of friends. The couples were kindly to him, making space for him as his interruptions and pronouncements grew louder, more insistent and less rational, until conversation almost foundered. Darcy’s words began to slur and he frowned, as if affronted to find his tongue beyond his control.
‘What do you know?’ he pursued some argument in Andrew’s direction. ‘What the … what the fuck do you know?’ His face contorted with anger and frustration, but the reason for the disagreement had already escaped him. His helplessness was apparent to all of them.
Hannah would not look at him.
Gordon left everyone’s glasses empty. But then, with a small cunning smile, Darcy bent down and reached out for an uncorked bottle that was left half-hidden in the shadow beside the barbecue. It clearly cost him a physical effort to bend and twist and there was an instant, with the bottle in his grasp, when it seemed that he would not be able to heave himself upright again. But Darcy did sit up, and he placed the full bottle beside his glass with a hiss of triumph.
‘Anyone join me?’ he called.
His fist tightened around the neck of the bottle. He lifted it, brandished it over his glass, and then tilted. Misjudging the distances, he clipped the rim of the glass with the bottle. The wine gushed but the glass was already falling. Darcy tried to catch at it, but his confused hands fumbled and the bottle fell too, a dark plume of wine making a twisted arc in the candlelight. A crimson jet sprayed across the cloth and the wine glass rolled over the edge of the table to smash on the paving.
There was a confusion of movement. The bottle was caught, hands reached to mop up the rivulets of wine.
Michael said, ‘Darcy? Are you all right?’
Darcy did not answer. His head was bowed, so that he seemed to be staring down at the shattered glass. Very slowly, painfully, he lifted one arm and then the other until his elbows rested on the table. Then he covered his face with his hands.
Very quietly he said, ‘Oh God.’
In the candlelight the faces except Hannah’s were like pale moons, reflecting their separate concerns and their diffidence and embarrassment.
Michael had begun to stand, but Vicky was quicker. She reached Darcy’s side before he lifted his head from his hands.
‘Yes, I’m all right,’ Darcy said.
He seemed suddenly completely sober, surprised to see them staring at him.
Vicky touched his shoulder. ‘Come inside. I’ll make you a cup of coffee. It’s getting cold out here.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ Darcy went with her, heavy-footed but as obedient as a child.
Gordon watched them go. He was impressed by the calm directness of Vicky’s intervention, and he felt a quiver of renewed love for her as she led Darcy out of sight into the house. And at the same time, as if some subconscious recognition swam towards the surface of his mind, a question formed in his head.
Janice began to collect the plates and Gordon bent to pick up the broken pieces of glass. The others pushed back their chairs, feeling the release of tension. A buzz of concern centred on Hannah.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Gordon. ‘We shouldn’t have come. Only he wanted to, and he isn’t stoppable when he wants something.’ She spread her hands helplessly.
‘How is he?’ Michael asked. The others were quiet, deferring to his superior medical insights.
Hannah hesitated. ‘Well … perhaps if I could talk to you about it, some time …’
Their eyes met again, mutely signalling to each other, I must see you, I need you.
Gordon was prompt. ‘If you want to have a quick chat, if you think Mike can help, why don’t you go in there, in my study?’
There were French windows, open on the garden, on the other side of the house from the kitchen. Hannah nodded.
‘I’d be grateful. That’s if you don’t mind, Michael? I’m sorry the evening’s ruined.’
Marcelle held herself still, listening to the rushing sound her blood made in her ears.
With the yellow linen shirt brushing against his sleeve, Michael walked with Hannah into the house.
Inside, Gordon’s study was dim. He closed one half of the doors behind them, leaving the other ajar, wondering how closely Marcelle was watching. Hannah faced him, stepping backwards a little in the thick blue dusk. He saw the cushiony oval of her half-open mouth. Without saying anything Michael took hold of her. There were seams in her tight clothes that constricted the flesh beneath and made him think of the swollen hemispheres of summer fruit. He breathed in the scent of her hair and her skin as he kissed her, his fingers at the neck of her yellow shirt. Michael’s head revolved with dizzy calculations about the desk and the open windows, and the compound scents of the Frosts’ pool house came back to confuse him.
‘Not now,’ Hannah whispered. ‘We can’t now.’
Michael felt the tiny twist of her smile as she kissed him in return. Hannah liked her own power, and it gave him a pleasurable, abject sense of his own helplessness to be made her victim.
‘Yes, we can. No one will come in.’
She was already half lying on Gordon’s desk. Michael could just make out a neat pile of household bills, a dish of paper clips.
‘No. Marcelle’s outside. Darcy’s somewhere, you saw how he was.’
Irritation blurred Michael’s desire. He knew that Hannah would not give way, and he wondered why he was trying to coerce her.
‘When, then?’
‘Come to the shop on Tuesday evening. At closing time.’
She had planned it already, and his desire for her renewed itself. There was no question that he would not go; he could not even remember what he was supposed to be doing on Tuesday evening.
‘Yes. I’ll come. You know that I will, I suppose?’
Hannah slipped away from underneath him. Outside a light clicked on, illuminating the garden. They could see each other clearly, and the arrangement of Gordon’s paperwork on his desk, and they both heard the clink of plates and the scrape of chairs as the tables were cleared. Michael walked slowly around the desk and sat down in the chair. He swivelled it through an arc, and pressed his fingers together at the point of his chin.
‘What about Darcy?’ he asked reluctantly.
Hannah sat down in another chair. They were both aware of this parody in their positions of the doctor and his patient. Michael thought that anyone looking in from the garden would see them sitting in exactly the blameless way that they ought.
‘You can see how he is tonight. I don’t know if he feels afraid, or weakened, and can’t bear to show it even to me. There are all these’ – Hannah’s hands chopped at the air – ‘side issues of the booze, and his aggression, and the determination to go on doing business as if nothing has happened, and he makes them so dense that I can’t see through them to the reality. But I think he is afraid. I can feel
