Free Athena by John Banville Page A

did I think? I thought I should keep mum. Give him the slightest sign and next thing we’d be plotting to make off with Morden’s pictures and split the take between us. Not such a bad idea, I suppose. The trouble with Francie was that he was not really real for me. He seemed made-up, a manufactured man, in whose company (if that is the word for what it was to be with him) credence was not required. And this air of fakery that he carried with him infected even his surroundings. Take this day, now. The whole thing had a contrived look to it, the pub, the girl with the grey eyes, the crowd of over-acting extras around us, that theatrically thick yellow beam of sunlight slanting down through the window and lighting up the bottles behind the bar, and Francie himself, sitting in the middle of it all with his cap on his knee, reciting his lines with the edgy, unconvinced air of an actor who knows he is not going to get the part. Why do I allow myself to become involved with such people? (I should talk; who is the real actor here?) I have – I admit it – I have a lamentable weakness for the low life. There is something in me that cleaves to the ramshackle and the shady, a crack somewhere in my make-up that likes to fill itself up with dirt. I tell myself this vulgar predilection is to be found in all true connoisseurs of culture but I am not convinced. I present myself here as a sort of Candide floundering amidst a throng of crooks and sirens but I fear the truth (the truth!) is different. I wanted Morden and his dodgy pictures and all the rest of it, even including Francie, longed for it as the housewife longs for the brothel. I am not good, I never was and never will be. Hide your valuables when I am around, yes, and lock up your daughters, too. I am the bogey-man you dream of as you toss in your steamy beds of a night. That soft step you hear, that’s me, prowling the unquiet dark where the light of the watchfire fails. Yoursentries are asleep, the guard at your gate is drunk. I have done terrible things, I could do them again, I have it in me, I—
    Stop.
    Francie was about to speak again but
    Was about to speak again but then a change occurred, and he went still and sat at an angle looking at his drink with a fixed, unfocused smile.
    Christ, look at me, I’m sweating, my hands are shaking; I shouldn’t, I really should not let myself get so worked up.
    When Morden arrived I did not hear but rather sensed him behind me. He leaned down to my ear and with mock-menace softly said:
    ‘You’re under investigation, you are.’
    Today he wore an expensive, ash-grey, double-breasted suit the jacket of which was wrapped around and buttoned tightly under his big bull chest like a complicated sling, so that he seemed even more top-heavy than usual, set down on those thick, short legs and small, incongruously dainty feet. He was not tall, you know; big and wide, but not tall; I must have had at least a couple of inches on him. Not that it made any difference, I was still afraid of him (I know, I know, afraid is not the word, but it will have to do). It would always be thus, I realised, in an odd sort of musing way which must have been partly an early effect of the gin; even if I were to get the better of him in some worldly dealing I would still quail inwardly before him. He made me feel off-balance, as if in his presence everything were pitched at an angle and I must keep constantly at a tilt in order to stay upright. But then, that was the way I felt with all three of them, more or less. I was, I
was
Candide. I made my way amongst them in a daze of uncertainty, looking the wrong way and tripping over myself, picking my shaky steps, as in a panic dream, athwart the treacherous slope of their unnervingly knowing regard. What a dolt I was.Morden must have loved me for it; I was his entertainment, his straight-man, his – what do they call it? – his patsy. Why do I not think more harshly of him than I do? Because – it has just