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By Root 1111 0

would have crushed his foot—the block underneath had lurched over, and now the trough itself, massive and unmoving, lay sideways on the grass. “Oh god, are you all right?” said Jenny, gripping his arm with a welcome note of hysteria. Mrs. Keeping herself made a kind of panting noise. “Now we’re jiggered,” she said. “Oh look,” said Jenny, “your hand’s bleeding.” How it had happened he didn’t know, and it was only now she said it that it began to hurt, a dull deep pang in the ball of the thumb and needle-like stinging of the grazed flesh. He supposed the pain had been held in check by the knowledge, so far his alone, that the trough had cracked in two.

Ten minutes later he found himself—clown, hero, victim, he couldn’t tell which—in a low garden chair with a large gin-and-tonic in his right hand. His left hand was impressively bandaged, the fingers hard to move in their tight sheath. Mrs. Keeping, with a smirk of remorse, had bandaged it herself, the remorse turning steadily more aggressive as the long strip of stuff was bound tighter and tighter. Now the family glanced at his hand with concern and regret and a touch of self-satisfaction. Paul, tongue-tied, reached out to scratch Roger the Jack Russell, who had come round to the back of the house and was sitting, panting, in one of the broad purple cushions of aubrietia which spread over the flagstones. Mr. Keeping was in the drawing-room, fixing drinks for the others; he called out through the french windows, “Your usual, darling?”

“Absolutely!” said Mrs. Keeping, with a tight little laugh and shake of the head, as if to say she’d earned it. She perched on the wooden bench, and tore at the cellophane on a packet of Kensitas.

“And what about Daphne?”

“Gin and It!” shouted Mrs. Jacobs, as if taking part in a game.

“Large one?”

“Vast!”

Paul and Jenny laughed at this, but Mrs. Keeping gave a barely amused grunt. Mrs. Jacobs was sitting facing Paul, and between them was a low metal-framed table with a mosaic top. Over the rim of the table he had, if he wanted it, a direct view into the beige-coloured mysteries of her underwear. In her shapeless sundress and wide floppy hat she had an air of collapse, but her expression was friendly and alert, if ready, with age and perhaps a degree of deafness, to let one or two things slip past her. She wore large glasses with clear lower rims and tops like tawny eyebrows. When her drink was set in front of her on the mosaic table, she gave it a keen but illusionless smile, as if to say she knew what would become of it. Her smile showed surprisingly brown teeth—a smoker’s smile that went with the smoky catch in her voice. “Well, cheers!”

“Cheerio …” Mr. Keeping sat down, still in his bank manager’s suit, which made his own large g-and-t look slightly surreal.

“Cheers,” said Jenny.

“What are you drinking, child?” said Mrs. Jacobs.

“Oh, cider, Granny …”

“I didn’t know you liked cider.”

“Well, I don’t particularly, but I’m not allowed spirits yet, and one has to get drunk on something, doesn’t one.”

“I suppose one does …,” said Mrs. Jacobs, as if weighing up a completely new theory.

“Paul’s just started at the bank this week, Daphne,” said Mr. Keeping. “He’s joined us from Wantage.”

“Oh, I love Wantage,” said Mrs. Jacobs; and after a moment, “In fact I once ran away to Wantage.”

“Oh, Mother, really,” said Mrs. Keeping.

“Just for a night or two, when your father was being especially beastly.” Paul had never heard anyone speak like this, and couldn’t say at first if it was real or theatrical, truly sophisticated or simply embarrassing. He glanced at Mrs. Keeping, who was smiling tightly and batting her eyelids with contained impatience. “I took you and Wilfie under my wing and drove like hell to Wantage. We stayed with Mark for a day or two. Mark Gibbons, you know,” she said to Paul, “the marvellous painter. We stayed with him till the heat died down.”

“Anyway,” muttered Mrs. Keeping, drawing on her cigarette.

“We did, darling. You’re probably too young to remember.” She sounded slightly wounded, but used to being so.

“You didn