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By Root 1137 0

were speaking quietly in French, in a kind of listless female conspiracy, while the men boomed and frowned and crashed cars. Nick smiled at them undemandingly. Martine in her long engagement must have become a fixture, a passive poor relation, who was waiting and waiting to turn into a millionairess. She seemed shy of speaking to Nick, for reasons he could only guess at. Wani's claim that she was longing to see him had been wishful social prompting—he had a habit of languidly implanting his wishes. But Martine, in her mild unexpectant way, had always seemed to have her own mind. So it was a minute or two before she slid a dish of olives towards him on the low glass table and said, "And how are you getting on?"

"Oh, fine!" said Nick, blinking and smirking. "I'm feeling a bit delicate, actually"—and he waggled his glass. "This is helping. It's a miracle how it does." He thought what extraordinary things one said.

She was too delicate herself to take on the subject of his hangover. "Work is all fine?" she said.

"Oh—yes . . . thank you. Well—I'm trying to finish my thesis this summer, and of course I'm very behind," he said, as if she must be familiar with his weaknesses, they seemed to grin out of him as he sat there. "I'm so terribly lazy and disorganized."

"I hope not," she said, as if he could only be joking. "And what is it concerning, this thesis?"

"Oh . . . it's concerning—Henry James . . . " He'd developed a reluctance that was Jamesian in itself to say exactly what its subject was. There was a lot to do with hidden sexuality, which struck him as better avoided.

"But Antoine says you are working with him too, at the Ogee?"

"Oh, I don't really do very much."

"You are not writing a film? That is what he says."

"Well, I'd like to. In a way, yes . . . We have a few ideas." He smiled politely beyond her to take Wani's mother as well into the conversation. Since it was all he had, he said, "Actually, I've always rather wanted to make a film of The Spoils of Poynton . . . " Monique settled back with an appreciative nod at this, and Nick felt encouraged to go on, "I think it could be rather marvellous, don't you. You know Ezra Pound said it was just a novel about furniture, rneaning to dismiss it of course, but that was really what made me like the sound of it!"

Monique sipped at her gin-and-tonic and looked at him with vague concern, and then, as if searching for the point, glanced about at the tables and chairs. Of course she had no idea what he was talking about.

Martine said, "So you want to make zfxlm about furniture?"

Monique said, raising her voice as the Ferrari tore past her ankles, "We saw the latest film, which was so nice, of The Room with the View."

"Ah yes," said Nick.

"Mainly it took place in Italy, which we love so much, it was delightful."

Martine slightly surprised him by saying, "I think it's so boring now, everything takes place in the past."

"Oh . . . I see. You mean, all these costume dramas . . ."

"Costume dramas. All of this period stuff. Don't the English actors get fed up with it—they are all the time in evening dress."

"It's true," said Nick. "Though actually everyone is in evening dress all the time these days, aren't they." He was thinking really of Wani, who owned three dinner jackets and had gone to the Duchess's charity ball in white tie and tails. He saw he was under attack, since the Poynton project would naturally involve a lot of dressing up.

Monique Ouradi said, "I'm sure my son will make a beautiful film, with your help"—so that Nick felt she was encouraging him in some larger sense, in the inscrutable way that mothers sometimes do.

"Yes, perhaps you don't know him all that well," Martine agreed. "You will need to push and shove him."

"I'll remember that," said Nick with a laugh, and amazing arousing images of Wani in bed glowed in front of him, so that Martine was like a person in the beam of a slide projector, half exposed, half coloured over, and a little ridiculous.

The Ferrari smacked into Bertrand's slipper once again, and little Antoine made it rev and whine