Every Day Is Mother's Day

CHAPTER 6

The week before half-term, Frank O’Dwyer made good his long-standing promise, and invited Colin and Sylvia to a dinner party. Sylvia would normally have worried about what to wear, but in the circumstances had no choice but one of the all-purpose floral smocks she had kept from one pregnancy to the next. Colin thought, I should have noticed that she had not got rid of them, after Karen. If he looked in Sylvia’s wardrobe more often, he might be able to divine her intentions.

Sylvia had been to the hairdressers. Her pale hair, heavily lacquered, was fluffed up like a ball of cotton wool. With her pink face, and her cheerful frock of red and green leaves and sprigs, she looked like a badly constructed Christmas decoration that someone had forgotten to put away. It occurred to Colin now that he had never told anyone his wife was expecting. Would they congratulate him, and then mock him behind his back, or would they pretend not to notice?

Since September he had rehearsed imaginary conversations in which he told his colleagues about the break-up of his marriage and about his new relationship with a young professional woman with no ties. This way and that he put it to them, in his head. These monologues had become a habit, and a ghostly parallel to his real speech. Sometimes he interjected his listeners’ exclamations of amazement, incredulity, and envy; sometimes he elaborately countered difficulties they raised. Now these conversations would never be held, but they were hard to give up all the same. He let them run, little hallucinations to accompany his pain.

He woke up in the mornings, and Isabel was his first thought. For this reason, he tried to delay the moment of waking. “You’re ever so dozy these days, Colin,” his wife said. “We’ll have to make an effort to get to bed earlier.” The sick pain of loss jolted through him before he had opened his eyes. He saw images of himself staggering through the days, grey-faced, with fatuities on his lips. Daily he took the matter in hand, promised self-discipline, tried to shut her out of his mind. His thoughts fled back to her as the dieting obese think of food, an abstract orgy of longing and inner greed, one thought for the pain and one for the world, systole for living and diastole for Isabel.

The telephone was ringing. It was the night of the dinner party, wet and black. Seven P.M.

“59428.”

“Mrs. Sidney?”

“This is Mr. Sidney.”

“It’s Tracey here.”

“Sorry?”

“I said it’s Tracey. I’m supposed to be babysitting for you.”

“Oh yes, hello Tracey,” Colin said with an excess of bonhomie. “When are you coming along then?”

“I’m not coming, that’s what I’m phoning for, sorry.”

“Oh but Tracey, now—”

“Me mam says I’ve got to stop in because me Grandad’s coming.”

“But surely, Tracey—look, would you have a word with Mrs. Sidney?”

“No point, is there?”

“Could I have a word with your mother, do you think?”

“She’s gone down our Doreen’s shop for a lettuce.”

“When will she be back?”

“Dunno.”

“Look, Tracey, are you sure you can’t come?” Colin took his schoolteacher’s tone, full of aching reasonableness. “You see, it’s letting us down rather badly. This was an important evening for us, and it’s too short notice to get anyone else, so it does put us in difficulties. Now you did promise, Tracey. Did you explain that to your mother?”

“No point.”

“Surely she’d understand that a promise is a promise.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Anyway, Tracey, look at it this way, you want your pocket money, don’t you?”

“Well, it’s only one fifty, isn’t it, and if Grandad sees me he gives me a fiver.”

“Oh, I see,” Colin said. “Well, I’m afraid I’m not prepared to engage in an auction for your presence, Tracey, that wouldn’t be right at all. So we’ll just have to manage without you.”

“Tough life, innit?” Tracey said. “Bye.”

Colin bellowed up the stairs, and Sylvia came out of the bedroom in her bra and half-slip. She had powdered her face and lips very white, preparatory to painting them back in again, and she smelled of Coty’s L’Aimant, which was not this year’s Christmas present.

“What’s up? Who was it?”

“It was some half-witted child called Tracey who it seems you’ve engaged as babysitter. She’s not coming.”

“Oh, no!”

“Her grandfather’s coming over, and will probably give her a fiver, so she’s not going to put herself out for one fifty.”

“Oh, dammit,” Sylvia said venomously. She began to scramble down the stairs, her stockinged feet large and flat. “Give me the phone.”

“Don’t you offer her any more money,” Colin said. “It’s blackmail. We can’t have that.”

Colin went into the bedroom and contemplated the clean shirt laid out on the bed. He heard Sylvia’s voice raised in expostulation. Shortly she came back into the bedroom, slamming the door.

“She won’t come. Honestly. It’s not often, is it, it’s not often, that I get a night out? You wouldn’t think one night was too much to ask.”

“Well, it’s no good taking it out on me,” Colin said.

“I’m not taking it out on you. What on earth are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, but honestly, Sylvia, that girl sounded half-witted. When I picked up the phone she said, ‘Is that Mrs. Sidney?’”

“How could she be expected to know who picked the phone up?”

“Because I spoke, didn’t I? I said ‘59428,’ I don’t just pick the phone up and breathe into it, for Christ’s sake.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting yourself worked up for.”

“I’m getting myself worked up because we’re due at Frank’s in forty-five minutes, and we haven’t got a babysitter, because you make arrangements with some half-witted child that doesn’t turn up. Do you really think it’s safe, leaving them with somebody as clueless as that? How old is she?”

“She sounded pretty sharp to me,” Sylvia said. “She’s fourteen. I know her mother. Anyway, they’re not going to be left with her, are they, so what are you talking about?”

“We’ll have to ring Florence,” Colin said.

“Florence never babysits for us. She doesn’t know how to manage them.”

“Are they as bad as that? What do they need, qualified nannies or policemen?”

“There’s no need to get nasty. It’s not the kiddies’ fault, Colin.”

“Have you got a better suggestion?”

“Ask her if she’ll have them for the night, then. Go on. Phone her.”

“You phone her,” Colin said. “You got us into this mess.”

“I’d like to know why it’s always my problem to fix up a babysitter. You always leave it to me and then you criticise. It’s you that wants to go to this dinner, not me.”

“All right,” Colin said, “all right. Then I’ll just phone up Frank and say we can’t make it, shall I? Frank goes to a lot of trouble over his dinner parties. He’s very interested in cooking and he goes to a lot of trouble, trying to select the right guests.”

“And I go to trouble every night of the week. You don’t think about that.”

“Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, Sylvia. Are we going or aren’t we?”

“Well, if I phone Florence, you’ll have to go down and get them their sausage and beans. Children have to be fed as well, you know.”

“I’ll phone,” Colin said. “You see to them.” He stumped off downstairs. He took deep breaths. Self-command, he thought, control, order; he realised, amazed, that this upset had dismissed Isabel from his mind for at least fifteen minutes. But he could not arrange to live in a permanent row. “They can bring their sleeping bags, tell her,” Sylvia shouted after him. Here was material for reworking, for weeks and weeks of quarrels. Colin could hear the children shouting each other down above the noise of the TV set. I’d be more adept at feeding lions, he thought, or giving rabbits to pythons.

Florence sounded doubtful, mildly shocked. “But the beds aren’t aired, Colin. It’s such short notice.”

“Sylvia says they can bring sleeping bags.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound very suitable to me, but I do admit it might be the lesser evil.” Oh, cut it out, Colin thought, yes or no? “They can’t sleep in beds that aren’t aired,” Florence said.

“Okay, but if we bring the sleeping bags, and listen Florence, they’ve been fed, and I’ll be over for them first thing tomorrow.”

He put the phone down, relieved. He would have felt such a fool, making his excuses to Frank; Frank seemed to have smart intellectual friends who would not have problems like babysitters, and he would probably not understand. He had been looking forward to this evening, relying on it to take his mind off Isabel. He would rise above his situation tonight, he would be witty and carefree and relaxed, and not, he vowed, not have too much to drink, so that Sylvia gave him warning glances in front of everybody and nagged him all the way home about the breathalyser.

All he had to do was change his shirt. He ran a comb through his hair and was ready by a quarter to eight, standing expectantly in the hall. Sylvia had painted her eyelids with a luminous stripe of sky-blue, and her eyes beneath, rather bloodshot, appeared angrier than ever. Fuming quietly to herself, muttering under her breath, she dumped bundles and baskets in the hall, marshalling the children with little pushes and taps on the backs of their skulls.

“What are you standing there looking so useless for?” she demanded. His brief ebullience vanishing, Colin took her by the arm, steering her into the kitchen for a little private row.

“I do wish,” he hissed at her, “I do wish that you could manage not to talk to me like that in front of the children. How do you expect them to have any respect for me? What are they going to think about me, if you speak to me like that?”

Sylvia glared at him. Then she dropped her eyes and disengaged her arm from his grasp. “What does it matter?” she said tiredly. She swerved past him and back into the hall.

“You undermine me,” he shouted after her. “You’ve got enough stuff there for an Antarctic expedition. One night, they’re going for, woman, not a bloody month.”

The children were complaining at being dragged away from the TV. They had been looking forward to bullying their babysitter and getting the better of her, and forcing her to let them stay up long past their usual bedtime. Florence was an unknown quantity; she alternated with them between doting and frigidity, and she had no TV set. Packed into the back of the car, they became instantly fractious. They flailed their legs and jostled for room, jabbing each other with their elbows. Karen began to sniffle, and Suzanne took out a pencil she had about her person and dug it into her brother’s leg.

“For God’s sake, will you stop it?” Sylvia twisted round in her seat to deliver slaps left and right.

“How can I drive?” Colin demanded. “How can I concentrate on the traffic? There’ll be an accident. You’ll cause an accident if you go on like this.”

“Oh, Dad, Dad, Dad,” Alistair wailed. “She’s made a big grey hole in my knee. It’ll go septic, Dad. I’ll have to stay off school.”

At the traffic lights Sylvia lurched over the back of her seat and snatched the pencil from Suzanne. She wound down her window and hurled it out. It struck the windscreen of the car drawn up next to them with a noise like a gunshot and rolled with an astonishingly loud clatter down the bonnet.

“My God,” Colin said. People in other cars were staring. Scarlet with embarrassment and breaking out in a sweat, he accelerated away from the green light.

He drew up in Florence’s driveway, under the dark shapes of the dripping trees, and took out his new clean handkerchief to mop his forehead. “Well, we’ve made it.”

Sylvia swivelled her legs out of the car. “These damn mouldy leaves,” she said. “My evening shoes will be ruined.”

Florence appeared immediately, looking apprehensive. She must have been watching from the front room, standing in the dark. Sylvia propelled the children towards the house and Colin followed, his arms loaded with their baggage. A sleeping bag escaped from his grasp and unrolled itself like a serpent on the wet path. He dragged it after him, hoping no one would notice. Sylvia was saying, “They’ve been fed, they’re to get straight to bed, they don’t want anything.”

“But what if they do?” Florence said. “I mean, what will I give them, and in the morning—”

“Look, you don’t need to give them their breakfast even, we’ll come for them,” Sylvia said.

“I’m not unwilling to give them their breakfast,” Florence insisted. “It’s not that, don’t think that, Sylvia, but I don’t know what they’re used to, for instance if they have fresh bread or stale.”

“Stale bread? What would they have stale bread for?”

“Yuk,” Suzanne offered. “I’m not eating stale bread.”

“Well,” Florence said, “when we were children we never had fresh bread. Children didn’t have it. It’s bad for them. They can’t digest it.”

“Go on.”

“It’s no joke, Sylvia. You ought to be careful what you give them.”

“Sylvia, it’s gone half-past eight,” Colin said. “We’re late.” Florence turned to him, looking stubborn.

“Perhaps you can convince her, Colin, as she doesn’t take any notice of what I say.”

“Florence, if we had stale bread when we were children I expect it was because Mother was too lazy and disorganised to have any fresh in the house.” He turned to Sylvia. “She got fussy as she got older, you know, but when we were kids it was a different story.”

“I think that’s very disloyal, Colin.” Two red spots appeared on Florence’s cheeks. “I don’t know how you dare. She was an excellent mother, and there was nothing wrong with the way we were brought up.”

“I’ve not got time to discuss it.” Colin hauled his cuff up again and tapped the face of his watch. “Sylvia—”

“You’ve not answered my question,” Florence said stubbornly. “About the bread.”

“Bread?” Colin’s self-control fled now with a great yell into his sister’s face. “Bread? They chew nails, this lot. You could feed them nitroglycerine and ground glass and they’d bloody digest it.”

Sylvia pulled at his arm, and Alistair, red-faced, wormed among the overnight bags and took Florence by her skirt.

“Aunty Florence, I’ve got a septic hole in my knee.”

“What, my pet?”

Standing on one leg, Alistair pointed to his wound. “You’ll have to get your glasses,” he said.

Florence bent over his raised knee and looked up with a face full of alarm.

“It’s all black, Sylvia. Whatever’s happened?”

“Take no notice of him, it’s nothing.”

“But it’s black.”

“It’s from a pencil. It’ll wash off.”

“I’d better get my first-aid kit,” Florence said. “I don’t think you ought to leave me with him like this.”

“I’ve told you, it’s nothing. Alistair, I’m going now, and if I hear from your Auntie that you’ve been playing her up there’ll be trouble.”

“Oh all right, you go,” Alistair said. “I expect I’ll be up all night crying with the pain, that’s all.”

Suzanne sat down on the stairs and clasped her arms round her abdomen, rocking with simulated mirth; standing amid the baggage, Karen began to scream.

“We’re off,” Sylvia yelled above the noise. “Thanks a lot, Florence, and we’ll see you tomorrow.”

“But you can’t leave me with them like this. He might be ill. What if—”

Sylvia bolted out of the front door, Colin was already in the car. Alistair’s voice followed her, “I expect my leg will be cut off and you’ll have to push me round in a wheelchair,” and Karen’s wails and Suzanne’s snorts of laughter. Mud splashed the back of her tights. She slammed the car door.

“It’s quarter to nine,” Colin said.

“How far is it?”

“Half a mile as the crow flies, that’s all.”

“As the crow flies? Does that mean you don’t know the way? Oh, what a bloody business it all is. My evening’s ruined before it starts.”

Colin edged the car out of Lauderdale Road.

“And Colin, remember you’ve to get up early in the morning to fetch the kids, and before that you’ve got to get us both home tonight.”

“When do I get drunk, Sylvia? Come on, when have you ever seen me drunk?”

“You drink too much if you get the chance. You always do, and you know it.”

“And how often do I get the chance? Come on, Sylvia, when did you last see me reeling round the estate smashing people’s windows and singing ‘I belong to Glasgow,’ and throwing up on the pavement? When was the last time, eh, when?”

Sylvia lapsed into moody silence. “They’ll settle down,” she said, after a while. “They’ll settle, won’t they?”

“I hope so. Florence isn’t used to them.”

“I mean, it’s not just them, all kids are like that. There’s many worse. Florence doesn’t know. Colin, this is a long half-mile.”

Colin saw that he was in a cul-de-sac. He slowed the car to a crawl.

“Are we there?”

“No, we’re not. Look out, will you, and see if you can see Balmoral Road.”

It was the very edge of Florence’s respectable district, bigger houses well back from the road, flat-land encroaching, street names buried in dripping hedges.

“Andover Crescent,” Sylvia said.

“That’s no help. Well, okay, I’ll just drive along it.”

“Hadn’t you better go back?”

“If it’s a crescent, it’s bound to go round, isn’t it, use your common sense. I wish you’d learn to drive, Sylvia, then I could have a drink sometimes without you nagging me.”

“Nobody’s going to get a drink at this rate. I thought you knew where Frank’s was.”

“If I knew, we’d be there, wouldn’t we? Do you think I’m doing this for pleasure?”

“There’s no need to get sarcastic. At least three times in the past two months you’ve been over to Frank’s.”

Fear shot through him, joining the anger churning his intestines. “Not from this direction. I know it from our house but not from this direction. All these streets look the same. And in the dark, too.”

They drove around for another ten minutes, and then Colin stopped the car at a phonebox. Inhaling the smell of stale urine, he leafed through the directory, a draught from a broken pane blowing piercingly down the back of his neck. The “O” section had been torn out jaggedly, cutting him off at O’Connor. He dashed back to the car.

“You’re getting soaked,” Sylvia said reproachfully. She was scrabbling through her handbag looking for change. “Haven’t you got Frank’s number in your wallet?”

“I’ll find another box.” Colin drove on. “Here, I might have, take it out and have a look through.”

They had by now reached the main road and Sylvia searched through his wallet under the generous light, unimpeded by trees. “Well, I can’t see Frank’s number. I don’t think you’ve got it. Here, what’s this? Social Services. What do you want the number of the Social Services for?”

“For school,” Colin said promptly. Sweat started out again on the back of his neck. “We have to carry it. For emergencies.”

“What emergencies? I thought you got ambulances for emergencies.”

“Are you looking for a phonebox?”

“Here, stop here, I think that’s one. It’s not got a light. Here, pull up.”

“At least we know where we are now.”

Colin grabbed the directory and hurled himself back into his seat, peering at the listings by the dim light of the interior bulb. The door was half-open and rain splattered in. Sylvia shivered.

“Here’s Frank. Give me that Iop.”

He dialled the number and was relieved to hear the ringing tone. It rang and rang. When he was on the point of giving up, the receiver was lifted and an unfamiliar voice answered. He heard it calling out for Frank.

“Here, Frank, here’s some extraordinary chap called Sidney who’s got lost.”

Frank came to the phone. “Hello? Colin?”

Colin expected him to sound irritable, but he was quite jovial, perhaps alarmingly so. Must be a good party, Colin thought, good conversation, lots to drink. His spirits briefly rallied. The directions fixed in his mind, he jumped back into the car.

“Right, got it this time. Be there in under five minutes.”

“I’m cold, Colin. Freezing.”

“Cheer up. En avant.”

“Is that a foreign expression?”

“Yes. Course it is.”

“I hope you won’t be using foreign expressions tonight, making a fool of yourself. And remember, about the drinking.”

Colin struggled for words for a moment, and found none. He slammed on the brakes and brought the car to rest outside Frank’s house. Some long-sealed capsule of rage seemed to explode inside his skull, so that the rest of the night passed for him in a sort of haze, odd incidents and scraps of conversation rising jaggedly above the tide of his wrath; so that the next day, when he was forced to think it all over, he could not pin any sequence to events, or say if they were real at all.

It was nine-thirty. Frank answered the door. He looked vacant, rather slack-jawed.

“Hello,” Sylvia said. Frank took her hand and kissed it. Startled, she pulled it away and rubbed it on her coat sleeve, then took off her coat and handed it to Frank as if he were a cloakroom attendant. Looking him over, she saw that he was wearing white shoes. She raised her eyebrows meaningfully.

Frank had a large Victorian house, a bit dilapidated but gracious in its proportions; he had a few good pictures, and quantities of junkshop and repro furniture intermingled with a few antiques. He leaned to the idea that books furnish a room, and frequented jumble sales in search of leather bindings; he was not as interested in the contents of his finds as he knew he ought to be. The overall effect was harmonious, a little dusty, genteel. He had bought the house before prices shot up, with his savings and a small legacy, and financed his risk by letting off bedrooms to students from the Teacher Training College. Colin imagined they paid a high price in humiliation, for Frank loved to patronise the young. I must take a good look around, he thought, I’m supposed to have been here quite often.

Frank did not seem to know what to do with Sylvia’s coat. “This way,” he said.

They followed him into a large, high-ceilinged room, where the other guests sat with drinks in their hands. In a tiny pause in the conversation, heads turned; turned back, and the talk resumed, a touch rumbustious, grating, over-loud; collars loosened and faces glowing. They’re in full swing, Colin thought, we really are terribly late. Perhaps it would have been better to cut our losses and not come at all. He began to stammer out fresh apologies, but Frank brushed them aside.

“This is my colleague, Colin Sidney,” Frank said to the room at large. “This is his charming wife, Sylvia, whom we all immediately notice is expecting another little Sidney, and this is Sylvia’s wet coat.”

“Why does he want us to call him Sidney?” one of the guests said. “Why can’t he use his real name?”

“Don’t be facetious, Edmund,” Frank said. “Have you seen my drawing-room since it’s been redecorated, Colin?”

“Oh well, we’ll call him what he wants,” the other man grumbled. “But either we should all go under our real names, or we should all have pseudonyms.”

“What?” Colin stared at him for a moment, and returned his attention to Frank’s question. “Of course I have, of course I’ve seen it,” he said heartily.

“I didn’t think you had. I’ve moved the idiot box into the morning room, not that I ever watch the thing except for the odd documentary, and the telephone’s through there in the junk room. They couldn’t seem to understand that I wanted it through there.”

“Why not?” the grumbling man said. “Most telephone conversation is junk. The art of letter writing is dead.”

“Colin, have you met—I’m sure you must know Edmund Toye?”

“I’m afraid not. How do you do?”

“Now that is a question.” Edmund Toye was a yellow-faced man, with a goatee and a snide pseudo-aristocratic expression; not unlike Cardinal Richelieu in some respects, but very unlike him in others. “Now that is a piece of what you might call conversational junk. I mean, you say how am I, but if I were to tell you about my spondylitis, you would be very put out. My dear lady,” he said to Sylvia. “Enchanté.” Sylvia removed her hand hastily, fearing he might kiss it. “Now is that more meaningful, or not, Sidney? I wonder.”

“Edmund,” a woman said in a sweetly warning tone. She presented them in turn with her hand. “I am Charmian Toye.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Sylvia said.

“Now that is what I call an overstatement,” Toye said. “Or a piece of hypocrisy. At best, she might be indifferent, certainly she has no reason to be pleased, and in fact she is simply trying to impress us with her grasp of the social niceties.”

“Well, well,” Charmian said. “We may just get along stormingly together, and she may be awfully pleased in the end, so you see, Edmund, she is only anticipating. Anyway, it’s a perfectly innocuous statement. Or so I should have thought. It may pass without comment.”

“It may, but of course,” said Edmund, “it has not.”

Momentarily, Colin was alarmed. Who were these people with the odd names, and had they been drinking? Well, yes, obviously, but had they been drinking too much, or did they always talk like this? He was glad to see that one of his colleagues from school was present—Stewart Colman, who taught English—but although he was at least sanely named he was not a reassuring dinner companion. He seized Colin’s hand now and pumped it earnestly, wisely adding no spoken greeting. There was a peculiar glint in his eye, Colin thought. He was a wiry man with very black hair. During his last summer vacation he had grown a beard, which to his grief and astonishment had sprouted the vibrant shade of bitter thick-cut marmalade. Having braved ridicule on the first day of term, he would not court more by shaving it off. His wife, Gail, was a big-boned woman of thirty-five, contrastingly sober in hue, who followed him around like an apology.

“Well, you seem to be saving lots of time by recognising the Colmans,” Frank said. “Though I must say, Colin, you do appear a trifle distrait.”

“I’m just sorry we were so late. I can’t apologise enough.” He paused, wary in case this turn of phrase should excite Edmund Toye’s derision. “We must have held up dinner.”

“Oh, we hadn’t thought of dinner,” Frank said. “We’re doing some serious drinking. Let me provide for you. Whisky, I suppose, and for you, Sylvia? Gin all right? Gin’s all right for Sylvia. Anything in it, Sylvia? Splash of something? Orange? Good Lord, I didn’t think anyone over the age of sixteen drank gin and orange. Never mind, my dear, you shall have whatever you desire, I’m no snob.” Frank whirled about, Sylvia’s coat in his arm like a comatose dancing partner.

“Here is Brian Frostick, and this is Elvie, whom we immediately notice is Brian’s very newly married wife.”

Frostick was gaunt and pallid, and intimated that he was a solicitor; his wife Elvie, no more than twenty to his forty, was brown and short, with cropped hair and sturdy bare shoulders rising from the flounces of a vivid scarlet dress. Her handshake was bone-crunching.

“Well, why don’t you sit?” Frank demanded. “I’ll dispose of Sylvia’s outerwear and give you drinkies in a trice, when I think how to manage it.” He wandered from the room.

“Frank’s well away,” Frostick said. He sniggered.

“I say,” said Edmund Toye sharply, “don’t sit there.”

Sylvia stopped, her backside in mid-air, then reached behind her to retrieve a violin, which Frank had placed carelessly on a chair in an effort to raise the cultural tone. She held on to it, looking about her helplessly. Soon, Colin thought, she would become angry.

“Oh, do,” Toye said with a gesture. “By all means, if you feel moved. I dare say Frank can provide a selection of sheet music. You do play, I suppose?”

“You suppose wrong,” Sylvia said. Her voice was flat. “I just want to know what to do with it.”

“My dear lady,” Toye said. Colin took the violin from Sylvia and edged up a very tarnished silver candelabra to place it on a sidetable. Mrs. Toye was patting the chaise-lounge beside her. She was a tiny woman, buttoned-up and rather cross, with a small pointed face and an air of extreme self-possession.

“What a pity, Sylvia,” Frostick said. “What a pity, I really thought you would give us a recital. What a merry little Zingara you looked, in your festive red and green.”

“What’s a Zingara?” Elvie asked.

“A type of gypsy, I believe,” Edmund Toye said. “Speaking of the Romany people, does anyone, I wonder, read George Borrow nowadays?”

At that moment Frank arrived with the drinks. Gail Colman leaned forward and asked Sylvia pleasantly, “When are you due?”

“July.”

“Oh, the ladies are going to talk about their confinements.” Frank seemed delighted. He pressed a glass into Sylvia’s hand. “Do harrow us, freeze our blood.”

“Well, I know nothing about it,” Elvie said, in the manner of one delivering a crushing snub. “I only left school last year.”

“Thanks,” Sylvia said. “Cheers, everybody.” She sipped her gin. “Oh, it’s very strong,” she said. “Do you have children, Mrs. Toye?”

“I have six.”

Colin turned and regarded the neat little woman with open astonishment.

“My goodness,” Sylvia said. “I expect they keep you busy.”

“They don’t keep me busy,” Mrs. Toye said, a shade reproachfully, “they keep me occupied.”

Sylvia was silent for a moment; all were silent. “Well, Charmaine,” she said at last, “I’m not going to cut any figure beside you. This is my fourth I’m expecting, and I’m quite sure it’ll be my last.”

“Oh, not Charmaine.” Mrs. Toye closed her eyes. “Not as in the popular song.” She sang softly, “‘I wonder why you keep me waiting, Charmaine, my Charmaine.’” Her eyes snapped open again. “Charmian, as in Iras and, A and C. ‘Give me my robe put on my crown I have immortal longings in me.’ If you find it easier, do call me Mrs. Toye.”

“‘Withered is the garland of the war, the soldier’s pole is fallen,’” Toye remarked. “That of course is a more than faintly ludicrous line. Really, I sometimes wonder if Shakespeare had any sense of the sexually ridiculous.”

Toye had by now taken up his stance before the fireplace, and was toasting his meagre buttocks before the electric logs. “Do go on with what you were saying,” he ordered Frostick. “About the so fascinating Road Traffic Acts.”

Stewart Colman leaned forward confidentially. “Between you and me,” he told Colin in a hoarse whisper, “these dinners are a bit pretentious. Frank’s a bit pretentious. I don’t know what they’re talking about half the time. Truth be known, I don’t think they know themselves. Intellectually speaking, it’s a case of fur coat and no knickers.”

Unexpectedly moved by this image, Colin looked at Colman gratefully. He wondered when dinner would appear; he was feeling very hungry. Sylvia edged towards the end of the chaise-longue, away from Charmian, and touched his hand.

“Colin, are they all mad,” she muttered, “or have they had too much to drink? That woman singing…”

“I don’t know. Keep your voice down. Try to take no notice.”

“Can’t we go?”

“Not till after dinner. Have a drink of your gin, and then you’ll feel more into things.”

“Can we go right after the meal?”

“Yes, I don’t think they’ll miss us.”

A gust of Elvie’s piercing chatter blew across them.

“I don’t think they’d miss us if we went now,” Sylvia said.

Frank was moving amongst them, circling the room with a bottle of Gordon’s in one hand and a bottle of Johnnie Walker in the other. He poured a liberal measure of the gin into Charmian Toye’s glass, a quintuple by Colin’s estimate. Colin could not help but total it up and add in the cost of the whisky Frank slopped into his own glass. Ashamed of himself, he looked at his watch, as a diversion. It was ten-thirty.

“By the way,” Frank said, giving himself a final dash of Scotch, “I’ve invited Yarker to join us for dessert. I didn’t think we wanted Yarker for the whole evening, and yet I did think that at some point Yarker would be necessary.”

“Does he know when to come?” Elvie asked.

“Yarker always knows the moment,” Frank said. “You should know that, Elvie.”

“Christ, yes,” Frostick said, with a smile that showed his gums.

“Do you remember when he put Charmian’s knickers on his head and pelted everybody with sardines? Yarker’s good value.”

Colin’s heart was sinking fast. The present company he could possibly cope with, but this threat of physical extravagances seemed unbearable. Would it be worse in anticipation, or worse in reality? People said that things were never as good as you hoped or as bad as you feared, but then, he thought with a pang, there had been Isabel, and on the other hand there had been the time he had his wisdom tooth out.

“By the way,” Frostick said, “when’s the food, Frank?”

“Oh, stop fussing. Where’s your glass?”

It was another three-quarters of an hour before they were seated at Frank’s elaborately laid table. Sylvia and Colin were at opposite ends, but Elvie and her husband had been seated together, because, Mrs. Toye advised mysteriously, “it was not yet a year.” By now it had become clear to Colin that the Toyes and the Frosticks were at home in the house, because the men had become ruder to Frank, and had started to help themselves to drinks. It seemed also that the two couples knew each other well, even intimately. Colin felt a sense of sinister exclusion. He had hoped to be seated with Gail Colman, but he had Charmian instead. He thought that with this seating plan the evening had reached its nadir, but he did not know then what would occur over the saltimbocca.

Muriel had decided to go to bed. When she was halfway upstairs, a sharp pain brought her to a dead stop, as if someone had slammed a door in her face. She put a hand to her back and stood where she was, her large feet wedged a little sideways and her hand slapped down on the banister rail, flatly where it had fallen. After a time, when the pain ebbed, she turned gingerly and sat down on the step. She waited, not aware of what she was waiting for, not trying to think about it. Lately the affairs of her body had taken a turn for the worse; here was a turn for the worser. Evelyn had just gone on being the same, except snide and looking sideways and jeering about her misfortunes, and doing a performance she called worrying about the future.

When the pain came back, Muriel leaned forward and dug her fingers into her thighs. The vast bulk before her seemed to pulsate dully, throbbing and jumping like a machine. There was no guarantee that she would not always have to stay like this, her head down, a dry grunt coming from her throat. But after a minute or two the spasm slackened and released her. She took a deep breath, ran her hands along her legs, and stroked her knees. This was a change in her state. This was a process, she thought. There would be something at the end of it.

It was so long since Colin had eaten that he felt slightly nauseated. Frank was an accomplished cook, and he had taken a great deal of trouble. It was obvious that the meal had not been waiting. Did that mean, Colin asked himself, that his lateness had made no difference at all? If he had sat there with the rest of them, consuming Frank’s generous drinks since eight o’clock, he would have been in no state to drive home; and they had hardly started on the wine that was to accompany their meal. He looked apprehensively around the ring of faces. They looked little different from when he first came in, but different they must be, edging by degrees towards inebriation; he hoped there would be no scenes.

“Insalata di funghi e frutta di mare,” Frank announced. He tripped slightly, bearing the plates in, but retrieved himself. His glasses were completely steamed up from the heat in the kitchen. But he did not seem to notice. “No squid, of course,” he said gloomily.

“Ah well, Frank,” Mrs. Toye said. “Squid is next to impossible, especially those tender little sea creatures which the Italians, so poetically I always feel, call sea-strawberries.” Mrs. Toye now sat back with a languid air, as if, because of the absence of squid, she could expect to find no further pleasure in the evening.

Colin looked down at his plate, and down the table at Sylvia. She wouldn’t eat raw mushrooms, that was for sure. Oh well, she could blame her pregnancy for anything she couldn’t manage.

“Sidney. I’m speaking to you,” Edmund Toye said. “I say, I understand you are also a schoolmaster.”

“Yes, that’s right. I teach history.”

“Well, you say history, but I wonder what you think history is. Probably a question we would need considerable time to go into. ‘It is a sign of the gods’ especial detestation of a man, when they drive him to the profession of schoolmaster.’ Now which of the ancient writers, I wonder, said that?” Toye did not wait for a reply, but pressed on keenly, thrusting a forkful of salad into his mouth. “Tell me now, what is your preferred form of creativity? Frank of course has written some delightful poetry. As an actor he is extremely skilful. His painting I feel is artificial. Intellectualised.” A stray thought claimed Colin’s wandering attention and involuntarily he raised his eyes to the deep blue ceiling above the Regency Stripe. Didn’t he remember Frank complaining about the cost of undercoat? No, Toye didn’t mean that, evidently he didn’t mean that.

“Frank,” he was saying, “have you told Colin about your novel?”

“My novel,” Frank said, beaming. “You want to hear about my novel, Colin?”

“That would be very nice,” Colin said. “I had no idea.”

“Well it’s just a germ as yet, you understand.” Frank took off his glasses and polished them vigorously. “It’s all rather circumstantial…as a matter of fact, I had a stroke of luck. Do you remember that bad fog we had, when my car got a bump, and was in the garage?” Frank paused, took a sip of wine, then a gulp. “Robust,” he said. “Here, Colin, let me top you up.” Colin pushed his glass towards Frank. Out of the corner of his eye he checked on Sylvia. She didn’t seem to be making too much of a fool of herself. There was an untouched glass of white wine by her plate, and he knew she had only had two gins.

“Well, the odd thing was,” Frank began.

“Perhaps for brevity I should take the story up,” Toye cut in. “When he got his car back, it came complete with the most extraordinary document. Obviously belonged to somebody else with a car in for repairs, and the garage men had taken it out and then put it back in the wrong car. At least, that’s the explanation we came up with.”

Colin felt uneasy. “What exactly was it?”

“Oh, a most extraordinary thing,” Toye said. “A kind of case file which a set of wretched social workers had been keeping over the years. Really, you cannot imagine the low level of literacy among those people.”

“The entries,” Charmian Toye said slowly, “have given us much innocent pleasure.”

“But look,” Colin’s heart was hammering in his throat. “Look, Frank, you must give it back at once. It’s the property of the Social Services Department.”

“Oh, knickers to that,” Frank said. His grin was distinctly lopsided, and his eyes behind his spectacles seemed to slip out of focus. “Finders keepers. It’s all about two dotty women. It’s a gift. Grist to the mill. I’m going to turn it into a novel.”

“Frank could never,” Toye said, “have invented such grotesquerie by himself.”

“For goodness’ sake,” Colin said. He was aware that his voice was very loud, and that the Frosticks, man and wife, had turned to stare at him. “Frank, think now, this is confidential information you’re talking about.”

“Then someone should have taken better care of it. Here, Frostick, open another three bottles, will you, I’m talking. You can’t imagine the lives some people lead. I might turn it into a sort of allegory, you see, about the state of our society.”

“But regardless of how it came to be lost…some poor social worker…the consequences could be very serious.”

“Poor social worker be damned,” Frostick said. “I’m not sure that they’re not the villains of the piece. Interfering do-gooders. Caring Society. Huh.” Frostick showed yellow teeth in contempt, and took to grappling with the corkscrew.

“Come on now, Frank, you’ve got to give these papers back.” Colin’s tone was pleading.

“Not a chance. I’ve already written Chapter One. Stranger than fiction. It’s inspired me.” He waved an arm. “It’s all through there, in the study, waiting for me to get back to it tomorrow morning.”

“Really, Frank,” Colin said, “you can’t do this. You’ve lost touch with reality.”

“He has if he thinks he’ll do anything tomorrow morning,” Elvie said. “Except vomit.”

“But these are real people. You can’t make their lives public property.” He turned around on Toye. “You’ve no right to abet him in this. You know it’s wrong, probably illegal.” Toye stroked his beard, and regarded him sardonically.

“I’ll change their names,” Frank said sulkily. “I wish I’d never told you, Colin. You’re spoiling it.”

“Yes, and I’m right to spoil it. This could have serious consequences, and not just for you. Some client—these clients—may be suffering because the file’s missing. And someone’s job may well be in jeopardy, if things go wrong. Even losing the file is bad enough, but it was obviously pure accident—and some poor young woman—or man,” he added hastily, “won’t be able to do their job properly without it.” He leaned forward, his face reddening. “Give it back, Frank, hand it in, for God’s sake.”

Frank sprawled back in his chair. “Client,” he murmured. “He knows all the jargon.”

Frostick leaned over Colin and refilled his glass. “Calm down,” he said.

“Yes, calm down, Sidney,” said Toye. “You’re spoiling the party.”

“I don’t give a damn about the party.” Colin crashed his fist down on the table. “Give that file to me.”

There was a silence. From the other end of the table Sylvia implored him. “Please, Colin, what does it matter to you?”

“It does matter, because—I happen to know—Oh, Christ.”

“Know what?” Elvie said.

“Frank’s heart’s set on it,” Charmian added sentimentally.

“Never mind,” Colin growled. He dabbed his mouth with his napkin, as if there were blood on his lip. He would, indeed, have liked to lean over the table and punch Frank as hard as he could manage. Frank was what he had always suspected. He was a blind, antisocial egotist, and not fit to have charge of the young. He should have known it was useless to appeal to any residue of morality left in Frank. And no other kind of appeal was open to him, without giving himself away. Was there any possibility that he was mistaken? No, not a chance. That was Isabel’s file, and Isabel’s error that Frank was hoping to blazon to the world. And of course, Frank would succeed in his project. Frank and the Frosticks and Edmund and Charmian between them could write any number of books. He glared at Elvie Frostick, now glowing like a bulb above her lampshade of a dress. Elvie probably took shorthand.

Colin reached for his glass, drained it. He put it back on the table, and quite suddenly, instantly, he was drunk. Around him the conversation resumed, louder, crueller; he heard it in snatches, above his own thoughts, clattering after logic like some unoiled and primitive engine.

A door was creaking. In time, in time, Evelyn’s figure appeared below her at the foot of the stairs, her hand fumbling for the lightswitch that still worked. She snapped it down, and as light burst over Muriel, a frenzy of pain burst out in her body, an unstemmable riot of pain, hers and hers alone.

Evelyn mounted the stairs. “Get up, get up,” she said. “Do as I tell you. You have to. I’m responsible. I’m in charge of you.”

So every day is Mother’s Day, Muriel thought. Her eyes half-closed, she regarded the old woman. Evelyn reached out and took Muriel under her armpits, trying to pull her to her feet. Muriel allowed herself to be lifted, her body hanging like a sack filled with bricks. Evelyn’s chest rose and fell audibly, with a creak that was very like that the furniture made, but which seemed strange from a human person. Her lips turned blue, her face grew pinched, flesh fell away from the bones. When Muriel was good and ready, she put her hands on Evelyn’s shoulders and heaved herself upright.

“It’ll get worse before it gets better,” Evelyn said. “I’m only telling you.”

For years she had been of the opinion that Muriel didn’t feel pain. She got bruised and bled, but she didn’t feel it like any normal person. What was agony for some could be just a twinge for her. Tonight even her twinge must be regarded.

“I got this dress on the island of Kos,” Elvie was saying. “We went there on honeymoon. It was very cheap, this dress.” A sort of complacent savagery crept into her voice. “But I think it’s rather special. It’s my colour, scarlet. It was too long, you know, so I made them shorten it, there and then. That’s what I call service.” She looked around, ready for a challenge. “That’s what’s wrong with Britain today.”

“Ah,” Edmund said, “how does it feel, I wonder, to be twenty.”

“After we’d been to Kos,” the girl said, “we visited Malta. On both islands we saw all the historic sites.”

“I did the swim,” Frostick said, “the famous swim. As in history.”

“It’s got to be done in armour,” Frank said.

“Where would I get armour from?” Frostick demanded.

“Well, you say swim,” said Edmund, “you say armour, but I question whether it is possible to swim in armour.”

“Not what you would think of as armour,” Frank explained. “Not plate armour. A leather jerkin with things sewn on it. Chain links.”

“Oh, that,” Toye sneered.

“My friend fell in the canal wearing her suede coat,” Gail Colman said. “She sank like a stone.”

Colin pushed his chair back and stood up.

“You can’t go to the lavatory, because I’m going.” Elvie Frostick hoisted herself to her feet, looking belligerent. She thrust her chair away and swayed across the room, her face incandescent; it could be seen that she was in fact little more than a dwarf.

Colin edged himself around to Frank and bent over him, whispering.

“Do you think I could make a phone call?”

“Of course.” Frank gestured expansively. “You don’t have to ask permission, you know where it is.”

“I said I was going,” Elvie yelled back from the doorway. She clung to the door frame like a furious and compressed gorilla.

Colin slipped into the little room that Frank had indicated earlier. It was a junk room indeed, piled high with broken-sided old tea-chests and yellow newspapers. The phone with its stack of directories was on a rickety table in the far corner. Colin swore to himself as he picked his way over the rubbish. How bloody impractical and stupid, how exactly like O’Dwyer. All his respect evaporated, replaced by loathing and fear, as if he were compelled to walk a mountain road in the company of a lunatic. He nudged the directories aside to crouch over the telephone; no one must overhear. Under the topmost book was a copy of Playboy and a volume of Reader’s Digest. Colin stared at them. He did not know which he found the more shocking. After a moment he recovered himself, but as he began to dial Isabel’s number he was appalled to see that his fingers were trembling.

He tried to work out how many weeks it was since he had spoken to her. Suppose her father answered, and she refused to come to the phone? Or she answered herself, and put it down at the sound of his voice? His heart was thumping against his ribs. Is it so important, he asked himself, is it a matter of life and death? He didn’t know, his brain was befuddled, he couldn’t think straight. He must choose the words, the exact words that would tell her at once—

“Hello?”

“Isabel.”

“Colin? What is it?”

“Listen…”

“What do you want?”

“Something’s happened, ver—”

“Oh? Something’s happened, has it?” Her tone was full of impatience and mockery. “Has Sylvia miscarried? Is that it? So you think that now—well, you can’t. It’s not on, Colin. So if that’s it—go to hell.”

He gasped, and suddenly tears filled his eyes, pricking and demeaning. Where did she learn to talk to him like that? Why did she do it? Was it out of perplexity and confusion greater than his own, or out of some practised hardness inside her? He shuddered, taking a great breath.

“I know where your file is,” he said, as loudly and clearly as he dared.

“What?”

“Your file, your missing file.” As simply as he could, he told her what had happened.

“Wait,” she said, when he finished his account. “Colin, you’ve got me out of bed. I can’t think straight.”

“You’ll have to be quick. I’ll have to ring off in a minute.”

“But I went to the garage three times. They denied they’d ever seen it. Then they—but Colin, how could he write a novel? I don’t know what you mean.”

“He thinks it’s got the makings of a good story.”

“But it’s not a story, it’s just what people do. It’s just a record of what they do.”

“Grist to the mill, he says. Have you ever heard that stupid phrase? What is grist, anyway?”

“Colin, are you drunk?”

“No, not by a long chalk.”

“This isn’t some stupid joke, is it?”

“Of course it’s not a joke. It’s a dinner party. We’ve finished two courses and I’ve come to phone you. I’ve got to be quick.”

“Colin, there’s nothing I can do, is there? I mean, if I came and asked him for it…do you think—?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea, because how would you have known, and that involves me—”

“Yes, I see, I do see that.”

“If Social Services asked him for it? If you told them?”

“Don’t be stupid, Colin, I’m trying to avoid them knowing, isn’t that the whole point? I don’t want this case discussed at Social Services. Can’t we persuade him?”

“I’ve told you, no.”

“This is awful, Colin, this confidential information lying about, it could cause the most awful blow-up.”

“I know that, I know, you don’t have to persuade me.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“Where it is? What do you mean?”

“In the house.”

“Well…yes. Roughly.”

“Then take it.”

“What?”

“Get it for me, Colin.”

“But Christ, how can I—”

“Do you see any other way?”

“No, but—”

“Phone me tomorrow.”

He heard a click. The line was dead. She didn’t even say thank you, he thought. And she hadn’t told him what the file looked like, or whose name was on it. Presumably he would know it when he saw it. Gently he replaced the receiver. Someone was calling him.

“Sidney! Sidney!” That was Frank. Now Frank thought it was a big joke to call him Sidney. “Sidney, come for your chocolate mousse.”

At least, Evelyn thought, the turn of events had not taken her by surprise. She had dreaded being roused from sleep, pulled up from her musty undersea dreams to find the girl and her half-born child scraping at the bedroom door. What if there were difficulties? Of course, it had to be considered, she had run over the question in her mind. If Muriel looked like dying, she would fetch the doctor. If it came to that…she could not stomach being haunted by that composite creature that would be Muriel and the half-emerged child; no, she could not stomach it. They would want a room to themselves, to hiss and cavort and bang on the walls; ah, the gay young dead. Soon she would be forced to live in the kitchen.

She left the lights burning all over the house. She hoped that it would not attract attention from the outside, but she had enough to do without being hampered by things following her down the hall. She made Muriel a cup of tea and let her have it lying on the bed. She was the soul of kindness. Then she took out the first-aid books and her reading glasses. She boiled the scissors for ten minutes. She did not think they would be much use, but you cannot get scissors sharpened nowadays. In her drawer in the kitchen cabinet she found some lengths of string, which would do for tying off the cord; they were rolled up with the remains of her paper bags, from her tenants’ tearing days. She could not see her pile of farthings, and spent a minute or two rooting around for them. She sighed. She would have to ask Muriel about it, when Muriel was more in command of herself. “I do like everything in its place,” she said to herself. She got ready a blanket for the baby, a bit worn and musty but the correct size; it must have been one of Muriel’s. She took up some aspirin and a glass of tonic wine; but when around midnight Muriel screamed out in pain, she lost her nerve and slapped her repeatedly until she lay quiet, with two tears rolling down her grey cheeks.

When Colin re-entered the dining-room, he saw at once that the situation had deteriorated. Several more bottles of wine had been opened, and Charmian had returned to gin; the bottle stood by her elbow. Charmian’s precise tones had become even sharper, as if her tongue were edged with glass. Sylvia looked up at him anxiously. He attempted a smile, a reassuring smile; his face felt stiff. Edmund Toye was explaining how after a hard week at the Teacher Training College he liked to support his local football team and stand on the terraces, wearing a cap and bellowing. He described it as a most valuable emotional release.

“A. J. Ayer does it,” he said. “Logical Positivism.”

“Go on,” Frostick said.

“He’s Arsenal.”

Colin took his seat. He pushed his plate away. He certainly wasn’t going to eat chocolate mousse. He picked up his brimming glass and took a gulp of dessert wine. He did not notice the taste; it could have been water, or vodka. His throat was dry. Stewart Colman pushed the bottle down to him.

“Refill, Colin. Might as well. When in Rome et cetera.”

Colin noticed that Colman seemed relatively sober still. And Sylvia too; she sat with an expression both hunted and mutinous, which she had assumed as soon as she saw Frank’s white shoes and which the meal and the drinks had done nothing to alter. But then, he thought, for what I have to do next it would be as well if they were all drunk. He shifted his attention from his glass to find Charmian’s eyes fixed upon him. He lifted his head.

“Do you know,” she said distinctly, “he hasn’t got spondylitis?”

“I suspected as much,” Colin said.

“He said it because he thought it sounded clever. In fact it’s not an intellectual’s disease at all. I should think you might get it from carrying heavy weights.”

“I should think you might,” Colin said.

“In that case it surprises me that half the population of Africa hasn’t got it, from carrying things on their heads. It may be that they have. We do not comprehend,” she said, shaking her head, “we seldom take the time to try to comprehend, the sufferings of the Third World.”

At that moment there was a loud clatter just outside the room, and Elvie stood in the doorway holding by the hand a bald sandy-coloured man of about sixty, with moles and bristles on his shining scalp. He wore sagging twill trousers and a leather-patched jacket. The man’s mouth hung open, but it was difficult to tell whether he was inebriated, or meant to utter a greeting, given time. It was possible that this was the only member of the party for which the excuse could be made that, when sober, he appeared drunk. Locked together, he and Elvie staggered across the room towards the table.

Now Charmian displayed the first real sign of animation since her discomfiture over the squid. She sat bolt upright, her hands clasped.

“I say, Yarker. How clever of you, Yarker, to know that we wouldn’t get to pudding till midnight.”

“Pudding?” said Yarker. “No pudding, whisky for me.”

“Oh, you are tiresome, Yarker, we’ve finished all the whisky.”

“Eh?” said Yarker.

“S’right,” Frank said. “Colman here’s been mixing cocktails.”

“You say cocktails,” Toye put in, “but does anyone, I wonder, really know the derivation of the term, ‘cocktail’?”

His glass halfway to his lips, Colin glared at Colman. If Colman had been sampling his own product, his last hope of sane assistance had gone. Elvie had now resumed her seat, and as if in early confirmation of his fears, Colman rose from the table, lurched across to her, and pressed his mouth into her stout shoulder. Brian Frostick watched from under lowered eyelids. Gail Colman stared at her husband’s strange parti-coloured beard moving across the girl’s flesh like some small browsing animal; she pursed her mouth, and sat isolated in a moody silence, looking as if she were accustomed to this and had been waiting for it all evening. When Colman raised his head, a large half-moon of teethmarks could be seen above Elvie’s meaty left breast. Perhaps anaesthetised by alcohol, she had not made a sound. As Colman straightened up, Gail’s fingers crept across the table towards Colin’s untouched mousse; she stood up, drew back her arm, and with an Amazonian heave of her bosom lobbed the heavy glass dish at his head. It struck him a glancing blow, and a gelatinous mess slid down his shirt front. He swayed slightly, then stretched his arms wide and thrust his head forward, as if he were in the pillory. “More, more,” Edmund Toye cried. Her eyes narrowed, Gail Colman reached for the pepper-mill. Sylvia shot out of her chair in alarm.

“My God,” Colin roared, “you all know each other, don’t you? You do this regularly.”

“Let’s go,” Sylvia said to him.

“Soon. Soon as we can.”

“Can’t we go now?”

Above the general racket, something penetrated to them all simultaneously, a new noise in the room. It was a quiet snuffling, a sighing, a series of little squeaks. It emanated from Mrs. Toye, who now sat swaying in her chair, crying softly. Colman realigned himself with the table, stumbled back to it, and resumed his seat. He put his elbows into the debris of the food, and peered closely at Charmian.

“I say, pass the port,” Frank said. “It’s going the wrong way.”

“Shut up, Frank,” Frostick said, with no amiability. Charmian was fumbling for her handkerchief. She found it, then looked at it, bunched up in her fist, as if she did not know how it got there or what it was for. Her eyes had become dreamy and huge with tears, her mouth quivered, and her voice had broken down into a plaintive bleat.

“So delighted, so euphoric,” she said, “always the same when you’re pregnant, you don’t want to tell people, tempting fate, you know, not that I expected any trouble but you get that funny feeling and you can’t help worrying, but Edmund goes and tells everybody right away. He can’t contain himself, bursting with pride, well I think men are, don’t you?” Charmian, eyes glazing, addressed the empty air. “I mean it must seem so sentimental to you, I expect you get tired of people enthusing, but it really is so wonderful, absolutely the most wonderful thing in the world, I remember I absolutely melted when Jerome was put into my arms, and it was the same with Ariana so I know it works with girls too. Oh, and such an absolutely super super feeling, each one like a little miracle, each tiny perfect little finger—”

“She’s cracked up,” Frostick said.

“—and each tiny perfect toe.”

Charmian subsided into muffled sobs. The room fell quiet. Then suddenly Frank rose to his feet with a deafening clatter, slapping his palms down on the table; extending one arm, gripping the table with the other, he commenced a repertoire of humming and twanging which Colin took to be the sounds of an orchestra tuning up. Ambitiously extending both arms, he bellowed two lines:

“Allons enfants de la patrie,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé.”

“Can’t remember any more,” he said, and sat down abruptly. His whole body seemed to sag, and he made a soft snorting noise. His head lolled, and a trail of spittle ran down his chin. His body lurched over to the left side of his chair, and stayed there, leaning precariously over the arm.

“He’s had a seizure,” Sylvia cried, jumping to her feet.

Frostick looked at her with contempt and annoyance. “He’s pissed,” he said. “He’s had far more than we have. He drinks in the kitchen between courses. For God’s sake, sit down, woman, and give me the port if you don’t want any.”

Charmian was still crying, wiping her nose noisily from time to time. Colin knelt by Frank’s chair and took his pulse. He could not find it, but did not assume from this that Frank was dead; it was more a formality than a practical proceeding.

“Sylvia,” he said, “why don’t you take Charmian upstairs, and loosen her clothes, and get her to lie down for a few minutes?”

Sylvia dragged her eyes from Frank. “Right,” she said. She took Charmian firmly by the arms and raised her from her chair. Mrs. Toye suffered herself to be led from the room. Colin saw with admiration that, although Sylvia was trembling a little from the multiple shocks of the last ten minutes, her expression was firm and her gait quite steady.

“Upsy-daisy,” she said to Mrs. Toye, when they reached the bottom of the stairs. He heard her retrieve the tiny lady from a tumble, and set her on her feet again. “Up we go, there’s a good girl.”

And up they went. Colin surveyed the wreckage. Frank was still lolling half in and half out of his chair, one knuckle brushing the carpet. Colman and Frostick were mixing port with brandy. Gail Colman had resumed her sulk, and Elvie, whilst sitting bolt upright, appeared only semi-conscious.

Now Yarker sidled up to Colin and took him by the sleeve. He was breathing heavily. Colin saw that his freckled skin was almost entirely covered in fierce ginger hairs like those found in doormats. “I say,” said Yarker, “what’s all this about Frank having no more whisky! It’s nonsense, I say. Of course there must be whisky.”

Colin saw that he must placate Yarker before he would make any progress. He appealed to the table. “Have you any idea where Frank keeps his spare whisky? Yarker seems to think he must have a supply.”

“Yarker is not known to be wrong,” Toye said.

Frostick looked up. He seemed to be giving the matter consideration. “We could look for it,” he offered.

“Good idea,” Colin said. “It’s a big house, so we’d better split up.”

“Look, I’ll take command of this exercise,” Yarker snapped. “Volunteers for the study?”

“Me,” Colin said promptly.

“You’ll not find it there,” Yarker said. “He spends too much time in there. If it were in there, he’d have drunk it. Stands to reason. Moral: never volunteer.”

“I don’t mind,” Colin said. Yarker glared at him.

“Colman, stand on your feet man when I address you. Kitchens, out-houses, sculleries. Frostick, recce all medicine cabinets. I myself will search the upper floors in their entirety. Toye—oh, leave him, the bloody man’s playing with himself under the table.”

Toye’s expression had become vague and goatlike, and neither he nor Elvie seemed better than stuporous; Frank snored gently, twitching a little at his extremities. Colin bent down and compassionately eased off Frank’s shoes. Then he straightened up, wheeled smartly, and trotted off for the study at a pace which brought a bark of approval from Yarker. Softly he closed the door behind him, shutting them all out.

A smell of damp and old papers, and the healing darkness. Colin felt reluctant to switch on the light, but that was ridiculous; he was working against time, he told himself. For good measure he switched on Frank’s desk lamp too. He pulled out the first drawer and rifled through it, and then the second. Nothing. On the desk, then, actually on it. All waiting for tomorrow, Frank had said, but how could you find anything under all this rubbish, these press-cuttings turning yellow, these ends of string and scissors, and pile upon pile of the Reader’s Digest, even in Compendia, even in Condensed Books. Was it possible to do any work in this room? If only she’d told him—what’s this? His hand slid over a buff-coloured folder. He swept the debris off the top of it. Opened it, flicked through. MURIEL ALEXANDRA AXON. Yes, this was it all right. Funny, that name sounded very familiar. Where did he know it from? He was beginning to have a headache, and his eyes burned from the cigarette smoke. He rubbed them vigorously. Never mind now, it would come back to him tomorrow, as soon as his head was clear. The important thing was that he’d got the file. He patted the papers back into it and tucked them under his arm. There was a cough behind him and he jumped violently. It was Frank, swaying alarmingly, smiling, his expression sly. “Ah, Colin!” he said. “Caught you! Cry down my idea, would you, and then creep in here and steal my file? Thought you’d write it for yourself, did you? Wait till the others hear about this!” He raised his voice. “Help! Help! Stop plagiarist!”

Colin heard Sylvia’s voice in the hall. He held the buff cardboard across his palpitating heart. Frank took in a breath, poised for another roar, but at that moment he lost his balance slightly, and clutched at an armchair to save himself, his head drooping over the back.

“Might be sick,” he said. His head hung.

“Will be,” Colin said. “Will be bloody sick.” Colin’s hand closed around the nearest of the Condensed Books—Kon Tiki, I Leap Over the Wall, and Father of the Bride; he raised his arm high, and with the evening’s amassed frustration brought the volume crashing down on the back of Frank’s neck.

It must be two o’clock, Evelyn thought. Two o’clock in the morning. She remembered the whisky. It was true that Florence Sidney had not thought highly of it at Christmas, but then the circumstances had been vastly different. Yes, she would go down and get herself a drink of that. The thought was comforting.

She fumbled with her reading glasses, and thumbed over the pages of the first-aid book. She turned to Muriel on the bed, Muriel with her damp face, crawling up the side of her glassy pyramid of pain. “Take quick pants when you are breathing,” she reminded her. “Short quick pants, the book says. Don’t hold your breath like that. You’ll stop it coming out. It might as well come, now. We might as well see what we’ve got.” Muriel didn’t answer. “It says to put newspaper under you, Muriel. It sounds like what you do for dogs, but that’s what it says. Or a plastic sheet. I haven’t got a plastic sheet, otherwise you could have it, Muriel. I’m going down to the lean-to, to get some newspapers. You’ll be all right, won’t you? I’ll not be long.”

Muriel seemed indifferent. She doesn’t seem to care whether I go or stay, Evelyn thought. But it’s nothing new, she’s always been like that, hard-hearted, independent, going her own way. Evelyn gripped the banister with both hands as she went downstairs, bringing her feet together one step at a time; the pain in her knees burned her, as if the muscles were being torn, and getting downstairs was worse than getting up. When she reached the foot of the stairs she steadied herself with one hand against the wall. I do not seem to feel strong, she said to herself. She forced herself to rest for a moment, and then made her way to the kitchen. The room had a derelict, unused air; the night looked straight in at the window, a blue night with a parched moon. She fumbled in a cupboard for the bottle of whisky, found a cup, and poured out the last inch of it. She grimaced as she swallowed it; it burnt her lips and tasted of earth, left her mouth dry. It will brace me, she thought. When she opened the door of the lean-to, a wet and rotten smell rushed towards her, invading the house. Holding her torch carefully she picked her way among her possessions. The newspapers were sodden; she can’t have these, she thought, whatever the book says. That is summertime advice, I am sure. On the top of one bale lay the corpse of some small animal, a mouse or shrew, its tiny mouth gaping. I need some air, she thought. She stood at the door looking down over the garden.

How far and giddyingly distant the moon seemed; there were no visible stars. She thought she heard, blown on the night wind, the wailing and chattering of children. Lights were on in the Sidney house, and once she thought that a window opened, and white faces, no bigger than a child’s, stared out over the dark gardens. She wondered if they were waiting in the dark for her, amongst the shrubs, around the old coal-bunker, down in the shed where Clifford used to go. Perhaps we should have had more children, she thought, more children of our own. But after Muriel, Clifford had not wanted to risk repetition. He said that he would amuse himself. He would go down to the shed and she must turn a blind eye. A blind eye to whatever he kept in there and whatever comings and goings there were. That was what she had always done, until one day she had seen the child from next door heading down the path, little Florence Sidney; little Florence Sidney, who was that great hulk of a woman now. She had taken it upon herself to shoo the child away, scold her out of the garden. When Clifford came in for his tea at three-thirty—it was a Sunday—she asked him, “Do you take children down there?” How her hands had quivered; milk and sugar had gone all over the table. Clifford’s face then: “A blind eye, Evelyn, a blind eye” the threats in his voice, the promise of a week of bruises, and Muriel tossed into her bedroom unfed and screaming. “What are children to you?” Clifford had sneered. His own eyes not blind, but pale and rimless, turning now to all the wastage on the table, the messy spillings of her fear.

Years passed like this, the nameable fears giving way to the unnameable, the familiar dread of evening muffled under a pall of fog, of blackness, of earth; all the days lived as if underground, and Muriel, she thought, if I could have mourned myself, if I could have drawn breath, I might have pitied you. She pulled her cardigan around her and turned her cheek from the wind. Time to go back upstairs.

To Colin’s alarm and astonishment, Frank slowly stood erect. Colin stepped back. It was beyond his power to deliver a further blow, to knock down a sentient, upstanding Head of Department. But then, as if swaying in some whimsical breeze, Frank leaned sideways, then tottered, then keeled over and crashed to the floor like a dead man.

Giving his victim a cursory glance, Colin secured the file and headed back for the dining-room. Sylvia was coming in from the kitchen with two mugs of black coffee on a tray.

“There you are, Colin,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice.

Colin’s chest heaved, sweat ran from every pore.

“These were all the cups I could find that were reasonably clean and fit to use.” She put the mugs on the table and held up the tray. It had once been the lid of a biscuit tin, with a bit of bilious green lino, sugar-encrusted and stained, forming a top to it. “I wouldn’t give this houseroom. It’s an education, what people have in their backs. That kitchen makes me heave, all that Italian muck plastered all over the place. I’d have thought he could have afforded decent food. And cleanliness costs nothing. I don’t know who’s going to have these coffees. Do you want one?”

“We’re going,” Colin said.

“I’ve got my coat.” Tears sprang into Sylvia’s eyes, glinting like bayonet points. “Colin, do you know what he’d done with it? He said he didn’t know where to put it. He’d dumped it in his rubbish bin. My good coat. It stinks of tomato sauce and fish.”

“Oh, Sylvia. Oh, love, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was going to be like this.”

“I can’t wear it. It’ll have to be cleaned.”

“Do you want my jacket?”

“No, it’ll do me good to get out in the cold. What’s that under your arm?”

“Nothing, just some papers. Come on, let’s go.”

Sylvia pulled out a tissue and polished the tip of her nose. “I’d like to give Frank a piece of my mind.”

“He was drunk. I’m sorry.”

“Where is he?”

“I put him to bed.”

Behind him, from the study, he heard movement and a muffled groan; Frank coming to, or as to as he would come, before morning. He took Sylvia’s arm. “Come on.” From upstairs came a yelp of triumph, and Yarker’s voice:

“Well done, that man!”

He bundled Sylvia out of the front door and into the damp air. A pulse hammered in his forehead, his hands had begun to shake again, but free of the smoke-laden fug of the house, he took huge raw gasps as they scurried to the car. All I need now is a flat battery, he thought; expecting the worst, as experience was training him to do. But the engine roared, dreadfully loud, shattering the silence of four A.M. on a dead winter’s day.

“In twenty minutes we’ll be in bed,” he said.

“You know the way, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, I know it now.”

“I wish we had got lost. I wish we’d called it off and never gone. It was the worst night out I’ve ever had.”

“Yes, I know. Try and forget it.”

“We’ll never go there again.”

“I’ll be surprised if we’re ever asked, love.”

“That’s something, then. I wonder how Florence went on with them? Perhaps she’ll come over and mind them next week, and we could go to the pictures.”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”

“I’ll have to take my coat to the cleaner’s first thing. Colin, it was awful, that man Yarker started interfering with her. With Charmian. I was embarrassed. I came out.”

“Yes, you did the right thing. Don’t get involved, that’s the best.”

They were the only car on the road, an icy ribbon unwrapping beneath them, the fields bare and still, the houses shuttered, the moon riding high and white.

“I haven’t been out at this time for years,” Sylvia said, adding, “thank God, and I don’t intend to be again.” She sounded cheerful enough, now that the whole ordeal was over. She stretched, arching her body in the seat, and yawned loudly. “Is that somebody behind us?”

Colin saw the flashing lights in his rear-view mirror. Sylvia saw them too, looking back over her shoulder. Colin pulled into the side of the road. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then, very quietly, very calmly, Sylvia said, “It’s like a nightmare.”

Colin wound down his window. The young constable whose face loomed up to fill their vision had a paste-coloured face in which freckles bloomed like the raisins in a steamed pudding. Shorn copper bristles extruded from under his cap, and for a chilling moment Colin thought Yarker had pursued him, metamorphosed, rendered youthful the better to hound him down the years.

“Are you aware, sir,” the boy said, “that your rear lights are defective?”

Slowly, Colin swung open the door and uncoiled himself from his seat. He set his feet as firmly on the ground as he could manage, but it seemed to give under his tread, as if swamp had bubbled through the tarmac. With one hand on the roof of the car he worked his way around to the boot. Something ghastly hung from the policeman’s hand, some membrane, shiny and swinging. Colin blinked.

“Would you please, sir,” said the constable, “breathe into this bag?”