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Dunsany, his claim staked years ago. If there was ever to be a massive, official biography of the man, Charley knew he would have a fair crack at landing the contract. Trouble was, such a commission would probably never happen. Dunsany remained a minor talent to most, a second-rater in the rankings. And then there was the matter of his personal life, which was dull, to say the least. He rode horses, shot animals and pottered about the family estate somewhat in the manner of a character who had just failed the audition for a role in a novel by Smollett. The geezer hardly even drank. But nobody was perfect, and by now Dunsany was Charley’s academic niche. He had a genuine fondness for the old boy, read and reread his pellucid prose with enormous pleasure, and sometimes thought of him as a kind of dead uncle he had never had the good fortune to know in life.
    â€˜You’re almost too late to be early,’ Charley observed, when Malcolm arrived.
    â€˜Ready for another?’
    â€˜Is that a question?’
    Malcolm smiled and went for a round of drinks. A friend for twenty years or so, this Malcolm Browne. Charley and Malcolm had met as students at University College, Dublin. It was around the time the pound was being decimalized, and Charley had come from a distant corner of Wisconsin in search of – what the hell was it, anyway? Joyce, the Ginger Man, Flann O’Brien, Kavanagh, Dunsany, all the usual suspects. Found them all, too.
    It was through Malcolm that Charley had landed the Yale gig. Malcolm was a fixture at Yale. Sound critic, excellent teacher, and a bloody genius at the obscure art of departmental diplomacy, with the self-effacing charm and smoothness of Anglo-Irish genes in his blood. Of course, there was a price to pay for this grand success. Malcolm wasn’t half the pub-going drinker he had been a while back. All the same, a dear man.
    Come to think of it, it had been Malcolm who had suggested this particular get-together. Charley wondered what might be in the offing. Perhaps a week with the Brownes at their cottage on the Cape. Sudden space in a journal for a paper on the influence of Dunsany on Sam Beckett – Malcolm was in tight with several fine scholarly publications. Maybe he just felt the irresistible need for an old-fashioned gargle in a moderately bleak saloon, a valid and perfectly honourable motive in itself.
    â€˜Cheers.’
    â€˜Your good health.’
    â€˜So, have you decided what you’re going to do this summer?’
    â€˜Staying on a while, I think. It looks as if that Hamilton job might be put back to the spring semester.’
    â€˜How are you getting on in the department?’
    That was interesting. ‘No bother at all,’ Charley replied. ‘You have a dreadful infestation of multiculturalists, but I try to keep a civil tone with them.’
    Malcolm smiled. ‘I might have a summer course available, if you want it.’
    â€˜That’d be great.’ Indeed.
    â€˜It’s just your basic English comp.’
    â€˜A breeze. Consider my ankle chained to the galley.’
    â€˜How’s Jan?’
    â€˜Oh, fine. She quite likes New Haven.’
    â€˜Good. You must come up to Wellfleet this summer. Stay for a weekend. We’ll have piles of fresh seafood, kegs of cold beer, and we’ll play the Pogues all night long.’
    â€˜Sounds great. We’d love it,’ Charley said, with enthusiasm. To be fair, a whole week had been a bit much to hope for. ‘How’s Maggie these days?’
    â€˜Very well, thanks. In fact, that’s a part of what I wanted to talk to you about.’
    â€˜Oh?’
    Malcolm looked about as close to embarrassment as he could ever get. ‘I think I mentioned to you once or twice before that Maggie has this – special interest.’
    â€˜Yes.’ Tentative. He seldom thought of Maggie. Wife of a good friend, full stop. Ideal mate for a professor at a place like