William Boyd - The Blue Afternoon

'What?'

'What I've found out about the photograph.' He removed the soft wallet from his coat pocket. 'It's amazing what information you can mine from a well-equipped public library.'

'Fire away.'

Carriscant told me he had discovered more about the tennis match that the photograph featured. It had been part of a series of charity events taking place over three days -bicycle races, boxing bouts, a raffle with cash prizes-co-sponsored by the US legation, the Portuguese Red Cross and an Anglo-Portuguese charity welfare group called the Knights of 1147, commemorating the year, Carriscant informed me with an annoying pedagogical air, when English crusaders helped capture Lisbon from the Moors. The festival had occurred between 20 and 23 May to celebrate the Knights' golden jubilee and the visit of the US Navy's light cruiser Olympia and a British destroyer flotilla to Lisbon. The tennis match had been the highlight of the three days' entertainments, an exhibition game between Riverain and Carlos Pelicet. 'Riverain won 6-2, 6-4,' Carriscant informed me. 'Apparently it was a closer match than the score suggests.' What was interesting, he went on, was that the cup had been named after the wife of the US envoy – the Lillian Aishlie cup.

'And what was even more interesting,' Carriscant said, leaning forward, placing both hands on my desk, 'is that the envoy's wife did not present the trophy.'

I assumed Carriscant would inform me why this was 'even more interesting' in his own good time.

'I know,' I said dutifully, 'that actress – what's her name – did.'

'Exactly. Q. E. D.'

'I don't follow.'

'The envoy's wife couldn't have been there.'

'Possibly. So what?'

'So that means the other people on the dais were more than likely US legation staff.'

Finally I began to see the meandering line his reasoning was taking. 'So,' I said, slowly, 'no ambassador's wife for the presentation of her own trophy – '

'Call in a cinema actress. But someone has to be there from the legation.'

'Why not the Red Cross or the Knights of diddly-squat?'

'Because this was the USA 's event.' He removed his precious photograph from its wallet and spread it out on my blotter. The actress, the white-haired man in the dark suit, Carriscant's lady with her enigmatic smile, the naval officer.

'The guest of honour,' Carriscant said, his forefinger on Carmencita Barrera (the nail was rimmed with dirt, I noticed), it jumped the next two faces down the line, 'the naval officer,' back for the white-haired man, 'the envoy and,' he paused, 'the envoy's guest, or the naval officer's wife.'

I could see that this last appellation affected him. 'It sounds plausible,' I said, 'but you can't know for sure.' I turned the magazine page round to face him. 'All these people are on the gorgeous Carmencita's left. The really important people could be on the right.'

'No, absolutely not. Press photographers always make sure the dignitaries are in the shot.'

I could see he was in no mood to quibble. He was convinced with all the unreasoning certainty of a zealot, and he was not going to be shifted.

'So, you're saying – ' I began.

'I'm saying that this woman… ' there was now a distinct tremble in his voice, an emotional vibrato. 'This woman was the friend or wife of a US embassy official in Lisbon in 1927.' He reclined in his chair, his face set in the curious clenched half-grimace of someone fighting to hold tears back. He folded his arms tightly across his chest, embracing himself.

'This is where the trail starts,' he, said, his voice husky with triumph. 'This is where it must begin.'

'Well, good luck to you.'

He looked at me blankly, emptily for an instant, as if I had suddenly spoken in a foreign language.

'No, Kay, we begin. Us, you and me. I can't go without you.'

'I told you the last time, I'm not going anywhere. I have a house to design. I have a life to live here, for God's sake.'

'It would only be for six weeks, two months.'

I laughed: more a gasp of incredulity than a laugh, actually.

'Dr Carriscant, this is your… your obsession, not mine. I barely know you. I can't simply -'

'I can't afford to go to Lisbon,' he said petulantly, accusingly, as if it were my fault. 'I have no money.'

'Neither of us has money.'

'You've just sold your house.'

'Yes, my house. To build another one. We work on a shoestring here, look around you.'

He lowered his head to stare at his hands which were held in his lap, loose fists. His shoulders hunched and subsided a few times, as if he were relieving an ache, and when he looked up at me again shameless tears were flowing from his eyes.

'Kay, I'm asking you as my daughter -'

'Stop that, right now -'

'- as your father. Come with me, help me.'

'You are not my father,' I shouted at him. 'Hugh Paget was my father. How dare you -'

'No, I am, I am, Kay!' he shouted back. 'I am!'

The fervent confidence with which he made this claim silenced and unsettled me. I realised that in my association with Salvador Carriscant, the hours I had spent in his company, our two-day trip to Santa Fe, I had tacitly set aside my doubts and had complacently – perhaps voluntarily-allowed the assumption he had made to lie there between us, like a gift proffered, but not yet accepted. Nor yet rejected. Now was the time for that act to occur.

'If you are my father,' I sad reasonably, under control, 'then who is my mother?'

'Why, your mother, of course. Annaliese.'

'She is alive and well and living in Long Beach, California, if you want to go visit.'

He looked sad and shook his head, wordlessly, then sniffed and wiped the drying tears from his cheeks. Not for the first time I asked myself if he was an innocent fool or simply a very bad actor.

'She would never see me,' he said. 'She would never acknowledge me.'

'Why not?'

'Because of what I did to her.'

'How long were you married?'

'Five years.'

I stopped myself from asking any more questions even though dozens of fresh ones were lining up clamouring in my head. What was the date of the marriage? How old was I when it ended?… The problem was that all my questions presupposed the veracity of his version of events – and I saw that this was how Salvador Carriscant drew you in, enmeshed and enmired you. I was not going to play his dangerous games any longer.

'I'm sorry, Dr Carriscant,' I said abruptly. 'I can't help you on this, no.'

He stared at me balefully, sullenly, his eyes full of a new dislike and resentment. And then, all at once, the mood passed and his face brightened. He exhaled and let his shoulders slump and smiled weakly.

'Oh, well,' he said almost light-heartedly, 'what can I do? I hope you won't object if I try to change your mind – from time to time.'

'You can try,' I said, 'but it won't work.'

Philip's thigh was still warm against mine. Too warm. I moved further away from him, very slowly, shifting myself along the mattress until I felt the moistness on my flank begin to cool. No portion of my body touched his, none of the calorific glow emanating from him warmed me: if it had not been for the surprisingly loud sound of his breathing I might have been alone in my bed. I spread my fingers and the tips touched a damp patch on the mattress-his semen, I supposed, and immediately my mind turned to the banal routines of housekeeping, of needing now to change my sheets even though they had been on the bed barely a day…

It had been a mistake to invite him to stay a night with me. We had made love, which of course was what I had wanted, a sudden and simple need for effective sex of some prolonged duration – so I could experience its visceral uncomplicated joys with none of its complicated personal preambles and aftermath. Philip was the only person who could furnish me with that, and he had, with, for him, an extra dimension of delight (it had been over a year since the last time), but he had fallen asleep, literally a minute after it was over, it seemed, his head heavy in the hollow between my shoulder and my breast, his legs against mine, a palm flat on my thigh. It had taken me ten minutes of small patient manoeuvrings to free myself from the various contacts with his body and I lay now, still and untouched in my small area of coolness, wishing he was home and trying not to feel cross with myself.