2

‘I don’t know what they’ve been doing to her,’ Mrs Sherman says. ‘She scarcely seems to know me. On top of which, she’s put on all this weight.’

She sits beneath the armorial reliefs, unaware of the fur-coated figures at the adjoining tables; she hasn’t, as yet, removed her scarf which, in addition to being fastened at her throat, is pinned to the top of her head with a metal brooch. Her handbag, the size of a small suitcase, she’s placed on the table beside her plate. The waitress, when she comes across with her tray of coffee, is at a loss for a moment where to put it. Finally, with a kind of groan, Mrs Sherman picks up the bag and sets it on the floor beside her.

She rubs her hand across her nose, half-weeping, then searches in her pocket.

‘I had one with me,’ she says. ‘I don’t know where it’s gone.’

I hand her mine.

She blows her nose.

‘She’s changed out of all recognition. She’s never had all that weight. Not even as a girl. I didn’t recognize her, you know, when I first went in.’

She gazes at the coffee, picks up a spoon, stirs the cup, replaces the spoon then gazes vacantly before her.

‘I’m sure, now, she shouldn’t have come out. She wasn’t well enough. If we’d only been patient she’d still be in that admission ward. You can see into the garden you know, from there. From where she is now, it’s like a prison. I felt so awful when I first went in. And all those other patients.’ She runs the handkerchief across her mouth.

She wipes her eyes.

‘Have you seen Doctor Lennox at all?’ she says.

‘It was over a week ago,’ I tell her.

‘I asked to see him. They said he was busy. If you want an appointment, they told me, it’d take three weeks. She might be dead by then. Or so ill from seeing those people around her she’ll not recover.’

‘She’s already much improved,’ I say.

‘But she doesn’t know me. When I talk to her she doesn’t listen. I try to imagine at times what she must be thinking. But it’s all a blank. It’s like talking to a wall, or somebody you’ve never seen before. There’s no contact between us, and we’ve been so close before. Particularly since her father died. She’s been such a good daughter to me. She really has.’

‘I should drink your coffee.’

She wipes her nose. She screws up the handkerchief, then hands it back.

‘You lose your appetite for food when you’ve been in there. I’ve hardly eaten anything these last few days. I get it ready, cook it; but when it’s there I just think of her, you know, and cry.’

She looks across with tear-filled eyes.

‘You’ve been so good to her, I know. But I honestly think, Colin, she’s getting worse. It’s a disease of the mind. It’s not like a broken arm. There’s nothing to mend. It’s all inside. And now, you see, she’s grown so fat.’

She lifts her cup. She presses it for a moment against her lip.

She doesn’t drink.

‘I’ve been in here, you know, before. Yvonne brought us, when she got her degree. We came here afterwards and had a meal. You should have seen us then. It makes you wonder why you live at all. All that effort.’ She begins to cry.

I hold out the handkerchief.

She searches for her own. The heads, at the surrounding tables, begin to turn.

She feels down to her bag, lifts it up, knocks over the coffee: a brown stain seeps out across the table.

The waitress comes across.

‘Will there be anything else?’ she says as if she’s watched this charade go on now long enough.

‘If you’ve got a bill.’

She puts it down beside the cup.

Mrs Sherman herself seems unaware that anything’s occurred; she roots inside the bag, still sobbing, taking out a bag of oranges, a bag of apples, a box of chocolates and some envelopes and paper: gifts these, which, at the hospital, inexplicably, her daughter has refused.

‘I must have dropped it.’

I offer her mine.

She takes it in her hand, examines it for several seconds, finds a spot unmarked by lipstick, and wipes her cheek.

The waitress, having deposited the bill, is mopping up the table. I replace the chocolate, the fruit and the writing material in Mrs Sherman’s bag.

I get up from the table. I pay the bill.

When we get to the stairs leading to the street she takes my arm.

‘I don’t see any point,’ she says. ‘If somebody you love ends up like that what’s the purpose in going on? All she’s ever wanted in life is to help other people and do some good. You read every day of criminals who get unpunished, of people, who never do anything with their lives at all: and there’s Yvonne, a heart of gold. And she ends up in a ward like that. Some of those women.’

She shakes her head.

When we reach the street she takes the bag.

‘You got its number, then?’ she says, and adds, ‘This car, I mean, that knocked you down.’

‘They’re trying to trace the owner now,’ I say.

‘You want to sue them for a lot of money. You could easily have been killed with a thing like that.’

We reach the stop. A queue has formed.

‘What’ll you do with the fruit?’ I ask.

‘I’ve no idea.’ She wipes her eyes.

‘I’ll take it with me, if you like,’ I say.

‘You can have it all for me.’

She plunges her hand inside the bag.

She lifts out the envelopes, the box of chocolates. She takes out the fruit.

By the time she’s finished my arms are full.

When the bus pulls up she climbs aboard; a hand is raised; the bus moves off.

As I turn up the street I see Hendricks walking towards me with a canvas cricket bag. He’s dressed in plimsolls with short white ankle socks, a raincoat thrown over his shorts and the white, scimitar-crested sweater. He sees me himself a moment later and glances back, hastily, the way he’s come.

He’s already moving off by the time I catch him up.

‘Just the man I want,’ I tell him.

‘I say, I heard you’d been in hospital,’ he says. ‘I called at your flat, you know, last week. That man on the ground-floor with the red moustache said he thought he’d seen you taken off.’

I hold out the fruit. ‘I was just wanting a bag,’ I tell him, ‘to hold all this.’

‘I’m just on my way to give him a game, as a matter of fact. Did you know he was the Surrey Hardcourt Champion in 1946? Or was it seven?’

‘I’d deem it a very great favour if you could relieve me of it all,’ I say.

He opens the bag.

‘Did you have your hand X-rayed?’ he says.

‘And chest.’

‘Was anything damaged?’

‘A couple of ribs. I’ve broken two fingers, it seems, as well.’

‘Wilcox, you know, made me write a report. The bulb in the light, apparently, had been taken out. And this last week, while you’ve been away, someone’s lifted one of these stuffed birds from the natural history shelf. There’s only that otter and that squirrel left. You should have seen Wilcox. Went quiet as death.’

He gazes at his bag, now stocked with fruit.

‘Is your wife improved at all?’ he says.

I shake my head.

‘Wilcox was telling the Major you mightn’t be coming back.’

‘When?’

‘It was something he mentioned, I believe, this morning.’

‘I wrote him a note.’

‘Perhaps Wilcox never got it.’

‘Perhaps he’s fired me, after all,’ I say.

‘He went to see Newman the other day.’

‘I hope,’ I tell him, ‘you win the match.’

I watch him walk off.

When he’s got some distance away he suddenly turns.

‘What shall I do with the fruit?’ he says.

‘Anything you like,’ I say.

‘I’ll eat it,’ he says, ‘if that’s all right.’

‘That’s quite all right by me,’ I add.

He nods his head.

Weighted down by the bag, he sets off down the street.

Lightened, I set off, more slowly, in the direction of the college.

‘Just look at this, man,’ Kendal says.

He’s standing in the door of Wilcox’s office: beside him are two of the cleaners, leaning on their mops.

On the desk itself stands one of the bottles which usually occupies one of the shelves on the office wall.

‘Guess what’s in it?’

The cleaners, grimacing, shake their heads.

‘They’ve just knocked one of them down,’ he says.

A bucket of steaming water stands by a pile of broken glass in the middle of the floor.

‘Acid?’

‘Urine.’

‘Dirty bugger,’ the cleaners say.

I step inside.

‘Every one of them,’ he says. ‘You can have a look.’

He runs his hand along the wall.

‘We knocked one of them down,’ the cleaners say. ‘All these years we’ve been mopping up.’

One of them stoops down; she collects the glass, sweeping it up beneath her mop.

With their bucket and the debris they go out to the hall; their voices, complaining, drone on a moment later from the corridor beyond.

‘I heard them in the door when I was working in my room. When I came in here they were taking all the stoppers out. They’re acid bottles from the etching room. Would you believe it? What a terrible pong.’

Kendal, entranced, has rubbed his hands.

Rebecca has appeared on the stairs outside.

A moment later she comes over to the door.

Unaware of Kendal, she steps inside the room.

Kendal, standing by the door, looks up.

‘I shouldn’t come in here,’ he says.

Rebecca, startled, has looked across.

‘I wondered if I could have a word with you,’ she says.

‘Just look at this, then,’ Kendal says. He indicates the bottles glinting on the wall.

‘Would you like to open a door?’ I say.

‘What door?’

‘The door to Wilcox’s lavatory,’ I say.

‘Have you something I could open it with?’

‘I’ll get you something,’ Kendal says.

‘Isn’t Mr Wilcox here?’ she says.

‘He’s out,’ Kendal says. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

He crosses the hall to the door of his room.

The two of us, for a moment, stand in silence.

‘I’m sorry about bursting in,’ she says.

‘Look before you leap,’ I tell her.

‘I should have known. Only I never thought.’

‘Will you tell your father?’

‘I shouldn’t think he needs to be told,’ she says.

‘Have you seen your mother yet?’ I say.

She shakes her head.

‘She’ll not be disturbed,’ she says. ‘It’s happened before. I just never thought of it. Not on this occasion, at least,’ she adds.

Kendal reappears in the hall outside.

‘I’ve a piece of wire. Some metal. A pair of pliers. Whatever you like.’ He holds them out.

‘I’ll try the wire,’ she says.

She goes over to the lock. She tries the door.

Kendal stoops beside her as she feels with the wire inside the lock.

A few moments later the door swings back.

I feel inside for a switch on the wall.

The light goes on.

There’s a hand-basin immediately opposite the door, a toilet, and a wooden cupboard.

The entire room, however, is packed to the ceiling with dismembered statues, with pieces of pottery, easels, stuffed animals, palettes; with lumps of coke and coal and clay; with picture frames and prints and magazines; with miscellaneous boxes, packages and chests. I recognize the Cupid, an Apollo Belvedere; a broken ’cello stands, its bodywork eroded, in the sink itself. There’s an atmosphere of dust and damp. On the lavatory seat stands a plaster cherub; on the floor beside it lie the dismembered limbs of an articulated wooden horse. A skeleton, a hook embedded in its skull, hangs from the topmost link of the lavatory chain.

‘My God,’ Kendal says. ‘The man’s gone mad.’

Rebecca gazes in, wide-eyed, from the open door.

‘But it must have taken years,’ she says.

‘Even longer, I imagine,’ Kendal says. ‘It’s a work of art.’ He rubs his hands. ‘He puts his refuse on the wall, where his culture belongs, and the relics he confines, don’t you see, to his bloody bog. Wilcox is an artist. A man of his times. He could exhibit this wherever he liked. A bloody genius.’

‘It looks more like kleptomania to me,’ I tell him.

‘To an outsider,’ he says, ‘I suppose it might.’

He steps inside. He examines the pieces.

‘I should leave it,’ I tell him. ‘The shock of it being discovered might prove too much.’

‘What about the bottles?’

‘I should leave them, too.’

We go outside.

‘Can you lock the door?’ I ask Rebecca.

‘I’ll have a try,’ she says. ‘It’s more difficult than opening.’

She feels inside the lock with the piece of wire.

‘I’m not sure what’s more amazing,’ Kendal says. ‘Wilcox, or the girl herself.’

The door itself has given a click.

‘I’ll see you home, if you like,’ I say.

She gives Kendal back his piece of wire.

‘I wouldn’t mind going for a drive,’ she says.

‘Will you tell Apollo and the Major?’ Kendal says.

‘I should keep it,’ I tell him, ‘between ourselves.’

‘Until the opportune moment.’ Kendal smiles.

He gives a wink.

‘It’s as safe as a dicky-bird with me,’ he says.

He goes to his room; he turns on his light. We go out to the hall and close the door.

The cleaners are in the rooms upstairs; there’s the rattle of buckets and the banging of mops.

‘There’s this party tonight.’

‘That’s why I came.’

‘To the college?’

‘I was hoping to find you.’

‘What time does it start?’

‘We’ve a couple of hours.’

We go down the corridor; I hold the door.

‘Wasn’t it strange? Finding all that stuff.’

She steps down to the car. She opens the door.

‘Can you control it?’ she says. ‘A thing like that.’

‘You can control almost anything,’ I say.

‘You sound like Daddy.’

‘I’m beginning to feel like him,’ I say.

‘But you’re not like him at all.’ She laughs.

She starts the engine. We move out from the yard.

‘I hope it’s not going to be too bad a night for you,’ she adds.

It’s dark. Immediately above us looms the low stone wall separating the overgrown garden of the ruined house from the heath itself: the battlemented roof with its balustrade shows up against the moonlit sky beyond.

‘They’re sort of demons, I suppose,’ she says. ‘Daddy has his girls. Mummy has her men. Most of them,’ she adds, ‘like you.’

She climbs the wall.

We move between the overgrown mounds towards the house.

‘Wherever we go it gets like this. At first, you see, I was away at school. But recently, coming back, I’ve seen it all.’

We step into the drive. The jagged outline of the roof and the tall, rectangular blacknesses of the house’s mullioned windows loom about our heads.

‘Do you think it’s spooky?’

She takes my arm.

The heath, below us, is full of shadows.

‘With you it’s different, I suppose,’ she says.

‘Why’s that?’

She shakes her head.

Two figures, silhouetted, have stepped out from the trees.

Silently, they pass down the garden, the way we’ve come.

‘It’s a kind of circus. Leyland. Fraser. Groves. They hang around. They all have parts, you see, as well.’

The gate, surmounted by the stork, appears ahead.

‘I’m not sure what you hope to gain from it,’ she says. ‘From getting involved, I mean, with me. And them.’

She gestures round.

A bird flies off from the shadows of the gate; on one of the posts is the lower half of the metal stork; the silhouette of the other stands out against a luminous bank of moonlit cloud.

‘Do you hate all this?’

She indicates the village; perhaps she’s been mistaken about the time of the party: the road across the green is lined with cars. More cars are parked in the driveway of the house and around the gates. Others, as we come out from the overgrown driveway, are being parked in rows along the verges of the green itself.

‘It’s just an excuse.’

‘For what?’

‘For junketing, I suppose,’ she says. ‘Do you want to come in? I’ll slip in the back. I have to change.’

She lets go my hand. We start across the green.

‘I’ll leave the car where it is,’ she says. ‘Afterwards, if you like, I’ll take you home.’

Other figures are moving across the green; there are shouts and cries from the garden of the house.

‘I suppose it’s mischievous, in the circumstances, inviting you,’ she says.

‘I’d have preferred to have come in any way,’ I tell her.

‘No wonder that Mathews approves of you,’ she says.

She begins to laugh.

‘His father’s a bus-driver, you see. He feels you haven’t sold out.’

‘To what?’

‘To people like me, I suppose. Like Mummy and Daddy.’

Groups of figures are drifting up the drive; all the lower windows of the house are now alight; there’s the sound of music coming from the open doors. There’s a burst of laughter: a window in one of the upper rooms has opened: a voice calls down to the drive below.

‘You remember Eddie? The one with the factory.’ She shakes her head. ‘He’s the only decent one there is,’ she says.

Pettrie is standing in the porch.

He comes down the steps as he sees her in the drive, folding back his hair. He’s wearing a suede jacket, with a thin, string tie.

‘Your mother’s been going frantic,’ he says.

He leans down to Rebecca, kisses her cheek, then gives her a small parcel he’s holding in his hand.

‘Honestly,’ she says. ‘I’ve just been rounding up my guests. You remember Colin.’

Pettrie puts out his hand.

There’s a cry from the porch; other figures emerge from the lighted door.

Rebecca disappears; I see her being greeted inside the hall: figures intervene. A couple dance slowly to and fro in the shadow of the porch.

‘Let me get you a drink, then,’ Pettrie says. ‘It’s a case of grabbing what you can. I’ve tried a couple of times,’ he adds, ‘already.’

The thin-faced chauffeur is standing in the hall; he’s examining invitation cards from the people flooding through the porch. Beside him is the close-cropped, grey-haired secretary; she smokes a cigarette, scrutinizing each face as it comes in through the door, looking up in dismay as she recognizes mine.

‘Mr Freestone hasn’t got a card, Bennings,’ Pettrie says. ‘Rebecca rounded him up herself.’ He takes my arm.

We move off towards the lounge; there’s a small orchestra playing in one corner of the room; several couples are dancing; other groups stand against the walls: most of the furniture in the room has gone. Over the fire-place, however, still hangs the ‘View of Delft’.

‘I shan’t be a second,’ Pettrie says. He disappears amongst the crowd.

A waiter passes carrying an empty tray.

I go back across the hall. The secretary herself has gone: I nod at Bennings. In a room beyond the hall a bar has been set out; a frieze of glittering bottles and half-filled glasses lines the edge of a narrow table above which hangs Elizabeth’s triangulated abstract picture. Immediately beneath it, by the bar itself, stands Wilcox, a glass of fruit-juice in his hand.

He looks over quickly, blinks, then looks again; he regards me, as I cross the bar, with widening eyes. He’s dressed in a dinner-jacket, with a black bow-tie.

‘Freestone.’

‘Been here long?’

‘I’ve just been having a word with Mr Newman.’ He holds up the glass, perhaps as an indication of his pacific intentions. ‘I thought you were in hospital, then.’ He looks at my face, glances at my bandaged hand, then looks over at the barman as I call for a drink.

‘I’ll be back at college next week,’ I tell him.

‘That’s something,’ he says, ‘I meant to talk to you about.’

I take the drink as the barman passes it across; I take another from a tray of drinks already on the counter. I swallow them down. I take a third.

I say, ‘Have you done any dancing yet?’

‘My wife couldn’t come this evening, I’m afraid.’ He makes some attempt to move away. I take his arm. Figures press in on either side.

We move over to the door. Immediately ahead of us Pettrie reappears.

‘You’ve got a drink. Good show.’ He taps my back, moves past, his figure swallowed up amongst the groups behind.

‘You’ve been here before, then?’ Wilcox says.

‘Several times.’

‘I had an invitation from Newman,’ he says, ‘the other day. I went out to see this new place he has.’

‘A bit of a mess.’

‘It’ll mean big changes in the town he says.’

He looks towards the stairs; Elizabeth has appeared; she wears a red gown: her hair’s piled up above her head. Her neck and arms are bare. She moves off, without seeing Wilcox or myself, towards the lounge: there’s a cry from inside followed, a moment later, by a roll of drums. An announcement’s made; people stand on tiptoe, gazing in.

‘The party-girl’s been found, then,’ someone says.

‘Apparently Rebecca wasn’t here when the party began.’ Wilcox gestures towards the door itself. ‘I saw her at the college, earlier today. She’s taken up, you know, with that trouble-maker Mathews. I’ve been half in a mind, in the past, to pitch him out. He’s started one of these student action groups. Actually came up, you know, with a signed petition: said he wanted to participate in the planning of next year’s curriculum. Plus, I might tell you, representation on the Board of Governors.’

Leyland’s red head appears, stooping at the door of the library at the rear of the hall; he’s seen me already for he calls into the room behind then comes forward, forcing his way between the crowd.

His pale blue eyes have lighted. He puts out his hand, sees the bandage, and begins to laugh. ‘Not run into a wall, then, have you?’

‘Just about,’ I tell him.

He laughs again.

‘Left hand as well?’

I hold it out.

‘Terrible eye.’

‘Fell down a flight of steps. Damn lucky he wasn’t more seriously injured,’ Wilcox says.

‘Always say: “look where you’re walking nowadays”,’ Leyland says.

‘A damn good motto, if you want my opinion,’ Wilcox says.

‘Enjoy yourself, then,’ Leyland says. He slaps my back. ‘We’ve got the steps out here well lit.’

‘He’ll watch his step here, I’m sure of that, Mr Leyland,’ Wilcox says.

Leyland disappears towards the lounge.

‘Met Leyland,’ Wilcox adds, ‘the other day. He showed me round some of those buildings when Newman himself was called away.’

I see Neville myself a moment later; he’s standing at the door of the library, a cigar in his mouth, talking to Fraser whose broad, bulky back is turned towards me. He glances round, smiling, as Neville points me out; he bows his head, briefly, allowing the look to linger on my face; then, the smile broadening, he turns away.

When I glance back to Wilcox I find he’s disappeared.

I turn back to the bar.

Pettrie, a drink in his hand, is returning to the door.

‘There are quieter conditions,’ he says, ‘upstairs. If you get a chance I’ll meet you there.’

He disappears to the hall outside.

I stand at the bar. I empty another glass; I pick up another. I drain it slowly. I light a cigarette. Through a window directly opposite the bar I can see into the drive outside; other groups are still arriving: lights show up across the green. A phone is ringing somewhere in the house; from the lounge across the hall comes a second roll of drums.

Mathews materializes in the space beside me.

He’s still wearing his American combat-jacket.

‘You’re for it, aren’t you?’

‘Me?’

‘I’ve heard all about it,’ he says, ‘from Bec.’

‘What have you heard?’

‘Enough,’ he tells me.

‘Don’t count your eggs,’ I tell him, ‘before they hatch.’

‘Yours are all cracked,’ he says, ‘if half of what she says is true.’

‘I believe,’ I tell him, ‘in the true democratic processes of the British constitution, emulated and admired throughout the world.’

‘Bollocks to all that,’ he says.

I finish the glass I’ve already started, pick up another and start to empty that.

‘Haven’t you had enough of that?’ he says.

‘I’ve hardly even begun,’ I tell him.

‘Have you got a fag?’

I hold one out.

‘They try and undermine you first by attempting to rouse in you feelings of common decency,’ I tell him. ‘Failing that, they clobber you, if they can, on top of the head. Failing with that, they compromise you, if they can, entirely, by offering you positions not so easily distinguishable from the ones they hold themselves.’ I tap my head. ‘I’ve got it screwed on, you see, all right. The one thing you can refuse them is co-operation, until the whole system, with a bit of luck, collapses of its own volition. I don’t give a sod for any of them, Phil.’

Rebecca appears beside me. I kiss her cheek.

She wears a frilled white blouse; her hair’s been fastened back beneath a ribbon.

‘You’ve not got him plastered,’ she says, ‘already?’

‘I’ve scarcely spoken to him,’ Mathews says.

‘There’s Mummy and Daddy in the other room. They’re about to make the presentation, if you want to come through and see it all,’ she says.

‘What presentation?’ Mathews says.

‘It’s my birthday, darling,’ Rebecca says. She takes his arm.

Glass in hand, I turn to follow them as they move across the hall.

The crowd has thickened.

A gap opens as we reach the lounge; someone begins to clap. The orchestra starts up. There’s a brief fanfare, a roll of drums; the lights in the room go out, replaced by the glare from a single lamp.

Newman and Elizabeth are standing by the fireplace, caught by the light, smiling, looking round; the crowd in the room have begun to sing.

‘Happy Birthday, dear Beccie, Happy Birthday to you.’

Rebecca steps forward into the pool of light.

There’s a round of applause, a cheer; the music from the corner veers off into another fanfare.

Newman, smiling, raising his hand, steps forward.

‘I was just wanting to say thank you,’ he says, ‘to all you good people for coming to our celebration. It was very good of you to find the time.’

There’s a roar of laughter; a cheer; a burst of applause.

‘I know how busy you are.’

Another roar.

‘It was just an informal affair which we thought we’d ask you to participate in. Being, as we are, newcomers to the district, so to speak.’

There’s another burst of applause.

Groves is standing beside me, his pale face even paler in the glare from the single lamp, his dark eyes, if anything, even blacker.

On my other side, his broad shoulder against mine, is Fraser. Mathews, like Wilcox before him, has disappeared.

‘We’re the harbingers, if you like, of history. Certainly of progress. We don’t stay long, unfortunately, in any place; like a fairy godmother, we spread enlightenment on every side.’

‘Here, here,’ comes Wilcox’s voice from across the room.

‘We bring glad tidings of another world, less hidebound, more energetic, more enterprising than the one we’re hoping to replace.’

‘Here, here,’ comes a voice from the door behind.

‘The new town we’re building, we hope, will enhance the old; revitalize it, provide it with a new stimulus; reinforce its old traditions, by, we hope, defining new ones: draw sustenance from it in the same way in which the old town we hope will draw sustenance from the new.’

There’s a burst of applause.

‘I don’t wish to go on making speeches. It’s the first opportunity, however, that Elizabeth and myself have had of meeting all our new friends at one time, and in one particular place; we’d like you all to enjoy yourselves, to have a glimpse of what our home life is like and trust that it’s not too much unlike your own.’

There’s a burst of laughter.

‘And we’d like to take the opportunity, since this is a gathering of friends, to present to our daughter, Rebecca, a little token of our esteem on this, the occasion of her eighteenth birthday.’

He takes his hand from his jacket pocket.

There’s a fanfare from the corner.

He presents Rebecca with a satin-covered box.

There’s a burst of applause, a cheer; Rebecca, red-cheeked, has taken the box; she kisses her mother, kisses Newman, then, to calls from the crowd, she opens the lid.

She gazes inside.

She holds up what appears to be, from across the room, some sort of pendant, a wing-shaped brooch.

There’s a gasp; the spotlight shifts over to a screen at the side of the room: a vast cake, glittering in the light, is revealed to the crowd. There’s a second cheer, a roll of drums.

Rebecca, her arm held by Newman, comes into the light.

She’s presented with a knife.

The next moment there’s a flash of light; the blade is raised, a moment later it’s plunged, heavily, into Newman’s chest.

A stream of blood is ejected across his shirt, the redness glistening against the white. A table’s overturned; a cry, like a groan, has filled the room.

‘My God. There’s been an accident,’ Wilcox says, his voice calling, half-wailing, as if some dietary blunder is being announced.

At least, I endure this sensation for several seconds; when I look again Rebecca is pressing the knife into the top of the cake: she eases it down. There’s a flash of light.

She cuts the cake. There’s a burst of applause.

The lights come on.

There are several cheers.

A dance tune recommences in the corner of the room.

Food is being served from a table by the door. I take another drink from a passing tray.

‘I hear you’ve had an accident.’ Fraser smiles.

‘I’m amazed at the interest it’s aroused,’ I say.

‘We’ve so little to entertain us with round here, that an accident like that,’ he says, ‘despite its seeming triviality, inevitably stands out.’

‘Maybe this’ll stand out, too,’ I say.

I hit him on the nose; from all around me come screams and shouts.

I hit Fraser so hard with my other hand that I can hear his teeth break up inside his mouth. I hit him once again, feel more stitches come apart, and continue to the door.

There’s something like a space around me; there’s a figure I fail to recognize; then someone, with a shout, has caught my arm: there are lines of feet. There’s a rush of air. A fist comes down.

A blackness, darker than the night, descends.

We’re sitting in a car. Elizabeth, a coat wrapped round her shoulders, is sitting beside me. Her gaze, aloof, remote, is fixed on some point in the road ahead.

Only as I open my eyes a little further do I see that she’s sitting directly behind the chauffeur; her head is silhouetted against the light from the headlamps of the car.

‘Are you all right?’ she says.

I’m covered in blood. I can feel it on my hands and round my cheek.

‘Where are we?’

‘We’re going to Eddie’s place. He’s gone ahead.’

‘What time is it?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

The chauffeur stirs.

‘It’s just after twelve, Mrs Newman,’ he says.

I lie back in the seat for a while.

‘Do you want a cigarette?’ she says.

She gets one from her bag; there’s the click of her lighter.

‘What happened at the house?’ I say.

‘I should just lie there,’ she says, ‘and rest.’

‘Is Rebecca all right?’

‘Of course she’s all right. She’s gone with Eddie.’

The car gives a lurch.

‘A fox. Or a badger,’ the chauffeur says. ‘This road is full of them,’ he adds, ‘at night.’

I pour out a cloud of smoke; my head has cleared.

‘I should, by all rights, I suppose, have seen a doctor.’

‘Eddie’s calling his,’ she says.

Her voice is hard, discordant; it’s as if, seconds before, she might have been shouting. Her hair, mounted above her head earlier in the evening, has been allowed to fall down around her face.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ She glances down.

‘I feel I’ve had my arms torn out.’

‘Put your head against this,’ she says.

She lowers her arm.

My head, a moment later, is cushioned by her breast.

Seconds later, it seems, the door has opened.

There’s a light outside; a glimpse of trees, a pebbled drive: a white, nail-studded door is slowly opened.

We cross a white, monastic-looking hall. A panelled door swings back. I catch a glimpse of Rebecca’s face, then Pettrie’s; then an older, bearded face is gazing down. My eye-lid’s lifted; a hand taps at my fingers. Darkness follows. There’s the sound of birds.

‘Honestly, if you hadn’t have been brought here you might have been arrested.’

‘He would have been arrested,’ Elizabeth says. She and Rebecca are sitting on the bed. The walls of the room I’m in are painted white. A window looks out onto a leafless tree. Beside the door is a wooden cabinet; porcelain figures, dancers in crinolines and men in breeches, stand on top. Immediately above it hangs a picture: a house, long and flat, glimpsed distantly at the summit of a hill.

‘Phil,’ Rebecca says, ‘got hit as well.’

‘I asked Mr Wilcox,’ Elizabeth says, ‘to take him home.’

‘I bet he was pleased at that,’ I say.

‘He had no choice, I’m afraid,’ she says.

‘What happened to Neville while all this was going on?’ I say.

Elizabeth, her eyes shielded by dark glasses, glances at her daughter.

Rebecca gets up.

‘I’ll leave Mummy to explain all that,’ she says.

She crosses to the door.

‘I’ll have to go into college, in any case. Eddie’s taking me in. I’ll see how Daddy is when I call tonight.’

The door is closed.

The room is tall; the shadow of the tree outside falls in a strangely tremulous pattern across the wall. It agitates the figures of the dancers, and the picture of the house above their heads.

Elizabeth is dressed as she was the night before: her arms are bare: there are four faint bruises beneath her lip.

‘Neville called the police,’ she says. ‘Or said he did. Whether they arrived or not I’ve no idea.’

‘What happened to the boy?’ I say.

‘He tried to join in. He jumped on Fraser’s back.’

She leans over the side of the bed and opens her bag; she gets out a lighter and finds a cigarette.

She gets out another; she lights them both.

I get up from the bed.

‘Your finger needs resetting. Perhaps both of them. I’ve to take you in to the hospital. Eddie’s doctor called last night.’

I take the cigarette.

I climb out from the bed. My right hand, it seems, I’m unable to use.

I go over to the window.

The pebbled driveway of the night before I now see as a narrow, rutted track winding off between clumps of trees to what, in the distance, looks like a tall stone wall; there’s a pebbled courtyard immediately below, a small pond between the courtyard and the nearest clump of trees and, beyond a wooden fence, a system of hedged fields stretching away to a line of hills, their summits at the moment lost in wreaths of mist.

‘What’s happened to Neville?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Did he call last night?’

She shakes her head.

‘What happened,’ I ask her, ‘when we left the house?’

‘We had a row.’

‘With everyone there?’

‘I was standing in the drive; Neville was at a window. He came out onto the porch when they got you on the lawn. I must have gone berserk.’

She removes the glasses.

‘I put these on while Eddie was here.’

Her eyes are swollen. She gets out a handkerchief. She holds it in her hand.

‘Shouldn’t you go back home?’

‘I suppose I should.’

‘I’ll get a bus to town,’ I say.

‘You won’t from here. We’re miles from anywhere. That’s why we came.’

‘Have we got a car?’

She looks at her watch.

‘They’re sending one from town. It’ll take an hour.’

The fingers of my right hand are blue and swollen, the knuckles disjointed. The strapping on my ribs has been renewed.

I can see my face reflected in the window; my nose is swollen; cuts have re-opened above my eyes and nose.

‘Does Neville know we’re here?’

‘I suppose he must.’

‘Who got me to the car?’

‘Bennings did, I suppose,’ she says.

‘What happened to Groves?’

‘He was lying in the hall.’

‘What happened to Fraser?’

‘He was lying on the lawn.’

‘Did you see what happened?’

‘Not all of it.’ She wipes her eyes. ‘What started it off, in any case?’ she says.

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Do you imagine these provocations,’ she says, ‘or are they real?’

She waits.

‘Most of them are real.’

‘You only have one reaction to anything,’ she says.

‘It’s more honest, I suppose, than most.’

‘I’m not so sure.’

She gets up from the bed.

‘I think I’ll have a wash. I’ve been talking to Eddie half the night. There’s a woman downstairs, called Mrs Bowen. She’ll get you anything you want.’

She goes to the door.

‘When the car arrives,’ she says, ‘I’ll let you know.’

The door is closed.

The house is silent.

My clothes are folded on a chair beside the bed. The shirt and the coat are covered in blood. The trousers, when I pull them on, I find, are torn. My tie has disappeared.

There’s blood on my shoes; there’s blood, too, I notice on the bed.

I pull on my shirt; I go to the door.

Outside, a broad, white-walled corridor with a bare wooden floor runs down to a landing; from the banister rail I gaze down to the hall; there’s a wooden table, a wooden bench, long and narrow, in the centre of the floor: there’s the inside, too, of the metal-studded door. Other doors open off on either side.

Plates and cups and saucers have been set out on the table; a woman in a white overall is clearing some of them away.

She glances up.

‘Is there anything I can get you, sir?’ she says.

‘I’m looking for the bath,’ I say.

‘It’s the second door along.’

She turns back to the table.

I go back up the corridor towards the room.

The second door is already open; there’s a bath inside, a shower.

I’m standing under the shower a moment later when Neville appears inside the door.

He stands there a moment, dark-eyed, then says, ‘I’ll see you downstairs as soon as you’ve finished.’

I begin to laugh.

My arms have begun to shake.

He’s dressed in a dark blue suit; he has a clean white collar; there’s a white handkerchief showing out of the breast-pocket of his jacket.

I step out from the shower and begin to dress.

When I go down to the landing I see Groves and Leyland and Fraser waiting in the hall. There are two men I’ve never seen before standing by the door: they both wear suits, one with a flower in his button-hole, the other with a handkerchief sticking from his pocket.

I go down the stairs and fasten my shirt.

I pull on my coat as I reach the hall itself.

Neville is sitting at the table; the others stand around the room. The woman in the white overall has gone.

Neville’s hair is neatly combed; the light, which comes from windows high in the walls, shines, glistening, along the parting. His hands, small, neat-fingered, he rests before him on the table.

‘We weren’t expecting you,’ I say.

‘That’s all right.’

He points to the cups.

‘Do you fancy some coffee?’

‘I wouldn’t mind.’

‘We’ve had some already,’ he says. He adds, ‘You must help yourself.’

Leyland has taken a seat against the wall. His eyes seem almost luminous, brilliant beneath the redness of his hair, his skin, if anything, even paler now than that of Groves.

Fraser has one eye closed; maybe I’d been mistaken about his teeth; he doesn’t smile.

Groves, apart from a small bruise on his cheek, appears unmarked.

I pour out some coffee from a metal jug.

The two men by the door have moved over to the table. One of them, perhaps, I recognize; a vague impression of a face I’ve glimpsed in the unlit yard at the back of the college.

‘Elizabeth’s upstairs,’ I say.

‘That’s all right,’ he says. He nods his head.

‘There’s a car coming shortly. She’s taking me to the hospital.’ I hold up my hand. ‘My eye needs some attention, too,’ I add.

‘We wondered,’ he says, ‘if you wanted a job.’

‘What doing?’

‘We normally have an adviser to our architect,’ he says. He unfolds his hands. ‘Usually it’s an artist of some repute. Though it’s not essential, if we feel, for instance, that his temperament is right.’

‘I have a job,’ I say ‘at present.’

‘I think, when you get to work,’ he says, ‘you’ll find you haven’t.’

He’s begun to smile.

‘Do I get your wife as well?’ I ask.

The smile has faded.

‘I should just knock his teeth in,’ Leyland says.

He comes over from the wall; he sits down at the table.

Fraser, too, has come over to the bench, easing himself down at the opposite end.

‘My wife herself,’ he says, ‘will have to answer that.’

He looks to the banistered landing overhead.

Elizabeth, evidently, is standing there.

One hand on the banister, she comes slowly down the stairs.

‘I shouldn’t take his job,’ she says.

She comes over to the table.

‘He’s no intention of giving you one, in any case,’ she adds.

I begin to laugh.

I see her eyes, grey, hooded, almost invisible, the strands of hair: Neville has caught her arm; he gets up from the table, pushing her back.

‘Are you ready, Elizabeth?’ he says. ‘We’re about to leave.’

She doesn’t answer. Leyland has begun to laugh; Fraser smiles: one of his teeth, at the front, is missing.

‘Do you really want her?’ Neville says. He looks across. ‘Is she worth all the effort you’ve been putting in? She isn’t to me,’ he says. ‘I can tell you that.’

The others, it seems, have scarcely moved.

It’s like some familiar routine; Leyland, as if reassured, has begun to tap his fingers against the table.

Groves, expressionless, still stands against the wall. He has a bandage, I notice, on one of his hands.

The man with the flower in his button-hole has a broken nose; the other one, with the handkerchief, has cauliflower ears. His hands are bruised. There’s a recently healed cut above one eye.

Elizabeth turns back to the table; she begins to cry.

Neville, as if antagonized, with an almost boyish alarm, hits her suddenly on the side of the head.

As I get up from the bench I find, suddenly, I’m being held down.

I begin to shout.

He hits her with his fist. He hits her then with the back of his hand. She falls on her knees. He lifts her head and hits her once again. She begins to scream. Leyland and Fraser have begun to smile.

She lies on the floor. I get up from the bench.

‘Don’t move,’ someone says, ‘you’ll be all right.’

Elizabeth, swaying, has climbed back to her feet.

‘Get in the car,’ Neville says. She shakes her head. ‘Get in the car,’ he says. ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’

A moment later, moaning, she moves over to the door.

Groves, it seems, has opened it for her; his black eyes, briefly, glance towards the room.

He follows her out.

‘Do you want the job, then?’ Neville says.

‘No,’ I say. I shake my head.

He begins to smile.

‘That’s why I thought I’d take the precaution of removing you from the other one,’ he says. ‘You’ll not work round here,’ he adds, ‘again.’

He buttons his coat.

‘I don’t suppose we’ll meet again.’

He nods his head towards the door.

I sit at the table. I don’t look up.

The man with the button-hole is the last to leave.

There’s the sound of car engines starting up in the drive outside.

The engines fade.

The woman in the white smock has appeared at one of the doors.

‘Will there be anything else?’ she says.

I lean on the table. I shake my head.

‘If there’s nothing else, then,’ she says, ‘I’ll clear the table.’

‘Did you hear all that?’ I ask her as she comes across.

‘No, sir,’ she says. ‘I was in the kitchen.’

I get out a cigarette; I begin to laugh.

‘I’ll call you when the car arrives,’ she adds.

I get up after she’s gone and wander round.

I look in the other rooms; there’s a library with other porcelain figures mounted on the shelves; a window, sheathed in curtains, looks out across hedged fields to a mansion on a hill.

In a field immediately below the house groups of figures are running to and fro: pitches have been marked out and posts set up.

Pettrie, when I turn round is standing in the door.

He folds back his hair, slowly; then, with two dogs at his heels, he steps inside the room.

‘I thought I’d come back,’ he says. He gestures behind him. ‘I saw them on the road. I dropped Beccie off,’ he adds, ‘at the college.’

He strokes the dogs.

‘Did anything happen?’

‘Elizabeth left.’

‘I thought she would.’

‘It’s a regular circus.’

‘They’re very odd.’

He crosses to the window.

‘I’ll drive you to the hospital. We needn’t wait for the car. ‘I’ll leave a message with Mrs Bowen.’

‘I’d appreciate a lift,’ I say.

‘Would you like a drink,’ he says, ‘before you go?’

‘I wouldn’t mind.’

‘I’ll get you one,’ he says. ‘I shan’t be a minute.’

The dogs stay in the room. They’re both retrievers, perhaps relatives of the ones the Newmans have.

He comes back in with a half-full glass.

‘I shouldn’t have more,’ he says.

I drink it off.

‘You might run out, you mean?’ I tell him.

He laughs.

‘I’m thinking of last night,’ he says.

He gestures to the window.

‘That’s the family house. Or was. It’s run now as a teacher’s college.’

He indicates the figures, running to and fro in the field below.

‘The one we’re in now’s the dower-house,’ he adds. ‘If you ever have time, I’ll show you round.’

He runs his hand across his head.

‘I suppose we better get off,’ he says.

A car with a folding hood is waiting in the drive outside. In its general proportions it’s not unlike Wilcox’s vintage Armstrong Siddeley.

He opens the door; as I climb inside he gestures at the house.

Low, one-storeyed, it stands in the shadow of several trees; dark branches are coiled above its broad-angled roof. It reminds me of the Newman’s house. Its yellow stone-work has begun to crumble. A single flight of steps runs up to the metal-studded door; white-painted sash-windows are arranged in pairs on either side.

The dogs have followed us to the car; Pettrie calls out as the white-overalled figure of his housekeeper appears at the door.

The dogs run back towards the house.

We turn to the drive; I can see the house more clearly as we reach the trees; it’s like a massive boulder, pale, symmetrical, a quaint facsimile of the larger mansion on the hill above.

The white figure at the porch, with the two dogs, has disappeared.

‘Did Neville say anything to you?’ Pettrie says.

I shake my head.

‘He offered me a job.’

He begins to laugh.

We reach a pair of gates; there’s a coat-of-arms mounted on a plinth on top of each of the posts: I catch a glimpse, in relief, of a bear, standing upright: to its left are grouped three feathers.

‘Did he say what it was?’

‘A consultant. In a wholly artistic capacity of course,’ I add.

He laughs again.

The car, having passed between the gates, turns into a walled lane the other side.

The walls, after a while, give way to hedges. I catch a distant view of the house on the hill, the glitter of its windows, a vague impression of jerseyed figures running to and fro in the field below.

Pettrie’s hands are long and thin, the knuckles crested white as he grips the wheel.

‘Will you be seeing Elizabeth again?’ he says.

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Did he beat her up?’

‘Has he done it before?’ I say.

‘It’s the one thing, it seems, that keeps them going. That and the provocation necessary, preceding it,’ he says.

He concentrates for a moment on the road ahead.

It runs along the bed of a shallow valley. Low, pine-covered hills have appeared on either side; we pass through a village of low, stone, terraced houses: a larger house stands back from the road amidst a clump of trees; an asphalt drive leads up towards it.

The road dips down; it crosses a stream.

Further on we reach a junction.

A lorry lies on its side; one of its wheels is still revolving; men with shovels and a hosepipe signal us past. There’s a van with a flashing light. The front of the lorry has embedded itself in the trunk of a tree. Pieces of glass are strewn across the road.

Further on, parked in a lay-by, is the Newmans’ Bentley. The upper half of it has disappeared. We’re almost past it before Pettrie, seeing it, calls out.

He turns into the side of the road and stops the engine.

‘My God: I believe that’s Neville’s car,’ he says.

He doesn’t look back.

‘I came the other way,’ he adds. ‘It’s quicker. If I’d come back this way I might have seen it.’

He seems more concerned with this than anything else.

I open the door, climb out, make sure that he’s no intention of following, then walk back along the verge towards the wreck.

The seat at the front is spattered with blood; blood runs, too, in a great gash across the bonnet.

A policeman comes across from the direction of the lorry.

‘Would you mind,’ he tells me, ‘moving on.’

‘Was anyone injured? They were friends of mine.’ I indicate the car.

‘The driver of the lorry’s been killed. And one occupant of the car,’ he says, ‘is seriously injured.’

‘Which one was it?’

‘Do you mind giving me your name?’ he says.

He writes it down.

Pettrie, when I glance back, is still sitting in the car, his gaze still fixed on the road ahead.

‘It was a gentleman, sir,’ the policeman says.

‘Do you have his name?’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t. You could get it at the station,’ he tells me, ‘when I send in my report.’

I glance back down the road.

‘What happened to the rest of them?’ I ask.

‘They drove on to town, sir, in another car.’

He waits.

I look down at his pad.

‘Between ourselves, it’s the chauffeur in the car who’s injured. The rest of the occupants, I’m glad to say, appear to be unhurt.’

I go back down to Pettrie.

‘Is anybody hurt?’ he says.

‘The driver of the lorry,’ I tell him.

‘Seriously?’

‘Dead,’ I tell him.

He nods his head.

He adds nothing further.

I get back in the car.

We drive in silence.

The traffic, after a while, begins to thicken. The first buildings of the town appear.

‘It’s always the innocent with them,’ he says, ‘who suffer. That’s why, in the past, I’ve been so keen on protecting Bec.’

‘Is she innocent?’ I ask.

‘I think she is,’ he says.

He adds nothing further.

On the far horizon the cathedral spire appears; the road dips down towards the valley: the town, like a mound of rock, rears up, strangely inhospitable, on the opposite side.

We cross the river.

He drops me off at the hospital gates.

‘If there’s anything I can do,’ he says, ‘you must let me know,’ but seems in no mood to wait for any answer.

I watch the car move off, then, scarcely aware of anything any longer, I turn up the drive to the hospital door.