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enough. Leave it,” said Peter.
    The cricket game was over. They walked home without a word, leaving the assailant lying on the ground.
    They shared a lot of history and a lot of hurt.
    Peter was startled from his reveries when his passenger door was suddenly snatched open by a man in a gray hoodie. The man had serious need of a shave. He looked at Peter with unblinking bloodshot eyes.
    “How long you gonna sit here without coming in?”
    “D O YOU WANT BEER or whisky?” Richie said.
    “I’ll have a beer.”
    Richie seemed not to hear Peter, because he splashed two measures of whisky into glass tumblers and handed one to Peter. “Quite a surprise. You showing up.”
    Peter took a slurp of the whisky. Supermarket special. He settled back on the leather sofa and glanced round the room. There were three electric guitars lying around, and a couple of small amps. One expensive-looking jumbo acoustic guitar. The place was tidy but dusty. No sign of a woman’s touch. Peter had heard over the years that Richie was living with this or that woman, was supposed to have fathered a child by one of them, but there was no sign of children or family.
    “Fag?” Richie sparked up a cigarette.
    “No. Gave up. No one smokes indoors anymore, anyway.”
    “They do in this house.” He blew a plume of smoke to advertise the point.
    Richie wore his hair very close cropped. He once had beautiful long hair, and girls fell in love with its soft waves; some did, anyway, and Tara once said that it was his hair that made her fall in love with him. If the severe crop was to disguise the salt-and-pepper color the years had given over, it only drew attention to the bony shape of his head. His pale skin seemed stretched and taut over the skull it covered. The veins on his forehead were a little too prominent and a little too blue.
    These days Richie wore round John Lennon old-style glasses. He pushed them up the bridge of his nose. “I hear you’re a blacksmith now.”
    “Farrier.”
    “What’s the difference?”
    “Horses. Horseshoes.”
    Richie wrinkled his nose and took another sip of whisky. “Never have been on the back of a horse.”
    “Sensible. Flighty creatures. You’ve got to watch they don’t kick you in the head.” Peter pointed at the guitars. “I see you’ve kept the faith.”
    Richie grunted.
    “Does it make you a living?” As far as Peter knew, Richie did the pubs circuit, was in and out of bands, did session work whenever he could get it.
    “A living? Half a living. You’re out at The Old Forge, ain’t ya? Wife and kids. Four kids.”
    “Yeh.”
    “You were here on Christmas Day. I saw you. Sat outside. Too scared to come in.”
    “Yeh.”
    Richie drained his glass and gave himself a refill. Almost as an afterthought he got up and carried the bottle over to Peter, splashing another measure into Peter’s glass. He put his cropped, bony gray head dangerously close to Peter and jabbed an angry finger. “You’re a fucker! A fucker! You hear that? A fucker, not speaking to me in all this time. Fucker.” He went back to his own seat, crashing back into the leather upholstery.
    Peter wanted to say that it takes two to make a silence work. Instead he said, “You feel better now?”
    Richie offered him a carnivorous smile. “Yeh, I do, actually. I feel much better. I’m quite relaxed now.”
    “Well, that’s good, ’cos I have something to tell you.”
    Richie blinked.
    “Tara came back.”
    Richie stared hard at his former friend. He said nothing. After a moment he took off his spectacles and polished them on the hem of his shirt, put them back on again, and looked at Peter some more.
    The two men sat in silence, sipping whisky.

CHAPTER FIVE
    It is strange and weird that I cannot with safety drink ten bottles of champagne; but then the champagne itself is strange and weird, if you come to that. If I have drunk of the fairies’ drink it is but just I should drink by the fairies’ rules
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    G. K. C