A Village Affair

CHAPTER FIVE

Alice dressed three times for dinner at Pitcome Park, and when she finished she was more than half-inclined to throw off her final choice and go back to the first one. But there wasn't time, and in any case, Martin was getting impatient. She came downstairs holding the ends of a heavy Turkish necklace of silver and turquoise behind her neck with both hands and asked him to hook it up for her. He was wearing a dinner jacket and looked very sleek and remote. He turned her back to the light in the hall so that he could see, and muttered over the necklace. She stood with her head bent, holding her pigtail away from her neck to help him, looking down at the deep folds of her red skirt and the toes of her embroidered slippers which said 'Made in Jaipur' on ribbons sewn to the insoles.

There,' he said triumphantly, and gave her shoulder a finishing pat. She let her pigtail fall again, down her back. She had woven it with ribbons for the dinner party and Natasha, who had sat admiringly on the end of her bed watching while she did this, was now sitting on the last step of the stairs trying to achieve the same effect on Princess Power. James sat on the top step crying quietly with'his thumb in. He didn't want Alice to go out and he didn't want to be left with Gwen. He said now, removing his thumb just long enough, 'What if there's a baddie?'

Natasha sighed.

'Quite honestly,' she said, plaiting away, 'you watch too much television.'

James loved television. He watched it, clutching a cushion in his arms so that he could bury his head in it if anything on the screen looked as if it might become frightening. But when the television was turned off, the baddies on it seemed to lurk about his imagination much more powerfully than the goodies. He knew Gwen wouldn't be any good at dealing with his fears because she somehow had something to do with the baddies. Only Alice staying at home would be any good.

He stood up.

'Don't go!'

Martin climbed past Natasha up the stairs and knelt below James.

'Now, come on, old boy. We are only going out for a few hours and we are only going to the Park-'

'Don't go! Don't go!' screamed James, staring at his mother past Martin's face.

Gwen came out on to the landing holding Charlie in her arms. He was wearing a yellow sleeping suit and looked like a drowsy duckling. He saw Alice in the hall and yearned out of Gwen's arms down towards her.

Til be back so soon,' Alice cried up to her two boys, 'so soon. I'll come in and see you the minute I'm back, I promise-'

'I should just go,' Natasha said, not looking up from her task.

'Oh, Tashie-'

James's crying rose to a howl. Martin gave him a despairing look and scrambled back down the staircase to the hall.

'Dear me,' Gwen said, 'what a silly fuss. Now you've set Charlie off-'

Martin hurried Alice towards the front door, wrapping her coat round her.

'Come on, come on-'

'I hate this,' she said unhappily, 'I hate going out when he's so miserable-'

'He only puts it on for you. To try and make you do what he wants.'

'Even so, he is frightened-' Martin said irritably, 'He is frightened of everything.'

He got into the driving seat of the car and leaned across to open the passenger door for Alice.

'He'll be five soon,' Martin said. Three years until prep school. He'll have to pull himself together.'

Alice said nothing. There were at least three things she wanted to say, chief amongst them being that she did not think James ought to be sent away to school at eight, but they only had five minutes' time for talk in the car, and they were bound to disagree and then they would arrive at the Park all jangled up and...

'Are you sulking?'

'No,' Alice said in as ordinary a voice as she could manage.

'I wish James had a quarter of Tashie's spirit.'

'I expect he wishes it too.'

The Park gates, with their boastful stone triumphs, reared up briefly in the headlights' beam, and vanished past them.

'I say,' Martin said, 'this is rather something.'

'D'you think it will be a huge party?'

'Dunno,' Martin said. He peered ahead. Lights were shining through the dark trees.

'It's huge-'

'It sure is.'

Alice thought of the black lace dress discarded on her bed.

'I've got the wrong clothes on-'

'No you haven't. Anyway, it's too late to think that.'

The drive swung round and opened into a floodlit sweep in front of the house; nine bays, ashlar quoins, roof pediment, long sashed windows and, above the front door, the arms of the family, added by a mid-Victorian Unwin who wished the world, or at least that part of it that came to Pitcombe Park, to be in no doubt as to the antiquity of his lineage. Alice leaned forward.

This is such a weird thing to be doing! It's like visits to Rosings in Pride and Prejudice. You know, best clothes, best behaviour, kindly patronage-'

'Nonsense,' Martin said tensely.

'But-'

He stopped the car at a respectful distance from the steps to the front door.

'It's a perfectly normal thing to do. And very nice of theUnwins.'

Alice said in a rude voice, 'Well, it isn't normal for me.'

Martin said nothing. He got out of the car, shut the door without slamming it and came round to open Alice's door.

'Allie-' he said, and his voice besought her to be amenable, 'don't let James get to you. He'll be fine, once we've gone.'

'It's nothing to do with James-'

The double front doors were opened above them and an oblong of yellow light fell down the steps. They were instantly silent, like children caught red-handed. Martin put his hand under Alice's elbow, and guided her up the steps. At the top, a small man like an ex-jockey was waiting to open the inner glass doors to the hall. He said, 'Mr and Mrs Jordan,' without a questioning inflexion, and Martin said, 'Evening, Shadwell.'

'How do you know?' Alice mouthed at Martin.

He ignored her. Shadwell slipped Alice's coat from her shoulders, murmured, 'This way, Mrs Jordan,' and went across the hall - it was round, Alice noticed, so did that mean all the doors had to be curved, like bananas? and opened another double pair, and there was the drawing room and Lady Unwin, swimming forward in a tide of green silk ruffles and ropes of pearls, to envelop them in welcome.

The room was large and grand and there were about a dozen people in it, grouped among the damasked chairs and the tables bearing books and framed photographs and extravagant plants in Chinese bowls. There was also someone particular by the fireplace. Everyone else was dressed as Alice would have expected - indeed, as Lady Unwin would require - in dinner jackets and the kind of silk frock that saleswomen are apt to describe as an investment, but this person looked like the cover drawing for Struwwelpeter, which Alice had had to hide from James's fascinated but appalled gaze. All Alice could see, because the person was half-turned away from her, was a wild head of corn-coloured hair and a bizarre costume of black tunic and tights. Whoever it was, Lady Unwin was leaving it until last.

'Alice, dear - may I? - Alice, this is Mrs Fanshawe who lives at Oakridge Farm, simply brilliant with flowers, can't think how she does it, and Major MurrayFrench you know of course, and the Alleynes from Harcourt House - little ones just the age of yours I think, such fun - and Elizabeth Pitt, Mrs Pitt who is my right arm on all these committees, truly I cannot think what I should do without her, and Susie Somerville who is what are you, Susie? Calling you a travel courier seems so rude when all the tours you take are so grand, I simply shouldn't dare to aspire to one, I promise you - and Simon Harleyford who is here for the weekend, so nice to have you, dear - and Mr Fanshawe without whom we just wouldn't have our famous summer fetes, and Clodagh. Clodagh, come over here and say hello to Mrs Jordan.'

The black tunic and tights turned briefly from the small bright pink man she was talking to, said 'Hi' and turned back again.

'I told her,' Lady Unwin said in a stage whisper to Alice, 'I told her to be especially nice to Nigel Pitt because I really need him for the hospice. Our present treasurer is threatening to retire, so tiresome but I suppose as he's nearly eighty I shouldn't bully. Go and talk to Susie. She knows everything there is to know about Indian palaces.'

'I don't, actually,' Susie Somerville said, when they were left alone. She was small and leathery and in her forties, dressed in an evening suit of plum-coloured velvet. 'I only know how to get a porter wherever I am and how to change a colostomy bag. Being a courier is murder, sheer murder. Our outfit is so expensive that only the ancient can afford it so I haul these disintegrating old trouts round Baalbek and Leningrad and Udaipur and spend every evening mixing whisky and sodas and Complan. It's a nightmare.'

'Why do you do it?' Alice said, laughing.

'Money. They give me vast tips, especially the Yanks who love it that I'm titled. I'd miles rather be married, but I only ever want to marry people who don't want to marry me. So I've got horses as substitute children and a lot of friends and this ghoulish job. D'you ride?'

'No,' Alice said.

'You've got a man,' Susie Somerville said, draining her glass, 'you don't need to.'

Ralph Unwin, in a deep blue smoking jacket and smelling of something masculine and Edwardian, came up to take Alice in to dinner.

'Is Susie trying to shock you?'

'I can't shock anybody any more,' Susie said. She jerked her head towards the fireplace. 'How's Clo, now she's back?'

Ralph Unwin spoke quietly.

'We think she's fine. She won't speak of why she left, so we are simply biding our time.' He glanced at Alice. 'Our daughter, Clodagh. It looked as if she might be going to marry a chap in New York, but she's suddenly come home.' He smiled very faintly. 'Young hearts do mend.'

Susie Somerville and Alice both looked across at the StruwweJpeter shock of curls. Alice said suddenly, surprising herself, 'Of course it hurts, but it's better to feel something so strongly that it half-kills when it's over than-'

She stopped.

'Hear, hear,' Susie Somerville said. 'Story of my life. Come on, Ralph. Margot's gesturing like a windmill. Nosebag time.'

In the doorway to the hall, there was polite congestion. Alice found herself next to Clodagh, whose face was difficult to see on account of her hair, Alice could not, out of delicacy, mention New York but she felt she ought to say something.

'We've just moved in to John Murray-French's house.'

'I know,' Clodagh said and moved on to catch up with her mother.

At dinner, Clodagh was next to Martin. When she turned towards him, Alice could see her face, which was neither pretty nor in the least like either of her solidly handsome parents. It was the face of a fox, wide-cheeked and narrow-chinned, except that her mouth was wide too. Because Alice was new to the village she had been put next to her host, and in order that she should not be alarmed by too much social novelty, John Murray-French was on her other side. In front of her was a bone china soup plate edged with gold containing an elegant amount of pale green soup sprinkled with chives.

'Watercress,' John said. 'They grow it further down the Pitt river. Are you liking my house?'

'Enormously.'

'You're too thin.'

'I don't think,' Alice said, leaning so that Shadwell could pour white burgundy over her shoulder into one of the forest of glasses in front of her, 'you know me well enough to say that.'

'It doesn't need intimacy. It needs an aesthetic eye. I don't just know about ducks.'

'Ducks,' Ralph Unwin said. 'Perfect bind. I gather they are coming off the river up the village street again.'

'Does that matter?'

'Only in that someone, sooner or later, slips on what they have left behind, and as they are reckoned to be my ducks, I end up visiting the victim in Salisbury hospital. My dear girl, you haven't any butter.'

Down the table Martin and Clodagh were laughing. She was doing the talking, very animatedly, and Alice could see her excellent, very white teeth. On Martin's other side, Susie Somerville and Mr Fanshawe were having a boastfully comparative conversation about international airports, and opposite Alice a gaunt woman in a grey silk blouse pinned at the neck with a cameo was drinking her soup with admirable neatness.

'You know Elizabeth Pitt, of course,' Ralph Unwin said.

Mrs Pitt leaned forward.

'I know you. Two dear little boys and a girl. They look exactly the age of Camilla's three. And you've taken on the dreaded shop.'

Ralph Unwin gave a mock shudder.

The shop!'

'It's jolly good,' John Murray-French said. 'Has just the kind of food I like. Left to myself I'd live on beans and biscuits and whisky.' He indicated his soup. 'Can't really see the point of vegetables.'

'Are you,' Sir Ralph said to Alice, 'going to start a vegetable garden?'

Alice smiled at him.

'I'm hoping my mother-in-law will do that.'

'Not Cecily Jordan!'

'The same-'

'My dear,' said Elizabeth Pitt.

'Does Margot know? You won't get a minute's peace-'

'Yes, she does.'

'I told you Martin was Cecily's son, you know,' John said. 'It's odd how nobody listens to a word you say unless you are offering them a drink, when they can hear you clear as a bell three fields off.'

Sir Ralph bent his blue gaze directly upon Alice.

'What wonderful luck. Has Martin inherited her talent?'

She looked down the table. Martin was describing something to Clodagh and using his hands to make a box shape in the air. She looked utterly absorbed.

'Not really. I mean, he's very good at keeping a garden tidy, but he hasn't really got her eye.'

This child's a painter,' John said across her, 'but she won't paint.'

'Won't?'

'I can't, just now,' Alice said unhappily.

Sir Ralph put a hand on hers.

'Sort of painter's block?'

'I suppose so-'

'I know!' Elizabeth Pitt said triumphantly, 'Juliet Dunne has a charming one, in her sitting room. Now Juliet,' she said, turning to Sir Ralph, 'has got a brilliant scheme for the hospice garden party-'

Sir Ralph bent towards her. John Murray-French turned away to say to the woman on his far side, 'I gather your trout have got some nasty ailment-'

Alice looked back down the table at Clodagh. She could watch her for a bit now, without distraction. It looked as if she hadn't touched her soup, and she had broken her roll into a hundred pieces and scattered it messily round her place, just like a child. She had very good hands. As far as Alice could see, they were without rings, but her nails were painted scarlet. Her eyes were set slightly on a slant, and even though her hair was light, her brows and lashes were dark. She didn't seem to have on any jewellery except an immense Maltese cross suspended round her neck on a black ribbon, invisible against her black tunic. She was saying something to Martin, looking down, and then she suddenly looked up and caught Alice gazing at her but her expression remained quite unchanged. Alice felt snubbed. She looked towards Sir Ralph and Mrs Pitt, but they were deep in county politics, so she looked instead at all the Unwins on the walls in their gilded plaster frames, regarding the dinner party from beneath their unsuitable, practical twentiethcentury picture lights.

When the salmon came, John Murray-French turned back and told her that his son Alex was married, to a French girl whom he had met in Athens. Alice said she was so glad. They ate their salmon talking companionably and Alice tried to be interested in Alex's new job as an investment analyst and at the same time tried to remember the flavour of Alex's brief, ardent interest in her. During pudding - a chocolate roulade or apricot tart - and cheese - Stilton and Blue Vinney - Sir Ralph devoted himself to Alice. He was very charming. He told her of his childhood at Pitcombe, and how two spinster great-aunts had lived in The Grey House then. He told her how his three children had exactly the same nursery rooms as he and his sister had had, which gave Alice the chance to ask a question to which she perfectly well knew the answer.

'And is Clodagh your youngest?'

He immediately looked fond.

'She is. Twenty-six. Of course, she could have been married a dozen times over, but she has impossibly high standards. She's much the brightest of our three. She worked in publishing in New York. Somebody and Row. I'm afraid I'm putty in her hands.'

Alice rather wanted to say that it looked as if Martin was, too. But instead, she said, 'Perhaps she could get a job in English publishing, now she's back.'

'You must forgive a fond old father, but I rather want her here for a bit. Perhaps you could help me devise a scheme to keep her. I know she'd love to see your paintings.'

'Oh no!' Alice said, genuinely alarmed.

'All you creative people, so modest. Now tell me, when are we going to be allowed to meet your mother-in-law?'

When the cheese had been borne away, Lady Unwin rose and swept the women out of the room before her.

'Strictly twenty minutes,' she said to Sir Ralph, and then to her charges, 'Clodagh thinks we are absolutely barbaric. Don't you, darling? I suppose Americans wouldn't dream of such a thing.'

Clodagh said, The Americans I knew ate in restaurants all the time,' and then she went up to Susie Somerville and said, 'Come on, Sooze. I want a horror story from your latest trip.'

'Braced for it?' Susie Somerville said delightedly, going up the great staircase beside Clodagh. 'Well, you simply won't believe it, but I had an eighty-five-year-old junkie who chose Samarkand as the spot to trip out-'

Margot Unwin took Alice's arm.

'My dear, I do hope they looked after you at your end of the table.'

'Beautifully, thank you-'

'Let's find you a loo, my dear, the geography of this house is a nightmare for strangers.'

They went up the stairs together behind Susie and Clodagh, Margot talking all the time, and across an immense landing peopled with giant Chinese jars to one of several panelled doors. Margot thrust it open with her free hand and pushed Alice into the pink warmth beyond.

'Take your time, my dear.'

Alice was suddenly desperately tired. Shut into this baronial bathroom done up in a style Cecily would describe as Pont Street 1955, she could at last look at her watch. It was only ten past ten. There would have to be half an hour without the men, and then half an hour with them, before she could even begin to signal home to Martin across the room. She looked in the mirror. To herself she looked badly put together and amateurish. Perhaps it was time to cut off her pigtail.

Outside the bathroom, Sarah Alleyne was waiting for her. Sarah was fair and expensive looking, and Juliet Dunne had said that she was brilliant on both horses and skis.

'I wondered,' she said now, languidly, to Alice, 'I wondered if we could talk about sharing a school run. My wretched nanny's pregnant and I'm quite stuck, just for now-'

In the drawing room the ladies were gathered, holding cups of black coffee and feigning indifference to a silver dish of chocolates. Neither Clodagh nor Susie Somerville was there. Lady Unwin sat Alice beside her on a little French sofa, and talked about the village. She went through a kind of vivacious inventory of inhabitants, from old Fred Mott who was nearly a hundred through Miss Pimm and Miss Payne to some old thing called Lettice Deverel who played the harp. After twenty minutes, Alice realized that she had not been asked a single question. After twenty-five minutes, the men came in, and after thirty, Susie and Clodagh returned still absorbed in some conversation. Martin was holding both brandy and a cigar, neither of which he normally touched, and he sat down beside the gaunt Mrs Pitt with every show of enthusiasm. Alice realized, with amazement, that he was really enjoying himself.

She could not drag him away until almost midnight, and only then because other people were beginning to look round for Shadwell and their coats and to say, 'Come on, old thing, eight o'clock church tomorrow, don't forget.' Both Unwins kissed Alice goodnight but Clodagh, talking to the Harleyford man whom Alice wondered if Lady Unwin intended to be the next boyfriend, just waved from across the room and called, 'Look at the beams!' to Martin.

'What did she mean?' Alice said in the car.

'She and her brother carved swear words into the beams in the room above our garage, for a dare, when they were little. She couldn't remember what the words were, though.'

He began to laugh.

'Was she nice?' Alice said.

'Good fun,' he said, still laughing. 'Good fun.'

At home they found James asleep in their bed, clutching Alice's nightie. Gwen said she was sorry about it, but he'd been a proper handful. Martin carried him to his own bed, and then drove Gwen home while Alice sat on the floor of James's room and waited for him to sink down into deep oblivion again. She sat with her arms round her knees and her head bent and thought, without enthusiasm, of the dinner party. When Martin came back, she crept out of James's room and went to their bedroom where Martin was chucking his clothes over the back of a chair.

'Did you enjoy it? Did you like tonight?'

He was down to his socks and boxer shorts. He pulled one sock off and dropped it.

'It was terrific,' he said. He pulled off the other sock. 'Wasn't it?'

She went past him to the cupboard where she kept her clothes.

'I think you did rather better than me at dinner.'

'Oh-ho,' he said sounding pleased. He seldom flirted, but he liked to be flirted with. 'D'you think so?'

'I thought she was jolly rude,' Alice said, from half inside the cupboard.

He began to hum. Clodagh had been far from rude to him.

'Give her time-'

'If I can be bothered-'

'Allie,' he said, suddenly serious, 'we can't fall out with the Unwins.'

'Can't?'

'No. You just can't be bolshy.'

He went off to brush his teeth. When he came back, Alice was in her yellow dressing gown, fiercely brushing her hair. When they were first married, he used to love watching her do it; now he got into bed, hardly looking, and punched the pillows into the shape he liked.

'You looked great tonight,' he said absently.

'I felt a mess-'

'Rubbish.' His voice was thickly sleepy.

She went over to the window and parted the curtains to look out. There was a bright hard white moon, and the shadow of the fence lay in a black grid on the silver grass. I would so like to be free, Alice thought involuntarily. I am so tired of myself and the muddle of everything. I wish ... She stopped.

'Come to bed,' Martin said.

She dropped the curtain and crossed the room to climb in beside him. He turned to roll himself behind her, cupping her breast in his hand. She stiffened, very slightly.

'OK, OK,' he said. He rolled away. 'Night.'

She reached to turn out her bedside lamp. A silver slice fell through a gap in the curtains.

'Martin. Sorry-'

He grunted.

She turned on her side and lay there, staring into the dim room. Outside an owl called, from across the valley, and after a while another owl answered it from the beeches high above the Park. Then, from down the corridor, but coming nearer at every step, came the sound of James, crying.

'What do you want to go to church for?' Martin said.

They were both slightly hung-over, Martin because he had had quite a lot of brandy, and Alice because she couldn't drink much of anything, anyway.

'I feel I'd like to. That's all. It's only an hour and Charlie will be resting. If you could just put the lamb in at half past eleven-'

'I wanted to be in the garden.'

'Then be in it. The children can come outside with you.'

'But the lamb-'

'You come inside to do that. It will take you all of two minutes.'

'I don't see why you want to go. You never go to ordinary church.'

'But I see,' Alice said, suddenly cross, 'why you don't want me to go. It won't do you any harm to have the children for an hour. I want to be somewhere quiet. I want to think.'

'Suppose I want to think?'

'Then you can go to evensong.'

He went out into the garden then, banging both halves of the stable door which failed to latch and bounced open again. Alice had a bad quarter of an hour putting Charlie down for his rest and finding a roasting tin for the lamb and Natasha's other gumboot and persuading James out of his pyjamas and into clothes, so that she had to run to church, which was uphill, and arrived very much out of breath and ill-prepared for calm.

The church was simple and strong and medieval. It had only a nave and a chancel and there was no stained glass in the windows, so that whatever natural light there was came in, uninterrupted. At the west end was a famous Norman font, carved with scenes from the life of John the Baptist ending with his lolling head on a charger, a scene that Miss Payne, who was in charge of the church flowers, liked to screen with a brass jug of golden rod or Michaelmas daisies or delphiniums. Mr Finch, of the shop, was sidesman in charge of books. He pressed Hymns A & M into Alice's hands most meaningfully.

She chose a pew at the back. The hassocks had been embroidered by the villagers to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee, each one representing animal or plant or bird life along the Pitt river. Alice knelt carefully on a bunch of kingcups. Ahead of her was a dozen or so backs, of which she recognized a few, and beyond them, Peter Morris in cassock and surplice. Idly she wondered who laundered its snowy folds. The organ began, a little breathlessly, played by Miss Pimm in her Windsmoor Sunday suit. The congregation rose stiffly to its feet.

Holding her prayerbook, Alice thought how much her father admired Cranmer's English. She remembered him giving a sudden impromptu lecture at supper one night on the iniquity of the banal and bloodless language of the modern service book. Pitcombe clearly had turned its thumbs down to the alternative services - what she held, she discovered, was in the still sonorous English of 1928. In the front of her prayerbook was stamped The Church of St Peter, Pitcombe' and underneath, in neat elderly script, 'Given in memory of Hilda Bryce, by her loving family'. Did anyone, she wondered, commemorate people that way any more?

She did not really notice what they said or sang, nor did she hear properly what Peter Morris said comfortably for ten minutes, from his pulpit, about St Paul's exhortations to the Romans, on being delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. She had said she wanted to think, but she didn't think. She simply sat, and looked at the whitewashed walls and the little monuments in stone and brass lamenting matchless husbands and beloved mothers and sons and observed how the pale sunlight came in and lit up the brass ends of the churchwardens' staffs like tiny flames. And then she knelt with everyone else and read aloud with them the prayer of St Chrysostom.

'Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be most expedient for them.'

What, she wondered, were her desires and petitions, except that she wished to be rid of this preoccupation with the fluctuating graph of her unhappiness? She got up and followed everyone out, and Mrs Macaulay said how nice it was to see her in church, and Mr Finch smirked as he took her books, and Peter Morris clasped her hand warmly and told her to remember him to Charlie.

When she got home, they were all sitting round the kitchen table with mugs and the biscuit tin, and Clodagh Unwin was there too. She looked pale, and nothing like as self-possessed as the night before, and she was wearing butter yellow tights, and an enormous grey jersey that came half-way down her thighs, and grey suede boots. The moment Alice came in, Clodagh got up and went across to her, put her hands on Alice's arms and said, 'I came to say sorry. Because I was so horrible last night.'

Alice, startled, said, 'Oh, you weren't-'

'I was,' Clodagh said. 'I was awful. Ma said would I be particularly nice to you, but I was in a temper with her for something that's too boring to mention so I was particularly horrible instead.'

Alice moved away slightly.

'It doesn't matter,' she said. 'You were very nice to Martin.'

He gave a pleased guffaw from the table.

'Oh, please,' Clodagh said. Alice gave her a quick glance and saw her eyes were full of tears. 'Don't make so much of it. It doesn't matter. I didn't notice.'

'I don't know,' Clodagh said, with the beginning of a smile, 'if that doesn't make me feel worse.'

'Come on, Allie,' Martin said. 'Come on. Have some coffee.'

Alice threw her coat over the chair back and reached for an apron on the hook behind the door to the hall.

'I've got to do the potatoes for lunch-'

'I'll do them,' Clodagh said, taking the apron. 'I'm a whizz at potatoes.'

James, who had decided Clodagh was delicious, pulled a chair up to the sink, giggling, so that he could splash about while she peeled. Natasha, who felt a keen desire for Clodagh's boots, stayed by the table to devise a scheme by which she might try them on even if they were going to be too big, which they were, she knew, but all the same . . . Alice, not won over, went to fetch the potatoes from the larder and the peeler from a drawer and a saucepan. She dumped the potatoes in the sink and Clodagh seized her wrist.

'Please forgive me,' she said. Her voice was an urgent hiss and her curious grey-gold eyes were bright with intensity.

'You made me feel a fool last night,' Alice said, 'and you're doing it again now. I don't like it. That's all.'

Clodagh dropped her wrist. In a voice so low only Alice could hear it, she said, 'You were the only person last night who didn't look a fool.'

Alice went away to find carrots and a bag of frozen peas. When she came back, Martin had gone out again, James and Clodagh were singing and splashing at the sink and Natasha, without being asked, was laying the table, back to front.

'Clodagh's staying,' Natasha said. 'Daddy asked her.'

Clodagh turned round.

'But I won't if you don't want me to.'

'Of course stay. It's very ordinary lunch-'

'You're really kind.'

Natasha stretched up to her mother's ear.

'Oh I so want her boots-'

'Aren't they smart.'

Without turning round, Clodagh kicked her boots off backwards.

Try them.'

Natasha gave a little squeal. James put his arms around Clodagh's waist in case the boots should create a bond between her and Natasha. She dropped a kiss on his head and he looked up at her with passion.

'You've no idea,' Clodagh said, 'how unutterable American children are. We had one that used to come to the apartment loaded with toys and if you admired the smallest thing, he'd say. "Don't touch. OK?" at the top of his voice.'

James thought this was brilliantly funny.

'Don't touch, OK, don't touch, OK, don't touch, OK-'

'Look-' Natasha breathed, bending over to admire her feet.

'You look like Puss in Boots.'

'I love them.' She looked up at Clodagh. 'Are they American?'

'Sure thing, baby,' Clodagh said with an American accent, 'Henry Bendel, no less.'

Martin came back with a bottle of wine. He was humming. He kissed Alice's cheek on his way to fetch a corkscrew and then again on his way to fetch the glasses. At the second kiss, she laughed.

'Feeling better?'

'Yes,' she said, surprised.

'I expect church made you feel better,' Natasha said, stroking the boots, 'I think it's supposed to.'

When everyone laughed she looked tremendously pleased and said, in Gwen's phrase, 'Well, this really is my day and no mistake.'

Martin poured wine for himself and Clodagh and Alice. Clodagh finished the potatoes and put them on to boil and scooped the peelings out of the sink into the rubbish bin. Alice stared at her.

'Isn't that right?' Clodagh said. She had pushed up the sleeves of her jersey and stood there, shoeless, like a grey and yellow bird.

'It's absolutely right. I just don't associate New York flat dwellers with-'

'Oh,' Clodagh said quickly, smiling at her, 'I always did things like that. I used to scrub floors and stuff as therapy when the whole scene got a bit heavy.'

She came round the table to where Alice was peeling carrots and looked at her intently.

'Hello,' she said.

Alice took a quick swallow of her wine.

'Is this another kind of game? Like last night?'

'No,' Clodagh said. 'I could kill myself for last night.'

Alice's hands were shaking. She put down her wine glass not at all steadily.

'You haven't met my baby.'

'He's so sweet,' Natasha said, still mooning over her feet. 'He's the nicest baby in my class.'

Clodagh dropped her gaze and let Alice go.

'Can we go and find him?'

The children rushed to seize her hands, Natasha shuffling but determined in her boots. They went out of the room and Alice could hear them beginning to clatter, chattering up the uncarpeted stairs. Singing softly, without meaning to, Alice fetched a pan and put her carrots in it, beside the pan of Clodagh's potatoes.