be able to recommend Peter as a reviewer, and he did some marvellous pieces in the TLS and elsewhere—though deadlines, I believe, remained a bit of an ‘issue’ for him …”

It was true of course that the lyric of grief was often attended, or followed soon after, by a more prosaic little compulsion, the unseemly grasp of the chance to tell the truth—and since the person involved could no longer mind … There was a special tone of indulgent candour, amusing putting-straight of the record, that wandered all too easily and invisibly into settling of scores and something a bit shy of objective fact. “He once more or less admitted to me,” Bryant said with a rueful laugh, “that he could hardly play the piano at all, but in front of an audience of prep-school boys he could generally get away with it.” (Here Jennifer shook her head and sighed, as if disappointed but unsurprised.) By the time he sat down again, he had said almost nothing about Peter Rowe’s life in books, beyond his failure to produce anything but “TV spin-offs.” Was it envy? It was fairly clear that they hadn’t seen much of each other for the past forty years, so the talk was a wasted opportunity—Rob thought of what he could have said himself about Peter’s book collection.

The final speaker was Desmond, who gripped the mike in both hands with a much less humorous look. There were perhaps a dozen people of colour in the room, but Desmond was the only black speaker, and Rob felt the small complex adjustment of sympathy and self-consciousness that passed through the audience; and then an unexpected squeeze of emotion of his own, at the thought of Desmond ten years ago. He was heavier and squarer-faced now, the lovely boyish thing in him was lost, except in his tremor of determination. Rob frowned gently as he remembered the scar on Desmond’s back, his almost hairless body and knobbly navel; but he saw that the magic of sexual feeling for him lingered only as a kind of loyal and sentimental sadness. He knew that