‘Daudet does, I imagine.’

‘Yes, too much.’

She stood up to go and he accompanied her to the front door. When he saw that she had left a cab waiting, he wondered who was paying for it.

‘And Paul? Should I have given you some of the letters? Would you have wanted them?’

Henry put out his hand as though she had not asked the question. He moved his lips, about to say something, and then stopped. He held her hand for a moment. She was almost in tears as she walked towards the cab.

HE HAD BEEN living in these rooms in De Vere Gardens for almost ten years but the name Paul had never once been uttered within the walls. His presence had been buried beneath the daily business of writing and remembering and imagining. Even in dreams, it was years since Paul had appeared.

The bare bones of the princess’s story would not need to be set down now. They would stay in his mind. He did not know how he would work it, whether it would be her last days in Paris – burning letters, giving things away, leaving things behind – or her last salon, or her interview with her husband, the moment when she first learned her fate.

He would remember her visit, but there was something else that he wanted to write down now. It was something he had written before and had been careful to destroy. It seemed strange, almost sad, to him that he had produced and published so much, rendered so much that was private, and yet the thing that he most needed to write would never be seen or published, would never be known or understood by anyone.

He took the pen and began. He could have written an indecipherable script, or used a shorthand that only he himself would understand. But he wrote clearly, whispering the words. He did not know why this had to be written, why the stirring of the memory was not enough. But the princess’s visit and her talk about banishment and memory, of things that were over and would not come back, and – he stopped writing now and sighed – her saying the name, saying it as though it were still vividly present somewhere within reach, all these things guided his tone as he wrote.

He set down on paper what had happened when he returned to Paris, having received a note from Paul, that summer almost twenty years before. He had stood in the beautiful city on a small street in the dusk, gazing upwards, waiting, watching, for the lighting of a lamp in the window on the third story. As the lamp blazed up he had strained to see Paul Joukowsky’s face at the window, his dark hair, the quickness of his eyes, the scowl that could so easily turn into a smile, the thin nose, the broad chin, the pale lips. As night fell, he knew that he himself on the unlit street could not be seen, and he knew also that he could not move, either to return to his own quarters or – he held his breath even at the thought – to attempt to gain access to Paul’s rooms.

Paul’s note was unambiguous; it had made clear that he would be alone. No one came or went, and Paul’s face did not appear at the window. He wondered now if these hours were not the truest he had ever lived. The most accurate comparison he could find was with a smooth, hopeful, hushed sea journey, an interlude suspended between two countries, standing there as though floating, knowing that one step would be a step into the impossible, the vast unknown. He waited to catch a moment’s further sight of what was there, the unapproachable face. And for hours he stood still, wet with rain, brushed at intervals by those passing by, and never from behind the lamp for one moment more was the face visible.

He wrote down the story of that night and thought then of the rest of the story which could never be written, no matter how secret the paper or how quickly it would be burned or destroyed. The rest of the story was imaginary, and it was something he would never allow himself to put into words. In it, he had crossed the road halfway through his vigil. He had alerted Paul to his presence and Paul had come down and they had walked up the stairs together in silence. And it was very clear now – Paul had made it clear – what would happen.

He found that his hands were shaking. He had never allowed himself to imagine beyond that point. It was the closest he had come, but he had not come close at all. He kept his vigil that night in the rain until the light in the window faded. He waited for a while longer to see if something else would happen, but the windows remained dark, they gave nothing away. Then he walked slowly home. He was on dry land again. His clothes were soaking, his shoes had been destroyed by the rain.

HE LOVED THE dress rehearsals and allowed himself to picture the potential play-goers in each seat in the theatre. The lighting, the extravagant and opulent costumes, the ringing voices filled him with pride and pleasure. He had never, in all the years, seen anyone purchase or read one of his books. And even if he had witnessed such a scene, he would not have known the effects of his sentences. Reading was as silent and solitary and private as writing. Now, he would hear people in the audience hold their breath, cry out, fall silent.

He placed friends, familiar faces, and then, in all the seats near him and in the gallery above, and this was the most risky and exciting prospect, he placed strangers. He imagined bright, intelligent eyes in a man’s sensitive face, a thin upper lip, soft, fair skin, a large frame that was carried with ease. Tentatively, he placed this figure in the row behind him, close to the centre, a young woman beside him, her small, delicate hands joined, the tips of her fingers almost touching her mouth. Alone in the theatre – the costume-makers were still backstage – he watched his imaginary, paying theatre-goers as Alexander, playing Guy Domville, appeared. It became clear what the core of the conflict on the stage would be. He kept an eye on the audience he had conjured behind him as the play proceeded, noting how the woman’s face lit up at the gorgeousness of Mrs Edward Saker’s costume, the elaborate elegance of a hundred years ago, noting then how serious and still the face of his thin-lipped supporter became when Guy Domville, despite his vast wealth and golden future, decided to renounce the world and devote himself to a life of contemplation and prayer in a monastery.

Guy Domville was still too long and he knew that there was disquiet among the actors about the discrepancies between act one and act two. Alexander, his steadfast director, told him to pay no attention to them, they had merely been stirred up by Miss Vetch, who had no role to speak of in act two and barely reappeared in act three. Nonetheless, he knew that in a novel it could not be risked: a character, once established, must remain in the narrative, unless the character were minor, or died before the story closed. What he would never have tried in a novel, he was trying in a play. He prayed that it would work.

He hated making the cuts, but he knew that he could not complain. At the beginning he had grumbled a great deal – indeed expressed a pained amazement – until he had made himself less than welcome in Alexander’s offices. He knew that there was no point in claiming that if the play had needed cuts he would have made them before he finished it. Every day now he made excisions, and he thought it strange that after a few hours he remained the only one who noticed the gaps, the missing moments.

During the rehearsals he had little to do. He was both thrilled and disturbed by the idea that only half the work was his, the other half belonged to the director, the actors and the scene-makers. Overseeing the work was the element of time and that was new to him. Over the proscenium arch there was an immense, invisible clock to whose ticking the playwright must attend, its hands moving inexorably on from eight thirty, as precise as the audience’s patience. In that busy period of two hours, if the two intervals were taken into account, he must present and solve the problem he had set himself, or be doomed.