Bill appeared nervous, Pat suppressed like a water main on the point of bursting.
Two compliments at her gown, a peck or two on the cheek from the moneyed or notable, and she would become a swan, having been a self-conscious duckling.
Then Marian saw Clive, hovering beneath the portico as if he was unsure whether or not he had an invitation to his own house. Once he recognised her the smile at her outfit was immediate and gently sardonic, his widened eyes registering Pat's confection he seemed enlivened, certain.
She kissed his drawn, leathery cheeks as she had so often done, then he was shaking hands with Bill and Pat. David Winterborne, his features less patrician than those of his father, his eyes less welcoming, stood just behind Clive. Yet he, too, seemed to brighten, even if only at the memory of an old antagonism, as he saw her.
"Hi, Davey." The diminutive had always irritated him.
"Hi, Squirt."
They embraced almost by instinct, warily and briefly, yet with the warmth of the long-familiar. Then Clive was fussing them into the cavernous main hall, which extended from the front to the rear of the house. The columns, niches, statuary, the matching pair of Daniel Quare long case clocks were all so familiar to her that she almost turned off to the closed doors of the library or the drawing room.
The band is on the terrace, and the tent is on the lawn," Clive offered brightly, and she patted his arm. He, her father and dear Kenneth ranged themselves always in her imagination like great ancestral portraits, dwarfing the other men she had known, making them invidious by comparison.
"Kenneth's hovering somewhere near the musicians perhaps one day he may learn to enjoy Mozart!" Clive added, shaking his head mischievously.
Then: "I'm displeased with that father of yours, my dear why he needs to have a regimental reunion tonight of all nights, I do not understand!" Smiling, he shooed her onwards down the hall, towards the already apparent, slight and stooping figure of Kenneth Aubrey. Marian was struck, with a piercing sadness, by the age of the two old men, their decrepitude, as if it had been suddenly exposed by a bright, merciless light.
Almost in apology, she grabbed at Aubrey's arm and floridly introduced him to Bill and Pat the latter returning her attention from the portraits, busts and ornate plaster work Aubrey's knighthood seemed to work on her like rough liquor, quickly animating. Then the cool air of the terrace at the rear of the house and a glass of chilled champagne in her hand from a subtly, silently offered tray. A chamber orchestra, to one end of the terrace, was playing one of Mozart's serenades. Some more elderly guests were seated on folding chairs, attentive. On the great lawn below the terrace, a huge marquee festooned with lights seemed to swallow eager guests. She heard ducks from the lake, disturbed by the people making last-minute checks on the firework display. She remembered from her childhood how the explosions would frighten the ducks, as the lights and flares and colours reflected in the lake. Beyond, where darkness gathered, Warwickshire fell away from the rise on which Uffingham sat proprietorially in rolling farmland, the first few hundred acres of which belonged to Clive.
The Millennium Children's Fund, Clive's anti-Lottery inspiration, had brought out the great and good of the West Midlands in force, she acknowledged, nodding to two businessmen of her acquaintance and a matron recently ennobled for charitable works. A hundred and fifty pounds per head, food and fireworks and a tantalising glimpse of the kind of property old money still inhabited cheap at the price. There was even to be a disco after the fireworks, to the further perturbation of the wildfowl.
She gestured towards the marquee, squeezing Aubrey's arm and bending her head to whisper.
"You won't find the Tory party at prayer in the C of E any longer more likely in one of those."
"Mm there did seem to be a great many sports cars arriving earlier, I have to admit. Margaret's real children, I imagine?" He glanced at her, his faded eyes alight with mischief.
They're not in the Ferraris and the Porsches. Greed is still good only if it wears green wellies and drives an off-road vehicle," she responded. Wo politics. I warn you, Kenneth—" He pressed her arm against his side.
"Like all pensioners, I'm already hungry and inordinately interested in what is on offer," he said.
"You may help me down the steps."
"Very well. I shall wear you like a crucifix, it might help ward off the vampires—" She waved to someone, then her hand remained aloft as she said: "I've just seen the EU Commissioner for Urban Development the old apple himself."
"Laxton? Yes. I'm Clive's house guest, along with one or two other old decrepits.
He arrived this afternoon, as a guest of David. Along with his fellow Commissioner Rogier, your Euro MP counterpart, Ben Campbell, and a few other specimens. My room overlooks the front of the house. I saw them arriving what is it?"
These same people keep cropping up—" '-and always in connection with David. Quite."
A group passed them, the women tottering on the highest, narrowest heels on to the steps down to the lawn, the men busily engaged with the first champagne and the rear elevation of Uffingham.
"I think I might have a word with Ben Campbell, if I can find him in the crush. He may be indiscreet, drop a few hints…" She paused and swallowed, then added: "As to why the same men who were at the meeting observed by Michael Lloyd are meeting again. Mm?" Aubrey's face darkened with warning. Marian added brightly: "Come on, I'll get you a bun and a glass of milk before I set off in search of him!"
Why, she thought, as they descended the steps, are they here? The men who met in Brussels. Her suspicions altered her mood and seemed to change the familiar terrace and the lawn more than the erection of the marquee and the presence of the chamber orchestra. Gales of noise rose from the marquee and she heard the futile little protests of the wildfowl. The barking of dogs.
"Did you discover who owns Complete Security?" His manner seemed suddenly, inexplicably furtive.
"Kenneth?" she demanded. Aubrey shrugged.
"It um, it's a subsidiary of Winterborne Holdings, I'm afraid."
"I don't believe in coincidence do you?"
"I'd much rather you did, Marian," the old man warned.
She ignored him, her eyes alight.
"I wonder…" she breathed. But at once they were amid the distraction of a scrum of guests. The Lord-Lieutenant of the county and his large-bosomed wife, a scattering of local politicians and gentry like attendant lords swelling the scene. Small, louder-laughing groups of younger people, in gowns like modernist daubs that rustled of new money. The lights, candle like though they were, seemed to affect her; they or the noise, so that she paused until she regained her equilibrium. No… She must not wonder anything of the kind, for that would mean making connections between Michael Lloyd's death and people she knew, had grown up with… Unforgivable; impossible.
Gales of laughter like contrary winds blowing between the kind of reddened, inflated faces that used to feature in the corners of old maps. Here be monsters such warnings were imprinted for those who strayed out of the known seaways, the familiar trading routes. Here be… She craned her neck, trying to catch sight of Campbell. That would be somewhere to begin.