Betty was a large girl, and she sat with fat blue-jeaned thighs spread in front of her, arms crossed on great unsupported breasts. On her face was a look of sour scepticism: you aren't going to put anything across me. The face was large and plain and coarse. Her black hair straggled greasily. Joyce seemed even more of a sad waif beside her, for it was at once evident that Betty mothered her. The young man, who sat apart from the women, was very thin, pallid, limp, with a long bony neck. His hands were thin enough to see through, and his face was covered in red blotches.
During the applause when the play ended, the three disappeared.
An informal party for the company and neighbours had been arranged on the side of the house away from the theatre. Long tables held wine and cakes. Behind these the two pretty blonde girls, Shirley and Alison, served while Elizabeth and Norah, with Stephen, welcomed guests. The audience streamed away to the cars and coaches that would take them to the town or to London, but about two hundred people stood about on the lawn. Hal appeared and went straight up to Stephen, introducing himself not as Sarah's brother but as Dr Millgreen. Stephen did not know who he was but behaved as if this was a great honour for him. Hal refused a glass of wine, saying he had to return to London because he must be at his hospital early, said in a kindly way to his sister, 'Very nice, Sarah,' and went off, not looking to see if Anne, Briony, and Nell followed, or if they might perhaps like a glass of wine. From the other side of the lawn he did look back, apparently to approve the house, for he was wearing his professional look of a generalized benevolence. Various people hastened up to him and to Anne. For a moment he stood in a group of colleagues, or patients, or friends, a figure of kindly authority. It occurred to Sarah that just as she had never seen much more of Stephen than his Julie side (his dark and concealed side), so she saw nothing of the social life of her brother and her sister-in-law. Formal parties were not in her line, and their friends were not in her line either. But possibly there were a good many people who knew this eminent Dr Millgreen, and his clever doctor wife, Anne, and their two pretty daughters, as a likeable family. They might perhaps remark if they remembered, 'A pity about that girl of theirs. A bit of a handful apparently.'
Just as Sarah was thinking that she should ask Hal and Anne about Joyce, the family got into their car and drove off. So she went on talking, as it was her part to do, with anyone who wished to talk to her. Yes, she had found it rewarding to work on this play — if you could call it that — but there were two authors, and Stephen Ellington-Smith, their host, would have a lot to say about it too. This went on for an hour or so, and the dusk had settled in the trees and shrubs when she heard a young man say with a laugh that he had been accosted after the performance as he came out of the new building by a couple of girls who were offering the male members of the cast a blow-job for ten pounds a time. It was Sandy Grears, talking to George White. Sarah at once went up to them and said, 'I'm afraid one of the girls was probably my niece. I suppose you don't know where they went?' She was finding it hard to appear calm, because the thought of Henry — who would have been in the new building with the others — anywhere near a paid-for blow-job was too painful almost to bear, like a grotesque sexual joke directed at oneself. The two young men at once adjusted their manner, from one appropriate to laughing at a couple of slags to one sympathizing with the relative of a problem child. George said he thought it was likely the girls were in The Old Fox in the town, for it was the only place open in the evenings. He offered to take Sarah there. Sandy went off, and this enabled Sarah to ask if there had been a young man with the girls. Yes, there had. George hesitated; he could have said more, but Sarah decided not to ask. She found it hard to believe that Sandy went in for blow-jobs offered by unhealthy youths, but one never knew. She was surprised she felt a genuine pang — an aesthetic one — that anyone who had enjoyed (for once an absolutely accurate word) the beautiful Bill Collins could even think of a blow-job with that poor derelict.
On the way to town she told George about Joyce, and he was suitably sympathetic. His own sister was a problem. She was anorexic, sometimes suicidal, and it had all been going on for years. Once again, here was the unwelcome shift of perspective when a colleague's private life (never more than the backdrop to the life you know them in, their working life, their real life, so you prefer to think) comes forward and you are made to know with what difficulty and how precariously this friend maintains independence from that matrix the family. George for a time had had this sister living with him and his wife, but then it all got too much when the children were born. Now, unfortunately, she was in and out of hospital. Sarah and George then exchanged the lines of that conversation which takes place more and more often, to the effect that for every whole, competent, earning person are every day more of the people who cannot cope with life and have to be supported, financially or emotionally. The two went on to wonder if there were really more, or perhaps it was only that they were more visible because of our (after all quite recently adopted) view that disadvantaged people are infinitely redeemable. And what about those people who are seen as whole, healthy, independent, 'viable', but in fact are dependent on others? Sarah of course was thinking here of her brother, for what would he be without that drained-of-blood person his wife?
The Old Fox called itself a wine bar, but it was a restaurant with a bar and loud music, and so full they could not see the other side of the room. Then, suddenly, there Joyce was. A group of young people squeezed themselves around a table, drinking. This was a far from disreputable place, and Joyce's group was the only doubtful element in it. Sarah, who was now faced with the necessity of doing something, but not knowing what, was saved by Joyce, who was pushing her way through the crowd with cries of 'It's my Auntie Sarah.' She was holding a tumbler of whisky above her head for safety. Standing in front of her aunt and reeking of whisky, Joyce chattered about the lovely play. She did not look at George White. It had not been more than a mild twilight when the play ended, but perhaps she did not look, on principle, at possible customers.
'How are you going to get home?' asked Sarah.
'Oh, we'll manage. We got ourselves here, didn't we?'
The two adults stood listening while the poor child offered the smart phrases that were obligatory when she was near her friends. 'No dis, Auntie, but you're right out, we've nuff carn, we're safe.' Translated: No disrespect, but you're worrying about nothing, we've got lots of money, we're okay. Meanwhile her gaze moved continually to the door as new people came in. Clearly she knew this place well. Her smile, as always, seemed fixed. Her eyes were all pupil. Drugs enlarge pupils. Like the dark. Or like love.
George caught sight of someone he knew. He moved off. After all, the company had been here for three days and this was the place for the youth of the town. At once he was surrounded: he was amiable, good-looking, always popular.