It was hard to sleep, of course. I suppose I did not want to sleep, afraid of what I would encounter in my dreams. At best I would manage a fitful hour or two in the darkness before dawn, and wake up exhausted, with an ache in my chest and my eyes scalding. Charlie too was sleepless, I would hear at all hours his creaking step on the stair, the rattle of the teapot in the kitchen, the laborious, spasmodic tinkle as he emptied his old man's bladder in the bathroom. We saw little of each other. The house was big enough for us both to be in it at the same time and yet feel we were alone. Since that first, drunken night he had been avoiding me. He seemed to have no friends. The phone never rang, no one came to the house. I was surprised, then, and horribly alarmed, to come back early one evening from my rambles in town and find three big black cars parked on the road, and a uniformed guard loitering in the company of two watchful men in anoraks at the harbour wall. I made myself walk past slowly, an honest citizen out for a stroll at end of day, though my heart was hammering and my palms were damp, and then skipped around the back way and got in through the mews. Halfway up the jungly garden I tripped and fell, and tore my left hand on a rose-bush that had run wild. I crouched in the long grass, listening. Smell of loam, smell of leaves, the thick feel of blood on my wounded hand. The yellow light in the kitchen window turned the dusk around me to tenderest blue. There was a strange woman inside, in a white apron, working at the stove. When I opened the back door she turned quickly and gave a little shriek. Holy God, she said, who are you? She was an elderly person with a henna wig and ill-fitting dentures and a scattered air. Her name, as we shall discover presently, was Madge. They're all upstairs, she said, dismissing me, and turned back to her steaming saucepans.
There were five of them, or six, counting Charlie, though at first it seemed to me there must be twice that number. They were in the big, gaunt drawing-room on the first floor, standing under the windows with drinks in their hands, ducking and bobbing at each other like nervous storks and chattering as if their lives depended on it. Behind them the lights of the harbour glimmered, and in the far sky a huge bank of slate-blue cloud was shutting down like a lid on the last, smouldering streak of sunset fire. At my entrance the chattering stopped. Only one of them was a woman, tall, thin, with foxy red hair and an extraordinary stark white face. Charlie, who was standing with his back to me, saw me first reflected in their swivelling glances. He turned with a pained smile. Ah, he said, there you are. His winged hair gleamed like a polished helm. He was wearing a bow-tie. Well, I heard myself saying to him, in a tone of cheery truculence, well, you might have told me! My hands were trembling. There was a moment of uncertain silence, then the talk abruptly started up again. The woman went on watching me. Her pale colouring and vivid hair and long, slender neck gave her a permanently startled look, as if at some time in the past she had been told a shocking secret and had never quite absorbed it. Charlie, mumbling apologetically, had put a shaky old hand under my elbow and was gently but firmly steering me backwards out of the room. The fear I had felt earlier had turned into annoyance. I felt like giving him a clout, and putting a dent in that ridiculous praetorian helmet of hair. Tell Madge, he was saying, tell Madge to give you something to eat, and I'll be down presently. He was so worried I thought he was going to weep. He stood on the top step and watched me make my way downstairs, as if he were afraid I would come scampering back up again if he took his eye off me, and only when I had safely reached the bottom and was heading for the kitchen did he turn back to the drawing-room and his guests.
The kitchen was filled with steam, and Madge, her wig awry, looked even hotter and more harassed than before. This place, she said bitterly, honest to God! She was, as she picturesquely put it, Mr French's occasional woman, and came in when there were dinner parties, and that. This was interesting. Dinner parties, indeed! I helped her by opening the wine, and sat down at the table with a bottle for myself. I had drunk half of it when there was a loud knock at the front door that set my heart thumping again. I went into the hall, but Charlie was already rattling hurriedly down the stairs. When he opened the door I could see the two anoraks outside, guarding the way for a burly man and a tall, sleek woman, as they advanced at a regal pace into the hall. Ah, Max, Charlie said, and stepped forward with clumsy eagerness. The woman he ignored. Max shook hands with him briefly, and then took back his hand and ran it upwards quickly over his low, truculent brow. Christ, he said, you're far enough out, I thought we were never going to get here. They moved towards the stairs, Charlie and Max in front and the woman behind them. She wore an ugly blue gown and a triple rope of pearls. She glanced along the hall and caught my eye, and held it until I looked away. Madge had come out of the kitchen, and hovered at my shoulder. There's his nibs, she whispered, and the missus too.
I waited a while after they had gone up, and when Madge returned to her cooking I followed them, and slipped into the drawing-room again. Charlie and Max and Mrs Max were standing at one of the windows admiring the view, while the others bobbed and clucked and tried not to stare too openly in their direction. I seized an armful of bottles from the mantelpiece and passed among them, topping up their glasses. The men had a scrubbed, eager, slightly anxious air, like that of big, blue-suited schoolboys on their first adult outing, except for one old chap with a nose like a blood-orange and stains down the front of his waistcoat, who stood to one side all on his own, glazed and dejected. The others carefully looked through me, but he brightened up at once, and was ready for a chat. What do you think, anyway, he said loudly, will we win, will we? I understood it to be a rhetorical question. We will, I said stoutly, and gave him a broad wink. He raised his eyebrows and stepped back a pace, however, peering at me doubtfully. By God, he said, I don't know, now. I shrugged, and passed on blandly. Charlie had caught sight of me, and was smiling fixedly in alarm. Mine was a vodka, Mrs Max said coldly when I offered her gin. My attention was on her husband. He had a raw, scrubbed look to him, as if he had been exposed for a long time to some far rougher form of light and weather than the others in the room had ever known. His movements, too, the way he held himself, the slow, deliberate way he turned his glance or lifted his hand to his brow, all these bore a unique stamp, and were weighted with a kind of theatrical awareness. His voice was slow and guttural, and he had a violent manner of speaking that was impressive, and even, in an odd way, seductive. It was the voice of a man moving inexorably forward through a forest of small obstacles. I imagined him carelessly crunching things underfoot, flowers, or snails, or the insteps of his enemies. Well, Charlie, he was saying, still buying cheap and selling dear? Charlie blushed, and glanced at me. That's right, Mrs Max said, embarrass everyone. She spoke loudly, with a dull emphasis, and did not look at him. It was as if she were lobbing remarks past his shoulder at a sardonic ally listening there. Nor did he look at her, it might have been a disembodied voice that had spoken. He laughed harshly. Have you acquired that Dutch job for me yet? he said. Charlie, grinning in anguish, shook his head, speechless. His left eyelid began to flutter, as if a moth had suddenly come to life under it. I proffered the whiskey bottle but he put a hand quickly over his glass. Max also waved me away. The woman with the foxy hair had come up behind me. Your hand, she said, you've cut it. For a moment we all stood in silence, Max and his missus, and Charlie and Foxy and me, contemplating the beaded scratch across my knuckles. Yes, I said, I fell over a rose-bush. I laughed. That half-bottle of wine had gone straight to my head. Charlie was shifting stealthily from foot to foot, afraid, I suppose, that I was about to do something outrageous. It struck me for the first time how frightened of me he was. Poor Charlie. A lighted yacht was gliding silently across the inky harbour. Lovely view, Max said grimly.