The guessing game had gone on long enough: "Actually, I teach," Perry said, peeling a banana.

"Teach like you teach students students? Like a professor, you teach?"

"Correct. I teach students. But I"m not a professor."

"Where?"

"Currently at Oxford."

"Oxford University University?"

"Got it."

"What you teach?"

"English literature," Perry replied, not particularly wishing, at that moment, to explain to a total stranger that his future was up for grabs.

But Dima"s pleasure knew no bounds: "Listen. You know Jack London Jack London? Number-one English writer?"

"Not personally." It was a joke, but Dima didn"t share it.

"You like the guy?"

"Admire him."

"Charlotte Bronte? You like her too?" You like her too?"

"Very much."

"Somerset Maugham?"

"Less, I"m afraid."

"I got books by all those guys! Like hundreds! In Russian! Big bookshelves!"

"Great."

"You read Dostoevsky? Lermontov? Tolstoy?"

"Of course."

"I got them all. All the number-one guys. I got Pasternak. Know something? Pasternak wrote about my home town. Called it Yuriatin Yuriatin. That"s Perm Perm. Crazy f.u.c.ker called it Yuriatin. I dunno why. Writers do that. All crazy. See my daughter up there? That"s Natasha, don"t give a s.h.i.t about tennis, love books. Hey, Natasha! Say h.e.l.lo to the Professor here!"

After a delay to show that she is being intruded upon, Natasha distractedly raises her head and draws aside her hair long enough to allow Perry to be astonished by her beauty before she returns to her leatherbound tome.

"Embarra.s.sed," Dima explained. "Don"t wanna hear me yelling at her. See that book she reading? Turgenev Turgenev. Number-one Russian guy. I buy it. She wanna book, I buy. OK, Professor. You serve."

"From that moment on, I was Professor. I told him again and again I wasn"t one, he wouldn"t listen, so I gave up. Within a couple of days, half the hotel was calling me Professor. Which is pretty b.l.o.o.d.y odd when you"ve decided you"re not even a don any more."

Changing ends at 25 in Perry"s favour, Perry is consoled to notice that Gail has parted company from the importunate Mark and is installed on the top bench between two little girls.

The game was settling to a decent rhythm, said Perry. Not the greatest match ever but for as long as he lowered his play fun and entertaining to watch, a.s.suming anybody wanted to be entertained, which remained in question since, other than the twin boys, the spectators might have been attending a revivalist meeting. By lowering his play lowering his play, he meant slowing it down a bit and taking the odd ball that was on its way to the tramlines, or returning a drive without looking too hard at where it had landed. But given that the gap between them in age and skill and mobility, if Perry was honest was by now obvious, his only concern was to make a game of it, leave Dima with his dignity, and enjoy a late breakfast with Gail on the Captain"s Deck: or so he believed until, as they were again changing ends, Dima locked a hand on his arm and addressed him in an angry growl: "You G.o.ddam p.u.s.s.ied me, Professor."

"I did what what?"

"That long ball was out. You see it out, you play it in. You think I"m some kinda fat old b.a.s.t.a.r.d gonna drop dead you don"t be sweet to him?"

"It was borderline."

"I play retail, Professor. I want something, I G.o.ddam take it. n.o.body p.u.s.s.y me, hear me? Wanna play for a thousand bucks? Make the game interesting?"

"No thanks."

"Five thousand?"

Perry laughed and shook his head.

"You"re chicken, right? You chicken, so you don"t bet me."

"I suppose that must be it," Perry agreed, still feeling the imprint of Dima"s hand on his upper left arm.

"Advantage Great Britain!"

The cry resonates over the court and dies. The twins break out in nervous laughter, waiting for the aftershock. Until now Dima has tolerated their occasional bursts of high spirits. No longer. Laying his racquet on the bench, he pads up the steps of the spectators" stand and, reaching the two boys, presses a forefinger to the tip of each of their noses.

"You want I take my belt and beat the s.h.i.t outta you?" he inquires in English, presumably for the benefit of Perry and Gail, for why else would he not address them in Russian?

To which one of the boys replies in better English than his father"s: "You"re not wearing a belt, Papa."

That does it. Dima smacks the nearer son so hard across the face that he spins halfway round on the bench before his legs stop him. The first smack is followed by a second just as loud, delivered to the other son with the same hand, reminding Gail of walking with her socially ambitious elder brother when he"s out pheasant shooting with his rich friends, an activity she abhors, and the brother scores what he calls a left and a right, meaning one dead pheasant to each gun barrel.

"What got me was that they didn"t even turn their heads away. They just sat there and took it," said Perry, the schoolteachers" son.

But the strangest thing, Gail insisted, was how amicably the conversation was resumed: "You wanna tennis lesson with Mark after? Or you wanna go home get religion from your mother?"

"Lesson, please, Papa," says one of the two boys.

"Then don"t you make any more ra-ra, or you don"t get no Kobe beef tonight. You wanna eat Kobe beef tonight?"

"Sure, Papa."

"You, Viktor?"

"Sure, Papa."

"You wanna clap, you clap the Professor there, not your no-good b.u.m father. Come here."

A fervent bear-hug for each boy, and the match proceeds without further episode to its inevitable end.

In defeat, Dima"s bearing is embarra.s.singly fulsome. He"s not merely gracious, he"s moved to tears of admiration and grat.i.tude. First he must press Perry into his great chest, which Perry swears is made of horn, for the three-times Russian embrace. The tears meanwhile are rolling down his cheeks, and consequently Perry"s neck.

"You"re a G.o.ddam fair-play English, hear me, Professor? You"re a G.o.ddam English gentleman like in books. I love you, hear me? Gail, come over here." For Gail the embrace is even more reverent and cautious, for which she is grateful. "You take care this stupid f.u.c.k, hear me? He can"t play tennis no good, but I swear to G.o.d he"s some kinda G.o.ddam gentleman. He"s the Professor of fair play fair play, hear me?" repeating the mantra as if he has just invented it.

He swings away to bark irritably into a mobile that the baby-faced bodyguard is holding out to him.

The spectators file slowly out of the court. The little girls need hugs from Gail. Gail is happy to oblige. One of Dima"s sons drawls "cool play, man" in American English as he stalks past Perry on his way to his lesson, his cheek still scarlet from the slap. The beautiful Natasha attaches herself to the procession, leatherbound tome in hand. Her thumb marks the place where her reading was disturbed. Bringing up the rear comes Tamara on Dima"s arm, her bishop-grade Orthodox cross glinting in the risen sunshine. In the aftermath of the game, Dima"s limp is more p.r.o.nounced. As he walks, he leans back, chin thrust forward, shoulders squared to the enemy. The bodyguards shepherd the group down the winding stone path. Three black-windowed people carriers wait behind the hotel to take them home. Mark the pro is last to leave.

"Great play, sir!" clapping Perry on the shoulder. "Fine court craft. A little ragged on the backhands there, if I may make so bold. Maybe we should do a little work on them?"

Side by side, Gail and Perry watch speechless as the cortege b.u.mps its way along the potholed spine road and vanishes into the cedar trees that shelter the house called Three Chimneys from prying eyes.

Luke looks up from the notes he has been taking. As if to order, Yvonne does the same. Both are smiling. Gail is trying to avoid Luke"s eye, but Luke is staring straight at her so she can"t.

"So, Gail," he says briskly. "Your turn again, if we may. Mark was a pest. All the same, he does seem to have been quite a mine of information. What extra nuggets can you offer us about the Dima household?" then gives a flick of both little hands at once, as if urging his horse on to greater things.

Gail glances at Perry, she is not sure what for. Perry does not return her glance.

"He was just so snaky snaky," she complains, using Mark, rather than Luke, as the object of her disfavour, and wrinkles up her face to show how the bad taste lingers.

Mark had barely sat beside her on the bottom bench, she began, before he started banging on about what an important millionaire his Russian friend Dima was. According to Mark, Three Chimneys was only one of his several properties. He"d got another in Madeira, another in Sochi on the Black Sea.

"And a house outside Berne," she went on, "where his business is based. But he"s peripatetic. Part of the year he"s in Paris, part Rome, part Moscow, according to Mark" and watched as Yvonne made another note. "But home, as far as the kids are concerned, is Switzerland and school is some millionaire internat establishment in the mountains. "He talks about the company the company. Mark a.s.sumes he owns it. There"s a company registered in Cyprus. And banks. Several banks. Banking"s the big one. That was what brought him to the island in the first place. Antigua currently boasts four Russian banks, by Mark"s count, plus one Ukrainian. They"re just bra.s.s plates in shopping malls and a phone on some lawyer"s desk. Dima"s one of the bra.s.s plates. When he bought Three Chimneys, that was for cash too. Not suitcases of it but laundry baskets, somewhat ominously, lent to him by the hotel, according to Mark. And twenty-dollar bills, not fifties. Fifties are too dicey. He bought the house, and a run-down sugar mill, and the peninsula they stand on."

"Did Mark mention a figure?" Luke is back.

"Six million US. And the tennis wasn"t pure pleasure either. Or not to begin with," she continued, surprised by how much she remembered of the awful Mark"s monologue. "Tennis in Russia is a major status symbol. If a Russian tells you he plays tennis, he"s telling you he"s stinking rich. Thanks to Mark"s brilliant tuition, Dima went back to Moscow and won a cup and everybody gasped. But Mark isn"t allowed to tell that story, because Dima prides himself on being self-made. It was only because Mark trusted me so completely that he felt able to make an exception. And if I"d like to pop round to his shop some time, he had a dandy little room upstairs where we could continue our conversation."

Luke and Yvonne offered sympathetic smiles. Perry offered no smile at all.

"And Tamara?" Luke asked.

"G.o.d-smacked he called her. And barking mad with it, according to the islanders. Doesn"t swim, doesn"t go down to the beach, doesn"t play tennis, doesn"t talk to her own children except about G.o.d, ignores Natasha completely, barely talks to the natives except for Elspeth, wife of Ambrose, front-of-house manager. Elspeth works in a travel agency, but if the family"s around she drops everything and helps out. Apparently one of the maids borrowed some of Tamara"s jewellery for a dance not long ago. Tamara caught her before she could put it back and bit her hand so hard she had to have twelve st.i.tches in it. Mark said if it had been him he"d have had an injection for rabies as well." he called her. And barking mad with it, according to the islanders. Doesn"t swim, doesn"t go down to the beach, doesn"t play tennis, doesn"t talk to her own children except about G.o.d, ignores Natasha completely, barely talks to the natives except for Elspeth, wife of Ambrose, front-of-house manager. Elspeth works in a travel agency, but if the family"s around she drops everything and helps out. Apparently one of the maids borrowed some of Tamara"s jewellery for a dance not long ago. Tamara caught her before she could put it back and bit her hand so hard she had to have twelve st.i.tches in it. Mark said if it had been him he"d have had an injection for rabies as well."

"So now tell us about the little girls who came and sat beside you, please, Gail," Luke suggested.

Yvonne was leading the case for the prosecution, Luke was playing her junior, and Gail was in the box trying to keep her temper, which was what she told her witnesses to do on pain of excommunication.

"So were the girls already ensconced up there, Gail, or did they come skipping up to you the moment they saw the pretty lady all on her own?" Yvonne asked, putting her pencil to her mouth while she studied her notes.

"They walked up the steps and sat one either side of me. And they didn"t skip. They walked."

"Smiling? Laughing? Being scamps?"

"Not a smile between them. Not a half of one."

"Had the girls, in your opinion, been dispatched to you by whoever was looking after them?"

"They came strictly of their own accord. In my opinion."

"You"re sure sure of that?" becoming more Scottish and persistent. of that?" becoming more Scottish and persistent.

"I saw the whole thing happen. Mark had made a pa.s.s at me that I didn"t need, so I stomped up to the top bench to get as far away from him as I could. n.o.body on the top bench except me."

"So where were the wee girls located at this point? Below you? Along the row from you? Where Where, please?"

Gail took a breath to control herself, then spoke with deliberation: "The wee girls wee girls were sitting on the second tier, with Elspeth. The older one turned round and looked up at me, then she spoke to Elspeth. And no, I didn"t hear what she said. Elspeth turned and looked at me, and nodded yes to the older girl. The two girls had a consultation, stood up, and came were sitting on the second tier, with Elspeth. The older one turned round and looked up at me, then she spoke to Elspeth. And no, I didn"t hear what she said. Elspeth turned and looked at me, and nodded yes to the older girl. The two girls had a consultation, stood up, and came walking walking up the steps. Slowly." up the steps. Slowly."

"Don"t push her around," said Perry.

Gail"s testimony has become evasive. Or so it sounds to her lawyer"s ear, and no doubt to Yvonne"s also. Yes, the girls arrived in front of her. The elder girl dropped a bob that she must have learned at dancing lessons, and asked in very serious English with only a slight foreign accent: "May we sit with you, please, miss?" So Gail laughed and said, "You may indeed, miss," and they sat down either side of her, still without smiling. So Gail laughed and said, "You may indeed, miss," and they sat down either side of her, still without smiling.

"I asked the elder girl her name. I whispered, because everybody was being so quiet. She said, "Katya," and I said, "What"s your sister"s name?" and she said, "Irina." And Irina turned and stared at me as if I was well, intruding really I just couldn"t understand the hostility. I said, "Are your mummy and daddy here?" To both of them. Katya gave a really vehement shake of her head. Irina didn"t say anything at all. We sat still for a while. A long long while, for children. And I was thinking: maybe they"ve been told they mustn"t speak at tennis matches. Or they mustn"t talk to strangers. Or maybe that"s all the English they know, or maybe they"re autistic, or handicapped in some way." while, for children. And I was thinking: maybe they"ve been told they mustn"t speak at tennis matches. Or they mustn"t talk to strangers. Or maybe that"s all the English they know, or maybe they"re autistic, or handicapped in some way."

She pauses, hoping for encouragement or a question, but sees only four waiting eyes and Perry at her side with his head tipped towards the brick walls that smell of her late father"s drinking habits. She takes a mental deep breath and plunges: "There was a game change. So I tried again: where do you go to school, Katya? Katya shakes her head, Irina shakes hers. No school? Or just none at the moment? None at the moment, apparently. They"d been going to a British International School in Rome, but they don"t go there any more. No reason given, none asked for. I didn"t want to be pushy, but I had a bad feeling I couldn"t pin down. So do they live in Rome? Not any more. Katya again. So Rome"s where you learned your excellent English? Yes. At International School they could choose English or Italian. English was better. I point to Dima"s two boys. Are those your brothers? More shakes. Cousins? Yes, sort of cousins. Only sort of? Yes. Do they go to International School too? Yes, but in Switzerland, not Rome. And the beautiful girl who lives inside a book, I say, is she she a cousin? Answer from Katya, squeezed out of her like a confession: Natasha is our cousin but only sort of again. And still no smile from either of them. But Katya is stroking my silk outfit. As if she"s never felt silk before." a cousin? Answer from Katya, squeezed out of her like a confession: Natasha is our cousin but only sort of again. And still no smile from either of them. But Katya is stroking my silk outfit. As if she"s never felt silk before."

Gail takes a breath. This is nothing, she is telling herself. This is the hors d"oeuvre. Wait till next day for the full five-course horror story. Wait till I"m allowed to be wise after the event.

"And when she"s stroked the silk enough, she puts her head against my arm and leaves it there and shuts her eyes. And that"s the end of our social exchange for maybe five minutes, except that Irina on the other side of me has taken her cue from Katya and commandeered my hand. She"s got these sharp, crabby little claws, and she"s really fastening on to me. Then she presses my hand against her forehead and rolls her face round it as if she wants me to know she"s got a temperature, except that her cheeks are wet and I realize she"s been crying. Then she gives me my hand back, and Katya says, "She cries sometimes. It is normal." Which is when the game ends and Elspeth comes scuttling up the steps to fetch them, by which time I want to wrap Irina up in my sarong and take her home with me, preferably with her sister as well, but since I can"t do any of that, and have no idea why she"s upset, and don"t know either of them from Adam well, Eve end of story."

But it isn"t the end of the story. Not in Antigua. The story is running beautifully. Perry Makepiece and Gail Perkins are still having the happiest holiday of their lifetimes, just as they had promised themselves back in November. To remind herself of their happiness, Gail plays the uncensored version to herself: Ten a.m. approx., tennis over, return to cabin for Perry to shower.

Make love, beautifully as ever, we can still do that. Perry can never do anything by halves. All his powers of concentration must be focused on one thing at a time.

Midday or later. Miss breakfast buffet for operational reasons (above), swim in sea, lunch by pool, return to beach because Perry needs to beat me at shuffle-board.

Four p.m. approx. Return to cabin with Perry victorious why doesn"t he let a girl win even once once? doze, read, more love, doze again, lose sense of time. Polish off Chardonnay from minibar while reclining on balcony in bathrobes.

Eight p.m. approx. Decide we"re too lazy to dress, order supper in cabin.

Still on our once-in-a-lifetime holiday. Still in Eden, munching the b.l.o.o.d.y apple.