He hopes that his tartness will fluster her. But she is not flustered at all. 'Leave you alone?' she says softly, so softly that he can barely hear. 'If I left you alone' – her eyes flicker to Marijana – 'if I left you both alone, what would become of you?'

Marijana gets up, blows her nose again, stows the tissue in her sleeve. 'We must go,' she says decisively.

'Help me up, Marijana,' he says. 'Please.'

On the landing, out of earshot of the Costello woman, she faces him. ' Elizabeth – she is good friend?'

'Good? No, I don't think so. Not a good friend, not a close friend. I had never laid eyes on her until quite recently. Not a friend at all, in fact. Elizabeth is a professional writer. She writes novels, romances. At present she is hunting around for characters to put in a book she is planning. She seems to be pinning her hopes on me. On you too, at a remove. But I do not fit. That is why she is pestering me. Trying to make me fit.'

She is trying to take over my life. That is what he would like to say. But it seems unfair to be making an appeal to Marijana in her present state. Save me.

Marijana gives him a faint smile. Though the tears are gone, her eyes are still red, her nose puffy. The bright light from the skylight shows her up cruelly, her skin coarse without make-up, her teeth discoloured. Who is this woman, he thinks, to whom I yearn to give myself? A mystery, all a mystery. He takes her hand. 'I will stand by you,' he says. 'I will help you, I promise. I will help Drago.'

'Mama!' whines the child.

Marijana extracts her hand. 'We must go,' she says, and is gone.

'I AM HAVING visitors,' he announces to the Costello woman. 'It won't be your kind of evening, I'm afraid. You may want to make other arrangements.'

'Of course. I'm glad to see you getting back into the social whirl. Let me think… What shall I do? Maybe I will go to the cinema. Is there anything worth seeing, do you know?'

'I am not making myself clear. When I say make other arrangements, I mean make arrangements to stay somewhere else.'

'Oh! And where else should I stay, do you think?'

'I don't know. It is not my business to say where you go from here. Back to where you came from, perhaps.'

There is a silence. 'So,' she says. 'At least you are blunt.' And then: 'Do you remember, Paul, the story of Sinbad and the old man?'

He does not reply.

'By the bank of a swollen stream,' she says, 'Sinbad comes upon an old man. "I am old and weak," says the old man. "Carry me to the other side and Allah will bless you." Being a good-hearted fellow, Sinbad lifts the old man onto his shoulders and wades across the stream. But when they reach the other side, the old man refuses to climb down. Indeed, he tightens his legs around Sinbad's neck until Sinbad feels himself choking. "Now you are my slave," says the old man, "who must do my bidding in all things."'

He remembers the story. It was in a book called Legendes dorees, Golden Legends, in his book-chest in Lourdes. Vividly he remembers the illustration: the skinny old man naked but for a loincloth, his wiry legs hooked around the hero's neck while the hero strides through the waist-deep torrent. What has happened to the book? What has happened to the book-chest and the other remnants of a French childhood that crossed the oceans with them to the new country? If he went back to the Dutchman's house in Ballarat, would he find them in the cellar, Sinbad and the fox and the crow and Jeanne d'Arc and the rest of his story-companions, closed up in cardboard boxes, patiently waiting for their little master to return and rescue them; or did the Dutchman cast them out long ago, after he became a widower?

'Yes, I remember,' he says. 'Am I to understand that I am Sinbad in the story and you the old man? In that case you face a certain difficulty. You have no means of – how shall I put this delicately – no means of getting onto my shoulders. And I am not going to help you up.'

Costello smiles a secretive smile. 'Perhaps I am already there,' she says, 'and you do not know it.'

'No, you are not, Mrs Costello. I am not under your control, not in any sense of the word, and I am going to prove it. I request you to kindly return my key – a key you took without my permission – and leave my flat and not come back.'

'That's a hard word to be speaking to an old woman, Mr Rayment. Are you sure you mean it?'

'This is not a comedy, Mrs Costello. I am asking you to leave.'

She sighs. 'Very well then. But I'm sure I don't know what will become of me, with the rain pelting down and the dark coming fast and all.'

There is no rain, no dark. It is a pleasant afternoon, warm and still, the kind of afternoon that ought to make one glad to be alive.

'Here,' she says: 'your key.' With exaggerated care she sets down the latchkey on the coffee table. 'I will need a brief grace to collect my belongings and put on my face. Then I will be off, and you will be alone again. I am sure you are looking forward to that.'

Impatiently he turns away. In a few minutes she is back.

'Goodbye.' She transfers a plastic shopping bag from right hand to left, offers him the right hand. 'I am leaving a small suitcase. I will send for it in a day or two, when I have found alternative quarters.'

'I would prefer it if you took your suitcase with you.'

'That is not possible.'

'It is possible, and I would prefer it if you did so.'

No more words pass between them. From the front door he watches her descend the stairs lingeringly, step by step, bearing the suitcase. If he were a gentleman he would offer to help, bad leg or no. But in this case he is not a gentleman. He just wants her out of his life.

IT IS TRUE: he is indeed looking forward to being alone. In fact he hungers for solitude. But no sooner has Elizabeth Costello taken her leave than Drago Jokic, with a bulging rucksack on his shoulder, is at the door.

'Hi,' Drago greets him. 'How's the pushbike?'

'I have not done anything about the pushbike, I'm afraid. I have had other matters to attend to. What can I do for you? Would you like to come in?'

Drago comes in, drops the rucksack on the floor. The self-assured air is no longer so marked; he seems, in fact, embarrassed.

'Have you come about Wellington College?' he asks. 'Do you want to talk about that?'

The boy nods.

'Well, fire away. What is the problem?'

'My mum says you will pay my fees.'

'That's right. I will guarantee the fees for two years. You can think of it as a loan if you prefer, a long-term loan. It is not important to me how you think of it.'

'Mum told me how much it adds up to. I didn't know it was that much.'

'I have no use for the money, Drago. If we did not spend it on your education it would just sit in the bank doing nothing.'

'Yes,' says the boy doggedly, 'but why me?'

Why me? – a question on everyone's lips, it seems. He could fob Drago off with some polite form of words, but no, the boy has come in person to inquire, so he will give him an answer, the true answer or part of the true answer.

'In the time your mother has worked here I have developed a soft spot for her, Drago. She has made a huge difference to my life. She does not have an easy time of it, we both know that. I want to help where I can.'

Now the evasive air is gone. The boy is looking him straight in the eye, challenging him: Is that all you can say? Is that as far as you will go? And his answer? Yes, that is as far as I will go, for the present.

'My dad won't allow it,' says Drago.

'So I hear. To your dad it is probably a matter of pride. I can understand that. But you should remind him there is no shame in taking a loan from a friend. Because that is how I would like to be thought of: as a friend.'