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By Root 1143 0

where Lady Partridge was asking a man from the Treasury about muggers, and Badger Brogan was flirting gingerly with Greta Timms, pregnant with her seventh child. Nick circled through the room, smiling and almost immune to the anxiety he noticed in others, the booming joviality, the glancing inattentiveness, the sense of a lack that was waiting to be filled by the famous arrival. He looked round for a drink. The coke trickle in his throat made him doubly thirsty. Two waiters came in with laden trays, which made him laugh: they were just the answer to a double thirst. He chose, on grounds of beauty, the dark, full-lipped one, "Thanks—oh, hello," Nick said, over his raised glass, knowing the waiter before he knew who he was—just for a second, while everything was shining and suspended, their eyes engaged, the bubbles sailing upwards in a dozen tall glasses. "I remember you," he said then, rather drily, as if he were a waiter who had memorably dropped something.

"Oh . . . good evenin," the waiter said, pleasantly, so that Nick felt forgiven; and then, "Where do I see you before?"—so that he guessed he was in fact forgotten.

There was a commotion at the window, and Geoffrey Titchfield said, "Ah, the Prime Minister's car has arrived," like an old flunkey, steeped in the grandeur of his masters. He moved towards the door, too exalted by his own words to share in the fuss that they had triggered. Guests glanced into each other's faces for reassurance, one or two seemed already to give up, and withdrew into corners, and among the men there was some thinly amiable jostling. Nick followed through onto the landing, with the sense that the PM was beyond discretion, she'd be piqued if there wasn't a throng, a popular demonstration. He was pressed against the banister at the first turn of the stair, smiling down like an eye-catching unnamed attendant in a history painting. The door was standing open and the damp chill from outside gave an edge to the excitement. The women shivered with happy discomfort. The night was the fractious element they had triumphed against. The Mordant Analyst scurried in, almost tripped, amid laughs and tuts. Gerald was already in the street, in humble alignment with the Special Branch boys. Rachel stood just inside, haloed by the drizzly light and the diaphanous silver sheath of her dress. The well-known voice was heard, there was a funny intent silence of a second or two, and then there she was.

She came in at her gracious scuttle, with its hint of a long-suppressed embarrassment, of clumsiness transmuted into power. She looked ahead, into the unknown house, and everything she saw was a confirmation. The high hall mirror welcomed her, and in it the faces of the welcomers, some of whom, grand though they were, had a look beyond pride, a kind of rapture, that was bold and shy at once. She seemed pleased by the attention, and countered it cheerfully and practically, like modem royalty. She gave no sign of noticing the colour of the front door.

Upstairs, calm was re-established, but of a special kind, the engaged calm of progress once the overture has finished and the curtain has gone up. People recollected themselves. There was a sort of unplanned receiving line when the Lady came into the room (her husband, behind her, slipped modestly towards a drink and an old friend). Barry Groom, bouncing back from a low point with a call girl in the spring, dropped his head with horrible humility as the PM took his hand; it was later claimed that he had even said hello. Wani she greeted humorously, as someone she had seen recently elsewhere—he won the glow of recognition but surrendered the claim to need to speak to her so soon again; though he held on to her hand and it wasn't clear for a moment if he was going to kiss her. Gerald steered her jealously on, murmuring names. Nick watched with primitive interest as she approached; again she was beyond manners, however courtly and jewelled. Her hair was so perfect that he started to picture it wet and hanging over her face. She was wearing a long black skirt and a wide-shouldered