Absurd to blame Posner for the contrast. But the net of Tom’s feelings for his mother was not woven with reason. Even as his eye fell on the jacket slung beside Posner, what took shape in his thoughts was Iris’s double-handled vinyl bag. It was an object her son could not see without pain.

He sat down, and the pale circle turned to him. A black-clad arm unfolded itself along the sofa, confident as a cat. ‘A word seemed in order,’ said Posner.

He might have been addressing an underperforming minion across a desk.

In the silence that followed, some echo of his tone must have communicated itself to the dealer. His manner altered. He uncocked his leg, and ran a hand over his silver scalp.‘You’re a literary man, of course.’

A minute earlier, it would have had the ring of accusation. But Posner had hung out his imitation of a smile. ‘You must know the story of Virginia Woolf ’s marriage?’

Tom swirled whisky around his glass.

‘Her family had no illusions about the severity of her illness. They had witnessed the clawing, the howling, every grubby detail of it. But when Leonard wanted to marry her, the Stephens made light of what he was taking on. The merest sketch. Well, he was a godsend, naturally. Most of all to Vanessa, who’d have been stuck with nursing a madwoman if her sister hadn’t married.’ Posner paused. ‘You know the story?’ he asked again.

‘The merest sketch.’

‘You can’t help thinking they’d never have had the nerve if they’d been dealing with one of their own. Instead of a Jew-boy from Putney.’

There crept over Tom the sensation, marvel tinged with awe, that attends the sight of a great painting. It accompanied the realisation that Posner might still pass for a handsome man.

‘Of course only a Jew-boy from Putney would have stuck it all those years.’ Posner said, ‘One of my grandmothers was a Jewess. It makes me sensible to the deception.’

His gaze was very intent. But it was apparent to them both that Tom couldn’t tell what was wanted of him.

‘These headaches of Nelly’s.’ There was a light, feline tread to Posner’s words.‘They leave her so very…drained. She doesn’t always recollect the intensity of an episode, you see.’

Minutes passed.

At last Tom said, ‘Does she know you go around suggesting she’s mad?’

‘Dear boy! Such vehemence! I would speak,’ said Posner,‘of heightened colours. I would speak of broadened effects.’ He patted the sofa beside him. When this failed to draw a response, he pulled his jacket across his lap and ran his fingers over the soft black skin.

‘There is such pressure on artists to be contemporary. A loathsome notion, frankly risible. But there it is. Painting, landscape, figuration… In certain not uninfl uential quarters these choices are condemned as inherently old hat.’ Posner sighed. ‘I wonder if you have any idea of the depths of Nelly’s self-doubt. Her fear that her work lacks legitimacy. The intolerable strain. Nelly is a dear, dear friend,’ insisted that thin voice. ‘So marvellous. So moving as well.’

‘Don’t forget mad.’

And still Tom could not be sure that he had understood what Posner had come there to say. He had the impression, fleeting but forceful, of something waiting close at hand, something that might yet twitch loose and tear up the room.

‘Tom, such wilful misconstruction…’ But Posner broke off, shaking his large head. He studied the ceiling and said, ‘I knew this would be a painful conversation. I put if off for as long as I could. But I’ve known Nelly a long time. Now and then there comes… someone entirely charming.’ He was folding back the tip of the jacket collar, and folding it back again. ‘Someone who overcomes Nelly’s resolution to avoid excitement. And then-’ Posner let the leather spring free under his fi ngers.

‘There are so many aspects to Nelly.’ A white hand lifted, fluttered. ‘There’s a painting by Cézanne: Les Grandes Baigneuses. In the old days I’d go to Philadelphia just to look at it. It’s always reminded me of Nelly. Something about the way the figures melt into and out of each other, so that your perception of them keeps shifting. But out of that flurry of muffl ing and displacement, what emerges is singularity. Oh, it’s brilliant, utterly brilliant,’ said Posner severely, as if the point were in dispute. ‘Also unsettling. And sad.’

‘Piss off, Carson.’

Posner shifted in his seat. His hand brushed the jacket, sliding it from his knees. It might have been accidental. But Tom thought he could see a swelling in the dealer’s crotch.

He couldn’t have sworn to it. Posner was wearing black, and his body was in shadow. But Tom shifted his gaze at once. And said, ‘Tell me: have you shared your opinion of his mother with Rory? Not that I imagine he gives a fuck about you anyway.’

He was intent on cruelty. But was unprepared for the stillness that came over Posner’s face, rendering the eyes twin caverns in that pallid waste.

He thought, My God, he really loves him.

By the time Posner left it had stopped raining. In his study, Tom reached for a book.

It was a massive work, Les Grandes Baigneuses, its scale and the frontality of its handling closer to mural than easel painting. Tom had once written an essay about it. Had traced its precursors, described the way it vitalised the worn grammar of naked women in a rural setting.

The man leaning over the book had forgotten most of what he had argued.

What he remembered were the bodies. They fi lled the picture plane: preposterous, lumpish. Nor would they stay still, as Posner had remarked. A woman kneeling at the far right of the canvas was also a striding figure, the torso of one forming the buttocks and legs of the other. Observing this, the mind shimmered between two meanings, as in a dream.

Tom recognised the hurtling sensation: his sense of the duplicity of images. A trace of nausea-stiffened with excitement-worked in him still. The grotesque treatment of the bodies had the effect of rendering flesh itself inorganic. It was a painting in which something mechanistic grated at the heart.

But it was the figure facing out who now held Tom’s attention. Or rather, it was the blue line spurting at its groin. He took in heavy breasts, the specific marks of femaleness, and what he was seeing for the first time: a countering, ambiguous penis.

It was what had passed between him and Posner, Tom knew, that had opened his eyes to that doubleness. He thought, It’s a painting about him, not Nelly.

The phone shrilled him out of sleep.

‘Tom, it’s Yelena. Sorry, I-’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s Osman.’ She began to cry. ‘He’s back in hospital.’

‘Saint V’s? Give me ten minutes.’

‘No, no.’ He heard her gulp; then a loud, snorting sniff. ‘They’re filling him full of morphine. He will be out of it completely. I’m on my way home. Brendon is with him, and Nelly. He wanted you to know.’

‘How bad is it?’

‘They are doing tests and so forth in the morning.’ Her voice was quavery again. ‘But it looks like it’s no longer in remission.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Nelly said to say you should still come and get her at the Preserve tomorrow. And, Tom, this is terrible also about-’

But Yelena couldn’t go on.