The Ghost

became more active. It still doesn’t answer the basic question of what took him into a political party in the first place.”
    “Is it really that important?”
    Dep arrived to clear away the soup plates, and during the pause in our conversation I considered Ruth’s question.
    “Yes,” I said when we were alone again, “oddly enough I think it is important.”
    “Why?”
    “Because even though it’s a tiny detail, it still means he isn’t quite who we think he is. I’m not even sure he’s quite who he thinks he is—and that’s really difficult, if you’ve got to write the guy’s memoirs. I just feel I don’t know him at all. I can’t catch his voice.”
    Ruth frowned at the table and made minute adjustments to the placing of her knife and fork. She said, without looking up, “How do you know he joined in seventy-five?”
    I had a moment’s alarm that I’d said too much. But there seemed no reason not to tell her. “Mike McAra found Adam’s original party membership card in the Cambridge archives.”
    “Christ,” she said, “those archives! They’ve got everything, from his infant school reports to our laundry bills. Typical Mike, to ruin a good story by too much research.”
    “He also dug out some obscure party newsletter that shows Adam canvassing in seventy-seven.”
    “That must be after he met me.”
    “Maybe.”
    I could tell something was troubling her. Another volley of rain burst against the window and she put the tips of her fingers to the heavy glass, as if she wanted to trace the raindrops. The effect of the lighting in the garden made it look like the ocean bed: all waving fronds and thin gray tree trunks, rising like the spars of sunken boats. Dep came in with the main course—steamed fish, noodles, and some kind of obscure pale green vegetable that resembled a weed, probably was a weed. I ostentatiously poured the last of the wine into my glass and studied the bottle.
    Dep said, “You want another, sir?”
    “I don’t suppose you have any whiskey, do you?”
    The housekeeper looked to Ruth for guidance.
    “Oh, bring him some bloody whiskey,” said Ruth.
    She returned with a bottle of fifty-year-old Chivas Regal Royal Salute and a cut-glass tumbler. Ruth started to eat. I mixed myself a scotch and water.
    “This is delicious, Dep!” called Ruth. She dabbed her mouth with the corner of her napkin and then inspected the smear of lipstick on the white linen with surprise, as if she thought she might have started bleeding. “Coming back to your question,” she said to me, “I don’t think you should try to find mystery where there is none. Adam always had a social conscience—he inherited that from his mother—and I know that after he left Cambridge and moved to London he became very unhappy. I believe he was actually clinically depressed.”
    “Clinically depressed? He may have had treatment for it? Really?” I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice. If this was true, it was the best piece of news I’d received all day. Nothing sells a memoir quite so well as a good dose of misery. Childhood sexual abuse, grinding poverty, quadriplegia: in the right hands, these are money in the bank. There ought to be a separate section in bookshops labeled “schadenfreude.”
    “Put yourself in his place.” Ruth continued eating, gesturing with her laden fork. “His mother and father were both dead. He’d left university, which he’d loved. Many of his acting friends had agents and were getting offers of work. But he wasn’t. I think he was lost, and I think he turned to political activity to compensate. He might not want to put it in those terms—he’s not one for self-analysis—but that’s my reading of what happened. You’d be surprised how many people end up in politics because they can’t succeed in their first choice of a career.”
    “So meeting you must have been a very important moment for him.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because you had genuine political passion. And knowledge. And contacts in the party. You must have given him the focus to really go forward.” I felt as if a mist were clearing. “Do you mind if I make a note of this?”
    “Go ahead. If you think it’s useful.”
    “Oh, it is.” I put my knife and fork together—I’m not really a fish and weed man—took out my notebook, and opened it to a new page. I was imagining myself in Lang’s place again: in my early twenties, orphaned, alone, ambitious, talented but not