truly fancy him, now he’d seen him again? Could he really imagine getting undressed with that heavy-footed prep- school master? He thought of Geoff’s tight zip, and then of beautiful Dennis Flowers, at King Alfred’s in Wantage, Captain of Cricket, not a master but a boy. Paul stared in a kind of abstruse distress at the stretch of the lane by the gate, its chalky potholes, the parched grass and tough, half-pretty groundsel, knotty and yellow-flowered, that grew along its crown. Then the church clock struck 8.30, the two bright notes with their unusual interval that seemed to tell him, in their complete indifference, to get in to the house at once.
He stepped out with a racing heart on to the patio, where the drinks table was. They’d all met him, of course, but none of them knew who he was. He sensed nodding curiosity mixed with something cooler as he edged among these mainly grand and grey-haired people. Some women from the Bell had been brought in as waitresses, in black dresses with white aprons and caps – they ladled him out a fresh beaker of the fruit-cup, and there was something slightly comic about it, with the bits of orange and so on plopping in. ‘Do you want more bits, dear?’ said the woman. ‘No, just drink, please,’ said Paul, and they all laughed.
He saw Peter on the far side of the lawn, talking to a woman in a tight green dress – he was getting her to hold his glass while he fished out cigarettes from his pocket, there was a clumsy bit of business, and then she was raising her face to him, charmed as well as grateful for the light. Paul approached, heard the chuckling run of Peter’s voice, his impatient murmur as he lit his own cigarette, saw their shared smile and toss of the head as they blew out smoke – ‘What? in the second act, you mean,’ Peter said; now he was almost in front of them, with a tense tiny smile, but still eerily unseen, and abruptly not sure of a welcome – in a moment he had sidled off, his smile now wounded and preoccupied, round the edge of the chattering groups, looking round as if searching for someone else, till he found himself stuck, by himself, in a corner beside a high stand of pampas grass. He sipped repeatedly at his drink, which seemed much less toxic than his first helping. He was staggered by his own timidity, but he argued in a minute that his little scamper away had been so quick it could surely be reversed. The conversations close by were a blur of wilful absurdity. ‘I don’t think you ever will, with Geraldine,’ the woman nearest him was saying to a crumpled-looking man whose elbow virtually knocked Paul’s drink. He couldn’t stay here. Through a momentary opening among the shifting and swaying backs of the guests he saw Mrs Jacobs herself, in the middle of the lawn, in a blue dress and a dark-red necklace, her glasses gleaming as she turned, her face somehow spot-lit by the fact of this being her own party. ‘Now, we can’t have this…!’ – Corinna Keeping, in red and black, and all the more alarming in grinning high spirits, had found him out.
She took him, like some bashful hero, though also (she couldn’t help it) like a culprit who’d stupidly thought he could escape her, through the thick of the party to the far side of the lawn. ‘There’s someone who wants to meet you!’ she said, unable fully to conceal her surprise at this, and in a moment she had delivered him to Peter Rowe – ‘And Sue Jacobs – well, you can introduce yourselves,’ though she stood there, with her defiant smile, to make sure they did. They shook hands, and Peter said quietly, ‘At last,’ as he blew out smoke.
‘I didn’t catch your name,’ said Sue Jacobs.
‘Oh,
‘We’ll have supper in a minute,’ said Corinna, ‘and then bring everyone in for the concert.’ She rested a black-gloved hand on Sue Jacobs’s forearm. ‘Is that all right, love?’
‘Absolutely!’ said Sue, and grinned back, as if trying to match Corinna’s abnormal good humour.
‘Are you playing too?’ said Paul, not able to look at Peter yet.
‘I’m singing,’ said Sue, her smile vanishing as Corinna moved off. ‘I’d hoped for a run-through, but we had a hellish drive down.’ He saw that she was older than he’d thought, perhaps forty, but lean and energetic and somehow competitive.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Mm? – in Blackheath. Right on the other side. We could perfectly well have had the party there, rather than dragging everyone down into darkest Berkshire.’
‘But you couldn’t?’ said Peter.
‘Corinna wanted it here, and what Corinna wants… Sorry, I’m Daphne’s step-daughter,’ she said to Paul. ‘She married my father.’ She made this sound rather a regrettable turn of events.
‘Ah, yes!’ said Paul, laughing nervously, and not sure where Blackheath was – he pictured something like the New Forest. He saw that just behind them in the edge of the flower-bed, the broken trough was sitting, its end apparently cemented back on and hidden by some quickly arranged nasturtiums; on his hand too the graze had scabbed and been picked back to pink. He said to Peter, ‘Jenny says you’re playing tonight.’ It was magical as well as completely straightforward having him just a foot away. He had a commonplace smell of smoke mixed with some unusual aftershave that made Paul confusedly imagine being held by him and kissed on the top of his head.
‘I could have done with a run-through too, god knows,’ Peter said. ‘We bashed through it at school, but she’s ten times as good as me.’
‘I shouldn’t smoke if I’m singing,’ said Sue, opening her little evening bag.
Peter squashed his own cigarette under foot before getting out his lighter for her. ‘I don’t know the Bliss songs,’ he said.
‘I’m only doing the Valance,’ said Sue. ‘Mm, thanks… It’s Five Songs opus something, but we’re just doing the one, thank god.’
‘Aha…! Which poem, I wonder?’
‘I expect you’ll know – it’s about a hammock. He’s supposed to have written it for Daphne… apparently!’
‘I must ask her about Cecil Valance,’ said Peter. ‘I’ve just been doing him with my Fifth Form.’
‘Well, you should. She seems to think he wrote pretty well everything for her.’
‘Do you think she’d come and talk to the boys?’
‘She might, I suppose. I don’t know if she’s ever been back to Corley, has she? It will all be in the famous memoirs, of course.’
‘Oh, is she writing them?’ said Peter, putting his hand on Paul’s arm for a long moment, as if not to lose him, with talk about strangers, and surely conveying something rather more. In fact, Paul said,
‘She’s been writing them for yonks.’
‘Oh, you know about it,’ said Sue.
‘Well, a bit…’ – and then: ‘Isn’t it the poem that starts, “A larch tree at your head, and at your feet / A weeping willow”?’
‘You do know,’ said Sue again, sounding slightly put out.
‘I’d better get
‘Well, supper, perhaps,’ said Sue, in a way that made Paul think she’d become aware of something.
‘May we join you, sir?’ said Peter.
George Sawle’s sunburnt face settled into a vague smile as he gestured at the chairs. In the shade, or by now the midge-haunted shadow, of the weeping beech, it was the most secluded of the supper-tables. The old boy seemed almost to be hiding. ‘I’m Daphne’s brother,’ he said.
‘Oh, I know who you are,’ said Peter, with his suggestive chuckle, putting down his plate next to him. ‘I’m Peter Rowe. I teach at Corley Court.’
‘Oh, goodness…!’ said old Sawle, in a tone that suggested there was a lot to be said on the subject, if one were ever to get round to it. Paul grinned but didn’t know if it would be right to say what an honour it was to meet him. He’d sometimes seen John Betjeman in Wantage but had never actually met an author before. The
‘Yes, indeed…’ said Sawle, nodding and then pulling a little shyly at the longer white tufts of beard under his