Rosen was just under six foot and well built. His

appearance was wild and not unattractive to hot-blooded,

sex-starved women. He often wore the same shirts from

one day to the next and was an infrequent bather. He had

large grey eyes, a beautiful nose and thick untidy black hair

which he sometimes swept back from his face. He had the

loose look about the eyes of a man with a permanent

craving for women. He always wore his tie loosened at the

neck, and the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He kept

a gold Rolex watch on his left wrist.

Apart from the fact that he always shaved every day

with an electric razor, he was looking dishevelled that day

and his appearance and unwashed odour attracted her. His

tie was loosened at the neck. In fact, she had never seen it

knotted even when he was clean. The pale blue shirt he

wore had not been changed for several days and she could

tell that he had not taken a bath for the same amount of

time. His unkempt state was at variance with the expensive,

gold Rolex watch he wore on his left wrist and matching

gold cufflinks. The contrast between extreme expense and

sloth enthralled her to such an extent that she longed to be

violated by him.

"You haven't changed your clothes for some time," she

said, smiling.

"There are times when I don't feel like it. I don't go

round like this, all the time. Only occasionally, when I get

down in spirits."

"Perhaps, you should get down more often."

"Why, Baby?"

"Because you're more exciting when you don't wash."

Becket was looking at the cathedral on top of the hill,

overlooking Marseilles. He was the first to break the

silence.

"Would you like to accompany me to the cathedral, to

say prayers for the boy, Mr Rosen?"

"There wouldn't be any point. I have no faith."

"Not even some?"

"Not any. I don't believe in God, Mr Becket. Nor have

I, since I was twelve years old. I get angry when religion

is forced onto children, and they are warned about hell fire,

and that sort of thing. It's a threat to them, not a comfort.

"Don't take offence, but one thing I can't tolerate is a

religious person, trying to impose his God on me. Even in

adversity, I don't want God in my life."

Rosen put out his cigarette and lit another. He inhaled

urgently on it. It was his sixth since entering the cafÇ.

"I find your attitude dashed regrettable. Dashed

regrettable, I call it," said Becket.

"You can regret it as much as you want, for all I care.

All I ask is that you don't impose your God on me. I'm not

up to it. I'm a militant non-believer, with humanitarian

values. I'd sooner watch a blind person being helped across

a road, than a lot of idiots, praying. I suppose, if I were to

have any God, it would be sex. That's a thing my body

needs, to stay healthy."

"You need it, Mr Rosen."

"It's easy for you to say that. It's the way I am made.

I need a prostitute...

Lawrance, the Headmaster, was well-known for his

overtly verbose way of expressing himself. Ephraim sat

solemnly in one of the study's upright chairs, with his head

lowered, his hands clasped on his knee and his golden curls

tumbling loosely onto his face.

"Have you any Latin, Ephraim?" asked Mr Lawrance,

kindly.

"I did a little Latin at the Browning, sir. I am afraid I

am not very good, though, because I only studied it for a

few months. That is, before I left the school when my

mother died."

"What a smart, grown-up way, you have of speaking,

young Mr Rendon. It is your kind that turn into industrious,

professional men."

"I am indeed indebted, sir," replied the unusually

precocious twelve-year-old."

Mr Lawrance raised his eyebrows and lifted his arms in

an expansive gesture of bemused affection.

"Did you learn any French at your last school?"

"No, sir. I don't speak any French at all."

He scanned the large, imposing Headmaster, with his innocent wide eyes. "I do

know one thing, sir, and that's something my mother told me. When a gentleman

approaches a particularly low-grade type of whore, the whore often says, `How do

you like your French?' Perhaps, you'd care to tell me what that means, exactly, sir."

Mr Lawrance whitened and gaped at Ephraim, looking like an owl waiting to be

fed. He ripped his glasses off, in a subconscious attempt to blur his vision of reality.

"Your mother said this to you?" he spluttered.

"Oh, yes, sir. She and I often talked about this sort of thing. My mother used to

take me out some nights. She took me to red light areas in London. She loved to

point out the whores to me. It was ever so fascinating, sir. Do you do what most of

the other gentlemen do, after hours? Do you go up the disorderlies?"

Mr Lawrance was beginning to think his encounter with Ephraim was no more

than a dream. He responded mechanically.

"What do you mean by your use of the words, 'up the disorderlies'?"

"You must know, sir. Do you ever frequent disorderly houses, or brothels as they

are sometimes called?"

"Tell me a bit about the books you've been reading. What books were they?"

"I couldn't name all of them, sir, but I shall endeavour to name a few. They were

Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, some of the books written by Charles Dickens, and

Samuel Richardson's Clarissa ƒ oh that was all set out in the form of tedious letters.

I disliked the book, and, had I written it myself, I would have been deeply ashamed of

having bored my readers beyond oblivion."

Mr Lawrance stared at the child, aghast. He was beginning to fear him. Instead of simply

finding him singular, he saw him as being unnatural, threatening and surreal.

"There is just one question, sir, and to the best of my knowledge, it is an intelligent

question," said Ephraim.

"Well, what is your question?"

"What is a necrophiliac, sir?"

Mr Lawrance had already risen to his feet. He suddenly felt faint and allowed himself to

fall into his leather-studded chair.

"A necrophiliac, is plainly and simply, a filiac which is necro.

"What do you read?" asked Mr Green the English master.

"I like Fielding's Tom Jones, sir," said Ephraim.

"Why?"

"Because of the big-bosomed, buxom-buttocked wenches, sir.

I like the feel of over-painted whores, touting on cobbled streets.

I like the smell of hot sex and debauchery, hitting you in the face

on almost every page."

The boys stared and tittered at Ephraim.

"Your attitude is insolent and precocious, boy! What worries

me is the fact that you don't speak in this manner to show off.

You do so because you think it is quite normal.

"Give us the fags, will you?"

"Are you mad?"

"No. The morphine's completely stopped the pain. Anyway,

it's too late. It doesn't matter."

She handed him a cigarette and a lighter. When he inhaled,

she was horrified by his gasping wheeze, as he sucked the smoke

into his anaesthetized lungs.

"Lean over me. I want to touch your lovely hair."

"It hasn't been done for two weeks."

"As I see it, it looks as if you'd had it done only ten minutes

ago. Can you do just one more thing for me?"

"You know I can. What do you think I'm here for?"

"Get up on the bed. That way, I can feel your hair better."

"It's very dirty."

"It's sexier."

She got onto the bed. Her nerves made her movements

clumsy.

"Take my cock. When it's hard, try to get it inside you."

He went on smoking, using his left hand and allowed his

head to move from side to side in ecstasy. He clutched Miranda's

hair and twisted it round the fingers of his right hand.

"Oh, Christ, this is nectar! Get your head up, quick, before

I come down your throat and choke you."

Suddenly, his blood pressure rose dramatically and stopped

his heart. The half-smoked cigarette fell from his fingers onto the

floor.

Miranda continued to lie on the bed. Even in death, his

liquid grey eyes shone straight at her like stars. So extreme was

her grief, that it denied her the luxury of tears.

"I am afraid I want to be sick."

The devout Catholic crossed himself. He indicated left and

swerved the silver Rolls to the side of the road, its front left

wheel brushing against the pavement.

Becket bounded from the Rolls, raced round to the front and

hurriedly opened Ephraim's door. He eased the boy out and

rushed him to a wall, linking a row of terraced houses. Ephraim

leant over the wall and brought up everything he had consumed

that morning, into someone's proudly tended garden.

Becket could not tolerate the sight of someone being sick.

When his son, Peter, was small, the child often suffered from car

sickness. Betsy had been driving on one of these occasions, when

Peter was sick without warning. Becket found the experience so

horrific that he threw himself out of the moving car, rolled down

a bank and broke his collar bone.

Ephraim had a great deal to bring up. He had eaten a

heaped-up bowl of cereal, a plate of bacon, eggs, sausages and

tomatoes and three to four pieces of toast, mounded with his

beloved honey.

Becket held his head and looked the other way. He tried to

immerse his thoughts in the unknown matter of Gorky's sex life.

Ephraim finished, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand

and stood up straight like a soldier.

"I'm pretty sure I've got everything up, now. Thank you,

Becket," he said.

"Mr Becket to you!" said the chauffeur, his voice raised.

"I don't understand. I thought I was supposed to call you

'Becket' because Miranda calls you `Becket'."

"That has nothing to do with it. Mrs White is entitled to call

me 'Becket' because she and her husband employ me. You do

not employ me. Therefore, when you speak to me, if you wish

to use a name, you address me as 'Mr Becket'."

"Very well. I give you my word that I shall always address

you, not as 'Becket', but as 'Mr Becket'."

"Are you quite sure you aren't going to be sick, again?"

"Yes. Quite sure. I've got the whole lot up, now, thank you,

Mr Becket, like I said."

"Good. You must see it from my point of view. It would be

the end of the world if you were sick in the Rolls."

"Just before we begin, we have a new boy here, I'm told.

Would the new boy care to raise his hand," said Mr Paulden.

Ephraim did so, content that the eyes of the other boys were

focused on him, in anticipation of whatever outrage he would

commit next.

"What is your name?"

"Ephraim Rendon, sir."

Mr Paulden was having trouble with his hearing aid. It

enabled him to enjoy perfect hearing, but when it was

maladjusted, he couldn't hear anything.

"Fred, from Leicestershire, dear? I can't hear you."

"Ephraim Rendon, sir," repeated the boy, loudly.

"Tell me a bit about yourself."

Ephraim had had this question put to him so many times that

it bored him. He took advantage of Mr Paulden's deafness, to

amuse the boys.

"I'm a serial killer's son, sir. My father murdered three

women and hanky-pankied about with them after they'd snuffed

it.

"My father used to pay prostitutes to sing 'God Save the

Queen'. My father loved Edgar Allan Poe. My mother said I was

conceived while my father recited The Raven. My father loved

to have intercourse with dead bodies. My father was the biggest

necrophiliac in London."

Mr Paulden adjusted his hearing aid.

"What did you say, just then, when I asked you to tell me

about yourself? How is it that you have managed to evoke this

extraordinary amount of merriment among your class mates?"

"All I said was that I used to live by the Thames but had

since moved to Hampstead. I am an orphan and I am being

looked after by my foster-parents, whose names are Mr and Mrs

White. I also said, and perhaps this is a trifle less interesting,

that Mr White is a dentist with a practice in Harley Street."

"Harley Street, eh? Good, good. I can't say I find anything

particularly funny about that."

Becket, the chauffeur, opened the two back doors. He could tell

by the faces of his employers, that he would not be required to

drive away, immediately. Rosen put his hands under Miranda's

shirt. He laid her on her back and had violent, noisy, tormented

sex with her.

Becket, acutely embarrassed by Rosen's uninhibited

behaviour, sat there, his aristocratic face as rigid as a board,

reading The Brothers Karamazov.

The Rosens woke up early the following morning, Rosen

rolled on top of Miranda.

"I'm so sorry, Ian. It came on in the night. I can't do

anything for a few days."

"Poor little girl. Do you want me to get some Paracetamol

from the bathroom?"

"Will you?"

He handed her the pills and gave her a glass of water. He

lifted her head and shoulders onto his chest and put his arms

round her waist.

"Do you want me to rub your tummy?" he asked.

"I've got a better idea."

"Which is what, sweetie?"

"I want to go down."

He sat up and clutched her hair and pushed her head

downwards. His breathing became laboured and he let out a

strange, melancholy wail.

"Oh Christ, oh, Christ...."

Juliet was being taken by ambulance to St Thomas Hospital. Her

lungs were full of carbon monoxide fumes, following a fire and

the use of a large amount of the drug, Speed, she had taken,

made her behaviour disinhibited. Her head was a few inches

away from the ambulance driver's ear.

"I was the common-law wife of this beautiful-looking, hunky

pathologist at the Hammersmith Hospital," she shouted.

"He was a schizophrenic and his father was a Harley Street

psychiatrist.

"He told me this story not long before he died. He went into

his father's waiting room, where he saw this man reading Crime

and Punishment. Jesus, driver, do you know what he did?" She

shouted like an express train, her speech rattling.

The ambulance driver wiped the sweat from his brow.

"No. Just tell me as calmly as you can, if you think I need

to know."

"You won't believe it! He went up to this man and sat astride

him. He shouted, 'I say, when you read Crime and Punishment,

do you ever get fantasies about being buggered by Raskolnikov

on the floor of his garret?'"

Her words had nearly perforated the ambulance driver's

eardrums. In an involuntary movement, caused by exhaustion and

stress, his hand turned the steering wheel sharply to the right.

A bus carrying some old-aged pensioners to a community day

centre, was travelling on the other side of the road. Its driver

swerved off the road, onto the pavement and into some

shrubbery.

The ambulance driver had broken out in a cold sweat and his

heart was beating so fast that it hurt him. His words were

unnaturally flowery and his tone of voice exaggeratedly pleading,

even comic.

"Oh, please, I beg of you on trembling bended knee, please

stop persecuting me. I'm only a poorly-paid ambulance driver.

I just can't take the soundtrack of Oklahoma! I can't bear all this

shouting and I don't want to hear about Russians buggering

people in garrets. Besides, I don't think my mother would want

me to be exposed to such utterly disgusting conversation."

Rosen knelt beside her.

"It's Juliet, isn't it, Baby?" he said.

"Yes, I've tried to suppress it, ever since she died. I've tried

to appear cheerful and jolly for Ephraim's sake. I want to see

him happy. I've forced myself not to cry, either in front of him,

or otherwise."

Rosen held her. His unwashed state excited her.

"Why don't you cry, now? You're on the verge of tears,

already."

"I mustn't."

"He won't know. He's upstairs, working. You must cry.

Otherwise, you'll go mad."

"No. I can't let myself, Ian. Once I start, I won't stop. It

would be like alcoholism."

"Rubbish! Cry, just to please me. A woman's very sexy

when she cries. It would mean I'd be able to lick the salt tears

off your cheeks. In fact, it would be rather mean of you to refuse

to grant me such a simple request. Go on. Prove to me you're a

woman. No-one will witness your tears, but me."

Miranda did cry. Her body shook like an epileptic's. She

undid Rosen's shirt and let her tears fall on his chest.

"Good girl. When I see you do that, my love for you is so

terrifying I almost want to die," he said.

"I feel so lucky to have you that I'm sometimes frightened

you will."

He had a sudden wish to do everything he could to cheer her

up. He lowered his voice and spoke seductively into her ear.

"Do you want a fuck?"

"What, now? In here? That's impossible. The bloody

Pendarys are sitting next door."

"Does it matter?"

"Yes, of course it does. One of them might come in,

wondering where we are."

"That wouldn't bother me much. It shouldn't concern anyone

who really wants it."

"I do want it, she said.

"OK, Baby, promise you won't scream?"

Jopp took his glass eye out, rolled it on the table like a

marble and put it back in its socket. He continued to shout at the

prostitute.

"When I had my cough this morning, I gunked up an 'ole

'andkerchief-full of blood," he repeated.

"So you've said, already," remarked his female companion.

"Do you normally take out your eye, roll it about on the table

and put it back in its socket?"

Jopp continued his monologue. Hitler's utterances at a

Nuremburg rally, would have seemed no more than pathetic,

bird-like bleats in comparison with the eccentric West

countryman's delivery.

"You'll have to pay me for my time," said his companion.

"I can't listen to all this medical talk, unless you give me another

hundred francs, and fifty francs, every time you get your eye

out."

Jopp had run out of cash. "Forget it," he said,

.