Bat demands to know who this man is. ‘Who am I? This is my house! Who are you?’ roars Pius, so incensed that he spills a drop from his cup. Bat looks at the spillage and shakes his head. I tell them Pius is my da. ‘We’re sorry to intrude, Mr Lennon. My associate and I have business with Victor here. I’m afraid I can’t elaborate. I’m sure you’ll understand, sir, that it’s better for everyone if you don’t know any more than that,’ says Bat, with a conspiratorial wink, and Pius seems mollified; Bat and Arthur carry with them a seriousness that demands respect. I give him a little nod, and he withdraws to the next room. Bat sits down at the table but Arthur waits till I take a seat before he does. Arthur’s eyes dart left and right, up and down, taking in every detail of the place. I don’t like having him here, in the house I grew up in. It looks good, now that we have tidied it up, and we’re sitting on furniture that would have been expensive in its day. We’re in a big, bourgeois house, my comrade and I, one that testifies to money, and I just know he’s sitting there, contrasting it to the purity of the squalor he comes from.
