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Badger grunted, took a quick suck on his cigar, and said, "Oxford days . . ." knowing how easy Barry was to tease. "No, I'm having a place done up at the moment, that's why I'm here."

"Oh, really? Where is it?" said Barry suspiciously.

Badger was deaf to this question, so Barry repeated it and he said at length, as if conceding a clue to a slow guesser, "Well, it's quite near your place of work, actually." The secrecy was presumably a further tease, though it fitted with something seedily hush-hush about Badger. "It's just a little flat—a little pied-a-terre."

"A fuck-flat in other words," said Barry, sharply, to make sure the illusionless phrase, and his offensiveness in using it, struck home. Even Badger looked slightly abashed. Gerald gave a disparaging gasp and plunged as if confidentially into new talk with John Timms and his old mentor about the genius of the Prime Minister. Nick glanced across at Toby, who half closed his eyes at him in general if unfocused solidarity.

"I had wondered whether the Prime Minister might be with us this evening," said Lipscomb. "But I see of course it's not that kind of party."

"Oh . . ." said Gerald, looking slightly guilty. "I'm so sorry. I'm afraid she wasn't free. But if you'd like me to bring you together . . ."

Lipscomb gave a rare smile. "We're lunching on Tuesday, so it's not at all necessary."

"Oh, you are?" said Gerald, and smiled too, in a genial little mask of envy.

And so it went on for ten or fifteen minutes, Nick perching at the corner of two conversations, the "odd man," as Gerald had briskly predicted. He passed the decanters appreciatively, and sat smiling faintly at the reflections of the candelabra in the table top or at a disengaged space just above Barry Groom's head. He grunted noncommittally at some of Badger's jokes, Badger appearing in the candlelight and its mollifications as almost a friend among the other guests. He nodded thoughtfully, without following the thread, at one or two of Lipscomb's remarks that caused general pauses of respect. The cigar stench was the whole atmosphere, but the alcohol was a secret security. There was something so irksome about Barry Groom that he had a fascination: you longed for him to annoy you again. He was incredibly chippy, was that the thing?—all his longings came out as a kind of disdain for what he longed for. And yet he got on with Gerald, they were business partners, they saw a use for each other; and that perhaps was the imponderable truth behind this adult gathering.

Barry said, "The way you Oxford fuckers go on about the Martyrs' Club," and frowned sharply as he swallowed some claret. "What were you martyrs to, that's what I'd like to know."

"Ooh . . . hangovers," said Badger.

"Yes, drink," Toby put in, and nodded frankly.

"Overdrafts and class distinctions," said Nick drolly.

Barry stared at him, "What, were you a member?"

"No, no . . ." said Nick.

"I didn't think so!"

And then there was a rattle in the hall as the front door was opened and the bang of it slamming shut. Then immediately the bell rang, in three urgent bursts. There was a shout of vexation, the door was jerked open again, and Catherine, it must have been, was talking—from the dining room they heard only the hurried shape of her talk. Nick's eyes slid round the faces of the others at the table, who looked puzzled, displeased, or even lightly titillated. John Timms stared unblinking towards the closed door of the room; Badger sat back in a curl of smoke. "All right!" It was Catherine.

"That child would try the patience of an oyster," said Gerald, with evident feeling but also a snuffle of amusement, a darting glance to judge the effect of his allusion.

Then the front door closed again, more thoughtfully, and a man's voice was heard—"You need to be careful, girl . . . " Nick gave a little snigger, trying to commute it into Russell's voice, but Gerald had set down his cigar and stood up: "Sorry . . ."he murmured, and walked towards the door with a dwindling smile. "That's my sis,"