Bright Air by Barry Maitland Page B

as if all his most distinctive features had become exaggerated, eliminating the rest. His leanness had become skeletal, the lines on his face gaunt cleavages, and the long black hair shaggier and greyer. Most of all, the crippled leg had dragged the rest of his frame down around it, making him stoop awkwardly, like a damaged stick insect.
    He frowned at us for a moment, then his mouth split in a wide smile. ‘Anna! Hi! And …’ He clicked his fingers.
    ‘Josh,’ I said.
    ‘Josh, yes, of course, sorry. Great to see you.’ A dank sour smell wafted past him from the depths of the house. ‘Come in, come in.’ I caught a strong gust of whisky on his breath.
    It was dark inside the hall, the space smaller and more cave-like than I remembered it. We came to a living room, whose view out through stone-mullioned windows was obscured by dense foliage. The room was a jumble of ancient leather furniture surrounded and covered by piles of books and other debris. Judging by the stains in the ceiling the damp problem from the flat roof hadn’t been fixed.
    He continued through to a brighter room, with Frenchwindows opening onto a small terrace. This room was his den, as untidy as the one before but more lived in, with an empty wine bottle and a tray with the remains of yesterday’s pizza on the floor, and more books. He cleared a couple of chairs and went off to find another bottle, leaving Anna and me eyeing each other doubtfully. There was an old chintz-covered armchair in the corner by the window and I had a sudden vivid memory of another Saturday in this room, music playing, laughter from the garden, and Suzi sitting in that chair, flapping a handkerchief to try to keep the smoke from a joint in Curtis’s hand away from the face of the baby on her knee.
    I picked up a book lying among the remnants of Marcus’s meal and checked the title—
Occult Science
by Rudolf Steiner. Anna had opened the doors onto the terrace and I followed her out. Further down the steep slope we could see a kind of amphitheatre formed in a hollow in the hillside, accessible from Marcus’s house by rock steps winding down between the boulders. To one side of the terrace a shade-cloth conservatory had been built beneath the overhang of a sandstone outcrop, with ferns and other plants dimly visible inside.
    We turned and saw Marcus limping into the room, and went back inside. He almost stumbled on a book on the floor, and I caught his arm and steadied him, startled by how light he felt. I took the bottle from his free hand and found three empty glasses.
    He eased himself with a sigh down into another piece of furniture I remembered, a heavy dark wooden chair he called his throne. ‘So how are you guys?’ he said, examining us in turn. In that more haggard face his gaze seemed brighter, more intense, but his manner was less certain, almost as if he’d become withdrawn, unused to being with people, reclusive, or maybe just drunk.
    ‘We’re fine,’ Anna said. ‘I work over in Blacktown, and Josh has been in London.’
    ‘Ah, the merchant banker, yes. London?’
    ‘Right, I’ve just got back.’
    ‘Four years,’ he said. ‘Of course, of course.’ As if that was terribly significant.
    I smiled. ‘How’s the uni these days?’
    He lowered his eyelids, raised his wine cautiously to his mouth and drank. ‘I don’t work there any more, Josh. They decided they could do without me—very wisely no doubt.’ Some wine spilled onto his knee.
    Anna said, ‘But you were a great teacher, Marcus. And your research …’
    He gave a dry laugh that turned into a cough. ‘After the accident, well, someone had to pay. Inquiries, suspended from teaching, research grants withheld. They made life impossible for me, drove me out.’ He shrugged, wiped his knee absently.
    I was shocked, by both his story and how he looked, and said, ‘I’m sorry. Where are you now?’
    ‘Um? Oh, I’m working on my own private research program.’
    ‘No more