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By Root 1040 0

It was almost as though Peter knew what he’d done in Paul’s daydreams, knew all about the bath and the bachelor flat. And now this vaguely headachy thirst, and a little doubt, like the cooling and quickening of the air, pushing among the hedge-tops in front of him and then leaving off. He could hear the cheery, faintly contentious noise of fifty or sixty people talking, on the big lawn at the back of the house, where tables and chairs had been set out. Peter was in there somewhere, among the family and friends, happily getting drunk, Peter Rowe-my-dear, rather full of himself. Certain things Paul didn’t quite like about him came dully to the light. Did he truly fancy him, now he’d seen him again? Could he really imagine getting undressed with that heavy-footed prep-school master? He thought of Geoff’s tight zip, and then of beautiful Dennis Flowers, at King Alfred’s in Wantage, Captain of Cricket, not a master but a boy. Paul stared in a kind of abstruse distress at the stretch of the lane by the gate, its chalky potholes, the parched grass and tough, half-pretty groundsel, knotty and yellow-flowered, that grew along its crown. Then the church clock struck 8:30, the two bright notes with their unusual interval that seemed to tell him, in their complete indifference, to get in to the house at once.

HE STEPPED OUT with a racing heart on to the patio, where the drinks table was. They’d all met him, of course, but none of them knew who he was. He sensed nodding curiosity mixed with something cooler as he edged among these mainly grand and grey-haired people. Some women from the Bell had been brought in as waitresses, in black dresses with white aprons and caps—they ladled him out a fresh beaker of the fruit-cup, and there was something slightly comic about it, with the bits of orange and so on plopping in. “Do you want more bits, dear?” said the woman. “No, just drink, please,” said Paul, and they all laughed.

He saw Peter on the far side of the lawn, talking to a woman in a tight green dress—he was getting her to hold his glass while he fished out cigarettes from his pocket, there was a clumsy bit of business, and then she was raising her face to him, charmed as well as grateful for the light. Paul approached, heard the chuckling run of Peter’s voice, his impatient murmur as he lit his own cigarette, saw their shared smile and toss of the head as they blew out smoke—“What? in the second act, you mean,” Peter said; now he was almost in front of them, with a tense tiny smile, but still eerily unseen, and abruptly not sure of a welcome—in a moment he had sidled off, his smile now wounded and preoccupied, round the edge of the chattering groups, looking round as if searching for someone else, till he found himself stuck, by himself, in a corner beside a high stand of pampas grass. He sipped repeatedly at his drink, which seemed much less toxic than his first helping. He was staggered by his own timidity, but he argued in a minute that his little scamper away had been so quick it could surely be reversed. The conversations close by were a blur of wilful absurdity. “I don’t think you ever will, with Geraldine,” the woman nearest him was saying to a crumpled-looking man whose elbow virtually knocked Paul’s drink. He couldn’t stay here. Through a momentary opening among the shifting and swaying backs of the guests he saw Mrs. Jacobs herself, in the middle of the lawn, in a blue dress and a dark-red necklace, her glasses gleaming as she turned, her face somehow spot-lit by the fact of this being her own party. “Now, we can’t have this …!”—Corinna Keeping, in red and black, and all the more alarming in grinning high spirits, had found him out.

She took him, like some bashful hero, though also (she couldn’t help it) like a culprit who’d stupidly thought he could escape her, through the thick of the party to the far side of the lawn. “There’s someone who wants to meet you!” she said, unable fully to conceal her surprise at this, and in a moment she had delivered him to Peter Rowe—“And Sue Jacobs—well, you can introduce yourselves,