I
A DECLARATION OF WAR

“SO, HOW’S IT GOING?” Wexton called through the open door of his kitchenette. “Are you advancing or are you stalled?”

I could hear the sounds of cans being opened; an electric toaster popped. Wexton was preparing supper for me from his much-loved hoard of convenience foods. Wexton’s kitchen gods were Heinz and Campbell; he never ceased to be delighted and surprised by the glories that came in cans. What would it be tonight? Oxtail soup, with a dash of sherry, or corned-beef hash with Worcestershire sauce, or would it be that favorite of his, a concoction dating back to the days of rationing, involving ketchup and toasted cheese and known as a Blushing Bunny? Whatever it would be, Wexton had one inviolable rule: No one was allowed to watch when he was cooking.

“I’m not sure,” I called back through the door. “Running very fast on the spot, I think. The appraiser from Sotheby’s came yesterday. I saw the estate agents today. So I suppose I’m making progress. But, Wexton, there’s so much stuff—”

“Damnation.” Wexton gave an anguished cry. A smell of burning toast filled the air. There was the sound of a toaster being punched. I knew better than to interfere in Wexton’s love-hate relationship with his toaster. I moved away to the window, maneuvering through piles of newspaper clippings and books.

Wexton, the least violent of men, seemed to have his mind on violence: All these clippings concerned the violent events of the past violent year. The war in Vietnam, the civil war in Nigeria, assassinations in America, potbellied Biafran children in an advanced state of starvation. Wexton’s quiet and donnish room was stacked with the evidence of man’s current inhumanity to man.

Leaning against the window, I looked out. The view was tranquil; it gave the illusion time could stop. Apart from the presence of motorcars, it was a view that had changed little in two hundred years. The old streetlamps had been retained; the Queen Anne and Georgian houses, much prized, were carefully restored. This street (the reason it was prized, I suppose) resisted the twentieth century.

I could just see the church at the end of the street, and the trees that flanked the south side of the old Hampstead cemetery. Wexton liked to live near graveyards, or so he said. He liked to read old tombstones. This graveyard was his favorite in London; he visited it every day when he took what he would describe as his morning constitutional.

Out of his house, along Church Row, up past the graveyard with its urns and graceful sepulchers, through the warren of small lanes and passageways to the top of Holly Hill, from where he would descend to the village shops, to stare lovingly at the soup cans in the grocer’s.

This daily progress of his, reported once in a Sunday newspaper, was now celebrated. It attracted fans. They would lurk in Church Row, waiting for the famous poet to emerge, adjust his battered hat, lift his great lined face to the sky, and sniff the morning air.

Wexton-spotters. The previous day, apparently, one had asked for his autograph. It was the first time this had ever happened.

“Did you give it to him, Wexton?”

“It was a her. She was wearing a long velvet dress, Indian beads, and a peace badge. Sure, I gave her an autograph. I wrote, ‘All the best, Tom Eliot.’ She was delighted.”

I picked up a book from the top of the pile next to me. Perhaps Wexton’s mind ran on Eliot as well as violence, for it was a dog-eared copy of The Waste Land. I read the lines about Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant, with her wicked pack of cards. I will show you fear in a handful of dust. I put the book down. I had not yet told Wexton how I had spent the past week at Winterscombe. Or about Constance’s journals.

“Deviled sardines. On toast. Unburnt toast.” Wexton advanced, with a tray.

Between us we managed to clear enough space among books and clippings to put the tray down. We balanced our plates on our knees, sat in front of Wexton’s fire—he liked coal fires—and munched. The room was peaceful and companionable; the sardines were peppery and excellent. Wexton, who surely knew I was keeping something back—he always did—steered the conversation within careful boundaries.

“So. Tell me about the appraiser,” he said, still munching.

“He likes the Victorian furniture. The Pugin chairs, and that Philip Webb painted cabinet. When he saw the William Morris hangings he went into a rapture. His name’s Tristram.”

“Wow,” said Wexton.

“That’s nothing. The real-estate agent is called Gervase. Gervase Garstang-Nott.”

“Does he have raptures too?”

“Not noticeably. Think laid-back. In fact, think horizontal. Think if-it-was-Blenheim-I-might-just-get-interested.”

“As bad as that?”

“Worse, really. Nothing but negatives. Wrong date—everyone wants Queen Anne. Too far from London. Too far from the station. Too big—only institutions want houses with twenty-five bedrooms, apparently, and institutions won’t spend money. A nibble when I mentioned the woods—because the timber might be worth something. A flicker when we got around to the acreage—if planning permission could be obtained to build. He’s coming down next week. He made it sound as if that were a great favor.”

Wexton gave me a keen glance.

“Depressing?”

“Yes. I suppose it was. I don’t want the woods cut down. They’re beautiful. I don’t want to see houses on all the fields. Maybe that’s selfish, but I don’t. And I’d have liked someone to want the house. Barring an eccentric millionaire, apparently that’s not very likely. I know it’s large, Wexton. I know it’s Edwardian. I know it’s dilapidated. But I love it. I think of all the care that went into it, all the things that happened there—” I stopped. “Anyway. What I feel is irrelevant. Other people don’t feel that way, it seems. Either I’m blindly biased or there’s something wrong with me.”

“Have some ice cream.” Wexton rose. “It’s a new brand I discovered. American. We can have it with cherries. Tinned cherries. They’re really pretty good.”

“I don’t think I could eat anything else, Wexton. This was lovely. Sorry.”

“Okay.” Wexton sat down again. He hunched over in his chair. “Look,” he said at last. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really wrong?”

I told him. At least, I told him some of it. I explained about the chaos Steenie had left behind, the boxes and trunks, the family papers, the bundles of letters, journals, photograph albums—all that fallout from the past. I did not tell him about Constance’s journals. I almost did but, in the end, held back.

Wexton would not have approved of those journals. He might have told me to get rid of them, burn them—and it might have been sound advice. There were things in those journals, especially those written by Constance’s father, that sickened me, and to which I had no wish to return. There were other things that, placed side by side with other evidence still in the house, both alarmed and intrigued me. It was like an addiction, this investigation of the past—I could already see that. The past gave me a fix.

Perhaps that was why I was secretive—and with Wexton, of all people. Wexton, with whom I was always frank. As an alcoholic might hide bottles, I hid the fact of those journals. That way it was easier: I could pretend I did not need them, that I wouldn’t take another drink. I’m quite sure Wexton knew I was being evasive; always careful of others’ reticence, he did not prompt. I felt ashamed. I loved Wexton, and with those you love, evasion is as bad as a lie.

“It … muddles me, I suppose, Wexton,” I finished. “There the past is. I thought I knew it, and I find I don’t. I recognize the places, but I don’t recognize the events. They sound so different now, not the way I remember people telling them at all. And I don’t recognize the people, either—that’s the worst part. Aunt Maud, Uncle Freddie … well, maybe I recognize them. But Jenna. My father and mother…. They’re different, Wexton. And it hurts.”

“That’s predictable, you know,” he said quietly.

“I know it is. It’s predictable, and stupid—I know that. Obviously they’re different. Obviously they had lives before I ever knew them, and they grew up and changed….” I hesitated. “But now I feel as if I never knew them at all, as if all my own memories were false. I suppose that’s it. I want them back.”

“Then stop. You don’t have to read all that stuff. All right, you don’t want to junk it. Okay. But you can just pack it away. Look at it some other time. When you’re older, maybe—”

“Oh, come on, Wexton. I’m almost thirty-eight. If I can’t cope with it now, when can I? Besides … I can’t explain. The moment feels right.”

“I guess it is right then. Trust your instincts.” Wexton looked at his hands. “You’re following some chronology? How far have you got?”

“Oh, ’round about the first war. No. Not as far as the war. Just before: 1910, 1912. I’m not being too meticulous—just trying to put things in some kind of order. When Constance first went to live at Winterscombe, her father’s death—there’s a lot about that.”

“Before my time. I was still in America then.”

“But you heard about it, Wexton? I mean, Steenie must have talked about it, or my parents. About Constance and her father and the … accident he had. They must have talked about that?”

“Maybe. I don’t remember too well. Why not ask Freddie? After all, he was there.”

“I can’t. He’s away. His annual expedition. He was thinking about Peru, but in the end they settled for Tibet.”

Wexton smiled. My uncle Freddie’s annual excursions to the more remote parts of the globe delighted Wexton; he found them, as I did, impressive. Also comical.

“May I make a suggestion?” Wexton, still hunched in his chair, gave me a considering look.

“Of course, Wexton. I know I’m floundering about. Maybe you’re right and I ought to stop.”

“I didn’t say you should stop. I said you could stop. Why not take a look at the war years?”

“The First World War, you mean?”

“It might be an idea.” He shrugged. He made a church steeple of his fingers. “Maybe the problems you’re having—not recognizing people you thought you knew—well, why not think of it as a generation gap? You see, you weren’t yet nine when the last war began. You spent the war years in America. But if you’d been, say, five years older, if you’d been in London at the time of the Blitz, it would have left its mark on you. Take anyone who fought in that war—it doesn’t matter what nationality; they could be Russian, American, British, Australian, German, Polish—they still have a common ground, a common experience. They can be difficult to understand, if you don’t share that.”

“And the first war was the same, you mean?”

“Of course. That war above all. It marked all of us. Your grandparents, your uncles, your father and your mother—especially them, I think. Even … even Constance.”

I turned back to the window. I was surprised Wexton should mention that name. I also knew he might be right. I could already see it was to war that these journals were leading. War was one of Constance’s favorite words, although when she used it, it often had no connection with politics or with military matters. I turned back to Wexton uncertainly.

“How do I look at the war, Wexton? The letters from the front line—is that what you mean?”

“No. Not exactly.” Wexton answered me quietly. He looked abstracted, distant, as if his mind were far away from this room, from me. There was a long silence; then he seemed to rouse himself. He stood and put an arm around my shoulders.

“You’re tired. I can see all this has upset you. Don’t listen to me. I’m getting old—and I’m probably barking up the wrong tree. I’ve got war on my mind at the moment—that’s probably it.” He waved his hand at the piles of newspaper clippings.

“The thing is, I’ve never been to these places. Africa. Southeast Asia. But that’s not the point. It’s not the terrain that interests me, or the politics or the weaponry. I’m not writing about napalm. The journalists do that better than I ever could, and when they’ve finished, the historians can take over. No, it’s not that. I wanted to write about—”

He stopped, in the middle of his sitting room. Wexton rarely discussed his own poetry; when he did so, it always made him first agitated, then self-deprecating, then gloomy. His manner was never that of the sage. He resembled someone trying to explain a particularly abstruse knitting pattern.

“I wanted to write … about war as a state of mind. Yes, I think that’s it. It does exist. I’ve seen it. Soldiers—they have to be trained to attain it. But other people reach it as well. Some are born with it, perhaps. People who’ve never carried a gun. People who’ve never been near a front line. It’s inside us all, waiting. Bayonets in the brain. That’s what I wanted to write about … I think.”

His face fell. The creases and crevasses rearranged themselves into mournful folds.

“I even finished it. Yesterday. The first part of it. Of course it was no good at all. When I looked at it this morning, I could see—it was embarrassing. Dishwater verse.”

“What did you do with it, Wexton?” I asked him gently.

“Tore it up,” he said. “What else?”

I knew Wexton, I knew his hints, and I respected them. Wexton rarely gave advice. If he did so, it was usually astute. The more casual and dismissive his manner when he made a suggestion, the better it was likely to be.

When I returned to Winterscombe, and returned to the past, I opened Constance’s journals at my uncle Freddie’s nineteenth birthday, the day war was declared.

I was camped in a corner of the drawing room. In the rooms beyond, Tristram Knollys and his team of assistants were embarking on an inventory. They were making lists: every painting, every rug, every piece of furniture. Constance, too, made lists that day, but her lists were very different.

This is what she wrote:

August 4, 1914

How good to begin a new book, on a new clean page. Do you see, Papa I have found some journals exactly like yours! The same size, the same paper, the same covers. I was so happy to find them! I wanted them to match.

It is so very hot again today. Francis measures the temperature every morning. I am helping him to keep a chart. At eight o’clock it was seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit, imagine that! I put the mark in, and joined up the graph. It looks like mountains. It looks like the Himalayas. Up and up and up. So hot. And the house is full of that hot word ‘war’, so I ran away here, to the birch-grove to write. It is cool under the trees. Floss is licking my leg. Acland used to meet Jenna here, but now he is changed, and they do not meet, not here, not anywhere. I am interested—a little interested—in that.

Now, shall I make my list, Papa—the one I promised you? Here it is. The ones on the left had a motive, and the ones on the right had the means.

Denton	(jealousy)	Denton
Gwen	(guilt)	Cattermole
Francis	(if he knew)	Hennessy
Acland	(he did—hate)	Acland
Jack Hennessy	(jealousy—not of you)	Francis
Gipsies	(a mistake)	Gipsies???

There. Does that help? Please tell me, Papa, what you think.

Today, on the way here, Floss and I found a hedge-sparrow nest. There were seven eggs, of the most beautiful hue. They were as blue as your eyes, Papa, and no bird to sit on them. Floss said the nest was abandoned.

Abandoned is a good word. It has two meanings. You would like that. Some words have three, and a very few have four. Maybe I will make lists of them too. Would you like that?

It is very quiet here. The bushes are stealthy. Oh, Floss is beginning to growl. He says, Be careful, Constance. Stop now. Someone is watching.

Acland paused, just beyond the gazebo. Through the trees he could see a patch of blue. He hesitated, then walked a few paces farther forward. There, in the center of the birch grove, her back against a silver tree trunk, sat Constance. Floss was with her, stretched out at her feet. Constance’s attitude was one of concentration, her dark head bent toward her lap.

Acland took another step forward, a quiet one. She was writing, he saw, writing in a slow and painstaking way, as if completing a lesson. Every so often she would break off, stroke Floss in an absentminded way, then continue. She wrote in a notebook, he saw—a notebook with a black cover.

She seemed absorbed. Even when his foot cracked a small dry branch, and the dog’s ears pricked, Constance did not look up.

Acland was fascinated by Constance. Sometimes he resented this. He liked to watch her (especially if she did not know she was being observed); he liked watching her as a child likes to look down the tube of a kaleidoscope. He liked to see her patterns shift, re-form, and scintillate; he liked the patterns for their brilliant hues and their complexity. They tricked his eye with their iridescence, so that each pattern seemed new and never repeated. There must be a finite number of these patterns, but the speed and the dazzle with which they altered and re-formed pleased him; he preferred to believe they were infinite, and infinitely arbitrary.

Acland knew about kaleidoscopes; he had been given one as a child. Once, in an effort to resolve its mysteries, he had taken it apart. He had been left with a cardboard tube and a handful of glittering particles, mixed together in his palm, the colors muddied. All the variety and contradiction were gone. He had learned his lesson. Constance fascinated, he told himself, precisely because he watched, and from a safe distance at that; he did not intend to investigate further.

In four years Constance was greatly changed. The fact that Gwen now chose her clothes, and Jenna—now Constance’s maid—tended both her clothes and her unruly hair, had made a difference, of course. But the chief change was one Constance had wrought: She was then, as Acland watched her, in the process of inventing herself.

Later, when she had herself down to a fine art, Acland would still admire her, for the defiance and the energy of her artistry. But in some ways he admired her more when she was younger, still rough around the edges, as she was then, in 1914. Constance’s energy, always formidable, was then as tangible as a force field. She bristled with it—so much so that Acland sometimes felt that if he put out his hand and held it above her hair, his hand would tingle with static electricity.

She was small, fierce, unpredictable, and quick. Her face had the natural plasticity of the actress: She could look as sad as a clown one second, as imperious as a dowager the next. Everything about her seemed to fly off from some center of energy; her hair, which Jenna brushed religiously and tried to tame, had a will of its own. Constance was still too young to wear it up, and so it tumbled and snaked across her shoulders and her thin back—black, thick, resilient hair, as coarse and abundant as a horse’s mane. Gwen despaired of this hair, which she felt in a vague way was impolite. It made Constance, even when on her best drawing-room behavior, look like a Gypsy.

Constance never learned to be sedate and ladylike: If she could cross her legs, she would; if she could squat on the floor, she would; if she could run, she would. All the time—running, sitting, standing, talking—her hands moved. Constance had small hands; they gestured and spoke, and—since Constance had a magpie fondness for small bright pieces of jewelry—they glittered, for she wore too many rings, jamming them on her fingers with a carelessness Gwen found vexing. Gwen once examined these rings and found a valuable ring, of chaste design, given by herself, on the very next finger to a trumpery affair that had come from a Christmas cracker.

Constance could not resist such things; she could not resist bright colors. It occurred to Acland, as he watched her through the trees, that he had never seen Constance wear muted shades or pastels. Her dresses were as bright, and often as clashing, as the feathers of a hummingbird’s wings: scarlet, fuchsia pink, an electric shade of violet, marigold yellow, an iridescent blue so bright it bruised the eyes—these were the colors Constance loved, and the dresses she cajoled from Gwen. When she had them, she would preen in them; then, surreptitiously, day by day, she would trick them out until they were more garish still. A fragment of lace, sequins, a bright square of embroidery, a diamante buckle on an otherwise irreproachable shoe; Gwen would sigh, and give in. She could see that, however much she disapproved, these things suited Constance. She took oddities and scraps and excesses, and out of them fashioned herself: a quick, bright thing of contradictions. Look at me, said this creature: I divert! You cannot tame me! Watch me—look how I sparkle when I dance!

That day, in the birch grove, Constance wore a dress of blue material, acid as prussic crystals. It had begun life plain but was now adorned by a zigzag line of scarlet picot trimming, which marched around her tiny waist and navigated the now-discernible peaks of her breasts. Acland, looking at this trimming, wondered if its disposition—and the attention it drew to Constance’s figure—was accidental. He decided it was not. Constance might be many things; she was not an innocent. She was, that day, tranquil—and that was unusual. She wrote, paused, wrote again. Occasionally she would break off from her writing to stroke Floss.

Floss, given her by Boy, was the first of Constance’s dogs: a pretty thing, a small tricolored King Charles spaniel with an impudent air and a tail as smart as a feather. He had an inexhaustible appetite for affection; he encouraged Constance’s strokes and pats unashamedly. After a while, he rolled over on his back and offered her his stomach, but he did so in a lazy way, as if he were a potentate and Constance was just another useful hand from the harem.

To his own surprise, Acland was touched by this vision. Those who do not know they are watched are always, in some way, defenseless. Constance’s defenses were usually thick and impenetrable—she had discovered, Acland suspected, that charm was a better barrier than the sullenness she had displayed as a child. Now, because she did not see him and therefore made no attempt to tease, provoke, challenge, or please, as she usually did, Acland felt drawn to her.

She looked like a child, although she was close to fifteen, almost a woman. She looked sad and studious and lonely, this girl with her dog and her notebook and her pencil. What did she write?

Acland was about to step forward when Constance, closing the notebook, looked up.

“Oh, Acland,” she said. “You startled me.”

“You looked busy.” Acland approached, then stretched out full-length on the grass, as he liked to do. He felt the sun on his face; he levered himself up onto one elbow and looked at her.

Constance had curious eyes: They were large, a little slanted toward the corners, and their color was indeterminate; sometimes Acland thought they were navy-blue, sometimes a very dark green, sometimes black. He could see himself in them now: a tiny reflection. These eyes resisted interpretation; they rested upon him, yet they seemed, in their darkness, blank.

There was always the temptation, with Constance’s eyes, to look closer, to look deeper, to surprise a truth they cloaked. Acland felt from time to time that he would like to touch Constance’s eyes, and to trace their shape with his fingers. Also her lips, which he suspected she brightened with some salve; the upper lip was sharply defined; the lower, softer and more sensual. Between her lips, which were slightly parted, were small, even white teeth. Acland drew back.

“Aren’t you coming to Freddie’s picnic?”

“Is it time yet?”

“Nearly.” Acland lay down again on the grass. “I was just going back to the house.”

“I’m avoiding the house.” Constance made a face. “War, war, war. That’s all anyone talks about. Sir Montague says it’s inevitable, then Aunt Maud argues, and your mother weeps, and your father brings out his maps again, and Francis talks about his regiment…. I decided to escape.”

“What were you writing? You looked very absorbed.”

“Just my journal.” Constance pushed the notebook beneath the folds of her bright skirt. Acland smiled.

“You keep a diary? I can’t imagine that. And what do you write in it?”

“Oh, my girlish thoughts, of course.” Constance gave him a sideways glance. “I write about serious matters. My latest dress. My new shoes. Whether my waist is now sixteen inches or sixteen and a half. My dreams—I never leave out my dreams! My future husband—I spend a great many paragraphs on him, as girls do….”

“Do you indeed?” Acland, who believed little of this, continued to regard her, slightly lazily. “And what else?”

“Oh, the family. I write about them. What Steenie said. What Freddie wants from me for this birthday of his. About Francis and his photographs. His wedding to Jane, and how it has been postponed yet again …” She paused and gave him a sly look. “Sometimes—not often—I write about you.”

“I see. And what do you write then?”

“Well now, let me see. I write about your progress in the world. The books you read and the things you say about them. I write about those you admire and those you don’t. I describe you, of course. I say you remind me of Shelley—you do look like him, Acland, you know—”

“What nonsense.” Acland, who knew it was nonsense, was still flattered. “You’ve never even read Shelley, I’ll bet.”

“Very well then, perhaps I don’t write that. Perhaps I write … that you are changed.”

Constance’s voice altered as she said this. The teasing note left it. She gave him another sideways glance. Acland began to pull up tufts of grass. He said in a light voice: “Oh—and am I changed?”

“But of course. You have left Oxford now. You are quite the coming man—or so everyone says.”

“You believe it, do you—what everyone says?”

“Naturally. I trust gossip implicitly. I would lay down my life for a rumor. Acland the party-giver. Acland the golden boy of Balliol. Also …”

“Also what?”

“I make observations of my own. I record my data. No scientist could be more industrious. Of course, sometimes my findings do not tally with your reputation—”

“In what ways?”

“Ah, you are listening now, quite intent! What egoists you men are—you always want to know what we women think of you. Very well, I shall tell you. I write that you are older, less impetuous, that you have acquired a measure of caution, and that you fight life less—”

“A dull dog. I sound like a banker.”

“Perhaps I mean fight me less—for you have certainly called a truce there.”

“A truce? Is that what you call it? A tactical withdrawal, that’s all. Fighting is exhausting. Besides, you’ve changed. You’re a little less obnoxious than you used to be.”

“Thank you, Acland dear.”

“You have improved. You’d admit there was room for improvement?”

“Oh, yes. And I shall improve myself even more. Wait and see. I’m an anchorite when it comes to self-knowledge and self-improvement. Why, I’ve hardly begun! I shall work on myself, Acland, you’ll see—polish and hone away until I make myself quite dazzlingly perfect.” She paused. “However. I am beside the point. Don’t turn the subject. We were discussing you. How you have changed. I left out the most important thing of all.”

“Oh, and what was that?”

Constance gave a small smile. “Why, Jenna,” she said.

Acland stood up. He walked away. He was angry with Constance. He would have liked to slap her for her spying ways and her deviousness. He would have liked to slap her for her precocity, for the way in which—as and when it suited her—she made a provocative transition from young woman to young girl. Her words stung him, as she had known they would do—stung more, since he knew they were right. If he was changed, it was because of Jenna, and the ending of their affair.

Looking back over his shoulder at Constance, who had returned to her notebook without sign of concern, Acland thought (as he had thought before): Constance sees too much.

It was not simply that Constance should know of an affair he believed secret, or even know that it was over—it had been over for almost two years. But Constance had seen more than that: She had seen that he had changed. For the worse, he assumed, since the end of the affair had been shabby.

He had gone up to Oxford hot with love and promises: eternal fidelity, unaltered love. That state of mind had not lasted three months. Jenna was, quite simply, eclipsed. He lost sight of her behind new friends, new intellectual challenges, new horizons, new books. When he had next returned to Winterscombe, already wary, already experiencing guilt, he found a Jenna unaltered, yet unrecognizable.

He could see that she was pretty, where he had believed her beautiful. The redness of her hands, the calluses on her fingers—these offended him. Her accent, the slow manner of her Wiltshire speech, these which he had loved before, now irritated him. Acland had a head full of new friends, new ideas, new books, none of which he could discuss with Jenna.

This disloyalty made him ashamed. Shame bred guilt; guilt eroded desire. Acland discovered a bitter fact: Love was not immortal, as he had believed, and neither was physical want; both were capable of vanishing overnight.

Jenna, who had probably seen the change in him before he did, said not one word of reproach. With an air of quiet resignation, explaining their plight in truisms that made Acland wince, she said she understood it was over, that it might be for the best, that she would settle to it, given time, that, no, he was not to blame; no one was.

There was a look in Jenna’s eye, when she said these things, that made Acland deeply ashamed. He saw himself as shallow, profligate, irresponsible, snobbish—yet, even then, at the very same moment that he despised himself, he was heaving a silent sigh of relief.

His friend Ego Farrell (and Farrell, to the mystification of many, for they appeared so unalike, was Acland’s closest friend) said Acland had been a boy, confusing love and sex—in love with his idea of a woman, not with Jenna herself. He implied, in his dry way, that Acland might profit from the experience, that self-flagellation was unnecessary, since the affair had been the means to grow up.

Acland could accept that this was sensible; however, a residue of guilt and self-dislike remained. It had occurred to Acland while at Oxford, and it occurred to him again, standing on the edge of the birch grove, that to grow up in such a manner might also be to diminish. Was he less now than he once was—or more?

Acland was unsure. He had excelled at Oxford; he had also learned to distrust that excellence. At the very moment when the quickness of his mind, his grasp of the abstract, had earned him plaudits, at the very moment when (as Constance said) that golden future was forecast, Acland doubted. He saw himself as tainted, flawed, and self-deceiving. I lack will, he would say to himself, and he would see himself as confined by his class, a prisoner of the ease of his upbringing.

Jenna might have freed me from that, he would think, and the doubts would intensify. Yes, he was a fine sprinter (his First from Oxford told him that), but in the long term, did sprinters stay the course?

“Why did you say that?”

He had returned to Constance. He glowered down at her.

Constance closed her notebook and gave a shrug.

“About Jenna? Because it is true. You loved her once. You used to meet her here. I saw you kiss her once—oh, years ago, now. Then I saw her weep, one Michaelmas term. Now I hear she is to marry that horrible Jack Hennessy…. I told you: I collect my data. I make my observations.”

“You’re a little spy. You always were.”

“That’s true. Another thing to cure. I shall make a note of it. Thank you, Acland. And don’t scowl so. Are you afraid I’ll gossip? I shan’t, you know. I am very discreet—”

“Go to hell, Constance.”

Acland began to turn away. Constance caught hold of his hand.

“Don’t be angry. Here, pull me up. Now, look me in the eyes. You see? I meant no harm. You asked if you had changed. I answered you. You have, and for the better.”

Acland hesitated. Constance was now on her feet; she stood very close; her hair brushed his shoulder; her face was lifted to his.

“For the better?”

“But of course. You are harder now. Steelier. I like that. In fact, I sometimes think I like you best of all, even better than your brothers. Still, it’s useless to tell you that. You won’t believe me. You think me a hypocrite—or so you once said.” She paused. “Do you still think that, Acland?”

Acland looked down at her. Her face, serious now, was still lifted to his. There was a small bead of sweat on her temple, like a tear. Her nose intrigued him. Her wide flat cheekbones intrigued him. He was intrigued by the abundance of her hair. Looking down into her face, Acland was possessed by an extraordinary, an irrational thought: If he could only bend just a few inches, if he were to touch that springy hair, if he were to kiss those parted lips, he would have the answer to her question once and for all. Was she a hypocrite? The taste of her mouth would tell.

He turned away abruptly, releasing her hand. He said stiffly, “I’m going back to the house.”

“Oh, wait for me. I’ll walk with you.” She put her arm through his. Floss cavorted at her heels. Ignoring Acland’s silence, she chattered about Freddie, his birthday, the picnic, the present she had bought, what they might eat, whether Francis would take a photograph….

“Why do you call Boy that?” Acland said, out of a lingering irritation, a sense that he had been outsmarted and outplayed. “Why Francis, for God’s sake? No one else ever calls him that.”

“It’s his name. Why not?” Constance gave a skip and a jump.

“You do it so deliberately. You make such a point of it—”

“But of course.” She gave another skip. “Francis likes it. You must have noticed that.” She released his arm, then ran ahead of him, Floss barking at her feet. The distance between them widened. Acland, suspecting she meant him to chase her, slowed his pace.

They were out of the woods now, on the edge of the lawns. Acland stopped. Constance ran on, not once looking back. From a distance she was very much a child still, a tiny swift figure, a flirt of blue skirts.

On the terrace beyond, his family were gathering. Straight as an arrow to its target, Constance ran across the terrace to Boy.

Boy was given to sudden outbursts of coltish exuberance; Constance, Acland believed, liked to play on that. She did so then. As Constance launched herself at him, Boy gave a whoop of delight. He caught Constance up, swung her around in a blue circle, set her down on her feet again. It was the kind of horseplay an uncle might indulge in for the sake of a small child. Except that Boy was not Constance’s uncle, and Constance—in Acland’s view—was not a child.

From the edge of the lawns he glared at the spectacle: Boy making a fool of himself; Constance teasing Boy as successfully as she teased him.

Hypocrite, he said to himself.

They began the picnic with a photograph.

This is how Boy arranged them: in the center, Denton and Gwen, with Freddie, the guest of honor, enthroned between them. Acland and Steenie were to flank their parents, balanced on one side by Maud and on the other by Jane Conyngham. There were two other male guests to be accommodated: Ego Farrell and James Dunbar, Boy’s friend from Sandhurst and now his fellow officer.

Dunbar, a young man who wore a monocle and had no apparent sense of humor, was the heir to one of the largest estates in Scotland. Farrell was stationed by Jane, Dunbar by Maud; the two men knelt, to improve the composition. Maud promptly obscured Dunbar’s face with her parasol.

Since Montague Stern had remained at the house, awaiting news, the picture was then almost complete. Only one last component was missing: Constance.

Boy fussed; Maud complained that the sun was in her eyes. Freddie, who was eager to open his presents, had begun protesting volubly. In the end Constance appeared; she darted forward and seated herself right in the center of the group, in front of Freddie.

Since Freddie was tall and Constance tiny, this seemed to settle the matter. Boy disappeared beneath his camera hood.

“Smile!” he commanded, one hand snaking out, ready to press the bulb.

Everyone smiled; Freddie, leaning forward, put his hands on Constance’s shoulders; Constance, arching back a little, whispered something. Freddie laughed. Boy emerged from under the hood.

“I can’t take it if you talk.”

“I’m sorry, Francis.”

Boy retreated beneath the hood. The bulb was pressed; the Videx whirred; the picture was taken. It is in one of the old albums still, sepia, distinct, the corners dog-eared, the only photograph I have ever seen of Constance, with my family, at Winterscombe.

Constance holds her little dog Floss in her arms; she gazes directly at the lens; her hair flies out; her fingers are crammed with rings. Constance loved to be photographed; when you looked at a photograph, she used to say, you knew who you were.

Freddie liked to receive presents. It was pleasant, for once, to be the center of attention, pleasant not to compete with Steenie’s dramatics or Acland’s wit. By the time Boy began to unpack the picnic food, Freddie had a pile of the most satisfying gifts beside him. Constance’s present, the last to be given, lay on his lap: a flamboyant cravat made of Paisley silk, the kind of cravat Sir Montague might have envied. Freddie looked at it uncertainly.

“Don’t worry,” Constance said in a whisper. “That’s your public present. I shall give you your proper one later.” These words scratched away in Freddie’s mind, as Constance had probably intended. “Proper present.” “Later.” Freddie began to fidget.

“Constance,” Boy said in a stern voice, “would you prefer the chicken or the salmon?”

He looked up from the picnic basket in the manner of a man requesting that Constance make a serious and moral choice—between good and evil, salvation and damnation, perhaps.

“Oh, salmon, I think, Francis,” Constance replied in a careless way, and withdrew to the shade of a small clump of birch.

It was very hot. The air felt moist and steamy; the surface of the lake was without ripples. Freddie munched his way contentedly through the staple fare of Winterscombe picnics: gulls’ eggs, poached salmon, chicken in an aspic (which was beginning to melt).

He shared a cold steak sandwich with his father; he ate raspberries, then a slice of apple pie. His birthday was toasted in pink champagne. Freddie tilted his Panama hat over his eyes and leaned back against the bank. A pleasant somnolence began to steal over him.

Before this picnic, Acland had taken each person to one side; he had banned the topic of war, which so upset his mother. War might be uppermost in everyone’s mind, but consideration ruled. It was not mentioned. As Freddie lay back and began half to listen, half to dream, fragments of conversation drifted into his mind and out again. His father spoke of Scotland and salmon; Gwen and Maud discussed dresses; Acland and Jane talked about a book they had both read; Steenie gave a running commentary on the sketch he was making of the family group. Freddie half-closed his eyes. Steenie’s charcoal scratched on the drawing paper; Constance’s words scratched away in Freddie’s mind, like mice behind a wainscot. Constance, he saw (watching her beneath his eyelids), was laying siege to James Dunbar.

Boy’s friend was not promising material, but Constance was not deterred. She liked to practice her charms on the intractable, Freddie sometimes thought; she did so with an air of sweet perseverance, like a would-be pianist practicing scales.

After some while, Boy, who had also watched this display, began on a game. He picked up small twigs and pieces of branch and whittled at them. He began to toss them for Constance’s dog, and Floss chased after them. Floss was not an obedient dog; he had none of the instincts of a retriever. Once he had caught the sticks, he refused to return them to Boy. He pounced on them, toyed with them, flopped full-length, then gnawed at them.

Constance leaned across; she smacked Boy’s hand.

“Francis,” she said, “don’t do that. I’ve told you a thousand times. He will chew the bark. It makes him sick.”

“Sorry.”

Boy seemed to ignore the sharpness of the reprimand.

Constance turned back to Dunbar and continued her attack, which was taking the form of an inquisition.

“Tell me,” she said, laying one small ringed hand on Dunbar’s sleeve, “are you a good soldier? Is Boy? What makes a man a good soldier?”

Dunbar screwed at his monocle. He looked perplexed—such a question seemed not to have occurred to him before. He glanced across toward Gwen and then, judging she was out of earshot, decided to risk a reply.

“Well now.” He cleared his throat. “Courage—of course.”

“Oh, I thought you might say that.” Constance gave a small pout. “But you must be more specific. I’m a woman, and women don’t understand male courage. Our own kind is so very different, you see. What makes a man courageous? Is it daring? Is it stupidity?”

Dunbar looked nonplussed. Acland, who had caught the remark, glanced up and smiled. Boy, seeing that Constance once more had her back to him, threw another, larger stick to her dog.

“No, not stupidity,” Constance ran on. She smiled at Dunbar winningly. “That is quite the wrong word. I can’t imagine why I said it. Lack of imagination—that is what I meant. I’ve always thought the greatest heroes must lack imagination. They must refuse to imagine all the terrible things—pain and disaster and death. That is why they are strong—don’t you think?”

As Constance said “strong,” Freddie noticed her place her small hand once again on Dunbar’s sleeve. Dunbar looked confused. He fiddled with his monocle cord; he let out a stertorous sigh. The argument might not have convinced him (it was, in any case, truly aimed at Acland, Freddie thought), but the eyes did. Dunbar made protective noises; he capitulated.

Freddie smiled to himself. He knew quite well that Constance had considerable scorn for Dunbar, whom she called “the tin soldier.” He watched Boy throw one more stick, and Floss caper after it. Then he closed his eyes. He began to drift toward sleep.

Words eddied toward him. “The thing is,” his father was saying in an aggrieved tone of voice, “they’re so damnably fussy about where they spawn. You give it the optimum conditions, and what does your salmon do? It goes up Dunbar’s river, that’s what it does….”

“I almost think, Gwen, that I prefer Mr. Worth. I saw the most charming ensemble there last week. Montague would have adored it.”

“It is a perfect book.”

“Can anything be perfect?”

“Books can. While one reads them.”

“Women are the weaker sex—I’ve never doubted it,” said Constance, who believed no such thing. “A woman looks up to a man as she would to a father. He must be her protector, after all….”

“Because the thing is—your salmon is a contrary creature. Concentrate on the trout, I sometimes think, and forget the damned salmon altogether….”

“Little pin-tucks. Then, on the skirt, the most cunning embroidery …”

Freddie heaved a comfortable sigh; a muddled vision swam through his consciousness: salmon in ball gowns, rivers flowing with books. He saw himself assembling a new fly and heard himself pronounce, with great authority, that with this fly he would catch them—by the volume. There he was, in his waders, up to his thighs in rushing water, playing the book on his line, and it was a book he had seen Constance reading the previous day (a book borrowed from Acland), a devious brute, a fifteen-pounder at the least, which he reeled in just so far when it started fighting….

“Floss!”

A sudden high cry of distress, so sharp it wakened Freddie at once. He sat up, blinking.

His aunt Maud had jumped to her feet and was flapping her hands in a distressed way; Acland was rising; Constance was running toward the reeds in a blur of blue skirts.

“Boy, that was your fault.” Jane stood. “Constance told you not to do it.”

“It was only a game.” Boy stammered a little on the g.

“It was a stupid game. Constance, is he all right? What has happened?”

Freddie stood up. Constance had reached the reed bed. He saw her bend and pick up her dog. She cradled Floss in her arms. Floss wriggled; he squirmed. It was some while before Freddie realized that he was choking.

“He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.” Constance’s face was white and waxy; her voice rose in distress. “Francis, I told you—you see! There’s something stuck in his throat. Oh, help me someone, help me—quickly….”

Floss was making a kind of dry retching noise. A shudder passed through the length of his body from nose to tail. He squirmed, opened his mouth as if to yawn; his small tongue threshed; his paws scrabbled. Then he fell still. Constance gave a moan. She crouched down, head bent, clasping her dog more tightly, as if she wanted to hide his struggles from view.

“Hold him still.”

Acland pushed past Freddie. He knelt down beside Constance and grasped the dog’s throat. Floss jerked his head; he struggled so violently that Constance almost dropped him.

“Hold him still.”

“I can’t. He’s frightened. Stay, Floss—stay….”

“Damn it, Constance, hold his head. That’s it.”

Acland forced the dog’s throat back; he prised the clenched teeth apart; he hooked his finger into the dog’s mouth. Blood and saliva flecked his hand. A quick movement, then his hand was withdrawn. Acland closed his palm, then opened it. In it lay a fragment of stick, no more than an inch long. As they all looked at it Floss gave another tremor. He shook himself. He seemed to decide he could breathe. He snapped at the air, then licked at his muzzle. He made a heroic leap, and bit Acland.

That done, he recovered rapidly. Hearing the sighs of relief and the endearments, knowing he was the center of attention once more, he vibrated with new energy. He batted Constance with his front paws and nuzzled her hand with his nose; he pranced about the group and raised his smart feather of a tail. It was at this point, when it was clear that the accident had been averted and Floss was saved, that Sir Montague Stern joined the group unseen, from the path behind them.

It took a moment, amid the celebrations, for Stern’s presence to be registered. It took a moment more to understand the expression on his face. Once it was understood, the group wheeled and turned. They pressed upon Stern, pelted him with questions: It was certain, then? How did he know?

War, war, war. The banned word was released, in spite of Gwen. Having been imprisoned and suppressed for so long, it seemed to leap from person to person with new vigor, like a tongue of flame.

All eyes turned upon Stern, except those of Freddie. Freddie remained looking at Constance, and so it was Freddie alone who witnessed the strange thing that happened next.

Despite the appearance of Stern, despite his news, neither Constance nor Acland had moved. They remained kneeling, facing each other, Floss sniffing and panting just to their left. They did not look at Floss but at each other.

Acland said something that Freddie could not catch. Constance replied—again, he could not hear her words. Then Constance reached forward and took Acland’s hand. It was the hand Floss had bitten, and although the bite was neither serious nor deep, it was visible: a red half-moon of teeth marks. It had not broken the skin.

Constance raised Acland’s hand to her face; she bent over it and pressed her mouth against the sickle of the bite; her hair fell forward, obscuring Freddie’s view.

For a moment Acland did not move; then, in a slow way, as if he might at any second draw back, Acland lifted his hand too. He held it a few inches above Constance’s head; he lowered it, and let it rest upon her hair.

They stayed thus, poised as two figures in a pieta, apparently deaf, blind, and indifferent to the lake, the sun, the family group, the cries and exclamations. This stillness, in two people Freddie associated with speed and constant movement, astonished Freddie and silenced him. He had been about to interrupt—perhaps to intervene. He did not.

Walking back to the house a few minutes later, Freddie felt confused, a little truculent. There was something sour at the edge of his mind, a malaise as diffused but definite as a hangover. Acland walked ahead, his arm around his mother, who had begun to weep. Freddie brought up the rear of the procession. He glared at the sky.

Constance came skipping after him, Floss bounding at her heels. She caught his arm; she registered the glare.

“We knew it would happen, Freddie,” she said, in a kind voice. “It’s been inevitable for weeks.”

“What has?”

“War, of course.” She quickened her pace; the news seemed, if anything, to raise her spirits. “There are things to look forward to, even so.” She squeezed Freddie’s arm. “Don’t be a grump, Freddie. There’s your present, remember. I shall give it to you later.”

“When?” Freddie asked, with some urgency.

“Oh, after dinner.” Constance released his arm. “I shall give it to you then.”

She tossed back her hair; she quickened her pace to a run. Freddie followed more slowly. His mind felt like a logjam. War and a present; war and Constance.

Then, and later (this confused him), he found it impossible to dissociate the two.

“Look here, Acland, Farrell—what will you do? Wait for conscription, or volunteer?” Dunbar, at dinner the same night, cut into a slice of beef; he surveyed the table with a manly monocled eye. It was clearly a relief to him that after the constraints of the afternoon, he could now speak of war.

“I haven’t decided yet.” Ego Farrell looked away.

“You should volunteer—both of you. Shouldn’t they, Boy? After all, the whole shooting match could be over by Christmas. It may never come to conscription at all.”

“I would counsel patience,” Sir Montague Stern put in. “You might be being a little optimistic, Dunbar. Things might drag on longer, you know.”

“Really, sir? Is that the verdict in the City?”

Dunbar’s voice was one degree short of the overtly rude. By “City,” he clearly meant moneylenders; by moneylenders he implied Jews. The remark was designed, in short, to remind Montague Stern of his place, which—in Dunbar’s opinion—was not at a table such as this. True, certain prominent Jews, Stern among them, moved in London society, occasionally joined house parties such as this. That would not be the case, Dunbar seemed to imply, in Scotland, on his home ground.

“The City?” Stern, who was used to this kind of jibe, appeared unperturbed. “No. Downing Street, actually. Last week.”

It was rare for Stern to allude to his influence or his contacts. It was rarer still for him to put those who were offensive in their place. Silence followed his remark. Steenie, who disliked Dunbar, giggled. Constance, who admired Stern for his composure, gave him an approving glance. Dunbar blushed scarlet. Maud was quick to intervene. She was always sensitive to all slights to her lover. She had also noticed, as Dunbar had not, that his remarks were causing Gwen dismay.

“Monty, my dear,” she said lightly, “you are usually right, but you are a terrible pessimist. Personally, I have immense faith in our Foreign Service, especially now Acland is to join it. In my opinion, the whole matter will be resolved by diplomats. Why, it may never come to battles at all! The Kaiser, I’m sure, is at least a reasonable man. Once he understands what he is taking on—the British Navy; think of the British Navy!—he will back down. These gallant Belgians are all very well—one cannot stand by and see them overrun, I suppose—but really, when you examine it, what is this silly war all about? A great many peculiar countries in the Balkans, which I for one couldn’t begin to name—why, I couldn’t even place them on a globe with any degree of certitude. Besides which, I had it on immensely good authority—only last week, at dear Lady Cunard’s—that …”

At the far end of the table Gwen scanned the faces of her sons. All but Steenie were of an age to fight. Even Freddie, whom she thought of as a boy still; Freddie, who had only just left school.

Gwen pushed aside her food, untouched. The worst thing was that her present fears must remain unspoken. To voice them would be both cowardly and unpatriotic. She had already disgraced herself by weeping; any further exhibition of her true feelings would make Denton angry and her sons ashamed.

My hostages to fortune, Gwen said to herself; as the conversation continued she began to make silent and panicky plans. Denton would not help—that much was certain. Denton was in favor of war, would be proud for his sons to fight. In any case, Denton was almost seventy and showing his age. Gwen looked down the table, watched her husband’s hands tremble as they conveyed food to his lips. Poor Denton—the fire had gone out of him. His great rages were rarer now, and for the past year, two years, Gwen had found herself again growing fond of him.

In some way she could not understand, the death of Shawcross, that terrible accident, marked a dividing point in her husband’s life. Before then he was, if irascible, still vigorous: after it he became an old man.

The advent of war might have revived him a little, but Gwen knew that would not last. No, Denton would revert in a few days to the quieter way of life he had adopted. Days would be dozed through; Denton would begin again to speak, as he now loved to do, of the distant past. For that period, his childhood, his memory was vivid—yet, increasingly, he forgot events from the previous day. Names escaped him, also dates, and these sudden and unpredictable gaps in his memory, far from enraging him as they might once have done, now made him oddly humble.

More and more, Denton turned for comfort to Gwen.

“Talk to me, Gwennie,” he would say sometimes of an evening, when they were alone. Or: “Sing to me, Gwennie. One of your old songs. You have such a sweet voice.”

Gwen took a sip of her wine. The conversation had now, with Maud’s assistance, been turned to other things. She began to feel a little more courageous. She began to make plans. Friends, she said to herself—friends in politics, friends in the armed forces, friends—that was what she needed. Friends who, at her behest, could pull strings.

Boy must have a staff position—an adjutant, perhaps, well behind any front line. Acland—well, Acland had that First from Balliol; he had passed the highly competitive Civil Service examination; he was due to take up his work at the Foreign Office shortly. An illustrious future was foretold for Acland. Gwen saw him as an ambassador very soon. The Foreign Office: surely, on the strength of such vital work, Acland would—if it ever came to conscription—be classified exempt? Not so very difficult to achieve, Gwen thought. Which left Freddie. Freddie, she decided, must have some health defect. She began to think about weak hearts, flat feet, and obliging doctors.

With these plans, her spirits rose. She would begin this campaign, she told herself, immediately after dinner. No delay. She would begin with Maud, and Montague Stern.

Looking across at Stern (wearing tonight “one of those flamboyant waistcoats of his, jade-green with, yes, gold embroidery—Constance had given it a covetous look), Gwen felt a passing envy of Maud, a jealousy, there, then gone. With the advent of Sir Montague, it had to be admitted, Maud’s life had been transformed.

With notable lack of scandal, Maud had allowed her Italian princeling to drift out of her life. Maud no longer had to endure debts, constant traveling, perpetual uncertainty, and a succession of younger mistresses. Now Maud was the owner of a splendid London establishment, bought for her by Stern. It overlooked Hyde Park. Maud now dressed in Paris, with the best couturiers. Maud was, month by month, establishing herself as a prominent hostess. At her London parties, where Gwen often felt like a country bumpkin, Maud assembled a heady cast: royalty, both British and European; maharajahs; rich Americans (with whom Stern had many business contacts); celebrated names from the worlds of music, literature, opera, painting, and the dance.

Maud gave parties for the Ballets Russes. She invited Diaghilev to tea. She patronized Covent Garden, where Stern explained to her the plots. Augustus John had just completed her portrait. Maud was triumphing; she was becoming a close rival, even, to that doyenne of hostesses, Lady Cunard.

Gwen found these triumphs dazzling. She did not envy Maud her worldly success. No, she loved Maud, who had a kind heart and a shrewd mind, belied by her manner of speech. But, just occasionally, Gwen would look at Maud and feel a little wistful. Maud, after all, was older than she; her age might be a closely guarded secret, but she approached her late forties, Denton said. At—what?—forty-seven, forty-eight, Maud had a man by her side who was wise, reliable, considerate, discreet. A man who was younger, who was energetic, active, vigorous. Maud had, in short, a lover and a friend. Gwen spent her days with an old man whom she protected like a son.

Gwen sometimes felt it would be pleasant to have a man she could lean on, a man she might be kissed by, a man she could embrace. However, she did not. Nor would she have, she reminded herself, for Shawcross had cured her of that. Such days were over. Now, at forty-two, Gwen felt she had crossed the summit of the hill; she rested on the gentle incline downward. In her heart she neither resented that fact nor chafed at it. It was restful on that slope. When she considered it, she was content. After all, Maud had no children. She herself was a mother; that was her fulfillment.

My dearest sons, Gwen thought, half including Denton in that group. My dearest family.

“Nursing.” Jane Conyngham’s clear voice cut across her thoughts.

“Nursing,” Jane repeated. “I shall begin to train at once. I made inquiries a month ago. Guy’s Hospital will take me, I think.”

“Oh, I shall knit,” Constance interjected, with a demure glance toward Montague Stern. “That is, I cannot knit yet—I never mastered it—but I shall. I shall knit constantly. Balaclavas and woolen vests, little useful pouches and belts. Don’t you think that would be fitting, Sir Montague? For a woman, that is?”

Seated beside her, Stern smiled. He had detected the ridicule in her voice—as, perhaps, had Jane, at whom it was directed.

“Most fitting,” he replied. “Though difficult to envisage in your case, Constance.”

“Well, we must do something.” Jane blushed. “I did not mean … It is just that nursing …”

Nurses? Gwen frowned at Jane, whom she liked but found untactful. Her sons would not need nurses. Of that she was determined.

She leaned across, touched Stern’s arm.

“Monty, my dear,” she said, “after dinner, might I have a word?”

“How much longer?” Freddie demanded with mild irritation as, from behind a screen in Constance’s sitting room, the shrieks and giggles continued.

“Not long. Wait, Freddie. Steenie, keep still. Stop wriggling, I can’t do it up …”

Freddie shrugged; he began to pace about the room. It annoyed him that Constance should have insisted on Steenie’s joining them here; that she insisted on performing this charade. Dinner was over now. Constance’s present, yet again, was being delayed.

It would not do to betray his irritation, however; Freddie knew he must be careful. Too much protest on his part and Constance would be angry. No present then; its offer would be withdrawn, with a toss of the head, a stamp of the foot.

Best not to complain. In any case, being made to wait even longer had its consolations. Anticipation was sharpened, for one thing—as Constance, of course, would know. Constance’s favorite word (one she constantly used to him) was: wait. So, resigned, Freddie hummed to himself and continued to pace up and down. He lit a cigarette and looked around him with curiosity.

Some years earlier Constance had been moved from the nursery to this small set of rooms. She at once made them her own in a way that fascinated Freddie. This sitting room had become, for himself, Constance, and Steenie, a kind of headquarters. It was where they all three retired when the activities of the older members of the household threatened to become boring. For Freddie this room was part of a puzzle, a clue to the mysteries of Constance herself.

When Constance was moved in here, the room was redecorated on the instructions of Gwen. Gwen, not greatly interested in matters of interior decoration, had suggested in a vague way that the room should look fresh and feminine.

Accordingly, its colors were pale, and there was a certain amount of frippery: lace curtains, small ornaments, decorative little cushions. All this had been overlaid by a different and stronger hand: Constance had claimed the room and set her mark upon it.

Now, it resembled some Gypsy caravan, or the tent of a desert nomad. Gwen’s chairs were covered with rugs and throws of brilliant material, which Constance had rescued from the attics. The lamps were dimmed by pieces of bright silk; there were always candles burning. On the old screen (behind which Constance and Steenie were still conspiring and giggling) Constance had glued a mass of vivid images, cut from periodicals and cards or painted for her by Steenie. By the window was a large brass cage containing a fuchsia-pink parakeet. Under its cage were the homes of Steenie’s and Constance’s other pets—their menagerie: one white rat, called Ozymandias (Steenie’s contribution); one bowl of goldfish; one grass snake, given to Constance by Cattermole. This snake, a harmless and somnolent creature, Constance loved. She would hide him in her pocket, let him coil about her arm, tease Maud with him. She seemed almost as devoted to the snake as she was to Floss, but Freddie accepted this. Constance, he thought sometimes, preferred pets to people.

Freddie yawned, puffed at his cigarette, settled himself in one of Constance’s chairs. Yes, he liked this room. Constance always derided it, of course. Constance maintained that, if she had her way, she would inhabit a room that was black and silver and red. Freddie did not take this seriously. It was just another example of Constance’s need for drama, Freddie told himself, then shifted somewhat uneasily in his seat. Some of Constance’s little dramas (to which Freddie was addicted) made him afraid. With Constance there was always danger: Would she go too far, or (on the other hand, in some ways worse) would she not go far enough?

“Ready!” Constance cried from behind the screen.

A small scuffling, more laughter; then Constance and Steenie emerged. Freddie stiffened, blinked, stared. Constance surveyed their audience of one with steely concentration.

Constance and Steenie had exchanged clothes. Constance stood before Freddie dressed as a young man. Steenie, though taller than Constance, was very slender. His stiff shirt and black evening trousers fitted her well. Freddie had never before seen a woman in trousers. He gazed, fascinated, at Constance’s slim legs, her narrow hips, and—as she pirouetted for him—her pert and erotic bottom.

Beside her, Steenie gave a languorous sigh and fluttered his eyelashes. He looked, Freddie thought, quite horrible. He was wearing Constance’s dark-green dress, under which, in the area of the bosom, there was some lumpy padding. He had rings on his fingers, rouge on his lips and cheeks; his longish hair was scraped back in a bun at the nape of his neck; on his nose was a pair of small round reading spectacles. As Freddie stared, Steenie leered at him. He wiggled his hips in a lascivious manner. Constance cast him a look of disapproval.

“Steenie’s overdone it. As usual. I told him he didn’t need padding. Jane’s bosom is like an ironing board. And as for all that face paint, have you ever seen Jane wear the merest smudge of it? Really, Steenie, you are the most terrible little queen.”

“You’ve cheated as well.” Steenie seemed unmoved by this criticism. “You don’t look anything like Boy. Boy’s heavy. Well, stout—let’s be kind. Sort of square-shaped, anyway. I told you, you should have stuck a cushion up—much more convincing.”

“Be quiet, Steenie. Wait. Now …” Constance turned back to Freddie with an imperious gesture. “Now. Tonight, before your very eyes, and for one performance only, we bring you a most solemn and historic moment. We bring you, just as it occurred, the betrothal—the famous proposal of the Honorable Boy Cavendish to Miss Jane Conyngham, Spinster and Heiress of our neighboring Parish. Now, for your delectation: The Night of the Great Comet. We are in—I’m sorry about this, but Boy isn’t imaginative—we are in: the conservatory. At Winterscombe.”

Constance turned to Steenie; Steenie clasped his hands to his bosom and smirked; Constance struck an attitude, and—yes—Constance was a very clever mimic, and there, before Freddie’s startled gaze, she was translated. Of course she was not tall enough, of course she was far too thin, of course she still looked like a girl—yet also, by some magic of observation, she was Boy. She had Boy’s odd stiff stance, with his feet slightly apart; she had Boy’s puffed-out chest and nervously squared shoulders; she had—to the last detail—the inconclusive gestures of Boy’s hands. Before him Freddie saw his brother, and pitied him—for his awkwardness, his good intentions, his good heart, and his stupidity.

Constance sank to her knees at Steenie’s feet and placed one hand in the region of her heart. It lay on the starched shirtfront, inert, like a dead fish on a platter.

“Miss Conyngham … Jane …” Constance began, and although she could not match the depth of Boy’s voice, she had the manner of his speaking. She had caught the ponderous solemnity, the underlying insecurity—even the way Boy hesitated over certain consonants, that legacy from his childhood, when Boy stammered.

“… I shall, of course, speak to your father. That is, if you want … if you would like. But meanwhile, I have the honor, I should like to ask if you would do me the inestimable honor, of accepting … that is, I should like to ask for your hand in marriage….”

Freddie listened, heard his brother drowning, heard him tussle with the words, and finally end with his head, just, above the water. It was, as Constance played it, amusing. She carried on, with calm conviction, despite the fact that Steenie was overplaying his part grotesquely. Constance, ignoring this, swept on like the professional she was, and by the end both Steenie and Freddie were reduced to helpless laughter.

“Oh, God. He can’t have … he didn’t. Oh, Boy is such a fool. Constance, are you sure?” Steenie was clutching his sides, doubled up with malicious amusement.

“His very words. To the letter.” Constance gave a toss of the head and, the performance over, pulled off the band holding her hair; she shook it loose over her shoulders.

“Poor Boy.” Freddie, still chuckling, reached for another cigarette. “No wonder he made such a mess of it. He doesn’t love her, you know. Boy can never hide what he feels. I can just see his face, lighting up, the sigh of relief when she insisted on a long engagement….”

“Oh, she was relieved too.” Constance threw herself into a chair and grinned at them both. “Very relieved. She doesn’t love Boy any more than he loves her. I should think they’ll be engaged for the next thirty years. And Jane will nurse a broken heart all that time….”

“A broken heart? Jane? Whyever should she?” Freddie looked up in surprise; Constance and Steenie glanced at each other.

“Oh, come on, Freddie, don’t be slow.” Steenie winked. “You must have noticed. Jane is not as prim as she looks. Years—ages—she’s always carried a torch for …” And Steenie paused maddeningly.

“Who for? Who?”

“Acland, of course,” said Steenie and Constance in unison, and began laughing once more.

Their laughter and their conspiratorial air sobered Freddie. He stopped smiling and looked at them. What they were suggesting seemed to him unlikely and absurd, but their certainty was impressive. As sometimes happened on such occasions, Freddie felt left out.

This, obviously, was something Steenie and Constance had already discussed, one of their many secrets. And Freddie resented those secrets, resented the fact that Steenie and Constance had this effortless bond.

“Rubbish,” he said after a brief pause. “You’re making it up. Jane carrying a torch for Acland? I never heard anything so stupid. I don’t believe it. In fact, I don’t believe any of it. It’s typical of you two. You just made the whole thing up, invented it. How could you know, anyway?”

“Oh, Constance knows,” Steenie said, with a little smile.

“Oh, Constance was there, I suppose,” Freddie began, with weighty sarcasm. “Constance just happened to be sitting in the conservatory when Boy and Jane came in, and Constance said, ‘Don’t mind me, just go ahead and propose in front of me.’ Rubbish. You were both in bed. Up in the nursery. Where you belonged.”

“It wasn’t quite like that….” Steenie giggled. “Was it, Constance?”

“Not quite.” Constance’s face took on a closed expression.

“In other words, you made it up. Just as I said.”

“Oh, no. It’s true. Word for word. And Constance wasn’t in bed, were you, Constance?” Steenie gave Constance a sly little smile.

“Not then.” Constance looked away. Her expression was now one of boredom, yet Freddie had the impression she disliked this interrogation and wished Steenie would stop.

“The truth of the matter is …” Steenie continued, delving a hand into the bosom of his dress and pulling out yards of stuffing, “the truth of the matter is, Constance used to be a terrible snoop, didn’t you, Constance? Winterscombe’s very own little spy. Once upon a time. When she was younger. Not anymore, naturally.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Constance roused herself. She stood and met Steenie’s eyes. “I see all sorts of things, Steenie. Even now. I can’t help it—it just seems to happen that way. I see things people would much prefer I didn’t see, and I hear things they’d prefer I didn’t hear. But then, it doesn’t matter, because I never talk about them, do I, Steenie?”

Constance reached across as she spoke. She lifted her hand and, in a deliberate way, rubbed her finger across Steenie’s rouged lips. The rouge smeared across his cheek, and there was a small and dangerous silence. Steenie’s eyes were the first to fall.

“No,” he said in a flat voice. “No. You’re very discreet, Constance. It’s what we all love about you. Heigh-ho!” He gave an exaggerated yawn. “How late it is! I think I’ll go to bed now.”

He retired behind the screen, and in the room beyond, Freddie and Constance looked at each other. Freddie shifted from foot to foot, aware that the atmosphere in the room had changed in a way he did not understand. He could sense both hostility and threat—which were inexplicable.

And yet Constance, now, seemed quite unmoved. As Freddie looked at her uncertainly, Constance blew him the smallest of kisses. She nodded in the direction of the door.

She mouthed some words at him—“four present”—and at once Freddie’s heart began to beat very fast. It pounded a tattoo in his mind, and he felt it again, that familiar ache of expectation, that lassitude and alerting.

Constance now produced this effect upon him very easily. She had done so for some time. How long, he asked himself as he moved to the door. Why?

The door closed. Freddie waited, well schooled, on the landing. How long? Why? Familiar questions now, and yet Freddie could never quite answer them.

How long? It began, he supposed, quite soon after the death of Constance’s father, which meant it had been going on for more than four years. Yet it began in such small ways, and it crept upon him with such stealth that Freddie was not even sure of that fact.

Step by step, inch by inch, meeting by meeting: Constance, Freddie felt sometimes, laid siege to him.

“Did you find the present I left for you, Freddie? The little marzipan apple? I left it on your shirtfront. In your bedroom. It was my present, especially for you, Freddie….”

“Did you find the book in your room, Freddie? The one I left? Did you see what I wrote in it? Mind you don’t show it to anyone else….”

“Oh, Freddie, did you know what I was thinking at dinner? Could you tell, when you looked at me? I saw you blushing….”

“See, Freddie, I’ve brought you another present. It smells of me. Do you recognize that smell, Freddie? Is it nice?”

Wicked magic. In his mind all these separate occasions blurred and commingled, the innocent and the less innocent, and Freddie was now uncertain in which order they had happened, or when. Did Constance say these things (and do these things) when she was eleven, or twelve—surely that wasn’t possible? Or was it later? Did it, in fact, begin in a more gradual way than he now remembered?

Freddie never felt sure. All he knew was that (when she wanted) Constance had him in thrall. She could summon him with a click of the fingers, a glance of the eyes, an inclination of the head. And Freddie would go, wherever Constance’s whim commanded—sometimes the woods, sometimes to the cellars, once the gamekeeper’s hut, ripe with the smell of hanging pheasants, and dark…. Where else? Oh, an infinite number of places. In London once, in his mother’s bedroom, with the door half open for added danger, the two of them in front of his mother’s mirror. Once here at Winterscombe in the King’s bedroom. Once in the attics (no, twice in the attics). Once in the library, under Denton’s desk.

And what did they do in those places—in a dark hut, in front of a mirror, on rugs up in the attics? Never enough, as far as Freddie was concerned, but just enough to make him ache for more.

A cockteaser. Freddie knew the term, naturally, and once or twice, when angry, had been tempted to apply it to Constance. He rarely did so for long, for he knew it was inaccurate. Too ribald, too cold, too obvious, too slight. Constance teased, yes, but not just his body, or parts of his body. Constance teased his mind, and his imagination, which was why she was so powerful.

Constance teased, and when she did (what would his present be?) it was magic. Wicked magic.

“Acland’s room,” Constance said when she joined him on the landing, in her green dress, with her hair in black snakes over her half-bared shoulders. “Acland’s room. Quickly.”

Acland’s room? For once, Freddie hesitated, and consulted his watch. He was afraid of Acland—his sarcasm, his anger, his cutting tongue. It was now almost midnight. What if Acland should come up? What if he should find them?

“He’s downstairs, playing billiards. Arguing about the war. Who cares? Hurry up, Freddie. You want your present, don’t you?”

By then Freddie did want his present very much; his mind was exploding with the possibilities of that present. Who cared about Acland, indeed? He quickened his pace, hurried along the corridors. From the East Wing to the West Wing; as they passed above the hall Freddie heard music and voices, hesitated once more, and then again quickened his pace. Up to the second floor; Constance flitted through the shadows ahead of him. They were now above the King’s bedroom, in that corridor where (so many years before) Freddie had heard the two mysterious screams. (He had long ago forgotten them.) His room, Boy’s room, Acland’s room; outside the three doors, Constance paused.

“Maybe I’ll show you something first,” she said. “Maybe I will. Just quickly.”

And, to Freddie’s surprise, she opened the door to Boy’s room. She switched on the light, smiled over her shoulder at Freddie, who faltered in the doorway. Constance crossed to the corner. There, next to a large roll-top desk, under the shelves that still contained all Boy’s childhood trophies, the birds’ eggs, the lead soldiers he painted, the books, the school photographs—there, in the corner, was a large wooden cabinet ranked with shallow drawers. In this cabinet, Freddie knew, Boy kept his photographs.

“You thought I was being unkind to Boy earlier on, didn’t you?” Constance looked back at him.

“No. Well, not exactly. You hit him off very well—but, all right, you did go a bit too far. Boy may be awkward and slow, but he’s kind. He’s a good sort; he means well. He’s never done anything to hurt you.”

“Hasn’t he? He nearly killed my dog today—or didn’t you notice? It’s you who can be stupid, Freddie. You take people at face value. Just because Boy’s your brother, you look up to him, pretend he’s all sorts of things he isn’t.”

“Look, let’s leave it, shall we? Yes, Boy’s my brother. Obviously I care for him. I respect him. So what? What are we doing in here anyway? Why are we wasting time?”

“We’re not wasting time, Freddie. And I don’t want you to think I’m unjust. Not to Boy, not to anyone. Boy is not so slow. He’s an artist. Watch. Wait …”

As Freddie stared at her in puzzlement, Constance produced a small key from her pocket and held it up.

“Where did you get that?”

“Don’t ask. I have it. Maybe Boy gave it to me. Now. Look …” Constance bent, unlocked and then opened the last of the cabinet drawers. It was a deep drawer; at the front of it was a neat pile of envelopes and leather-bound albums. These, with an air of contempt, Constance pushed to one side. She reached her hand into the back of the drawer, scrabbled around a little, and eventually withdrew a thick bundle wrapped in what appeared to be white cotton.

“What’s that?”

“That? An old petticoat of mine. And inside it, some prints of his photographs. Not the plates—he hides those somewhere else.”

“Your petticoat?”

“My petticoat. My photographs as well. At least, Boy took them, but they are all of me. Not the kind of pictures Boy would leave around in an album in the drawing room. Look.”

Constance unwrapped the petticoat. She laid the bundle on the bed, and Freddie took a hesitant step forward. One by one, as he bent his head to look, Constance held up the pictures.

As she said, all the photographs were of Constance, exposure after exposure, and all of them had clearly been taken when Constance was younger. In them Constance stood, sat, lay, in a variety of curious costumes. Sometimes she wore a thin and bedraggled shift; more often she appeared to be wearing little more than rags. Her hair was tousled and her feet always bare. She seemed to be wearing an odd kind of makeup: In some she looked as if her face were streaked with mud; in others her lips were grotesquely smeared with rouge, so that she looked sometimes like an urchin, sometimes like a prostitute.

This impression was deepened by the poses Constance had struck. Somehow she contrived to look both deprived and depraved. Sometimes the rags or shift clung to her thin limbs, as if the material had been wetted; sometimes a sly hand would draw attention to a forbidden part of her anatomy. There, the point of a nipple, the small bud of a just-developing breast; there (Freddie drew in his breath sharply, for he had never seen this much) Constance parted her legs; between them was a cleft in plump flesh, a hint of pubic hair.

Freddie stared at the photographs, and sickness crawled in his stomach. They disgusted him and they appalled him; they also (and this was shaming to him) aroused him.

“It started when I was ten, and it stopped when I was nearly thirteen.” Constance’s voice was matter-of-fact. “My breasts grew too much then. I started to look like a woman, and Boy didn’t want that. He likes little girls. Poor little girls. I expect what he would most like to do is visit the slums of London and photograph girls there. Maybe he does—I don’t know. As it was, I had to pretend to look poor and dirty. Boy helped. He used to make me up, rub the mud on my face, that sort of thing. It started before my father died. Boy took my picture the day of the comet party—in the King’s bedroom. And then, a few months later, he asked if I would pose for him again. It developed from there. Curious, isn’t it? I think it made Boy feel guilty. I had to promise never to breathe a word to a soul. And I haven’t—until now. But I thought you ought to see, Freddie. So you’d know—he isn’t quite what he seems, your brother.”

“Oh, my God.” Freddie turned away. There was no doubt in his mind that these pictures were pornographic, but there was also a curious tenderness and restraint to them, which confused him. He swung around to Constance. “But why, Connie? Why did you agree? Why did you do it?”

“Why not?” Constance looked at him calmly. “I was very young and there seemed to be nothing wrong. Not at first. I liked Boy. I wanted to please him. And by the time I was old enough to realize that it wasn’t normal, it wasn’t right—well, we stopped then. I was too old anyway.” She gave Freddie an intent glance and then, with an unusual gentleness, covered his hand with hers.

“It’s all right, Freddie, really it is. I wasn’t hurt. Boy never touched me, never did … anything. I wouldn’t have let him touch me anyway. I would have known that was wrong. I don’t let anyone touch me—except you sometimes.”

Freddie hesitated. Constance was looking him full in the face, and her expression was one of limpid honesty. What she said flattered him, excited him, touched him—and yet he was not quite sure if he believed her. He had learned from experience that Constance could lie.

“Freddie, I’ve upset you. I’m sorry.” Constance rose. She wrapped the photographs back in the petticoat and locked them in the drawer, took Freddie’s hand, and switching out the light, closing the door behind her, drew him out onto the landing.

There it was dark, and Freddie’s eyes adjusted slowly to the sudden absence of light. Constance was only a dim shape, close to him, as she pressed his hand, released it, edged away.

“I shouldn’t have done that. I wanted you to know, I suppose.” Constance’s voice was now sorrowful. “You won’t want your present now, I expect. Never mind. I can give it to you another time. Tomorrow. Or the day after.”

Freddie felt dazed; his heart was thumping fast yet again; he had that familiar breathless tightness in his chest. Flaring in the recesses of his mind were images and memories: the small curve of Constance’s childish breast, peeping out beneath a damp petticoat; shadows between thighs; the touch of a hand, the brush of a damp palm, the smell of Constance’s skin and hair. He tried to fight against these memories and images, but it was useless.

“No. No. I want my present now,” he heard himself say, in a low voice, and beyond him, somewhere in the shadows, Constance sighed.

“Very well, Freddie,” she said, and she opened Acland’s door.

“Watch,” Constance had said, and “Wait …”

And Freddie had obeyed her. Only a candle lit, the candle Acland kept by his bedside. (Constance loved the ambiguity of candlelight.) Acland’s room was bare and monastic. Constance lay on his bare and monastic bed; the candle flickered; Freddie stood at the foot of the bed. On the floor by the bed was a curl of petticoat, a rustle of green silk, the green dress discarded, sloughed off like a skin.

In the candlelight Constance’s complexion was creamy, and her sharp little body appeared languorous. Very slowly, Constance stretched. In her hand she held her pet snake, which had been curled up in the pocket of her dress; its appearance startled Freddie. Now Constance held her pet aloft; the snake’s head moved from side to side and its tongue flickered. Slowly Constance lowered the snake and rested it between her small uplifted breasts; she stroked its spine, and it lay still, a necklace of S’s against the pallor of her skin.

Where should Freddie look first? At Constance’s black hair, which coiled across her shoulders? At her red lips, which were parted very slightly, so that Freddie could see her small white teeth and the pink tip of her tongue? At her breasts, which he had never seen, although he had been allowed to touch once or twice? At the angles of her waist, at her flat and boyish stomach, at that mysterious, alluring, terrifying triangle of hair, which looked so soft but which, once, he touched (one touch only, fumbling under skirts and petticoats) and found to be crisp and resilient?

Freddie looked at all these things, all these components of Constance’s wicked magic, and his vision swam. Looking was not enough (was looking to be his present?); looking only increased the agony. Freddie reached out a hand.

“Wait,” Constance said more sharply. “Wait. Watch.” Then she parted her legs, and her snake began to move. Usually this snake was lazy; not now. Now it began a complex journeying: It coiled and uncoiled between her breasts, slithered up to the curve of her throat, nestled in the hollows beneath her collarbones, darted out its tongue, and began a descent. Across Constance’s rib cage, slithering across her thighs, through the pubic hair, down to her ankle, around which it coiled like a slave anklet. There was now an expression of concentration on Constance’s face. She frowned, passed her tongue across her lips, bit the tip of her tongue between her sharp white teeth. Then, just as the snake seemed to decide on a final resting place (curling on the cream of her stomach, a pattern of jet and diamonds), Constance began to touch herself.

First her breasts, which she cupped in her hands and stroked, then pinched. Her nipples stiffened, and Freddie—who had heard of this happening but had never witnessed it—felt his body give a demanding, mutinous lurch.

After that, Constance’s movements became more businesslike, less desultory. Constance had small square hands (they were not her most beautiful feature); her fingernails were bitten. One of these hands she now insinuated between her thighs; the other remained at her breast, flicking at the tip of one nipple in an idle way, as if she were bored. The right hand, the hand between her thighs, moved deftly, and the fact that it was so small, crammed with cheap rings, that the fingernails were bitten, added to the eroticism for Freddie.

Freddie could not quite see what this hand was doing, and he leaned forward against the footboard of the bed, which creaked. This alarmed Freddie—one infringement of the rules, he knew, and Constance would curtail the entertainment.

Now, however, she was merciful; her eyelids flickered open, and her dark blank eyes fixed on Freddie as if she did not see him at all. Or perhaps Constance liked the fact that he watched with such concentration; perhaps—for she smiled.

“Open the door, Freddie,” she said in a dreamy voice.

“What?”

“Open the door….”

Freddie did so. From below he could hear voices still, and now they were more distinct; actual words could be discerned. War, Freddie heard, then murmurs, then again war: a tocsin of a word, and Freddie hesitated. Supposing Acland came up? Supposing his valet, Arthur, should put in an appearance? Supposing Constance’s current governess, the bristling Fraulein Erlichman, should arrive on the scene?

But these were (apart from Acland) unlikely appearances: Arthur, who grew insolent and lazy, would come only if rung for; Fraulein Erlichman retired early. Besides, as Freddie had learned, fear of discovery had its uses—it could sharpen desire. Freddie hesitated a second only, no more; then he was back at the foot of the bed. Constance’s eyes were still open and they remained upon him while, with delicacy and precision, she parted the lips of her sex.

No details; Freddie’s mind could not deal with details now. What he saw was a blur to him, and later, when he tried to conjure the details, they continued to escape him. A pursed softness, mauve flesh; a dampness. Freddie groaned.

“Let me touch—oh, Connie, please. Let me touch you. Quickly, quickly—someone may come up.”

Constance pushed his hand aside. “Watch. Wait,” she said (as she always said), and Freddie, terrified to disobey, withdrew his hand. He clenched it, thrust it into his pocket, touched himself. Below him, on Acland’s bed, Constance’s face became blank and concentrated.

Her little hand moved faster; one finger rubbed and glistened. Freddie—who by then could not understand what she was doing at all, but who was beyond caring—rubbed himself against the warmth of his own palm. Yet, something was happening to Constance; even the pet snake seemed to sense some danger. Constance’s body lifted; the snake slithered toward her head, and rested coiled on the pillow by her hair.

Constance bent her knees; she raised her haunches from the bed; her throat arched back as if in spasm, and her eyes closed. She shuddered, jerked, and then was still. It was like a minor convulsion, even a little like death. Freddie was, for a moment, terrified; urgent though it was to touch himself, his hand fell still.

A brief pause, then Constance opened her eyes.

She wiped her damp hand on Acland’s bedcover. She made a deep and purring sound of contentment; she stroked the back of her snake, outlined the dark diamonds of its spine with one finger. Then, composed once more, she lifted her arms, folded them behind her head, looked up at Freddie.

“You can do it now, Freddie,” she said, in the sweetest voice Freddie had ever heard her use. “I know you do it, in your room with the door locked. You were half doing it then. Go on—do it properly. I want to see it. I want to look at it. I want to see you. You can do it on me if you like; then we won’t make a mess in Acland’s bedroom. Please, Freddie, dear Freddie. I want to watch. Do it. Do it now….”

Was that her birthday present? Was that Constance’s gift, first to let him watch her and then to watch her watching him? To be at once both surreptitious and free, to obtain a glorious release, in a way he had never imagined possible with a woman, in a way that he later decided was dirty, depraved, and probably taboo (and therefore all the more glorious). That, Freddie told himself, that had indeed been his birthday present.

The next day he was less sure. He remembered the events of the previous night more coolly then, against the background of impending war. He watched his mother, weeping, as Boy and Dunbar departed, recalled to their regiment. He watched the other guests depart. He watched all these things, and by the end of that long, hot, oppressive day, when Sir Montague had gone and even Acland had left for London, he found himself alone, the last young man of their party still at Winterscombe. By nightfall a nasty and sick certainty took hold of him: Constance’s present had been given before they even entered Acland’s bedroom. Constance’s present had been the bundle of Boy’s photographs; Constance’s present had been the destruction of his image of his brother.

That day, Freddie had found it very difficult to meet his brother’s eyes. He had been distant when Boy took his departure, even though he knew it was possible that something terrible might happen and he might never see Boy again.

Guilt came to Freddie once his brother had left; guilt, and gloom, and disgust at his own behavior. He was very cool to Constance that day, indeed avoided her. He was cool the next day as well, and the day after that. Then it occurred to him that if Constance had noticed this coolness, she seemed unaffected by it. She behaved as if nothing had happened at all.

Freddie found this maddening. A curious, unaccountable jealousy seized him. From worrying about his brother and his own behavior, he turned to worrying about Constance. Did she hate him? Was she disappointed in him? Would she ever be with him, look at him, touch him, again?

A week. Constance waited a week, and then (perhaps when she judged that Freddie had argued himself back where she wanted him) she made another assignation. After that, more waiting, more agony and indecision and longing on Freddie’s part. Then the crumb of another little meeting was tossed his way.

Meeting after meeting, hiding place after hiding place, summer into autumn, autumn into winter. It was a strange time.

Looking back later, Freddie would know that it was not a happy time; as the months passed he felt no contentment. All around him his life was changing, and the pillars that had held up the structure of his world were falling. Boy had sent for his manservant; he was overjoyed to be posted to northern France. Acland was away in London, at the Foreign Office, doing work that—Gwen stressed—was of national importance. One by one, as the weeks passed, the servants were caught up in the war fever: Denton encouraged the men to join up (even threatened with dismissal those who were tardy in doing so); Arthur Tubbs left, surprising Freddie; Jack Hennessy enlisted, and his three brothers followed him; all the younger footmen left, and the drivers and the gardeners and the keepers and the estate workers. Freddie himself helped to bring in the last of the harvest that year; he worked in the fields bitterly, surrounded by old men.

War, war, war: no one talked of anything else; it was the only subject in the newspapers, and the expectation of an early victory was still strong. At the breakfast table, letters from the front were read: Boy sounded elated and cheerful; waiting for a posting to the front line, he had passed an afternoon near Chartres, bird watching.

Little to fear from this war. Freddie associated it with the packing of food parcels, the rousing tunes of the bands that accompanied the recruiting officers through the villages. He associated it with excitement, with a new sense of national purpose, and—in his own case—with frustration and shame.

For what had happened, within weeks of the declaration of war? Why, he had been escorted by Gwen to a famous Harley Street specialist recommended by Montague Stern. This specialist examined Freddie at length. His blood pressure was taken, before and after exercise. Feeling a great fool, Freddie ran up and down on a small moving platform, dressed only in undershirt and underpants. His pulse was taken. Blood samples were taken. An X ray was taken. A most thorough and exhaustive physical inspection was made. At the end of this, Gwen was readmitted. The specialist looked grave.

It was, he said, quite out of the question for Frederic to join up, and if conscription ever came, Frederic would be exempt. Frederic, he explained, had a slight irregularity in the heart valves. Had he perhaps experienced palpitations, episodes of dizziness? Freddie had, of course, and very recently, too—but those were not occasions he could mention then. He denied any malaise. The doctor remained adamant. Frederic had a weak heart; he should lose weight, exercise gently, avoid excitement, and forget the army. Freddie was shocked by this; his mother seemed shocked too. She left the consulting rooms with a white face and returned home weeping.

In the privacy of his own bedroom that night, Freddie swung his arms, ran up and down on the spot, and waited to drop dead. Nothing happened. The man had seemed very certain, but Freddie was not convinced. However distinguished the physician was, he could have made a mistake.

He pleaded with his mother for a second opinion. He tried to explain how dreadful he felt, the only man among his contemporaries at Eton who was still languishing at home. Gwen fell into such a paroxysm of weeping, such a violent clutching and clinging, that Freddie gave way. He remained at Winterscombe. He preferred to stay within the grounds. Visits to London made him very nervous. Freddie was tall, heavily built; he looked much older than nineteen. Every time he set foot in the street he expected to be accosted, to be given the white feather symbolizing cowardice.

Freddie’s obsession with Constance grew stronger. Constance was his confidante and his consoler. When Freddie felt less than manly, Constance could prove to him just how manly he was, in the only way (she said) that really mattered. Constance kissed the war away. In her arms, drugged with the scents of her body, Freddie forgot about patriotism and cowardice. Weeks went by in a priapic daze. Freddie learned the delights of enslavement, an enslavement in which nothing was more urgent than their next meeting, nothing more intoxicating than their last. Constance’s hair, skin, eyes, the whisper of her voice, the suggestions and ambiguities of her touch; hot days, hot thoughts; sweet delays and shocking promises—such a summer that was!

Constance, experimenting with techniques that she was later to use to even greater effect, was an artist in sex. She understood that hints, promises and caprice, delays and deviations were a more effective drug than fulfillment. Step by step, kiss by kiss, she took Freddie down into the maelstrom. His body sweated for her; his mind itched for her. At night he invented; then he dreamed of her. Sometimes she would give more, then—for weeks—less. Freddie’s days passed like a dream; the second he left her, he would be imagining some new excess.

One thing: she would not let him fuck her. This word—one Constance used casually and frequently, a little time device triggered to great effect in mid-embrace—would reverberate in Freddie’s mind like gunshots. He could not understand why Constance, who appeared without shame, who dismissed all sexual taboos, who introduced Freddie to practices he had neither heard of nor suspected, should impose this arbitrary, this incomprehensible stricture. Yet, on this point she was immovable: any variation—but no fucking. And then she-might smile: Not yet.

Constance’s favorite variation, Freddie discovered, was to risk danger when one of his family was nearby. The threat of discovery from a servant, a gardener, a farm worker—that worked to a more limited extent. Freddie was beginning to recognize when Constance was most excited: It was when his mother, his father, or one of his brothers was at hand.

The most outrageous example of this occurred in London, at the Cavendish house in Mayfair, in January of 1915. With his parents and Steenie, he and Constance had been visiting friends with an estate on the South Coast. From there, Freddie heard for the first time the famous and fearsome sound of the gun batteries across the Channel. Gwen heard them, too, and they sent her into one of her flurries of fear and protectiveness: They must stop off in London, she decreed. She could not return to Winterscombe without seeing Acland. Acland was duly telephoned at the Foreign Office, and agreed to meet his mother at home at five o’clock.

The Cavendish house in Park Street had a tall and spiraling main staircase, which led upward around a vertical shaft from the hall on the ground floor to the attics four stories above. There, it was possible to lean over the banisters and look down a vertiginous well to the marble floor of the hall below. Freddie—warned against the dangers of that staircase as a child—still retained an odd, almost atavistic fear of it.

Just before five, at Constance’s insistence, Freddie joined her on the shadowy, ill-lit third landing. By five, Constance was leaning forward against the banister, and Freddie was behind her, pressing against her sharp and agile little bottom. He was in a state of violent tumescence. (Indeed, just the thought of Constance these days provoked an erection.) He had one hand inside her dress (bright scarlet that day, and unfastened down the back). His other hand—weeks since he had been allowed to do this—his other hand was under Constance’s skirt. Constance was not wearing any knickers.

Freddie’s left hand squeezed and caressed Constance’s breasts; his right hand groped and explored a soft damp place. So excited was Freddie that he hardly heard the slam of the front door or the footsteps across the hall. He became aware of Acland only when Constance called out to him.

Acland came to a halt at the foot of the stairwell. He looked up and greeted Constance; Freddie he did not greet, for Freddie—whose hands stopped their explorations and became rigid—was invisible from below. Constance then proceeded to have a conversation with Acland. Indeed, she protracted the conversation most amusingly. At the same time she made it quite clear to Freddie (who had been about to withdraw his hands) that she did not want him to stop.

She wriggled and rubbed against him; she pressed down hard against his right hand, so hard that—for the first time—Freddie found the miraculous aperture he had long been seeking. Two of his fingers slipped inside her; Constance gave a small tremor. While continuing to converse cordially with Acland, she rotated her hips, as if screwing herself down on Freddie’s fingertips.

By then Freddie was too excited to stop. The fact that he was hidden from view, the fact that he was continuing to do this indelicate thing while Constance continued to speak, her voice quite as usual—all this combined to make Freddie both angry, aroused, and afraid. Fear, anger, and desire—oh, Constance understood the cocktail of sex. Freddie pinched and stroked at her nipples; from beneath Constance’s skirts he was aware of small sucking noises—she was very wet.

“We could hear the guns, Acland; the wind must have been in the right direction, for we could hear them quite clearly….”

Constance’s voice paused only a fraction; a hiatus before the ending of the adverb, and in that tiny space Constance had her orgasm. Freddie felt her body grow rigid for a second; then his dipping fingers felt the pulse from inside. Constance came; he had brought her to climax, something he had never done before, for usually Constance liked to do this herself, sometimes (she said this amused her) with Freddie timing her. Her record was thirty seconds.

Freddie knew she would reward him, and—when Acland, suspecting nothing, finally left the hall—Constance did; she was scrupulous about such things. She knelt, unbuttoned his trousers. She took his penis in her hand. With a fixed, set face, she said, “I want you to say something, Freddie. Just three words.”

“Anything,” Freddie muttered, frantic now and reaching for her.

“Say, ‘In your mouth.’ Just that. Nothing else. All right, Freddie?”

In your mouth: Freddie’s mind spun away into some vortex. This, Constance had never done, and the brutish simplicity of the words slipped the last of his controls. Heady; like diving into black water from a great height. Freddie said the words, and Constance obliged him.

That evening, Acland stayed for dinner. Throughout, Constance was unusually quiet—so much so that Gwen asked her if she felt ill, and Constance, replying that she was tired, retired early.

Freddie sat on for another hour, while his father slumbered before the fire; he tried to read a detective story but found himself unable to concentrate on the plot. Fragments of conversation between his mother and Acland drifted toward him.

“Ego has joined up—Ego Farrell,” Acland remarked once, in a casual voice. “Gloucestershire Rifles. I saw him today, before he left.”

“He might have had more sense,” Gwen said in a high strained voice. “I cannot imagine Ego’s fighting—and it cannot be necessary. He’s such a quiet man. Surely they have men enough out there?”

Acland changed the subject. Later, Gwen took out her most recent letter from Boy, and read sections to Acland. Freddie, who had already heard the substance of this letter at least four times, used the moment to say goodnight. All he could think of was seeing Constance. He crept up the stairs and along the landing to Constance’s room. The London house was smaller than Winterscombe; here they had to be very careful. Constance was waiting for him.

She was sitting at a table, a pile of black notebooks in front of her. As Freddie entered and closed the door, he saw that Constance was sitting in a stiff position; on her face was that dark, closed expression she had always had as a child. Without acknowledging him, she opened one of the black notebooks, flicked a page or two.

“My father’s journals.” She picked up the book and held it out to him.

Freddie looked down at the book; he glimpsed a date, lines of neat copperplate handwriting. These journals, which Freddie had never seen before, had not known existed, did not interest him in the least: Freddie, just then, had a mind that blazed with other matters.

However, Constance mentioned her father rarely; if she chose to do so now, he could not brush it aside—perhaps, after all, in her own secretive way, Constance still mourned for him.

“You shouldn’t look at them, Constance,” Freddie began. “It’s bound to bring things back. Much better to try and forget. Here.” He put his arm around her. Constance pushed it aside.

“They are about his women,” she announced in a flat voice. “For the most part. Sometimes other things, but usually women.”

This provoked Freddie’s curiosity; he at once felt more inclined to look at the journals. He glanced down at the page before him again, and there made out a word—several words—that startled him. Good God! And he had always thought Shawcross such a cold fish!

“Have you read them, Connie?”

“Of course. I read them constantly. Read and reread them. It is like a penance with me. I don’t know why I do it, quite. Perhaps I would like to … understand.”

This statement seemed to agitate Constance a little, for the dead note in her voice changed.

“Let’s look at them later, Connie.”

Freddie had just managed to insinuate his hand beneath Constance’s skirt. He could feel the top of a stocking, a strip of silk garter, a taut thigh. His priorities at once adjusted themselves: No words, however shocking, could compare with the suppleness of Constance’s skin, with the agility and aggression of her body, with the way in which, teasingly, she would sometimes part her legs wide and then scissor them shut.

“Later, Connie, please.”

“Not later. Now.”

Freddie at once withdrew his hand.

“I want you to read this, Freddie. It concerns you too. Look, here, on this page. This is where it all begins.”

“Where what begins?” Freddie drew back a few steps. Although he still did not understand, there was something in Constance’s expression that alarmed him. She had looked like this, he remembered, in Boy’s room, the night she showed him the photographs. He could feel the doubts begin; he felt uneasiness seep and creep into his mind.

Constance sighed. She said in a weary voice, “Just read, Freddie.”

Freddie hesitated once more; then curiosity had the better of him. He bent his head and began to read from the top of the page:

… had not done it since her husband died—or so she said; I went on with my own calculations. Twenty minutes at the most, preferably fifteen: I liked her mouth—a liverish colour, with slack lips—but I had that train to catch.

I had her up against the bedroom wall before the door closed, but her cunt was not to my taste: too vast, too loose, and I prefer them small. So I shoved her down on her knees, and went for the mouth after all. What should I discover then? Why, that the husband must have been a man of liberal tastes, for she was an old hand at this. She went at me like a sow for ripe potatoes, snuffling and guzzling; it put another inch on me at least. She pleasured my balls, gave a grunt and a heave, and there I was inside, the whole length of me, with those rubbery lips clamped round the stem of my cock, and her tongue lathering me.

The best suck in years. The old bitch swallowed the lot when I spent, and licked her lips, and unbuttoned her blouse and thrust her great drooping breasts at me. Her turn now, she had the gall to imply, so I let her beg for a while, and made her say the words—all of them. If her friends could have seen her then, all those friends who would not give her the time of day were it not for her money!

I left her then, unsatisfied, with some speed, not pausing even to wash, and caught my train with only minutes to spare. I felt soiled, had the notion I could smell her mouth and cunt on me, but on the train I became calmer. Variation! The very fact that I was unwashed …

Freddie had come to the end of the page; he looked up at Constance. Constance said, in a flat voice: “Turn over.”

Freddie did so; he began on the next page.

… began to suggest some interesting possibilities. Circumstances were with me; my conveyance was on time, and my other albatross was waiting, alone, in her boudoir.

I waited until the maid was out of the room; then I went for her. I had her down on all fours, with her great arse up in the air—she was slavering for it, as she always is, and came almost at once, in her usual fashion, noisily. I rammed on, like a madman, for a good five minutes, keeping the image of the other bitch in my mind all the while. My cock was burning like a poker thrust into coals, but I had a fear I might not be able to bring matters to their natural conclusion. I managed it however, and came. Just a few squirts, then I made her smell me.

An attempt at the appropriate rapture—though I knew in truth she was embarrassed—and her embarrassment gave me one last happy notion. I washed as usual—that excellent carnation soap—but I would not let her wash. I wanted her there, downstairs, sitting in her blue chair, with that lout of a husband of hers spread out, the way he always is, on the red sofa. There, with her other guests, with her tea table at her side, and her fine china cups and her silver teakettle, her cunt oozing my sperm and her juices.

Which she did: I begin to have her well trained, I think. Could the husband smell sex? I wondered—and almost hoped he did, which was certainly imprudent.

I was charming, even loquacious—always guaranteed to put him in the foulest of tempers. At six I retired, to bathe and change for dinner.

Twice within a matter of hours was a reasonable performance, I thought, although when younger I could have exceeded that tally easily. A well-banked fire in my room; a whisky in my hand; some proofs to correct before dinner; a good cigar to be savoured. Ah, Shawcross, I say to myself as I write this, the rewards of adultery are sweet—as sweet as those of retribution.

Freddie had come to the end of the entry, and the end of the page. He stared at it, the words shifting before his eyes: a blue chair, a red sofa. He would never look at this foul thing again, he told himself (although in the coming weeks he would in fact read this notebook, and several of the others, again and again).

“A blue chair?”

“A blue chair.”

“‘My other albatross’? What does it mean?”

“You know what it means. Just as I do.”

“I don’t. I don’t.” Freddie grasped Constance by the wrist and shook her. “You tell me. He’s your father.”

Constance jerked her wrist free. Saying nothing, her face tight and pale, she picked up the notebook again, turned back a page or two, indicated the heading.

Winterscombe, Freddie read. October 3, 1906.

“Nineteen-six?”

“It began that year. In the summer. It went on a long time. Four years. It’s all in there. He often calls your mother that—‘the other albatross.’ You can see if you want to.”

“Four years?”

“Oh, yes. Four years. Until the day he died, actually.”

Quite suddenly, Constance’s face altered: Her features seemed to crumple. She closed her eyes; she shivered; she clasped her arms tight around her chest; she began to rock back and forth, as if in some terrible ecstasy of grief.

Freddie, who had been about to burst forth in denunciations of Shawcross, was frightened by this. He stared at Constance, whose mouth moved in wordless cries. Then, in a hesitant way, reluctant to touch her, he stepped forward.

“Connie, don’t—don’t. Please don’t. You scare me. Wait. Think. Perhaps it’s all lies—it could be. Perhaps he made this up, like one of his novels. It can’t be true. My mother … It cannot be. Connie, please, be quieter. Look at me—”

“No!” Constance cried out. She jerked away and hit out at him. “It’s true. All of it. I know—I’ve worked it out. I’ve looked at the dates. And anyway, I know. I saw them together—”

“You saw them? You can’t have.”

“I did. By accident. Once or twice—in the woods. They used to meet in the woods. I saw them there, and I ran away. And once on the stairs—they were coming down the stairs. Yes, that’s it. I remember it….”

Freddie began to cry. The tears spouted suddenly from his eyes, although it was years since he had cried. He saw his mother in the garden, calling to him; saw her come into his bedroom and kiss him goodnight; saw his mother in a thousand guises, yet always the same: gentle, kind, devout, growing a little shortsighted now, so he teased her. His mother, and—blotting out the sense of her touch, the tranquility of her skin, the sureness of her care—another image, gross and grotesque.

“Connie, please …” He groped for her hand. “Look, I’m crying too. It’s—”

“Don’t touch me, Freddie.” Constance backed away from him. She backed up against the wall, backed farther, into the corner of the room. She huddled there, and then, as Freddie stepped forward, she sank to her knees.

“I want to die.” She said it in a small flat voice. “Yes. That’s it. That’s it. I want to die.”