Bridget shrugged. ‘If that’s what usually happens, why worry? You wanted it truthful.’ She smiled. ‘You can’t have it both ways.’

  ‘Both ways?’ he rasped. ‘I won’t have it any way.’

  His main regret as he left the room, was that he had not done so ten minutes earlier. To choose the wrong moment with Bridget was to guarantee failure.

  After Matthew’s departure Bridget remained by the window, watching another pantechnicon draw up outside the gatehouse. Since shortly before breakfast a stream of similar vehicles had been arriving, filled with paraphernalia for the evening’s festivities: dozens of little gilded chairs, almost as many small round tables, musical instruments, cinematic and sound equipment, potted palms and ferns, and a great many packing cases. Most of these items were now being manhandled to the huge marquee near the park, by a gang of removal men in green overalls. While she was watching, Paul walked into the courtyard, talking earnestly to a gaggle of hippy-like people, possibly members of a fringe theatre group. Bridget smiled as he began to mime a sequence of actions for them. So conventionally handsome in that marble-browed upper-class way she had once been inclined to disparage, Paul seemed to stride among his hirelings like an ideal aristocrat from the pages of a period romance. But one, miraculously, aware of this impression, and playing his part with good-humoured gusto.

  Just watching Paul made Bridget more exasperated with Matthew. Paul would obviously be entertaining to work with; the film couldn’t fail to be original; and everyone would get something out of it – a great deal if it boosted Roy’s future record sales. But knowing Matthew, that alone would be enough to put him off. At times (and this was one of them) Bridget felt that there was something unhealthy about Matthew’s habitual mistrust of Paul’s motives.

  She walked gloomily from the library, and paused at the foot of the stairs. The butler was lecturing a bevy of temporary waiters on the geography of the place. Lady Carnforth came striding towards them, her riding boots rapping out a sharp tattoo on the marble floor.

  ‘Hankin, who gave permission for the grand piano to be moved?’

  ‘His lordship, my lady.’

  ‘And what’s that caravan doing in the stable yard?’

  ‘I’m told it’s for the artists’ make-up.’

  ‘Please see that it’s moved.’

  ‘Certainly, my lady.’

  ‘Oh, and Hankin, I want the King’s Room and the Tuscan Gallery locked. I’ve seen people in unsuitable shoes carving up the floors.’

  When Eleanor hurried into the court, Bridget was intrigued to discover whether Paul would be the next target of her displeasure. To see a girl in her very early twenties flinging her weight about like a Tsarist princess amused Bridget, but also made her envious of such self-confidence. After her morning ride Eleanor had not removed her hairnet, which added to her air of patrician negligence.

  Paul was no longer in the court when Eleanor emerged, but Bridget overheard her ask the men unloading the pantechnicon where he was. Unable to imagine a better way of forgetting Matthew than witnessing what promised to be a piquant confrontation between two remarkably self-willed people, Bridget followed at a distance.

  Since the formal gardens were on the grand scale, she had a job keeping Eleanor in sight as she raced down terrace steps and cut through walled enclosures flanked by herbaceous borders. At length she reached the long Statue Walk, stretching from the east side of the house to the marquee.

  There were many people at work on either side of this wide path; some uncoiling electric cables, others siting spotlights in the beds, and some half-dozen occupied in dragging new plinths (faced in some plastic stone-substitute) into the gaps between the classical statues. As Eleanor approached him, Paul was chatting to an electrician. Bridget saw several men coming down the walk, carrying what looked like naked women, but, as the distance narrowed, turned out to be shop-dummies. Still with her back to these prawn-pink figures, Eleanor began to upbraid Paul. Pretending to have come upon them by chance, Bridget made a show of looking about, at last ‘catching sight’ of Paul and waving. Eleanor, who was facing the other way, did not see her as she came closer.

  ‘Why are these things being dumped in the beds?’ she asked Paul, jabbing her riding whip at one of the plinths. ‘Has Martin been told?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘There still ought to be a gardener here.’

  At this moment Eleanor turned and recoiled sharply. The dummies and their hefty bearers, were within yards of her. The plaster figures were clad in silver briefs, and had sequinned caps glued on their breasts. The purpose of the extra plinths was clear.

  As Paul greeted Bridget, one of the men grunted, ‘Where do we dump these birds, guv?’

  ‘On the ground for now.’

  Eleanor stared hard. ‘What sort of taste would you call this?’

  Paul studied his feet. ‘Aesthetics is a fearfully dodgy area.’

  ‘Really?’ replied Eleanor, plainly wanting to give vent to powerful emotions but feeling inhibited in front of a relative stranger. Already Bridget wished she was somewhere else.

  Paul said diffidently, ‘Isn’t calling something “bad taste” another way of saying one finds it incongruous?’

  ‘They’re vulgar and totally unfunny.’ Eleanor glanced angrily at Bridget.

  ‘Oh come on, Elly,’ he laughed. ‘In a shop-window, nobody looks twice, but next to Roman statues …’

  Eleanor flicked some mud off a boot with her whip. ‘Like manure in art galleries?’

  ‘But imagine them lit up,’ he pleaded.

  ‘You know how insulted people will feel.’

  Hearing an emotional thickness in Eleanor’s voice, Bridget moved away, fearing tears or shouting. In fact Eleanor rallied, and listened tight-lipped while Paul murmured about wanting to amuse and divert. He had got little further, when she turned and strode away towards the house.

  Bridget stayed where she was, feeling awkward.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he sighed at last. ‘Perhaps she had a point.’ He gazed at her with exaggerated anxiety. ‘Do you think so, Brigitta?’

  ‘I’ll wait till they’re lit up.’

  ‘You teach comedy, don’t you?’

  She shrugged. ‘It works if one laughs …’

  ‘Watch that plant,’ he yelled at a workman. ‘Actually Eleanor was right about one thing, I do want to raise the county’s blood pressure.’ He pulled a long face. ‘Mind you, it’s probably medicine twenty years too late.’

  As they sauntered down the Statue Walk, Paul seemed dismayed in case he had somehow offended Matthew, who had seemed so keen on their joint venture until recently. It distressed Bridget to hear Paul ruminating on the way in which friends tended to drift apart as their circumstances changed.

  ‘Honestly,’ she murmured, ‘I don’t think Matty’s even slightly influenced by things like that.’

  ‘Maybe not.’ Paul glanced at his watch, and thought a moment. ‘Look, I know what I’m going to tell you happened ages ago, and can’t explain everything, but it may help …’

  For the next few moments, Bridget listened to Paul’s account of a summer Sunday, a dozen years earlier, when Paul, as a boy at prep school, had invited Matthew home to Castle Delvaux for the day. Since his parents’ quarrels had then been novel enough to shock him, the visit had been marred for Paul by his mother’s unhappiness. In the afternoon the two boys had spent an hour on their own, wandering through the house. Matthew had been overwhelmed by the paintings. Beginning to feel bored, Paul had suggested lightly that, since Matthew was so interested in pictures, he might get round to giving him one when they were his. Then he had added in the same half-joking vein, that if Matthew ever decided to swop his electric Maserati for a picture at a later date, that would be fine by him. Matthew had considered the suggestion for some time before finally declining.

  That evening, back at school, Paul had admitted how unhappy he was. Matthew had not said much, but the following morning, after chapel, he had thrust at Paul his treasured car, telling him he could keep it without strings. Paul recalled raising token opposition before accepting. In fact that had not been quite the end of the story, because, several days later, during Latin, Paul had slipped Matthew a scrap of paper, promising ‘to my best friend Matthew N a picture when I get Delvaux’.

  Bridget laughed uneasily. ‘You’re surely not saying you should have delivered?’

  Paul watched some butterflies fluttering around a buddleia. ‘Not many people give away what they value most.’ His distant expression was suddenly replaced by one of those flicks of close attention Bridget remembered so well from the past. ‘Don’t you see?’ he urged. ‘Somewhere along the line Matthew got the idea that he was the one who always did the giving. Isn’t that why he backed out of making a film with me?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ conceded Bridget, her voice sounding scratchy. A clear presentiment of what was coming dazed her. He moved closer, intently questioning.

  ‘If I make some sort of gesture … do you think I could … put things right?’

  A long silence while she stared at the cascading flowers of a laburnum tree.

  ‘So what about a picture?’ he went on, without particular emphasis. He smiled. ‘I’d hardly miss one; and I did say I would. Of course it’d have to be a “bedroom picture”; all the stuff downstairs being more or less sacrosanct.’

  No wonder women adored him, she thought … being able to say something so extraordinary and still look anxious; almost expecting to be refused. Bedroom pictures? On one wall of the room she was sharing with Matthew, a breathtaking portrait of a child by Hoppner; next to it a Hobbema landscape, small but perfect. Yet probably he wouldn’t miss either … perhaps hadn’t seen them once that year. Looking at the tiny glinting cross of an aeroplane, she felt dizzy.

  ‘He’d think you were buying him,’ she said, in a tone that shocked her. Because Matthew would certainly turn it down? Because Paul knew he would? Because her disappointment was despicably intense, because …?

  Paul considered; head on one side, as if this had not occurred to him. Perhaps it really hadn’t. The laughter lines deepened around his eyes. ‘So I tell him I’ve given up the idea of a film.’ Her silence got through to him. ‘He might think I wasn’t sincere?’ She nodded. He drew in a deep breath, and kicked at the gravel underfoot. A moment later he laughed triumphantly. ‘So I give it to you. How can that put him under any obligation?’ Anticipating objection, he added gently, ‘In my place wouldn’t you sometimes want to do things for people you cared about?’

  ‘Don’t think I’m not bowled over,’ she began shakily.

  ‘Fine,’ he cried, ‘just think about it. Plenty of time …’ He touched her cheek; a gesture of encouragement before returning to his workmen.

  ‘All right, lads,’ she heard him say, ‘let’s have those ladies on their feet.’

  *

  Not long after leaving the library, Matthew made up his mind to patch things up with Bridget. Looking for her in the gardens, he passed the swimming pool, hidden away behind a creeper-clad wall. From the other side he heard sounds of splashing and laughter. On passing through the small arched entrance, instead of finding his wife, Matthew saw Gemma and Eleanor’s languid cousin, Jonathan, cleaving the sparkling water with fluent strokes. As Matthew backed towards the gate, Gemma spotted him.

  ‘Not so fast, Fellini,’ she spluttered. ‘I want a word with you.’

  Rather than risk a repeat of last night’s scene, he decided to humour her. Five minutes later, sitting in a deck-chair next to the swing-seat occupied by the other two, he listened glassily while Jonathan yarned about soldiering in Aden. Gemma nudged his lean brown torso.

  ‘Tell him about the baboons, Jonno.’

  Supposing ‘baboon’ to be an appalling synonym for ‘nationalist guerrilla’, Matthew was pleasantly surprised when Jonno gave a humorous account of how his company had opened fire on some real baboons, mistaking them for nationalists in the dark. The volleys had sent thirty or forty terrified apes storming through an unsuspected Arab position, causing enough confusion for Jonathan’s men to capture their machine-guns with ease.

  Though his own forays among the under-privileged were “B” Features to Jonno’s Major Motion Picture, Matthew suspected that Gemma thought the man a droll period piece. When Jonathan left to get dressed, Matthew rose too, but complied when Gemma patted the cushion next to her.

  ‘I’ve been an awful fool,’ she remarked, smiling with wry acceptance of life’s incalculable shifts. Matthew merely smiled back, wondering whether she would try to charm him into changing his mind. ‘I mean it, Matty,’ she murmured sadly. ‘I had no right to expect anything … Paul thinks so too.’ Matthew tried not to look too sceptical. ‘Perhaps you’ll believe me,’ she continued huskily, ‘if I tell you Paul’s given up any idea of a film about Roy.’

  The pool water had darkened Gemma’s ash-blonde hair and washed away the mascara from her eyes, making her look younger and more ingenuous.

  ‘I don’t deny I thought I could persuade you,’ she admitted, with a chastened laugh. ‘But after a while I started enjoying seeing you so much that it didn’t really matter what came of it in that sense.’ She looked down bashfully. ‘I probably shouldn’t say this … I want to go on seeing you.’ Surprised, Matthew abandoned his study of the way in which the stretched fabric of her bikini snugly defined the underlying contours. She looked at him directly; blue eyes unwavering. ‘That’s why the film’s a non-starter … Can’t be anything else if we’re to keep seeing each other.’ A lovely smile, half-elegiac, half-worldly-wise, seemed designed to implore him to brave his fears. And suddenly there it was, that ‘come-on’ look he remembered so well, with its unspoken challenge. Surely you’re grown-up enough to take your sex straight, without reassuring splashes of guilt con carne? You can’t be spineless enough to want to limit your options before you have to?

  He was tempted to say something encouraging, but was too aware of the many times she had fooled him in the past. Perhaps she had talked tactics with Paul since the night before. Her cornflower eyes were regarding his distressfully now. (How well he recalled those sudden darts from cynicism to injured innocence.)

  ‘I’m not going to press you for an answer,’ she whispered, kissing him lightly on the cheek. ‘You’ll be the one to decide how much time you can spare.’

  Not wanting to commit himself, Matthew remained silent. To his relief she began talking about Paul’s plans for the evening.

  *

  Without intending to tell him yet about Paul’s astounding offer, Bridget nonetheless set out in search of Matthew after leaving the Statue Walk. To have any chance of winning him over to the idea of acceptance, she would first have to mend a number of fences. So why not start at once? Back in the house, nobody seemed to have seen Matthew for some time. When Eleanor’s cousin came into the Great Chamber as she was leaving it, Bridget thought it just worthwhile to ask him.

  In fact her journey to the swimming pool ended in the rose garden, where she spotted Matthew and Gemma Lucas ambling in her direction through a galaxy of red and yellow blooms. They were doing nothing more incriminating than talking, yet something about the way they were moving (hardly seeming to take in their surroundings) made her skin prickle. Considering how enraged the woman had been only hours ago, it was strange to see them chatting so amicably. Quarrels followed by smiles, sunshine after storms: a well-known syndrome. Bridget felt breathless. Wasn’t it clear as daylight? The trouble Matthew had taken to explain away Gemma’s abuse was of a piece with the elaborate plausibility of recent excuses for plans overturned and unannounced latenesses home. How dare he, she thought, with a burning tightness in her throat: how dare he pretend to be pleased to be at Delvaux with me, when all the time he had seen this visit as an opportunity to be with her? Too upset to confront them, Bridget hurried away.

  *

  By five o’clock, Cosmic Gloom (Paul’s nickname for his wife’s elderly lady’s maid) had laid out her mistress’s clothes ready for the evening. In response to Paul’s plea for ‘something spectacular’, Eleanor and her dressmaker had obliged with an outfit combining Thirties’ Hollywood chic with oriental opulence. Yet gazing on these expensive fabrics, patterned with swirling dragons in gold-thread, she felt no trace of her usual delight in dressing-up. Alarmed by Paul’s preparations, she had considered telephoning some of the more straitlaced guests to warn them. But of what precisely? Plaster women? Cabaret acts they might find offensive? Fountains floodlit in the nauseating purples and greens normally confined to cinema foyers? Knowing that if questioned she would have no idea how to explain such things, Eleanor had remained inactive, feeling increasingly frantic.

  An hour later, wearing a close-fitting crepe de chine turban, she gathered up her gold and black skirt and swept into the Long Gallery, determined even in present circumstances to look and behave decorously, at least until the departure of the last guest.

  *

  ‘Holy smoke,’ gasped Bridget, rushing to the bedroom window. At the bidding of some hidden switch the entire east front, from the tallest Elizabethan chimney to the moat, was suddenly bathed in an aqueous glow of slowly moving colours. Matthew left the dressing table, where he had been wrestling with his double-ended black tie, and leant against a window-mullion.

  ‘It’s done by putting oil between plates of coloured glass, then revolving them in front of a few thousand watts.’ Bridget drew the curtains with a clatter of brass rings. ‘I didn’t mean to sound disparaging,’ he murmured.

  Since his talk with Gemma, Matthew had at last made up his mind not to go on seeing her. Whether Bridget knew anything definite, or merely sensed something wrong, it was useless pretending that Gemma had not been affecting their marriage.

  Looking at Bridget now as she crossed the room turning on lights, he was relieved to see an expression less pinched and vulnerable than earlier in the day. Recently she had been having problems at work; but he had been too absorbed with his own to be much help. In the aftermath of demonstrations and sit-ins at her college, she had been harder hit than many of her colleagues by the stream of questions about the ‘relevance’ of literature while B-52s were raining death on Hanoi. When they returned home, he would try to be more supportive.