‘We need,’ Andersen said, ‘more than anything to spread word of this project.’

‘Indeed,’ Henry replied.

‘I wondered, since you have become acquainted with my work, if you have thought of contributing an article about it to some journal?’Andersen asked.

‘I am afraid I am a mere story-teller,’ Henry said.

‘You have written articles?’

‘Yes, but now I labour at the humble business of fiction. It is all I know, I’m afraid.’

‘But you are acquainted with influential editors?’

‘Most of the editors I have worked with are well and truly dead or well and truly enjoying their retirement,’ Henry said.

‘But you would write about my works and my plans if the journal could be found which was interested?’ Hendrik asked.

Henry hesitated.

‘I could, I imagine,’ Andersen continued, ‘find someone in New York who might be interested.’

‘Perhaps we should leave art criticism to the art critics,’ Henry said.

‘But if an editor could be found who would like a description of my work?’

‘I will do what I can for you,’ Henry said and smiled. He rose from the table. It was already dark outside.

THE FOLLOWING morning, when he had finished his breakfast, he sat in the garden for some moments waiting for the arrival of McAlpine. Already the sky was cloudless; he carried his chair to the corner of the garden which caught the sun at this time. Andersen was still asleep, as far as he knew, but had said, in any case, that he wished to breakfast in his room. When the Scot arrived, they moved into the garden room and set to work immediately. He had looked at the typed pages from yesterday before he went to bed and made his corrections to them; now, within an hour, he would complete a story, and, as the sun moved hauntingly across the garden, and the day became warm, he started on another story, the scale even smaller than the one before, the effect almost defiantly minuscule and unportentous. He dictated with his usual mixture of certainty and hesitation, stopping briefly and darting forward again, and then going to the window, as if to find the word or phrase he sought in the garden, among the shrubs or the creepers or the abundant growth of late summer, and turning back deliberately into the cool room with the right phrase in his head and the sentence which followed until the paragraph had been completed.

By the time they sat down for lunch the day was sweltering. Andersen was wearing a white suit and had a straw hat at the ready as if he were preparing to go boating. They discussed how the afternoon might be spent, and when Andersen learned how close they were to the sea and how easy it would be to go to the strand by bicycle, he insisted that he had no greater wish than to bathe in the salt water and walk in his bare feet on the sand. His enthusiasm was a lovely relief as he refrained from mentioning any of his plans to win fame as a sculptor throughout the meal. Once lunch was over, they changed into clothes more suitable for both cycling and lounging on the beach and then set out on the two well-oiled bicycles Burgess Noakes had fetched from the shed behind the kitchen. They rode slowly down the cobbled hill and then set out for Winchelsea, the breeze from the sea cool and salty in their faces. Andersen, with his bathing costume and towel tied to the carrier, was in high good humour as he pedalled hard along the flat road and down the hill at Udimore to the sea.

When they left their bicycles and walked along the sandy path through the dunes, Henry noticed the haze of heat which made everything vague and the horizon barely visible. The mild exertion and the closeness of the sea seemed to have changed Andersen’s mood, had made him quiet. When finally they reached the water’s edge, he stopped and looked out to sea, narrowing his eyes against the light, briefly and affectionately putting his arm around Henry.

‘I had forgotten about this,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure where I am. I could swim to Bergen, I could swim to Newport. If my brother was here now…’

He stopped and shook his head in wonder.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘if I close my eyes and open them, I can imagine a stretch of sand and the light like this and I’m in Norway and I must be five or six years old, but Newport can be like this too on a summer’s day. It’s the air, the sea breeze. I could be home now.’

They walked along by the line the water made against the sand. The waves were calm and the beach was almost deserted. Henry stood looking out to sea as Andersen changed into his bathing costume and, leaving Henry to guard his clothes, he became a moving version of one of his own sculptures, his torso richly smooth and white, his arms and legs muscular.

‘It will be cold,’ he said. ‘I can tell by looking.’

Henry watched him as he waded into the water, jumping to avoid each wave before diving under the water and swimming out, the strokes strong and firm. At times he disappeared under the waves, allowing himself to float in towards the shore, waving at Henry who stood fully clothed, enjoying the heat of the sun.

When Andersen had dried himself and changed back into his clothes they walked for miles along the strand, meeting almost no one. Both of them stopped regularly for no reason to look out to sea, studying the far horizon or a boat in the distance. Andersen listened when Henry explained how the land had been reclaimed, thus making inland towns out of places which had once been harbours.

‘If this was Newport,’ Andersen said, ‘we would be able to walk to the pier and watch them unloading the catch or preparing for a night’s fishing.’

Andersen began to talk then about the Newport he had first seen as a child, arriving from Norway with his parents, his two brothers and his sister. That was when he had heard of the James family, he said. He knew where they had lived and that the son had become a writer because everyone told him so. The Andersens, he said, had everything except money; his brother was so clearly a talented painter when he was a mere child, just as he too was precociously talented, just as his younger brother was a promising musician. Old Newport, the old ladies and the half-Europeanized families, believed in talent, he said, more than they did in money, but that was because they had plenty of money, or had inherited enough never to think about it. The Andersens, he said, might have seemed like that too when they went visiting or went to church, but at home they had no money, so money was all they thought about.

‘They bought us oil paint and easels,’ he said, ‘and pretended not to notice our patched clothes. They discussed great art with us in the late afternoon and we could smell their hot suppers being made knowing that we were going home to cold suppers or grim suppers.’

‘Rome,’ Henry said, ‘must have been a relief.’

‘If only Rome had beaches and salt water,’ Andersen said.

‘And if only Newport had the Colosseum,’ Henry replied, ‘and if only the Andersens had possessed a fortune.’

‘And if only the James brothers had had patches in their trousers,’ Andersen laughed and punched Henry freely and softly in the stomach before putting his arm around him.

They freewheeled homewards in the twilight, dismounting briefly when they came to Udimore and again as they approached close to Lamb House. They arranged to meet in the garden for drinks after dressing for the evening.

As Henry waited for Andersen to come down, the scale of the garden, its modest and guarded proportions, in the raw slanted light which came from the dying sun, appeared more natural, closer to the scale of the landscape they had been moving in, and strangely closer to their range of feeling, Henry thought, than the openness and grand vistas of Rome. It might be easier, he thought, now that the rain had lifted and now that Andersen had seemed to settle, for them to relax together, to enjoy one another.