She went downstairs and turned on more lights. Ruby was not in the kitchen or in her own room. Alex went to the back door, which stood open, and looked down the garden. Some distance away lights and figures were moving and voices speaking. Alex did not dare to call again. She stepped out on to the pavement behind the house. Then she gasped and mouthed a cry as she saw the figure of a man standing near her.
‘Alex — ’ It was George.
‘Oh thank God! What is this awful business in the garden, what’s happening?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Of course, those horrible girls are giving a party, how dare they, in my garden, they never asked me, I shall go and tell them to stop, there are hundreds of people trampling everything, oh damn them, damn them — ’
‘No, don’t, there’s something odd about it all, I don’t think it’s that.’
‘What is it then?’
‘I don’t know. Devil’s work.’
‘Ruby’s gone.’
‘Go inside, Alex, and give yourself a drink and lock the door.’
‘Don’t go - you were coming to see me — ’
‘No, I heard the noise just as I was passing.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Just walking about the town, walking to the canal.’
‘To the canal? Why? To that place? Don’t go there, stay with me, please — ’
‘I’ll just go and see what all this business is.’
‘Come back, won’t you, please — ’
George had already disappeared.
The shutters of the Slipper House were now closing one by one, quenching the light which had been illuminating the patch of lawn. Outside there was a groan of disapproval followed by laughter. Tom ran forward.
Hattie, spreading out her arms to take hold of the shutters of the sitting-room, cried out when a figure appeared suddenly outside the window, like Peter Pan, close up against the glass.
Tom tapped. ‘It’s only me! Can I come in?’
Hattie stared, then violently swung one of the shutters across.
Tom, dancing outside the still unshuttered half of the window, shouted, ‘It’s not my fault! I didn’t bring them!’
Hattie swung the other half of the shutter across with a bang and fixed it with a bar. She stood looking into the painted eyes of Alex’s eternally young brother. Then she began to cry.
The shutters closed and the lights went out on the lawn just as George was making his way down the garden. Someone rose up from the grass and gave him a glass of wine.
Pearl said to Hattie, ‘Look, if you’re so upset I’ll go out and ask him in.’
‘No!’
Then I’ll go and talk to him and find out what’s happening, I’m sure he didn’t mean to — ’
‘No, don’t go away!’
Nesta said to Diane, ‘Come back to my place tonight. Just as a beginning, just to show you can — ’
Sitting on a seat embowered in bushes Bobbie Benning, who had had a great deal to drink, was starting to feel sick. He thought, I’m no good, I must resign my job. I’ll never get another, I’ll be on the dole, whatever will my mother think, it’ll kill her.
Peter Blackett was saying to anyone who could hear, ‘I gave him a drink, then I saw he was George McCaffrey, did I have a turn!’
Jeremy Blackett said, ‘Peter, it’s time for you to go home.’
‘I think we’d all better go home,’ said Olivia Newbold.
‘Are things going to turn nasty?’
Valerie Cossom, portentously beautiful in her long white robe, had heard that George was in the garden and was looking for him. Hector Gaines was looking for Anthea. The middle of the garden was dark, but lights from Belmont could be seen at one end, and the street lights in Forum Way at the other illuminated the trees.
Tom was at his wits’ end. The noise and the laughter was louder than before and he had the impression that a number of complete strangers had come in through the back gate. He wanted to explain to Hattie, but couldn’t see how to do this and couldn’t bear to go away either. He had thought of something else which distressed him: Dominic Wiggins must have assumed, and would tell Nesta, that he was taking Anthea to ‘Lovers’ Lane’ to lie down under a hawthorn bush.
Father Bernard had lost Diane but found Bobbie Benning. He sat beside the distraught youngster with his arm around him. ‘My dear boy, tell me all.’
Pearl said to Hattie, ‘I’ll go out and find him, don’t grieve, I won’t be long. I’ll go the back way, you lock up, and I’ll call when I’m back.’
Valerie said, ‘Hello, Nesta, have you seen George? Oh hello, Diane, have you seen George?’
‘Is he here?’ said Diane, and scuttled away among the shrubs.
‘She’s like a terrified little mouse,’ said Nesta. ‘It makes me sick to see a woman so frightened of a man.’
Valerie, searching, grieving, had passed on.
Tom thought, I can’t go and knock on the door, I’d look a complete fool there not being let in, it’s all shameful, I really must go home. I’ll write a letter of apology tomorrow. Oh God. As he began to walk unsteadily up the garden towards Belmont he became aware that he was being followed by a girl, a strange girl. Heaven knew who was in the garden by now, but there was nothing he could do about it. He felt reckless and remorseful and angry. He said, ‘Hello, what are you doing here?’ He added, ‘What am I doing here, if it comes to that.’
The curtains were drawn in the Belmont drawing-room, but the big uncurtained landing window, which showed the white sweep of the stairs, gave a diffused light. Tom looked at the girl who was giggling, perhaps a bit tipsy, and throwing her longish fair hair about. She was rather tall and wearing a smart silky multi-coloured dress. Now she came on, sidling boldly up against him. Tom, recoiling, looked at her again, more closely.
‘Emma! You wretch! This is too bloody much! And you’re drunk, you reek of whisky!’
‘Have some, I’ve brought it with me, let’s sit down somewhere.’
‘You’re horribly drunk. How did you know we were here?’
‘I met some drunks near the pub who said there was a party at the Slipper House. Where are the girls?’
‘If you mean Hattie Meynell, she’s in the house with the shutters closed!’
‘I thought you’d come to serenade her, after all Rozanov is forcing you to marry her!’
‘Oh shut up!’
Emma caught Tom round the waist.
Pearl had been gone for some time and Hattie was very upset. She was standing in the sitting-room, but with the door ajar so that she could hear Pearl’s knock and call. She was scared and affronted by the extraordinary mob outside whose noise showed no sign of abating, and deeply hurt and angered by Tom’s extraordinary and spiteful treachery. Now everything had gone so wrong and so sour. She regretted having let Pearl go out to look for him, which might seem like a capitulation, as if she were pursuing him.
At that moment Hattie heard a curious sound at the back of the house as of a door opening and a footstep. It could not be Pearl, after whom she had firmly locked the back door, indeed all the doors were locked and the windows fastened. As she held her hands to her face in horror, the door of the sitting-room began to move and a man came in. It was George McCaffrey.