lower lip jutted out to reveal the darker pink tissue within. Michael looked full at her, unnoticed by the others, and then dropped his gaze back to his drink. Hannah settled comfortably at the table. She told Jimmy that they would be meeting later at the Frosts, and that Nina Cort would be there, and then she turned away to talk to Michael.
Jimmy bought another round and concentrated on drinking steadily, hoping to recapture some of the sense of Sunday camaraderie that stayed with him like a blessing through the following week. He loved the way the men were friendly and informal at these times, but were yet held together by unwritten rules. It offended him when someone failed to obey the rules, as Michael had done this morning.
Hannah showed no sign of leaving. She accepted Jimmy’s offer of a second gin and tonic, and when the drinks had been consumed Darcy checked his watch and announced that they must go. Hannah made no protest, and five minutes after they had left Michael followed them. Finally Francis also drifted away.
Jimmy went to the bar and drank a quick whisky, wondering if he should join another group, but the day was already spoiled. He went home and found the house empty. Star had told him she was going out somewhere, although he had forgotten exactly where. He made himself a sandwich and fell asleep in front of the television, and then woke up with a headache when Star came back.
He heard her coming downstairs now, and then clicking across the woodblock floor of the hall.
‘Why are you sitting with the curtains open?’ she asked when she saw him.
‘Why not? Nobody can see in.’
Star went across and closed them. She was wearing a shirt cut like a man’s, but made of peacock-blue silk, and a pair of tight trousers in some elasticated material that showed the lines of her good legs. She did not usually take so much trouble with her appearance for a Sunday supper at the Frosts’.
‘You look nice,’ Jimmy said lazily. He held out a hand. ‘Come over here.’
She came and stood in front of him for a moment. Jimmy reached up and put his hands on her hips, kneading the flesh over her long bones and then sliding his palms inwards over the slight protuberance of her stomach so that the smooth silk slithered under his fingers.
‘I like this shirt. Is tonight something special?’
He was looking forward to it, he realized, after the fiasco of the day. He liked well-upholstered Janice and her dark eyes as much as he liked Hannah Clegg, and his ears had sharpened at the news that Nina Cort was also coming, although he had not betrayed his interest to Hannah.
‘Special? No, I don’t think so. Aren’t you going to change?’
He stood up. Star was two inches taller than he was, and with him in his socks the difference seemed greater than that. He had always liked it, ever since they had first met, this feeling of being overreached by her. He pressed his face forward and with his mouth found her neck, warm inside the collar of her shirt.
‘Mmm. You smell lovely.’
‘Aren’t you going to change?’ Star repeated.
Jimmy sighed. His mood had completely altered. He felt light-hearted and optimistic.
‘If I must.’ He made his eyebrows into beguiling peaks as he looked at her. ‘Won’t you come up?’
‘It’s a quarter to eight.’ She had turned away and bent down to straighten the sofa cushions behind him.
Jimmy sighed again, more theatrically. ‘A quarter of an hour used to be plenty,’ he cajoled.
She seemed not to hear what he was saying. Jimmy hesitated, and then shrugged and went whistling upstairs in his good humour to change out of his golf clothes.
Nina was the last to arrive at the Frosts’. As she paid off her taxi at the gate she saw Gordon’s car parked further along the road. She rang the doorbell, remembering the night of Hallowe’en, and Andrew came to open the door. Instead of a dinner suit he was wearing a patterned jumper that proclaimed Sunday.
The Frosts’ other guests were sitting in the room where they had danced at the party. Nina remembered that there had been coloured lights revolving overhead, and she had felt a premonitory beat of happiness to find herself momentarily set free from her grief, dancing amongst people who knew nothing about her.
Now she saw Darcy Clegg’s handsome, heavy face, and Hannah with her hair pinned up in a sleek chignon, and Star in a bright blue shirt. To her left, a dark shape in an armchair, was Gordon. Nina could not look directly at him.
Of the three women only Star greeted her with friendly attention. Janice distractedly offered her cheek to be kissed, and Hannah waved her ringed fingers from the other side of the room. There was a cool edge to the atmosphere, Nina thought, or perhaps she was beginning to distinguish these people more clearly.
She found her way to a place on the sofa beside Darcy. Andrew put a glass into her hand and she cupped her hands around the slippery bowl of it. There were soft cushions behind her, and when she tasted the wine there were the complicated flavours on her tongue. The physical world took on sharp significance again.
‘You’ve just come back from London?’ Darcy asked. He too was wearing the Sunday uniform of a sweater and corduroys, but the trousers were Italian and the sweater was cashmere.
‘Yes. I went up to stay with an old friend of Richard’s and mine, to see a play and have lunch with some people.’
She offered this simple account to Gordon, without glancing in his direction, and she knew that he listened to her.
Darcy had read the reviews of the play in the Sunday papers, and they began to talk about what Nina had thought of it. The conversations elsewhere in the room started up again, although Nina did not hear Gordon speak. Someone was describing a disastrous round of golf, and generating a good deal of brittle laughter. It was Jimmy Rose, of course. Each of Nina’s senses, not only her hearing, seemed abnormally sharpened. She could hear the unspoken words underlying the bantering talk. Jimmy had been upset and disappointed to lose the game. The clarity of her perceptions made her feel strong and lively.
Darcy was watching her from beneath the shield of his thick eyelids. There was a faint flush over her cheekbones and her fingers fluttered up and down the stem of her glass.
And then, without warning, the recollection that had stirred in him when they were first introduced delivered itself to him, almost complete. Somebody had described the circumstances of Richard Cort’s death, and then had made an allegation that did not particularly interest him at the time. But he remembered it now, with a sharpening of curiosity. It was a woman who had told him the story, a woman he knew quite well, at a useful party in London a few months before.
The theatre conversation continued while Darcy idly speculated.
‘Did you see the Arthur Miller?’ he asked, and Nina offered her response still with the faint colour in her face. Across the room Jimmy Rose was grinning at them, although neither Darcy nor Nina paid him any attention.
The elder Frost boy, Toby, came in. His hair was shaved close at the nape of his neck and a long hank at the front fell forward over his eyes. He was wearing a loose top with a hood and enormous shoes.
‘Hi, all.’
With this generalized greeting he
