'Of course, darling. Is there anything I can do?' The question was asked with an intonation that let it be known that the answer would be no.
'Not at all. I'll call you through in just a minute.' He pulled the door shut behind him. As he did so I indicated an offer of help but he shook his head.
We sat in silence for a second or two. Elizabeth reached into her bag and produced a cigarette case. Danny jumped up from the other sofa to offer her a light.
'Thank you,' she said, smiling up at him from under lowered eyelashes and exhaling. 'Tell me, how are you enjoying the house?'
'It's wonderful, so peaceful after a week in London,' said Martha.
'We always thought it was paradise. We used to pile into the cars and come up at the first opportunity. The first summer we spent here was one of the best of my life.' Somehow I couldn't picture Elizabeth piling into anything: I saw her instead in Patrick's Jaguar, sunglasses on and a headscarf streaming behind her as they zipped through the lanes with the roof down. I wondered if that summer was the one they got together.
'I can't wait till summer.' Rachel looked out over the lawn from her position on the window-seat. 'We'll be able to sunbathe without being spied on.'
'I envy you all,' said Elizabeth. 'So young. You have it all still in front of you.'
'You're not trying to tell us you're old?' Danny looked genuinely horrified.
She laughed him off with a modest expression that left me in no doubt she expected the compliment as her due.
Lucas called down the hall that lunch was ready. Greg stood and offered Elizabeth his arm. She took it and he walked her gently through to the dining room as if she herself were a work of art.
'Look at them all,' Rachel said in a low voice, walking behind with Martha and me. 'Do they realise she's old enough to be their mother?'
'Darling, I was just saying how much this reminds me of the time I spent here with your parents and Patrick and all our friends. It's like someone's rewound the tape - you could be us.' She declined with a wave the spoon of potatoes that Martha proffered. Danny refilled her glass and was rewarded with a cattish smile.
'We're not half as glamorous, I'm afraid,' Lucas replied, carving the lamb. He had prepared a huge roast, unable as usual to keep to the modest lunch he said he'd had in mind.
'Nonsense. And you're a much better cook than Patrick ever was. Your poor mother was left to handle that side of things in our day,' she said. That I believed: I couldn't imagine the woman in front of me ever stooping to vegetable preparation.
There was silence as we ate, punctuated occasionally by a remark about how cold the weather had been or a compliment to Lucas on the food. I was hungry all of a sudden and helped myself to another slice of meat.
'Take my advice and make sure you marry him, Jo,' said Elizabeth. 'Men who can cook are a rare breed. You have to grab one while the going's good.'
'Thanks for the tip,' I replied. 'But I haven't tested his ironing skills yet.'
'You wish.' Lucas looked sceptical.
As lunch went on, I watched the sun withdraw from the garden. The shadow that, when we started eating, had lain only on that part of it which was in the lee of the house spread like spilled ink across the lawn and drive. Greg opened more wine but I switched to water, conscious that I had to drive back to London in a couple of hours. Lucas produced a treacle sponge pudding and Elizabeth looked visibly shocked that people could countenance eating such a thing. In my amusement I asked for a large slice. Danny was watching her intently, as if comparing the present version with the one he'd seen in the film.
'Do you have any children, Elizabeth?' asked Martha.
She turned and smiled serenely, as if giving an interview for television. 'A daughter. Diana. She's travelling in Africa. In fact, she's in South Africa at the moment, staying with Jonathan. You remember him, Lucas, the photographer?' He shook his head blankly. 'Another one of our friends from that time.'
'Where in South Africa is she?' asked Greg. 'I was in Johannesburg just before Christmas.'
'Really? How interesting.' She refocused her attention on him, her eyes wide. 'Were you on holiday or working there?'
'Working. I was setting up a computer system.'
'God, Greg,' said Rachel, laughing. 'Why do you insist on making your job sound so dull? He designed a system for an international diamond-mining firm,' she explained. 'It was a really prestigious contract.'
That interested me. I knew, of course, that he worked in computers but hadn't realised at what sort of level. Rachel pulled her chair closer to Greg's and stroked his hair. He let her for a few seconds then gently inclined his head away, obviously annoyed by her comment.
Elizabeth stirred her coffee languorously, the spoon chiming against the edge of the cup. 'Diana's in Cape Town. She isn't working, just seeing the country. God knows what she'll do when she gets back.'
'I haven't seen Diana for years,' said Lucas. 'Not since she was eight.'
Elizabeth smiled. 'Is that right? Eight? What a good memory you have.'
'It was a memorable day.'
'She has always been something of a force, I suppose.'
'No. I mean, it was the day my father had his accident.'
There was a moment's shocked silence from the others but I'd known that detail; Lucas had told me earlier in the day. Then Elizabeth reached for his hand over the table and gave his fingers a tight squeeze. The green stone flashed.
'I'd like to see her again.'
'You will. She'll be back in the summer. She'd love to see you, I'm sure.'
Lucas smiled. 'Actually, I expect that you and I will be seeing a bit more of each other in the meantime anyway. I meant to tell you.'
She looked at him questioningly.
'Well, I'm going to be here full time. I'm going to do the same as Diana and use some of Patrick's money to take time off. Danny and I are going to move up from London and live at the house for a few months. To "pursue our creative projects".'
'Creative projects?'
'I've always meant to write a novel ...'
'Oh Lucas, how brilliant.' She clapped her hands together. 'You must both come to dinner with me.' She raised her glass to them. 'Oh well done, you. Patrick would be so proud.'
'Actually,' said Danny, 'if you don't think it's too much of an imposition, Elizabeth, I'd love to talk to you about your career sometime. Lucas tells me that you worked in film, as well as modelling. Film's my area - I'd be fascinated to hear about your experiences. Perhaps I could take you out to lunch?'
She gleamed then like newly polished silver. 'Of course. It would be an absolute pleasure.'
Danny opened the door when Martha and I arrived the following Friday evening. 'Martha, darling,' he said, throwing his arms around her as if he hadn't seen her for weeks. I stood awkwardly, waiting for him to unhand her. 'Give me your coat. Just leave your stuff there and come through.' He took her bag and put it at the foot of the stairs. I dropped mine beside it. We went into the drawing room and I wandered absently around, looking for signs, I think, that Danny's influence was making itself felt on the house. I stopped by the stereo and scanned the pile of CDs there. Sure enough, there was a healthy amount of dance by outfits of whom I'd never heard.
'Take a seat,' he said, waving a hand at the chesterfields and positioning himself in front of the mantelpiece. Martha sat down but I stayed standing.
'Where's Lucas?' I asked.
'In the library. I'm not sure he heard your car.'
'I'll go and say hello.' I walked over to the table and picked up the bottle of gin. 'Mind if I make myself a drink?' I was trying to keep my voice neutral.
'Help yourself.
Mi
casa es su casa
and all that.' He smiled an impervious smile. For a second I thought about asking him how things were going with Michael. Danny loved to have secrets from people, even though he never kept anyone else's. Knowing how much Michael liked to talk things over with Rachel, Martha and me, I expected he was dying to tell us but Danny was clearly pressuring him not to. For Michael's sake, I kept my mouth shut and went to find Lucas.
The door was open and I stood just inside watching him for a moment. He was sitting at the large round table, his back to me, a fan of A4 spread out in front of him. With one hand he wound a small circle of hair round and round an index finger, with the other he was writing intensely. The green-glass reading lamp was the only light in the room and it framed him in its orbit. I didn't want to shock him so I called his name gently. He turned in his chair and smiled.
'You're hard at work already,' I said, going over.
He pulled me on to his lap so that I could look at the papers with him. Some were covered in his jaunty script, others had been mapped by an elaborate spider diagram whose legs reached over several sheets. In bubbles along its etiolated form there were names and places and the occasional phrase. 'Did you doubt me?' he said.
'Is it set in Athens?' I asked, seeing the name of a hotel in the Plaka district where we had once stayed for a night.
'Partly.' He took the glass from my hand and had a sip. 'What's it about?'
'I'm not telling you. You'll have to wait and see.'
Danny had bought the DVD of
True Romance
and after supper everyone settled down to watch it. I hadn't noticed before that there wasn't a television in the house. Now he had set up the one from Lucas's flat on a low table and connected it to his Play Station. I'd seen the film before and wasn't a fan: Patricia Arquette's monotone grated on my nerves. I hovered about at the back of the room until Lucas told me I was distracting everyone and could I please sit down. I went back to the kitchen. It was the room where I felt the house's underlying atmosphere least, perhaps because, with its electrical appliances and the constant low-level hum of the fridge, it felt the most in touch with the twenty-first century, despite the butcher's block and ceiling hooks. I picked up the
Guardian
and began to flick through it before noticing a cloud of moths, like tiny angels, coming out of the dark to throw themselves against the glass of the French windows.
There were footsteps in the corridor behind me and I turned, expecting Lucas. It was Michael. He stood behind me and watched the moths for a moment. 'So stupid,' he said.
Surprised at the sharp comment, I turned to look at him again and saw there were tears in his eyes. I was taken aback. I'd never seen him cry before. 'What is it?' I touched his arm.
He moved into the body of the room, out of view from the corridor. 'I've been so fucking stupid,' he said, taking a juddering breath. He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. He was still in his work clothes, although he'd removed his tie and undone the top button of his shirt. His heavy wool suit, a couple of shades off black, gave him the incongruous appearance of someone airlifted off Wall Street into an English country kitchen. The material of his jacket strained between his shoulder blades as he put his head in his hands. 'I'm sorry. I'm drunk. Ignore me.'
I pulled out the chair next to him. 'What's happened?'
'Danny and I ...' he said. 'Have you got a cigarette?'
I lit two and handed him one, which he drew on with real need. I'd never thought of him as a smoker until then. 'Danny and I have been seeing each other. He dumped me on Wednesday.' His hand shook as he raised the cigarette to his mouth for another drag. I remembered the night that I sat out on the terrace, how happy his suppressed laughing had sounded.
'Oh Michael.'
'You don't seem very surprised.'
'I saw you together once, out on the lawn that night it snowed.'
He looked up. 'Did you? Shit. It was supposed to be a secret. Who else knows?'
'No one.'
'You haven't told Lucas?' He was surprised.
'No.'
He started to cry again, tears running down his face and dropping on to his shirt, making irregular semi-translucent circles on the material. 'That was the night it started. I knew it was a mistake even then. I'm so fucking weak. Everyone knows what he's like.'
'Don't be hard on yourself. He's worked on that magnetism for years.' It occurred to me suddenly that Danny was glamorous in the true, old-fashioned sense: he could be-glamour one, put one under a spell.
'I tried not to get too involved. I've always fancied him. I thought it was just a sex thing and that I would be satisfied with that ...' He swiped his hands under his eyes and tried to compose himself. 'I nearly didn't come up tonight. I knew it was going to be difficult. But then I thought about what it would be like to stay in London when everyone else was here. And I couldn't bear not to see him.' He looked at me as if asking me to tell him how stupid he was. 'Do you think he gets off on hurting people?' he said. 'It's like it was calculated: he waited until he knew I was hooked and then ended it - full stop, no warning.'
'He's enjoying letting me know that he's got Lucas to himself,' I said. 'I can't challenge him for his attention when I'm not here.'
'Do you think he wants Lucas?' Michael looked at me sharply. 'Is that why he wants him out here?'
'No, no, not at all.' I shook my head, realising too late that I'd opened up another avenue for his thoughts to go worrying down. 'It's the money and the fact that he can do nothing all day. That he can piss me off is just a happy by-product. Honestly.'
'If Danny wants him no one stands a chance.'
'Lucas is straight. He's my boyfriend.' As I said the words I wondered, what if Danny did want Lucas sexually? I discredited the idea quickly; it didn't feel true. Of course, even if he did, it would never happen. But also I knew Danny's attitude to his sexual partners, how dismissive he was of them, without any exception that I could remember. In the past I had wondered if somewhere deep in Danny there was buried a kernel of bitter self-hatred. It was the only reason I could think of for his immediate distancing of himself from anyone who got involved with him on a level beyond the platonic and superficial, as if, by liking him enough to sleep with him, people rendered themselves contemptible in his eyes for their poor judgement. I didn't think that he would ever jeopardise his relationship with Lucas by trying to seduce him. Their friendship was too important to him; he needed it.
But then I had another realisation: the idea of it wasn't making me jealous. Even the thought of Lucas with another woman that I conjured up now as a test didn't give me a twinge. In the past, I'd been painfully jealous when people had flirted with my boyfriends and over time I'd learnt to be more moderate but I wasn't the master of my emotions to this extent. My discomfort at the realisation must have shown on my face.
'Sorry, Jo, I don't mean that.' He smiled at me apologetically and sniffed loudly. 'Do I look like I've been crying?' he asked.
'A bit.'
'I'm going to go to bed. If anyone asks where I've gone, tell them I was exhausted, will you?' He stood up, then turned and grabbed my arm. 'Do you promise you won't tell anyone? Please. Especially now.'
'Of course.'
He let go of me and moved away.
'Michael,' I said. 'Try not to let him under your skin.'
'Too late.' He smiled briefly and was gone.
I was getting used to Stoneborough's night-time rhythms, the creaking as the central heating clicked off and the house cooled and contracted. A relay of clanking pipes started up at eleven and was set off again every time someone flushed a loo or turned a tap on, the tuneful rattling fading slowly afterwards into the distance.
On Saturday I lay awake long after Lucas. The house had settled for the night and it was hours since the pipes had finished their percussion accompaniment to the teeth cleaning on the floor below. I really couldn't sleep. Lucas's body seemed to be radiating a supernatural amount of heat. I felt stifled and kicked my side of the blanket off, achieving a moment of easier breathing. It must have been three o'clock, maybe half past. He rolled over and reached for me. In his dream the argument we'd had last thing had clearly been forgotten.
When we'd come upstairs, I'd stood in front of the mirror and begun to take off my make-up. I'd seen him walking up behind me and thought he was going to put his arms around me, as he often did. I hadn't expected him to reach round in front of me for the buttons of my jeans. I'd jumped away from him as if he'd been a pervert on the tube.
He'd looked hurt and embarrassed. 'What's wrong?' he said. 'Why don't you want me to touch you any more?'
'What do you mean?' I was immediately on the defensive, horrified that he'd noticed what I could hardly bear to admit to myself.
'You've gone cold on me.'
'No, I haven't.'
'You've spent as little time as possible in bed with me in the past couple of weeks. At night you're too tired to have sex, in the morning you're up and dressed before I've even opened my eyes.'
'I ...' I wondered if I could ever explain the confusion of my feelings. He was waiting for me to say something. 'I've got a lot on at work.'
'I know you're angry about the move up here.' He sat down on the bed and pulled off his trainers, tossing them into the corner of the room. 'I'm just hoping that you'll snap out of it. It's not about you. It's not a rejection. It's about doing something that's important to me.'
Feeling selfish, I sat down next to him and put my arm around his shoulder. 'I know.'
He leaned in and kissed me gently. It felt good, non-threatening, and I kissed him back. But the bottle of wine or more that he'd had made him too fast. Immediately he pushed me backwards on to the bed and clambered on top of me. I just couldn't. I shoved my way out from under him and ran to the bathroom where I sat on the edge of the bath wondering what I was going to do. It felt right to sit in the dark so I left the lights off. There was a big moon outside the window and it shed a milky glow on the tiles. After ten minutes or so I returned. Lucas's back was towards me, a large cold shape under the quilt. I tried to talk to him but he pretended to be asleep. I'd considered going to my room along the corridor but that would have been inflammatory. I didn't want to make the situation worse before I was sure I couldn't get things right between us again. So I got into bed and waited in vain for sleep to come. After a while, Lucas's breathing had slowed and I was left alone in the darkness. Outside a fox was barking, and the bleak clawing noise was more like the cry of a bird than an animal. It was the emptiest sound imaginable.
On nights when she couldn't sleep, my mother made cups of tea and sat at the kitchen table reading. She was an experienced insomniac, although no one had ever known why. I decided to try her method now. I eased out of bed, picked up my book and put on Lucas's big jumper over my T-shirt. The familiar scent of it was a comfort. I worried that the old brass door handle would rattle and wake him up but it was obligingly quiet.
The centre of the house was saturated with a ghostly blue light that spilled through the ring of windows under the dome and poured down to the hall below. The landings hung back, cloaked in gloom. I followed the helix of the staircase, past all the hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of art, robbed of its power in the darkness. When I reached the ground floor, the flagstones were icy on the soles of my feet. There was a low light on in the library. Someone else was awake. There was a cough. Danny, staying up late smoking. Although he was the last person I wanted to speak to, any company was better than none at that hour. The door was open so I stuck my head round it.
On the hearth rug a couple were having sex. With the shock of it, it was a second or two before I realised who they were. Greg's body pinned Rachel against the carpet. Her slim pale arms were flung either side of her head. The noise came again and I realised that it wasn't a cough but a sound low in Rachel's throat as Greg moved over her. He put his finger against her lips to keep her quiet and she took it into her mouth and sucked it. I should have gone at once but I couldn't move. Greg's skin, tanned by the fading light of the fire, looked dark against hers. His body was long and muscled but he wasn't lean like Danny or Lucas. He looked heavy, immutable, as he held himself above her, a brute fact between her legs. He moved his hand and covered the whole of her breast with it, capturing her nipple between his fingers. I was transfixed. At last I managed to take a step backwards out of the room. The floorboard underneath me creaked with my weight. I froze. But Rachel's eyes stayed closed and Greg didn't stop or look up. I drew back as far as I could without moving my feet and waited a second to be sure. Just as I turned away, Greg raised his head and smiled at me.
I ran across the hall and up the stairs, not caring now about the noise I was making. I had the horrible thought that all those Cubist faces were jeering at me from their frames as I raced past them on the first-floor landing.
Voyeur,
I heard them call,
Pervert.