Katherine said, but he was gone. ‘Oh, well.’
And then Daniel, who had answered all polite inquiries with a brief grunt and a shrug, who had not moved from his perch on the arm of the sofa, like a vast and lurid ornament, proved himself to have been all along the ringmaster of the festivities. Because with his departure the party was decisively over, and the few remaining guests moved towards the front door where Mrs Glover, her daughter at her side, was standing. In kindness, they bent and said a word to Malcolm, who said something in return, and then, with a chorus of thanks, they were out.
‘I do love your unit,’ Mrs Warner said over her shoulder, a final kindly thought disappearing into the lush August night. ‘As I was saying, I do love your…’
Goodbye, goodbye…and Katherine opened the envelope in her hand. It was an unfamiliar hand, elegant and swooping, in real ink, and the general gist of apology was clear before the signature was deciphered. She read it again, and smiled, her first genuine smile all evening.
‘Have they all gone?’ she heard Timothy saying, as he got up from behind the sofa, book in hand.
‘I think so,’ his father said, his voice muffled, regretful in the other room. ‘Where’s your brother?’
Daniel was in the street. It was half past nine. The road and the estate, in this summer twilight, had a lush warm glow; in the houses, up and down the avenue, single lights were coming on automatically, guiding the couples home from the party; husbands and wives, arm in arm and in the summer gloaming turned into lovers. The thin trees, planted ten years before, had lost their daylit lack of conviction and formed a delicate orchard, marking the edges of the quiet street. The night was perfumed, and Daniel, perfumed too, sniffed it all up.
Barbara was there, waiting for him. He had told her to wait on the wall outside number eighty-four. It was less suspicious to be casual like that rather than, as she was doing, cowering under the porch at the side of the house. Everyone knew it was empty; anyone could see her from the street. It was asking for trouble. Worse, it showed Barbara didn’t trust him, didn’t automatically think he was right. He decided to dump her after tonight, or maybe after the weekend.
‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ she said, in a burst.
‘Well, I’ve come now,’ he said, and dived for her mouth. She gave a small squeal, the beginning of a protest; but he knew to let his mouth just stay at the edge of a kiss, not forcing it, and in a second her hard teeth seemed to make way. They stayed like that for a minute; once or twice she made a pretty little noise, almost animal, and each time, not quite knowing whether he was mocking or encouraging her, he made something of the same noise back, but deeper, the sound vibrating through their twinned lips, making them buzz and ache, fulfilling the desire and stirring up more. Finally he pulled away. He looked at her critically; the little squeal, the blonde hair frizzing up in one, the pink roundness of her pinked-up face, lips and tits. Perhaps the boys had it right when they called her Crystal Tipps and laughed at him. Or maybe they were jealous. ‘I came as soon as I could,’ he said. ‘They were having a party.’
‘You said they were,’ Barbara said. ‘I don’t know why I couldn’t be allowed to come. I’d have behaved.’
‘It was boring,’ he said. ‘There was nothing but neighbours. They didn’t know each other, my mum didn’t know them. I don’t know why she asked them.’
‘We know all our neighbours,’ Barbara said with astonishment, ‘their birthdays, star signs, the lot. The telly programmes they watch, even.’
‘That’s because you live in a terraced house,’ Daniel said. ‘You could hear everything through the walls. When they fuck.’
‘Do you mind?’ Barbara said, objecting to the word rather than Daniel’s snobbery. But she drew close again, pulling him with her out of the light from the street towards the empty, overgrown garden.
‘They were all saying,’ Daniel murmured, his mouth against hers, running his tongue against her lips as they walked backwards into the lyric night, ‘they were all saying, who’s that gorgeous girl, goes into the neighbours’ gardens with Daniel Glover—’
‘They were not,’ Barbara said, her eyes bright, her hand running down Daniel’s side.
‘They were,’ Daniel said, his hand, his rippling fingers rising, weighing, cupping, down and under, beneath and within. ‘And I said—’
‘Oh, give over,’ Barbara said. But Daniel carried on, his hushed, exuberant voice now muted, and as they fell back against the lawn, which had grown into a thick meadow, she gave in to what he knew she felt. There was some indulgent amusement deep within him, and he never completely surrendered to the sensation, was never reduced to begging animal favours or further steps in the exploration of what she would grant him. His gratification, always, lay in seeing her so helpless; his pleasure in the expert and improving knack of bestowing pleasure. The noises she made were on some level comic, ‘Nnngg,’ she went, and an observation post in him kept alert over the expanding border territory between her propriety and her desire. They began when he chose to begin; they ended when he said he had to go, and when he knew that she would say disappointedly, ‘Do you have to?’
Barbara was in his maths set; he’d heard some of the things she’d been letting out about him. Flattering, really. He didn’t talk about her. Another couple of times, and that would be it; he’d seen the way Michael Cox’s sister looked at him, though she was eighteen next month. That would be something to talk about.
It was not clear to any of the Glovers what the purpose of the party had been. Not even to Katherine, whose idea it had been. He hadn’t come, after all. When the last of the guests had gone, the other two children went upstairs, Timothy holding a book. Malcolm sat down and, with his heels, dragged the armchair into a position facing the television. He did not get up to turn it.
Katherine put the letter on the shelf over the radiator, and began to go round the room, picking up glasses and plates. Malcolm had put the empty bottles in the kitchen as he had got through them. There were two open bottles left, one red and one white. The food had mostly been eaten, the tablecloth around the large oval dish of Coronation Chicken stained yellow where spoonfuls had been carelessly dropped. She began to talk as she collected the remains. She was wiping the thought that Nick, after all that effort, hadn’t come. He’d said he would.
‘They seemed to have a good time,’ she said. ‘I thought the food went well. I was worried they wouldn’t be able to eat it standing up, but people manage, don’t they?’
Malcolm said nothing. She sighed.
‘It’s a shame the new people over the road haven’t moved in yet,’ she said. ‘It would have been a good opportunity for them to meet the neighbours. Most people came, I think. There was a nice little letter from the lady in the big house, saying she was sorry she couldn’t come. She doesn’t like to go home after dark. Silly, really – it’s only a hundred yards, I don’t know what she thinks would happen to her, and it’s not really dark, even now. They get set in their ways, old people.’
Malcolm gave no sign of listening.
She couldn’t be sure what the reason for the party had been. But for her it had been defined by the people who hadn’t come rather than those who had. Not just one person; two of them. All evening she’d felt impatient with her guests who, by stooping to attend, had shown themselves to be not quite worth knowing. She projected her idea of the sort of friends she ought to have on to the new people – the Sellerses – and Mrs Topsfield, with the
