Mrs Slater allowed another rather long pause to elapse, during which she regarded Erika steadily through her dark glasses. The effect was belittling – it seemed to Benson intentionally so – but Erika looked quite unabashed. He wished now that he had asked for whisky.

  “Erika is very romantic,” Mrs Slater said at last. “Aren’t you, love? Next Sunday is the big day, of course,” she added, turning to Benson. “A week tomorrow. Hugo has a hundred and one things to see to. That is why he isn’t here to greet you.”

  “No, don’t you remember?” Erika said. “The children are here. He is rehearsing with the children.”

  “I quite understand,” said Benson, who didn’t at all.

  “It would be a pity to distract him,” Erika said. “We should not distract a man from work that is dear to his heart.” She raised her head and threw back her long blonde hair with both hands in an exuberant gesture that raised her vigorous breasts and made prominent her forearms, thickish but shapely, with glinting golden hairs. It came to Benson that she probably took quite a bit of exercise. From somewhere behind the house he heard a series of sharp, mewing cries, like a gull’s or hawk’s.

  “A man has his work,” Erika said. “I can’t think anything of a man who does not take his work seriously, can you, Mr Benson?”

  “Er, no.” Benson felt Mrs Slater’s eyes on him. “Well, perhaps a tax inspector,” he said. “The same thing applies to women, doesn’t it?”

  “I can’t think even that much of him.” Erika snapped her fingers scornfully.

  “You don’t want Hugo to be distracted at this point,” Mrs Slater said. “You don’t want to distract a man who is preparing the stage for you. That’s only common sense, darling.”

  The words, though spoken with no particular emphasis, brought the shadow of wrong and recrimination to this sunlit terrace. Erika raised a mirthful face, as if the other woman had made a joke, but she said nothing. After a moment or two Mrs Slater stood up rather abruptly. “I think I’ll go and rest for a while before lunch,” she said. She looked at Benson. “We have lunch rather late at the weekend,” she said. “Around two. I hope that suits you?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I’m sure Hugo will be along soon. Perhaps you’d like a drink now?”

  “I’d like a Scotch,” Benson said. The alacrity of this reply brought a slight smile to her face, the first he had seen since his arrival.

  “Very wise,” she said. “Exactly what is needed for dealing with Hugo in the production phase. Or any other phase for that matter. Soda? Ice?”

  “Nothing, thank you.”

  “I’ll have it brought out to you here.” She smiled again, without glancing at Erika, then walked slowly across the terrace to the open french window and disappeared into the house.

  “It must have been great fun, having Hugo as your officer,” Erika said, after a moment. “He is so inspiring, so dynamic.”

  Briefly into Benson’s mind there came the picture of Slater as he had last seen him, cap, stick, summer-issue shirt neatly pressed, clean white pips on the epaulettes; vision of neatness and correctness in that long room of bandaged shapes, distraught cries of dreamers, smells of disinfectant and suppuration. “Yes,” he said, “enormous fun.”

  “And to think,” Erika said dreamily, “that your paths have crossed again after all these years.”

  A middle-aged woman in a dark dress came on to the terrace with a tray bearing Benson’s drink. It was a very large Scotch indeed. As she set it before him there came a sudden blast of choral music from some upper room of the house.

  Erika grimaced. “That Verdi man again,” she said. “She never gets tired of him.”

  Listening, Benson thought he recognised the Dies irae chorus from the Requiem. “Well, cheers,” he said. He took a long drink from his glass.

  “Hugo drinks very little,” Erika said. “He is a dedicated man. Look at him now, how he makes himself responsible for everything. And yet just like a little boy in some ways.”

  She was looking beyond Benson as she spoke, towards the open parkland below the house. For a moment or two, as she raised her head, smiling with the womanly indulgence of her twenty years or so, Benson allowed his gaze to linger on her smooth throat, in which the words seemed to throb for a while after she had stopped talking. Then the import of the words themselves came to him: Slater must be down there, somewhere in sight. He shifted his chair round sharply. It was the first time he had been able to look out over the grounds; there had been the flurry of arrival, the introductions, the accident of his place at the table …

  “Where is he?” he said rather wildly, dazed for a moment by the extensiveness of the view. “Is that him? Is that a marquee?”

  Beyond the balustrade and the steps and the gravelled forecourt where Meredith had deposited him, lawns sloped away, shading barely perceptibly into meadowland, rising again in the distance to low hills. The downward slope was cunningly landscaped, dotted at intervals with small coppices of oak. Where the ground levelled, a gleaming lake, nakedly artificial, lay like a blade on a green cloth. Beyond this, half-hidden among the trees, was a summerhouse painted in red and gilt, with a roof like a Chinese pagoda. The whole vista was a dream of ordered and controlled rurality; but to the right of the lake, shattering the illusion, was a very large blue marquee, with the figures of three men standing in a group close to it.

  “Is one of those men Hugo?” he said.

  “Can’t you pick him out?” Erika seemed surprised and somewhat offended.

  Benson was visited suddenly by a feeling of dislike for the young woman beside him and a corresponding wave of sympathy for the older one, the wife, who for all her acerbity had been obliged to yield the ground. “How should I pick him out?” he said. “By his air of natural command?” He finished the whisky in a single draught. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, controlling the effects of this, “I think I’ll walk over and see him. I know a man should not be distracted and so on, but time is passing.”

  Going down the steps he felt dizzy and it occurred to him that his haste with the whisky might have been injudicious – he had had no time for breakfast that morning; but he made his way at a steady pace over the lawns and as he proceeded he felt better again. He saw the little group break up: one man went round the side of the marquee and Benson saw him a few minutes later near the lake with a wheelbarrow; it seemed unlikely that he would be Slater. The two others had not noticed his approach; they talked for some moments longer, then passed inside the marquee through a square opening in the front.

  Approaching the entrance he was in time to hear a childish clamour suddenly cease as a man’s voice was raised commandingly. He passed into the cavernous interior and stopped at once, looking towards the far end where on a raised platform some thirty children stood facing him in two ranks, boys and girls, identically dressed in white shirts, blue ties, grey shorts. They were quite silent, standing with their arms by their sides in a position of attention. Benson was not good with children’s ages, but he thought these were around nine or ten. One of the men, presumably the one who had called out, was holding up his arms to the children. The other, taller and grey-haired, stood further back, looking towards the stage.

  “Second and third verses again, please, Mr Pringle,” this man called.

  There was a moment or two of charged silence. Then the first man made a sweeping gesture with his arms, throwing them apart and bringing them violently together again. At once, in perfect unison, the children broke into song:

  “And did the Countenance Divine

  Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

  And was Jerusalem builded here

  Among these dark Satanic Mills?

  Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

  Bring me my Arrows of desire:

  Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

  Bring me my—”

  “Stop, stop!” It was the taller man who had shouted. Abruptly the singing ceased. He walked a few paces forward towards the children. “They must mark the change of mood between the verses,” he said to the conductor. He turned and began to speak emphatically to the silent children. “In verse two we are questioning things, the movement is slow, rather sad. What has happened to this dear England of ours? What has happened to the dream? That’s what we are asking. Then at the beginning of verse three there is an abrupt change. Now we are arming for battle, we are calling for our weapons, we are going to restore Jerusalem, the scent of victory is in our nostrils. You sound at the moment as if you were asking mummy to get you a lollypop.”

  The children listened impassively. If they had seen Benson they gave no sign. Neither of the men had seen him yet. Standing here in the blueish light amidst the summer smells of sun-warmed canvas and crushed grass, he felt oppressed. The docility of the children, their identity of dress, made them seem like victims in a rite of some kind, initiatory, sacrificial – he could not decide. They seemed burdened; creatures performing, who did not know their own purposes. It was a collective poignancy rendered more acute by individual lapses, the flushed little girl with hair escaping from her headband, a boy whose woollen stockings had wrinkled down towards his ankles.

  “You must give all the force you can to the ‘bring’ at the beginning of each line,” the tall man said. “Really sound it out. A clarion call. Then, when you are naming the weapons, just the briefest of pauses before the word, then boom! Open your mouths and belt it out. Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire …” He struck his palm with his fist on the beat of the words. Then he turned back to the conductor. “Let’s try it again, Mr Pringle, shall we?” he said. “From the beginning.”

  This was Slater then, revealed by elementary deduction. But I would have known it anyway, Benson thought, hearing and remembering after forty years the patient encouragement of the words: “Let’s try it again, shall we?”

  The conductor had raised his arms. Benson was about to leave the marquee with the intention of waiting outside when the man he knew to be Slater turned as if to move back to his former position and saw him. An immediate frown came to his face. Benson walked towards him. As he did so the children broke into song again:

  “And did those feet in ancient times

  Walk upon England’s mountains green?”

  “Clive Benson,” he said quietly, holding out his hand, raising his eyes to Slater’s face: the other was a good six inches taller, something he had not remembered particularly, probably because he was used to being the shorter one.

  The frown was immediately replaced by a smile of great charm, crinkling the corners of the eyes and giving the whole face an expression of friendliness and warmth. He felt his hand taken in a firm grip. “Let’s go outside,” Slater said. “We can’t talk in here.”

  To the continuing strains of the choir he led the way out of the marquee. The day seemed almost painfully bright to Benson after the filtered light inside; he blinked at a world that seemed more spacious than before. “I hope I’m not interrupting?” he said.

  “No, not at all. Pringle will take them through it. He is their teacher, you know. They’ve been practising a long time, but this is the first dress rehearsal – it’s mainly to make sure they’ve all got the right turn-out.” He gave a brief bark of laughter. “We don’t want the boys coming in Hawaiian shirts or the girls in sequins. And then, you know, they’ve got to get the drill right. At the end of the song they’ve got to form up and walk down the central aisle two by two, straight out – I don’t want them milling around in there, space is limited.”

  Slater’s face was heavier now, the mouth had loosened and the skin below the eyes was pouchy; but the eyes were the same, unfaded blue, level and alert under their straight brows. It was a handsome, well-nourished, confident face, authority unmistakable in it, like an element of complexion. His figure had thickened but there was no stoop and he moved lightly. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Little Benson. Over here would be a good place to have a chat.”

  They bordered the slightly rippled platter of the lake, passed through into a copse of silver birches. Before them now was the summerhouse with the pagoda roof, painted in gold and red, vivid against the pale silver of the birch trees and the water.

  “I come in here sometimes when I want to do a bit of thinking,” Slater said.

  Inside there was a faint, agreeable smell of paint and earth mould. A square window looked out over the lake and a long narrow bench of wood ran along the wall below it. They sat down on this and Slater began speaking at once. “I’ll just give you a run-down of what it is I’m trying to do here,” he said, “to clear up any misconceptions you may be labouring under. Then perhaps after lunch you could see some of the rehearsals and that will lighten up whatever corners are still dark.”

  “That sounds like a good plan.” Benson felt clear-headed despite the whisky, almost pretematurally alert, watching Slater’s face in the clear light from the window, a face so changed, so carnalised as it were, full-cheeked and sanguine, yet with that same intensity of purpose it had worn on the night of the shelling when he had waited through the thunder of the guns to explain his idea. The faintly derogatory tone of his words just now, the imputation of ignorance, had been quite good-humoured – probably habitual, Benson thought, a way of establishing ascendancy. He did not need it with us then, he had his rank. Or perhaps it is simply distrust of the press. In any case quite justified at present – Benson had no idea what he was talking about.

  “First of all,” Slater said, “to get the terminology right, it is a spectacle rather than a play, a series of tableaus really, with various interludes – like the children’s choir for example, which you have just seen in action. I want to make it as nearly as possible like those popular shows they used to take touring round the inns and courtyards and village greens of England. I suppose you know what I mean. Don’t you use a notebook?”

  “No, no,” Benson said, “I have a very good faculty of recall. Training, you know.” Since he had only succeeded by subterfuge in getting this audience at all, he was resolved to carry it off with what panache he could muster. The question had sounded suspicious; or perhaps merely impatient – he had probably not given sufficient appearance of attention. In fact, a sort of amazement had been slowly growing in him: he and Slater had never been friends of course; but the other had been his platoon officer, they had lived together through circumstances of hardship and danger, Slater had directed him as Velma, had seen him last quite badly wounded in the clearance ward of a military hospital; yet there had been no word of the past, no word of enquiry, no reference at all – Slater had gone straight to the matter in hand. I suppose that is the mark of the high achiever, Benson thought. “No,” he repeated, “I dispensed with notebooks long ago.” He glanced briefly through the window, saw a flotilla of ducklings in arrowhead formation on the lake, mother in front. “I bumped into Thompson the other day,” he said.

  “Thompson?” The frowning expression had returned to Slater’s face. It was not a look of incomprehension or puzzlement, but rather as if he had found something in his path, something obtrusive, not envisaged.

  “He was in your platoon. The one they called Killer Thompson.”

  “Oh, him. Yes, I remember him. First-rate fighting man. Invaluable chap to have in your platoon. Inspiring example to the others. Worth his weight in gold, a chap like that.”

  “He almost was for a while,” Benson said.

  Slater did not take him up on this. It was clear that he wanted to get back to his project but felt constrained still by these wartime associations. “Getting on all right, is he?”

  “Not really.” He wondered briefly if he should tell Slater that Thompson might be on his way here too. Better not. “He had the copy of the Colour Supplement with the article about your house,” he said.

  “That confounded article,” Slater said, the frown persisting. “Sylvia making one of those positively last appearances. I wish I had never agreed to it now. Where were we?”

  “The children.”

  “Oh, yes. Traditional songs expressing the unity of England and our great heritage. That is the theme of the whole show – unity. You don’t mind a history lesson, do you? Just come over here.”

  He rose and moved towards the door and Benson followed. They stood together looking out towards the rising parkland, the long grey façade of the house, the rougher, steeper ground beyond, the dark line of woods on the horizon. Benson felt the other man’s hand lightly gripping his elbow. “The house faces south,” Slater said. “So you are looking due north at this moment. If you struck directly through those woods beyond the house and kept going for about ten miles you would come to the lower reaches of the River Mersey. Somewhere between here and the river is the site of the Battle of Brunanburh. That mean anything to you?”

  “Not a great deal, I’m afraid.”

  “It was fought in the year 937. In that year a coalition of Vikings from Ireland, Scots under their king Constantine and a rabble of Strathclyders came sailing up the Mersey. The Vikings wanted to regain the Kingdom of York to which their leader, Anlaf, had a claim. At least, that was the ostensible purpose – the main thing they were all after was loot. They moored their ships on the southern shore of the Mersey and struck across country, pillaging as they went. They were met by a combined force of West Saxons and Mercians under King Athelstan. They were completely routed and driven back to their ships with great slaughter.”

  He paused for a moment and Benson glanced sideways. Slater’s face was absorbed with the interest of what he was saying; his eyes were fixed on the dark line of the horizon. It was no more possible now to doubt his sincerity than it had been forty years ago, in that cellar below the rubble of Anzio. What had weakened in memory and came back with force to Benson now, as he felt the touch on his arm, was the attractive power of personality the other possessed, the effortless way in which he enlisted you in his purposes.