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  ‘What do you think?’ one of them asked her.

  ‘We’ll do whatever you think best,’ said the other.

  Flora watched as Janey struggled for composure. Not for anything would she have interrupted this scene, momentous in her daughter’s life; not for almost anything would she have forgone the singular fortune of witnessing it. In a moment Janey’s voice was heard, almost calm, almost collected, with a faint echo of her mother’s social manner, betraying only to Flora the hint of unease and excitement to conceal which she was striving. ‘Why don’t you wait for a while,’ she said. ‘And then, if William still hasn’t come back, you can go to the village.’

  The beautiful youths got properly off their bicycles and leaned them against the low wall which half surrounded the swimming pool.

  ‘Yes, very well,’ said one, ‘we’ll do that—shall we?’

  The other nodded and then stepped forward. ‘I’m James Hopetoun,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘And this chap is my brother, John.’

  Janey had now risen, and stood looking, still astonished, at their two faces. ‘I’m Janey,’ she said meekly. ‘Janey Beaufort.’

  ‘Janey,’ they said, together. ‘How do you do?’ She shrugged very slightly and then at last managed to smile.

  At this moment the disregarded Nell—who had been sitting some distance away and watching the whole scene with gleeful interest—looked up at Flora’s window; catching sight of her mother she sank her head as far down as it could go between her shoulders and grinned deliriously, putting a hand over her mouth for further emphasis. God forbid that she should give Flora’s presence away! Flora put her finger silently to her lips and Nell, comprehending the injunction, ceased her grimacing and turned her gaze back to the group. The twins had by now engaged Janey in suitable chit-chat: was she too staying here—had she been here long—did she like it? ‘Oh, yes,’ said Janey. ‘It’s pukkah.’ The twins both laughed; one now glanced enquiringly across at the wide-eyed Nell, and Janey, following his glance, came a little to her senses. ‘That’s my sister, Nell,’ she said. ‘Nell: these are some friends of William’s.’

  ‘I know,’ said Nell. ‘I’ve been listening.’ The twins laughed again; Nell jumped into the pool and started to swim nonchalantly around, so showing them of how little account they were, and Janey—self-possession evidently growing, if slowly—invited them to sit down, which they did.

  ‘Would you like something to drink?’ she asked; and they having assented, she made her escape.

  Flora met her in the kitchen. ‘I see we have visitors,’ she said. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Oh, just some friends of William’s,’ said Janey.

  ‘Ah,’ said Flora. ‘Schoolfriends, I suppose.’ Janey shot her a look.

  ‘Oh, hardly,’ she said. But of course, as transpired later, they were. It was while Janey—with some assistance from Flora—was getting their drinks that the Hunters all returned from the village; the twins were invited to stay for lunch, informed the whole party that they had cycled the five kilometres or so from their own gîte (where their parents expected their return before nightfall) on the chance that William might care to come on an excursion with them that afternoon—had he a cycle here?—and, further, informed everyone that their village would be en fête on the following Sunday, and that it might be worth the while of William, and anyone else who cared to, to show up there and see the fun. ‘Yes, I’ll come,’ said William enthusiastically. ‘Absolutely. ’

  Janey sat, dumbly looking down at her plate; Flora’s heart almost bled for her, while William and his friends began to negotiate the time and place of their meeting, with much topographical data from the twins’ side and much calculation about the length and time of the journey by bicycle from William’s. Flora, glancing at Janey’s hanging head, could have wept, but suddenly John—or was it James?—looked across at the silent girl. ‘What about Janey?’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to come?’

  Janey’s head lifted, as if on a spring, and she stared at him. ‘I can’t,’ she said tragically. ‘There’s only one bike.’

  As Flora sat wondering whether or not it could be opportune to offer to provide transport, Nell entered the fray. She had been listening with some avidity to the twins’ and William’s plans but the inclusion of Janey was signal enough for her. ‘Can we go too, Mum?’ she said. Her plea was echoed with fevered urgency, first by Denzil and then by Thomas: all three, ignorant as they might be of the nature of the entertainment on offer, were now determined to partake of it. The consequence was that the entire household undertook to be present at the fête: but it was clear to Flora that once there Janey would do all that lay in her power to detach herself from the other members and make a fourth with the heretofore despised William and his schoolfellows.

  Her behaviour with William now at last became what it ought in Flora’s view always to have been: she was modest, pleasant, obliging and friendly; she had been chastened; such is the power of Eros. Beneath all this modest, pleasant, obliging friendliness, Flora detected as Sunday approached a growing anxiety bordering on panic which issued in the frantic cry that she had nothing to wear: but Flora succeeded after some argument in demonstrating that this was not the case; and after a great deal of trying on and casting off, both of her own wardrobe and of Flora’s, Janey managed at last to put together an ensemble that she felt would pass muster. ‘After all, darling,’ said Flora, lying on the bed watching her, ‘who is going to see you? Only a couple of dorks. Although, I must admit, they’ve got awfully long eyelashes—I don’t know whether you noticed, did you?—for dorks.’

  15

  Simon was too busy to go in for extra-marital love affairs, even if he’d believed them to be permissible. He hadn’t in fact considered seriously the question of whether they were, or were not, permissible; there had been no reason to do so, for it had never arisen.

  Of course, if Simon had had an ideological bias towards, or a natural proclivity for, extra-marital love affairs, it might have been another matter: he might have found the time, somehow—in the way that a lot of men even busier than he did. (Women, too, come to that.) Simon, if you’d asked him, would probably have said, after all, I have to direct such a lot of it I don’t have any libido left for the real thing, ha ha.

  All the same, a lot of men (and women, too, come to that) would have found—did indeed find—that directing sex scenes only increased their libido. But it didn’t take Simon that way. Simon just got on with his work, efficiently, on time and within budget, and then went home to Flora and the kids.

  And Flora might be looking a bit seedy, as was to be expected after three children and so on, but he loved her, whatever that might mean—not that Simon could have told you, precisely, what it did in fact mean. Who can? He hadn’t given the question any conscious or prolonged thought; he had not needed to; it had not arisen.

  David Packard was a television writer—author, indeed, of more than one of those sex scenes which Simon in his time had directed— and it was his partner, Sarah Frame, an actress (although not now conceivably in sex scenes), who coming across Simon in the canteen one lunchtime had taken pity on his bachelor state and invited him to dinner at the Packard–Frame establishment in Camden Town. ‘Dave’d love to see you, I know,’ she said. ‘He’s working on a new six-part series.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Simon. ‘Sounds great.’

  ‘You haven’t even heard about it yet,’ said Sarah.

  ‘No, nor have I,’ Simon agreed. ‘But it sounds just great.’

  ‘Well, let’s see, how about Friday?’ said Sarah.

  ‘Great,’ said Simon. He didn’t want to go at all, but how could one refuse these well-meant invitations? So on the Friday night which marked almost exactly the halfway point in his family’s absence from home Simon found himself looking for a parking space in the vicinity of Camden Square. He was driving the little Fiat because Flora had taken, naturally, the big car.

  It was Sarah who opened the door to him.
‘Come through,’ she said. ‘We’re in the kitchen.’ So he followed her down the narrow passageway to the back of the house, where there was a big overdressed kitchen, and there, sitting at the wooden table in its centre, was a woman he didn’t know, hadn’t foreseen, couldn’t have expected, here or indeed anywhere else, a woman whom Sarah—as if this were still the mundane world where such things naturally follow—introduced to him as Gillian Selkirk.

  ‘Gillian,’ repeated Simon. ‘How do you do?’

  And she simply smiled.

  16

  Simon had forgotten what this felt like, this bolt from the blue. One does. He stood there, feeling weak at the knees and stupid, wanting both to remain and to flee; impaled.

  ‘Well now!’ said Sarah, ‘what will you drink? Some of this?’ There was a bottle of wine opened on the table; Sarah got him a glass. ‘Why don’t you sit down here for the moment?’ she said. ‘Dave will be back in a tick.’

  Simon sat down awkwardly—his knees still weak—on a chair diagonally opposite Gillian Selkirk, and sipped at the wine. It wasn’t awfully nice. Gillian Selkirk caught his eye and smiled very faintly and Simon smiled back and looked down into his glass and sipped again. Sarah was busy at the stove. ‘So, Simon,’ she said, ‘how’s it going?’ They talked shop very briefly and then Sarah brought Gillian Selkirk into the picture.

  ‘Gillian here’s an accountant,’ she said. ‘She’s been looking into one of these dodgy Lloyd’s syndicates.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Simon. He was speechless.

  ‘Naturally, she refuses to tell us anything about it,’ Sarah went on. ‘I dare say it’s over our heads anyway.’

  Simon found his voice. ‘Sure to be,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I hardly think so,’ said Gillian. She had one of those dark mezzo-soprano voices, the colour of mahogany. ‘There’s no mystery about accounting, it’s perfectly straightforward.’

  She was wearing a little black linen dress with a white collar and a pair of wildly expensive-looking shoes, and she had rather straight flaxen hair, which might have been artificially coloured, because her eyebrows and eyelashes were darker, and her eyes were hazel-brown.

  ‘Anyway, she’s been giving Dave a few pointers,’ Sarah went on, ‘for this series he’s writing: it’s about the whole Lloyd’s thing. But fictionalised, obviously.’

  ‘I see,’ said Simon. He looked across at Gillian Selkirk. ‘That’s awfully good of you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, well,’ she replied, ‘we City types will grab any chance to mingle with the artistic set. It does such wonders for one’s credibility in the Square Mile.’

  Simon wondered how that blighter David Packard had managed to snaffle this particular accountant. His heart was still pounding uncomfortably; looking into his glass he saw that despite the poor quality of the contents it was now empty.

  Sarah read his thoughts. ‘Our accountant—Georgie Bligh—he’s yours too, isn’t he, Simon? Dear Georgie looks after us all—put Dave in touch with Gillian.’

  ‘I owed Georgie a small favour, anyway,’ offered Gillian. ‘He sorted my mother out.’

  ‘Useful man,’ said Simon.

  ‘It would take more than an accountant, more even than Georgie, to sort my mother out,’ said Sarah. She picked up the wine bottle, which was now empty. ‘Oh, silly me,’ she said. ‘We’ve been drinking the cooking wine. Well, let’s move on to something better, shall we?’ She took a bottle of something different from the refrigerator and began to open it. ‘I wish Dave would show up,’ she said.

  ‘Here, let me do that,’ offered Simon; and he drew the cork. Then David came in, and it was time to eat, so the dinner which was to compensate so fully for Simon’s misfortune in having been detained in London while his family were on holiday in France began. Would that it never had.

  17

  As far as David Packard was concerned this was a working dinner: this was his best and even last chance to learn everything he needed to know, all the answers to the questions which had arisen after his and Gillian’s first meeting, lunching with Georgie Bligh at a City restaurant where the odour of money made one slightly lightheaded, and the exquisite excellence of the food was a complete irrelevance.

  She explained everything rather neatly: David’s questions became more intelligent as time went on, and Simon became interested in the subject in spite of himself. ‘Think you’d like to have a crack at directing this thing, old cock?’ said David.

  ‘I’ll see when you’ve actually finished writing it,’ said Simon.

  ‘Work of a moment,’ said David.

  Simon thought, in a moment of something near panic, or shame, of his own still inchoate project. He should be in Hammersmith, working on it—or at any rate, towards it—not sitting here in Camden Town opposite a woman called Gillian Selkirk from whom he couldn’t without difficulty take his eyes. It was almost, now, towards the end of the meal, as if she too had become aware of this fact and was holding the other end of a line which he had thrown to her. At moments it might seem slack, at others taut, but never did she seem altogether to let go. Simon began to be afraid.

  ‘The question is,’ said David, ‘is it a scam, or is it a cock-up? That’s the question.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gillian. ‘That is indeed the question.’

  ‘Or is it,’ said David—after all, he was a writer, he got paid to think these thoughts—‘is it a hellish hybrid of the two? I say, that’s not bad, is it? Hellish hybrid. What do you think?’

  ‘Well, there’s the alliteration, there are always marks for that,’ said Sarah. ‘But I’m not really happy about the coupling of the Anglo-Saxon word with the Greek. Not really. That seems to work only when it’s done for comic effect.’

  ‘Wonderful woman,’ said David to the others, ‘isn’t she? Read English, you see. Knows all these things.’

  Simon looked at Gillian, he dared to look at Gillian. ‘Is he right? Is it—for want of a better phrase!—a hellish hybrid?’

  She smiled at him, returning his look. ‘It’s too soon to say,’ she said. ‘And so it may be for a long, long time.’

  ‘Just like life, really,’ said Sarah cheerfully. ‘Shall we have some coffee?’

  18

  ‘Could I just ring for a cab?’ said Gillian.

  ‘Oh, look,’ said Simon, ‘I can give you a lift. Where do you live?’

  ‘Oh, that would be awfully good of you,’ she replied. ‘Bays–water, actually. But look, not if it’s out of your way, really.’

  ‘No,’ said Simon, ‘not a bit. Not at all. Truly.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Sarah. ‘Simon lives in Hammersmith.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Gillian. ‘Well, in that case—’

  So here they were, getting into the tiny car. ‘My other car’s a Volvo,’ said Simon. ‘Estate.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Gillian Selkirk lightly.

  They drove in silence all the way to Bayswater, through the streaming Friday night traffic: Simon did not dare to speak, and she seemed not to wish, or to need to. She was painfully close: he could have reached out and put a hand on her knee so easily that it was extremely difficult not to. As they approached Queensway she gave him some directions and after following them he found himself outside a block of mansion flats.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Home sweet home.’

  There was something ironical in her tone. Did anyone else live there? Was she expected—with anxiety, with longing?

  ‘My cat will be starving,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ he replied. ‘Poor puss.’

  She unfastened her seat belt. ‘Well, thanks so much,’ she said.

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Simon. Dear God, was this absolutely all? Suddenly she leaned over and—just perceptibly—kissed his cheek.

  ‘Why don’t you give me a ring sometime?’ she said.

  Simon was stunned. Had this really happened? He sat there like an idiot watching her cross the pavement and put the key in the lock. As she unfastened it she t
urned slightly and briefly waved to him and then she pushed open the door and vanished. Simon still sat, staring at the closing door, the empty pavement, the rearing red-brick façade of the mansion block. Beyond the awful desire he felt for this woman—this unlikely, unforeseen, almost frightening woman—there seemed to yawn a black abyss: but why this should be so he could not begin to understand. But these things happen, he told himself; it’s not as if she’s the first woman I’ve fancied, since I became a married man. There must have been countless others. And I can’t now remember even one of them.

  But he could have done, if he’d tried. And he knew, inescapably, that none of them had affected him as this one did. Shaking off this knowledge as well as he might he drove as fast as he dared back to Hammersmith. After all, he said again to himself, these things happen. These things happen, to other people, all the time.

  19

  It was as if someone else were telling him what to do: as if an immaterial Other had entered his body and imposed its will, so that his hand, reaching out for the correct volume of the telephone directory, was really the hand of that Other and his eye, searching down the column of surnames, then of initials, was really the eye of that Other; and then his hand—that hand—again, picking up the receiver: all these movements seemed to take place in a dimension quite separate from his passive gaze; and now, in consequence, he heard a strange telephone bell ringing.

  It was eight days since he’d first met her. It was Saturday evening; it was the hour when the drinks trays come out, when the baths are run, the babysitters are fetched, the fingernails are painted, the front-of-house staff begin to arrive, and the last of the millions of winking, twinkling, dazzling lights go on: the hour when everything is permitted. Even this.