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By Root 1140 0

breaths came in rhythm with it. He turned over, looked blearily round, and saw that Toby had brought out the rowing machine from the pool-house. It had a sliding seat and stirrups and a hand-bar that pulled out a coiled and fiercely retracting white cord. Nick lay on his side and watched, with a suspicion that Toby was showing off to him, shooting forwards and backwards with each tug and each letting go. He was very powerful. The sun beat down on his back and sweat trickled from his armpits. His stomach muscles clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed. His breaths were keen and humourless, lips funnelled into a rigid kiss. It was surreal to be rowing so hard on dry land, beside a sheet of still blue water. The machine made its noise, like distant sawing or planing, a rhythmic nag and lull. And Nick remembered an evening in Oxford, drifting out through the Meadows to the Isis, and along by the boathouses, the eights all in and stowed, but one or two rowers still about, as if held by the late light, the mood of freedom and discipline by the river. The wide gritty path was streaked and puddled where the dripping boats had been carried across it. He dawdled along, and then saw what he'd hoped to see, Toby out in a single scull, shirtless, glowing, moving with astonishing speed across the welling water.

Nick was reading under the awning when he heard the slam of car doors and then tired, unsocial voices. For thirty seconds he was gripped by his old reflex of possession, resenting the real owners as intruders. The great glass jar was shattered, and the warm afternoon was spilt for ever. Catherine came clattering out, bent forward in a mime of exhaustion and nausea.

"Good lunch?" said Nick.

"Oh! Nick! God . . . " She subsided into a mumble and groped for him, for the table edge.

"Sit down, darling, sit down."

"The Tippers." She dragged a chair over the flags and fell onto it. "You wouldn't believe. They're as ignorant as shit. And as mean as . . . as . . ."

"Shit . . . ?"

"They're as mean as shit! He let Gerald pay for the whole of lunch. It was over ;£500, I worked it out, you know . . . And not a single word of thanks."

"I don't think they really wanted to go."

"Then when we went into Podier afterwards, we went into the church—"

"Hello, Sally!" said Nick, getting up and smiling delightedly to annul what she might have heard. "Have you had fun?"

It seemed to come as an unexpected and even slightly offensive question, and she twitched her hair back several times as she confronted it. Then she said severely, "I suppose we have. Yes. Yes, we have!"

"Oh good. I believe it's a marvellous restaurant, isn't it. Well, you're back in time for drinks. Toby's just making a jug of Pimm's. We thought we might have it outside this evening."

"Mm. OK. And what have you done all day?" She looked at him with a touch of criticism. He knew he was giving off the mischievous contentment of someone left behind for an afternoon, sleepy hints that he might have got up to something but in fact had done the more enviable and inexplicable nothing.

"I'm afraid we were very lazy," he said, as Toby, red from dozing in the sun, came out with the jug. He saw that this was what he wanted her to understand, his deep and idle togetherness with the son of the house.

Gerald and Rachel didn't appear for a while, and so the Tippers sat down with the youngsters for a drink. Toby gave Sir Maurice a glass so thick with fruit and vegetables that he left it untested on the table. Catherine blinked a lot and put her head on one side ponderingly. "You're really very rich, aren't you, Sir Maurice," she said after a while.

"Yes, I am," he said, with a snuffle of frankness.

"How much money have you got?"

His expression was sharp, but not entirely displeased. "It's hard to say exactly."

Sally said, "You can never say exactly, can you—it goes up so fast all the time . . . these days."

"Well, roughly," said Catherine.

"If I died tomorrow."

Sally looked solemn, but interested. "My dear man . . . !" she murmured.

"Say, a hundred and fifty million."