caused distress by eating nothing; at last she accepted a plate of the trifle which was discovered next orning, untouched, upon a window ledge behind a curtain. She also, for a while, disappeared, and was found by Rose upstairs in Gerard's bedroom in the dark, sitting at the window and, she said, watching the children next door who had been capering round the garden in their night clothes. By the time coffee was served it was getting very late and the evening was in danger of being wrecked by what Gerard subsequently called 'that simulacrum of a dinner party'. It appeared that no one was in charge. Gerard had pointedly given up the responsibilities of a host, Rose who would normally have kept an eye on the time had withdrawn into the position of a spectator. Jenkin was in some kind of a dream, almost seeming gloomy, perhaps getting steadily drunk on the powerful claret. Gideon, impishly enjoying himself as usual, was everywhere about with a smile on his face, waiting to see what would happen. Violet too was smiling, drinking very little, picking up pieces of kidney in her fingers out of the pie, and spooning trifle into her mouth and replacing the spoon in the bowl. Patricia was already in the kitchen washing up.
`What about the fireworks?' said Jenkin, suddenly awaking from his reverie.
`It's too late for fireworks,' said Gerard, 'we would disturb the children next door.'
`According to Tamar, they're all out in the garden in their nighties,' said Rose.
`Well, we could send up a rocket or two, there isn't time for the whole lot, everybody wants to go home!'
Gulliver, realising that he might soon be dangerously drunk, had already proposed that he should leave, forgetting that the letting off of fireworks was the purpose of the evening.
`Where's Tamar?' said Jenkin.
`In the kitchen helping Pat wash up!' said Rose.
`Where's Duncan?' said Gerard.
`Drinking whisky in your study.'
`I rather hoped Tamar would take charge of him tonight,' said Gerard, 'but she's so withdrawn.'
`She probably wants another heart-to-heart with you!' said Rose.
`At any rate Duncan started on Perrier. Do you think that was Tamar's influence?'
'Look, we
Jenkin, anxious not to have his programme curtailed by Gerard, had already set off the Golden Rains and several Roman Candles and a Peacock Fountain before the whole company, wearing their overcoats, had ambled or stumbled out into the garden. Everyone was given a torch, a bunch of sparklers and a box of matches. The sparklers, little metal sticks to be held in the hand while the ignited end spitted brilliant sparks, were to provide audience participation and, during intervals between the 'pieces', extra light. However some of the guests dropped their sparklers on the grass (Gull and Lily) or absently put them in their pocket (Duncan) or were too haughty (Pat and Violet) or too shy (Tamar) to ignite them. Rose and Gerard dutifully, and Gideon with a great deal of facetious to-do, set light to theirs at intervals and waved them about, revealing the rather dazed faces of their fellow guests in the very bright very white light of the sizzling sparks. Fireworks were, to keep them all in countenance, still to be seen glowing and ascending here and there from distant gardens where children were late to bed or adults still at play. Looking up in a moment of darkness Rose saw, in the upper windows of the house next door, the faces of children looking out. She lit another sparkler, held it up to reveal herself, and waved to the children. Dazzled by the glare, she could not see whether they waved back. Gerard had never made friends with these children, and they were strangers to Rose.
Jenkin had now reached the penultimate stage, which was the catherine wheels. The rockets came last. He had nailed three large wheels onto three posts set back near (but not too near) the walnut tree, the highest post in the centre. As he went round with his torch checking the three contraptions the others, who had provided murmurs, even cries, of admiration for the earlier events, fell silent, and it was for a moment dark in the garden. One or two torches, momently switched on, illumined feet, some sensibly, some foolishly clad, and patchr4 of wet trampled frosty grass. The air was becoming very cold, noses felt frozen, and those without gloves buried their hands deep in their pockets. Gulliver, badly wanting another drink was supporting himself by a hand on Lily's shoulder.
Suddenly, almost simultaneously, the big catherine wheels became alive, turning for a moment or two quite slowly, then accelerating into huge dazzling circles of fire which uttered a terrifying burning noise as of an inferno. Everybody gasped suitably, and indeed the sight and the sound were not only impressive but frightening. No one fidgeted, all stood still, staring open-mouthed and tense at the three great fiery circles.
Lily, who had been silent for some time in a sell concentrated state of quiet drunkenness, suddenly said, close to Gulliver's ear, 'Why are they called catherine wheels?'
Gulliver, startled out of his own intoxicated meditation, replied, 'Saint Catherine was martyred on a wheel.'
`What?'
`Saint Catherine was martyred on a wheel, tortured, killed.'
`How on a wheel, what did it do to her?'
`I don't know,' said Gulliver, annoyed by this irrelevant and somehow improper disturbance, ‘I believe it was turned over a lot of spikes or something.'
Lily pondered for a moment. Then she turned and went back toward the house. Gulliver, deprived of her support, sit down abruptly upon the grass.
The catherine wheels began at last, saddeningly to their spellbound watchers, to slow down, then one after the other gradually to go out, spurting a few last bursts of fiery angry sparks, then for a few moments continuing to turn, glowing dimly, then burnt out and blackened, upon their posts. There was a general sigh.
Showman Jenkin, determined not to lose his audience, immediately set off the first of the rockets.
Gerard, who had seen Lily slip off and not return, decided it was time to go and see if'she was all right. He moved quietly away as the others were gazing up at a drifting constellation of different coloured stars.
Lily, after she left the scene, had blundered in through the drawing room doors, finding herself behind the heavy curtains which threatened to suffocate her. She struggled in panic, in darkness, losing her sense of direction, trying to find either the middle or the ends of the heavy clinging curtains. At last she blundered out into the candle-lit room and hurried through it as to get further away from the garden. She went to the lavatory, and turning on the light, saw her mottled face in the mirror for the first time. She took refuge in the dining room and sat down beside the little low rickety table upon which she and Gulliver had perched their plates when having dinner or supper or whatever it was. Alcohol can open the dark gates of the unconscious and through this orifice there flooded upon Lily, in the name of Saint Catherine, a phantom host of memories of her Catholic mother, who had been much given to imploring the aid of various helpful saints. Lily often thought about her grandmother, but very rarely about her mother. Now, with the accusing memories, came awful guilt and remorse. Her mother had believed in hell. Why had Lily rejected and abandoned her poor mother who had died drunk and alone in terror of eternal flames? Why was her mother not alive now so that Lily could run to comfort her? Mixed with these thoughts about her mother's suffering came pious images, horrible to Lily as a child, of Saint Sebastian shot full of arrows, Saint Lawrence roasted on a grid. And of course Jesus, slowly tortured to death by crucifixion. Then it occurred to Lily that the three posts of the catherine wheels were like the three crosses of Calvary. She burst into tears. Gerard came in.
The rockets were now going up in quick succession, rushing up so suddenly, so violently, so dangerously, with a hissing tearing whistling sound, tearing the dark air, up and up so high, and then the achieved efflorescence which came with a wonderful sense of relief, of a kind of peaceful or happy or glorious death, an explosion of golden bullets or a fountain of' jagged stars, like the self-giving benediction of an amorous god. Other rockets in other gardens were flying up too, quick, quick, as if the mad licensed festival were nearing its end and, under pain of some doom, all must now be done quickly. The air was full of explosions. Rose thought, war sounds like this. To rest her dazzled eyes she stopped looking up and saw for a moment in the light of a match Jenkin's entranced deliglin face, his lips parted, his eyes round with excitement. What he celebrating, she wondered, what god, what vision, what golden secret desire? A shower of particularly long-lasting starlets showed her the other upturned faces, Gideon’s laughing with rapture, Pat's calmly pleased, Gulliver’s childishly gleeful. Duncan looked melancholy but quiet, his big head tilted back, his dark mane sweeping his coat collar. Violet's face startled Rose, it was radiant with some intense emotion, determination or despair or hate. Tamar, standing just behind her, was not visible. Rose then noticed that Gerard and Lily were missing.
