“Just over there,” Slater said, nodding towards the horizon. “Perhaps where those woods are now, perhaps even nearer. The location is disputed but I have gone carefully into it and I am convinced it was on our side of the river. There is a poem commemorating the battle in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The pursuit lasted all day. The fields around were darkened with blood, they say. Five Viking princes died in the battle. Constantine lost a son. People were fighting all the time in those days of course, it was a violent age. But this wasn’t just any battle. It was one of the great battles of our history. Athelstan was the first Saxon King to have effective rule over the whole of England. The army he was commanding was an English army – not Mercian, not West Saxon, not Northumbrian. English. North and South burying their differences, fighting as one nation to repel the foreign invader.”

  Slater took some steps forward out into the sunshine and stood waiting for Benson to follow. “I’ve had the poem translated into modern English,” he said. “It will be recited during the performance. My idea, you see, is to celebrate this step in the forging of the English state and nation by dramatising scenes from the life of King Athelstan, very loosely constructed, with interludes and entertainments.”

  The singing of the choir carried to them from the marquee, a different song now:

  “On Richmond Hill there lives a lass

  More bright than May-day morn,

  Whose charms all other maids’ surpass,

  A rose without a thorn.

  This maid so neat

  With smile so sweet

  Hath won my right good will …”

  “They are not getting it right yet,” Slater said. “They must give more force to those monosyllables. ‘This-maid-so-neat-with-smile-so-sweet.’ They are supposed to be singing the praises of an English rose, not reciting their multiplication tables. You may be wondering why I take so much trouble?”

  “Well, as a matter—”

  “The success of the whole depends on getting all the details right. That was true in the days of the Beachhead Buddies and it’s just as true now.”

  Benson nodded. It was the first unsolicited reference that Slater had made to the past. “The Beachhead Buddies, yes,” he said.

  “Shall we go up to the house? We could have a drink before lunch.”

  He continued to talk as they made their way up the gently sloping ground towards the house. “I don’t know what your politics are,” he said. “That’s your business. But you fought to defend this country. Men who have been through that know what unity means. You mentioned the Sunday Times. That’s a fine newspaper. Increasing its sales hand over fist, I understand, now that they have solved their labour problems.”

  Despite the express allowance for his own opinions, Benson felt that the pause Slater made here was deliberately interrogative. However, he said nothing. They were crossing the forecourt now, approaching the steps up to the terrace.

  “I don’t mind telling you,” Slater said, “that I’ve taken a bit of a chance on you, asking you here to my home, agreeing to cooperate in the matter of this newspaper article. But we were in the war together and that means a lot to me. What I am saying is that I’m assuming a basic patriotism on your part. We hear a lot about division these days from the gloom and doom merchants. The North-South divide, all this stuff about two nations. England is one nation, Clive, can’t help but be, considering our history. Chains forged like that are not broken by local discontents, or local malcontents either. They are forged in steel.”

  “Chained to history.” Benson was struck by this turn of phrase. It was true – you couldn’t open a newspaper without hearing them clank. “You feel that quite strongly in Liverpool,” he said.

  Slater appeared not to have heard this. He stopped at the foot of the steps, looking back over the grounds towards the lake. “I’m semi-retired now, you know,” he said. “I’m sixty-six. I still go to board meetings, of course. I still take care of most of the bank’s commodity business and do some investment consultancy work. Most of that I can do from my office here. Meredith drives me down to the City a couple of times a week on average. But I don’t take the same interest in the bank’s affairs that I used to. There’s a time to get out, Clive.” He turned and looked directly into Benson’s face and said with a sort of smiling frankness that was extremely engaging, “I’ve got some good years ahead of me yet. I want to get more involved in local matters now. I want to put this place on the map.”

  The terrace was empty now. They went through the french windows directly into a long, rectangular drawingroom, furnished in Regency style, with walls and ceiling elaborately decorated in moulded plaster, pale grey lined with gilt.

  “What can I get you?”

  “I’d like a Scotch. No ice, please. Just as it is.”

  “Just as God made it, eh? My other passion is this house. You won’t have seen much of it yet?”

  “No,” Benson said. “I came directly down from the terrace.”

  “This room we are in is what the first owners would have called the Saloon. Pity that word has gone out, I always think. It is now only associated with public houses, isn’t it? The stucco was done by Pietro Francini. That’s the same man who was commissioned by the first Duke of Northumberland to do the Long Gallery in Northumberland House.”

  “It’s very fine,” Benson said. This was no more than the truth. The plaster mouldings were the great feature of the room, wrought in graceful, playful patterns of foliation, clustered fruits, curlicues, rosettes, loops, swags, garlands, cornucopias. Winged women with gentle faces and the exuberantly bounding hindquarters of deer decorated the corners of the ceiling. Benson took a drink from his glass and felt an immediate benefit. “Very fine indeed,” he said. “There is an attractive incongruity between the rather severe rectilinear form of the room itself and this extravagance of the decoration. I wonder if the designers intended that.”

  He paused, aware that he had fallen somehow into the role of courtier, aware too that this would be customary with those surrounding Slater, elicited, demanded almost, by the very charm and expansiveness of his manner. He thought he could detect now on Slater’s face a shared knowledge of this, a look of faintly derisive alertness, as if his host had noted his malaise, discerned a sensitive spot; not an unfriendly look exactly, but somehow predatory, as if weaknesses emitted a sort of scent, as if within the caverns of personality vanities, follies, exploitable matter, could decay, giving off a whiff for those who had a nose for it.

  This impression was confirmed when Slater, instead of helping him with civil assent, merely said drily, “Yes, Francini is generally considered to be rather good,” and then began immediately to draw his guest’s attention to various of the objects in the room. “The relief over the chimney-piece is a copy of Schiavoni’s ‘Apollo and Midas’,” he said. “The original, of course, is at Hampton Court. The chimney-piece itself has been attributed to Henry Cheers. The painting on the wall over there is a portrait of Sir William Biggs, painted by Reynolds in 1768. He was the first owner, you know. I won’t tell you how much it cost me to get it from the family. The commodes by the wall over there are French, of the Regency period.”

  Benson looked at the portrait, saw a thick-necked slave-dealer in a wig and black tricorn hat. Reynolds should have had better things to do.

  “I’ve tried to keep the general tone of an eighteenth-century interior,” Slater said. “The gilt table is Italian, around 1750. Do you see the clock on it, in the walnut case? I’m particularly fond of that piece. It once belonged to Lord Macaulay. The sofa-table is English too, a bit later, turn of the century. It’s in rosewood. The wine cistern over by the door is a very rare type, famille rose, with dolphin feet, ah, there you are, Sylvia.”

  Mrs Slater had entered by the double door at the far end of the room. She was dressed in a pale green blouse and cream pleated skirt and no longer wore the sunglasses. Benson was sure now he could remember the face from innocently romantic English films of many years ago. The pale, ethereal prettiness was lined and faded but the large blue eyes were the same as had looked trustfully up at tall hussars and highwaymen. They were slow-moving, the eyes, he suddenly noticed, perhaps myopic, she had to narrow them slightly to keep him in focus.

  “You’ve met Clive already, I gather.”

  There was a note of genial warning in this, or so it seemed to Benson. He saw her pass her tongue cautiously, like a child, over her lower lip. He realised that after an hour or so of listening to Verdi in her boudoir she was slightly drunk.

  “Yes,” she said, “we met earlier. Mr Benson had coffee with us on the terrace.”

  “Did he indeed? You would have done better to send him straight down to me in view of the time at our disposal.” The voice was genial still. “I thought that is what I told you to do.”

  “I don’t remember. He had just arrived, Hugo. I thought, after the journey …”

  Something in the tone of this rather than the words made Benson look quickly at her. It came to him in that moment that she was frightened of her husband. Fortified as she was, mild as Slater’s tone had been. “The coffee was extremely welcome,” he said, looking at Slater. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he felt the stirring of a revolt perhaps forty years belated. “In fact,” he said, “I don’t know what I would have done without it, I don’t know how I could have coped with the news that awaited me in your pagoda, Hugo.”

  “News?”

  “That England is essentially one nation and that we owe it all to Athelstan.”

  Slater looked steadily at him for perhaps five seconds. His face was quite expressionless. “Perhaps you’d like another drink?” he said at last. He had himself drunk nothing yet.

  “Another Scotch please.”

  Slater took his glass and went to the sideboard with it. While he was pouring out the drink Erika and another, older woman entered the room and joined him there.

  “That’s Erika’s mother,” Sylvia said. “You can’t have one without the other, as Hugo has discovered to his cost. I don’t think you’re a journalist at all, Mr Benson, or at least not a proper one. You don’t behave like one somehow. I mean, don’t ask me how they behave but you are just not right. You intrude your own opinions. You make quite uncalled-for remarks about the slave trade. You’ve just offended Hugo, which is a very unwise thing to do, believe me. He didn’t show it, but I know him. I don’t think he believes you’re a real journalist either. He has his reasons for doing things, Hugo always has his reasons, but they are not always what you think. You’re not the Clive Benson who wrote Fool’s Canopy by any chance?”

  “Do you mean to say you’ve read it?”

  “I’ve got a copy. If you really are the author, I’d like you to sign it sometime. It’s one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read. I’ve always thought it would make a marvellous film.”

  Benson was so moved by this that he felt the prick of tears in his eyes. “You have just made a friend,” he said. There was no time to say more. Slater came back with his drink. He was introduced to Erika’s mother, a plump, quick-eyed woman with a vibrant voice. They were joined by a man with a soft face and hard eyes, whose name was Robinson; Sylvia explained in an aside that he was the senior partner in a firm of accountants and chairman of the Constituency Conservative Party. Two more men arrived together just before lunch was announced, one tall and black-haired, the other rather fat, with a full beard. They had driven over from Chester. Benson failed to catch either of their names but Sylvia told him that the tall man was playing Athelstan and the bearded one St Columba, so he thought of them in that way.

  The dining-room contained one or two more portraits of wigged worthies and their gowned wives. There was a silver basket on the table, filled with white roses. Benson found himself seated near one end of the table with Erika’s mother, Mrs Belmont, on one side of him, Sylvia on the other and Athelstan opposite. He had some soup without much noticing the flavour; then there was rainbow trout and stuffed artichokes – refined and expensive sorts of things such as he almost never ate these days. There was white wine on the table and he had some. He was beginning to feel a certain sense of occasion. He glanced with renewed feelings of friendship at Sylvia Slater sitting to his left at the head of the table. She too was drinking the wine. She sat looking before her with a slight smile on her pale, rather crumpled-looking face. That magazine article had given quite the wrong impression of her, he thought. She was clearly a woman of discerning taste. What was it Slater had said? Positively her last performance. Something like that. Rather an ill-natured remark. She had dressed up for it. She had put on her gold bracelets and her white pyjama suit and tried to make a brave show, tried to do the old-time star, scattering ‘darlings’ and talking about boudoirs. The only true thing about her in all that rigmarole was that she liked listening to Verdi.

  He looked across at Erika, who was laughing at something Robinson had said. She looked radiant, glowing with health. She had dressed her hair on top of her head, leaving unobscured the strong, beautiful column of her neck. She was wearing a white, short-sleeved dress of thin wool, which clung to the lines of her figure. Slater, he saw, was looking at her too.

  “This is a beautiful house, isn’t it?” Athelstan said, leaning across the table in a stiff-shouldered, man-to-man way. He had very soft brown eyes, like a cow’s. “Full of beautiful things,” he said. “Mr Slater once let it fall that the creamware dinner service in the cabinet was the personal possession of Josiah Wedgwood. Then there is the chinoiserie. Of course, Mr Slater is a collector.”

  “It’s nice to see her happy again,” Mrs Belmont said on his right. She had been following the direction of his gaze. “I’ve been very worried, you know. Erika is so trusting. She gets into some difficult situations simply because of this idealism of her nature. She has always been passionately interested in the stage, of course. Mr Slater recognised her talent at once.”

  “I thought we’d begin with Athelstan’s dream immediately after lunch,” he heard Slater say to St Columba.

  “I should say that this is one of the most desirable residences we’ve ever had on our books,” Athelstan said.

  “Are you an estate agent?”

  “Yes, I am, as a matter of fact.”

  “There was this man Gerald,” Mrs Belmont said, “just to give you an example. I don’t think we ever knew his surname. He said he was an impresario and the silly girl promptly went and fell in love with him. Good address in Knightsbridge. Turned out he had nothing to do with the theatre at all, he was some kind of crook. He kept her more or less locked up in this flat, no furniture in it, just carpet, the floor and walls all covered with beige carpeting. She was very disillusioned. Well, he was mad, but she only found that out when she was in the situation. When she complained he bought her a twelve-foot rubber plant to keep her happy. He knew she loved rubber plants. Of course, it couldn’t go on.”

  “It doesn’t sound very promising,” Benson said. “I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered so much if he had turned out to be a genuine impresario.”

  “No, that’s right. She felt so betrayed, you see. That is what killed her love.”

  Benson drank some more wine. With something of a shock he saw Meredith, massive in a white jacket, standing at the sideboard. “What was Athelstan’s dream?” he said. He had to raise his voice a little – the table was long and his host was at the far end of it. There was an immediate hush as Slater began to reply.

  “On the eve of the battle,” he said, looking not very cordially at Benson, “St Columba appears to Athelstan in a dream and promises him victory over his enemies. He prophesies that the kingdom he rules over will develop into a great nation of seafarers and inventors and will be the mother of parliaments. He outlines to Athelstan some of the great achievements awaiting England in the future.”

  “Agincourt,” St Columba said, “the Armada, Shakespeare, the Spinning Jenny, the Steam Engine, the spread of Empire.”

  “You can’t possibly bring in the Industrial Revolution,” Benson said, “surely, without mentioning the accumulation of capital due to the Liverpool—”

  “Liverpool played her part of course,” Robinson said. “No one would deny that.” He smiled stiffly at Benson. “You’re a Liverpudlian, I take it? I like a man who takes pride in his city.”

  “It’s a very important scene,” St Columba said. “It’s the only scene I’m in, as a matter of fact.”

  “It’s an absolutely crucial scene,” Robinson said. “Here you have all the themes summed up in a nutshell, unity through victory, the forging of the nation, the great contributions this small kingdom was destined to make to the civilisation of the Western world. And, seeing it, people will realise that these are not just dim events in history books but things that happened on their own soil, in the case of this battle on their own doorstep. It links people to their past. I should just like to add this, Hugo, while I’m about it, there won’t be another opportunity before the event itself and I know it expresses the feelings of us all…”

  It was clear that Robinson, perhaps by force of habit, feeling he had the attention of the meeting, had settled down to make a speech. “I know that I speak for all of us,” he continued, “when I say how grateful I personally feel to you, not only for throwing your house and grounds open, but for the work you have put in, the dedication and the high sense of civic purpose. It’s not too much to say that you are continuing the work of Athelstan himself. He had a policy of settling people on the land, as I understand it. You are giving people a sense of having a stake in this country. And that means owning a piece of it, owning your own house, for example.”

  “Hear, hear!” Athelstan said.

  “It means having a stake in the future of this country by being able to buy shares in our great industries. That is what we mean by a property-owning democracy. That was Athelstan’s policy a thousand years ago and that is our policy today. Thank you, Hugo. I can assure you of one thing: it doesn’t go unnoticed.”