The Sunlight on the Garden by Francis King

someone said his name. He turned. It was a tall, middle-aged man with an umbrella raised in a hand, while the other hand rested on the camera that dangled from his neck.
    â€˜I wanted to congratulate you. You deserved more than a commendation. You ought to have won.’
    Luke laughed. He agreed with the man but felt no bitterness. ‘Nothing in life is fair.’
    â€˜How right you are! Few of us get our deserts.’ The man was now close beside him. He smelled of something cloying and sweetish. Luke himself never used any sort deodorant or aftershave. ‘I’m a photographer myself. In an amateur way.’
    â€˜That’s all I am. An amateur.’
    â€˜But an amateur with a professional touch.’
    They were now walking down the street, with the man holding the umbrella more over Luke than over himself.
    â€˜Why didn’t you submit something yourself?’
    â€˜Oh, I take my photographs only for my own pleasure. A private hobby.’ The voice had not so much a stammer as an intermittent hesitation.
    â€˜How did you come to know my name? Have we met before?’
    â€˜I overheard someone introducing you to someone else. You were sitting just in front of me during the prize announcements. I’d noticed you already.’ He paused. ‘ Your face was – familiar.’
    â€˜What an idiot I was not to bring an umbrella or raincoat! If you don’t take a bigger share of your umbrella, you’re going to get horribly wet.’
    â€˜Why don’t we have a drink at my place until it’s all over? It’s just round the corner from here. Left at the pillar box.’
    Luke hesitated. ‘ Well … All right. That’s kind of you.’
    The steep steps of the Edwardian block of flats were slithery from the rain. The entrance hall was large and dimly lit. Two upright, bentwood chairs flanked a cumbersome oak table. Othewise the whole area was bare.
    â€˜The lift’s not working. D’you mind walking up?’
    â€˜Fine.’
    The hand on the banister ahead of Luke was white and bony, the fingers unusually long with nails curving over them, in urgent need of cutting. At random, the umbrella dripped water now on to one step and now on to another. The man began to wheeze as they started on the flight up to the third floor. He must be asthmatic, Luke decided. ‘Nothing bloody works in this block. And do the landlords care? Of course not. But I’m a statutory tenant and so I can’t complain. I pay about a third of what almost everyone else does.’
    They stopped outside the front door and the man fumbled in a pocket of his unusually long and voluminous black raincoat and pulled out his keys. The door open, he turned to allow Luke to enter ahead of him. He gave a little bow. ‘Welcome to my humble abode.’
    The sitting-room, frowsty, as dimly lit as the downstairs hall and crowded with pieces of Victorian and Edwardian furniture too large for it, reminded Luke of visits to his mother’s widowed mother, during his childhood. Then two totally incongruous objects caught his eye. One was a pinball machine, standing in one corner. The other was a juke-box. standing in another. Oddly, both were garishly lit up.
    The man smiled and, throwing out an arm, said: ‘ This – with one or two exceptions – is all my dear, deceased mother’s taste. I was too lazy – and too broke – to do anything about it after she had gone.’ He surveyed the room, turning his head from side to side, as though in a first appraisal. Then he urged: ‘Now sit down – there – or there – or anywhere you like – and let me fix you a drink. What would you fancy?’
    Luke had noticed a bottle labelled Oloroso Sherry on a sideboard. ‘Some sherry?’
    â€˜Why not? I think sherry wine would be just the thing on a miserable night like this.’
    The man poured out a glass of sherry and handed it to Luke.