‘Let’s have a swim first, sweet,’ she said, gasping.
Jimmy struggled up and looked at her. They were bathing each other in pink light. It was like a warm liquid over them. The long face had undergone a change. Her brow was wide and tolerant; every line of her face had relaxed, so that she seemed plumper, less mature, even less sure of herself. Here, now, she was beautiful. He took a long look at her, trying to remember it all.
‘“And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,”’ he quoted, half-shyly. ‘Have some Chianti?’ Just how much had she drunk before the party, he wondered, that she should ever want him?
They drank gravely, companionably, out of the one glass Aubrey kept stowed in his locker, then drove on. Jimmy covered the road more slowly now. For one thing, he had caught the savour of the evening; it was something peaceful, relaxedly relentless – a kind of homecoming. He was going to be a proper man and take the correct tempo; Rangy would appreciate that. She knew and seemed to tell him exactly how these things should go. For another thing, he was having misgivings about the Hurns and their pool.
Rupert Hurn had been at Merton with Jimmy. Their friendship had not been close, but twice Rupert had taken Jimmy and another friend to his home. They had met Rupert’s younger sister (what was that plump child’s name?), and his docile mother, and his pugnacious little stockbroker father; and they had swum in his pool. But the last visit had been two years ago. Rupert might not be at home; the family probably would not remember him. They might even have moved. Jimmy’s idea began to look less bright with every mile they made.
He mentioned no word of his misgivings to Rose. If the evening was going to spoil, it should do so without any help from him.
The sun was setting as the MG passed Walton station. To Jimmy’s relief, he remembered the way clearly and picked up Ryden’s Road with confidence. He could recall the look of the house now; it crouched between two Lutyenesque chimneys; the porch rested on absurdly fat pillars and a laburnum grew too close to the windows. Jimmy had passed the place before he realised it; they had had the sense to chop the tree down.
He backed into the drive and climbed out. Rose climbed out and smoothed herself down. She took his arm, looking at him quizzically; her irises were a perturbing medley of green and brown. Jimmy wondered how on first impression she had seemed unattractive.
‘Er … come on,’ he said. Their Norman Lights had ceased to burn. He stepped between the fat pillars and rang the bell; in reply, a mechanism in the hall said ‘Ding Dong Ding Dong’. There was no other sound.
‘Perhaps they’re out,’ Rose said. ‘There are no lights anywhere. Surely they won’t have gone to bed yet?’
‘You’re beautiful,’ Jimmy said. ‘Forgive me for not mentioning it earlier. You’re beautiful, wonderful, unique.’
The door opened, and a very young man thrust his head out. After a searching glance at them, he stepped onto the porch, pulling the door to behind him. He wore a soft black suit with a mauve bow tie and big suède shoes; he had a (violently) contemporary fringe-cut to his hair, while on his brow an ER disc glinted metallically. His little, enquiring face was at once sweaty and fox-like.
‘Who are you? You aren’t Fred,’ he said, surveying them anew.
‘Touché,’ Jimmy said, with an attempt at what he called his society laugh. ‘What can we do to redeem ourselves?’
‘What do you want?’ the young man asked, refusing to be deflected into a smile.
‘We are friends of the Hurns,’ Jimmy told him. ‘We beg entry in the name of hospitality – or don’t they live here any more? Tell me the worst.’
‘Which Hurn do you want? They’re nearly all out.’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ Rose said, making a determined entrance into this asinine conversation, ‘Who are you, a bailiff?’
The young man shot her the look of dumb endurance one sees on the faces of wet dachsunds. He was about to speak when a girl appeared in the open doorway, wearing a severe blouse and slacks, the austerity of which was relieved by a hundredweight of charm bracelet clanking on her left wrist. In the dim light, she looked very young, very lovely. She also wore an ER, though her hair was swept forward so as partly to conceal it.
‘Jill!’ Jimmy exclaimed. The name of Rupert’s sister had returned to him suddenly, just when vitally needed. Jill! That podgy creature who had swooned over Rock Hudson and played Jokari from a sitting position had transformed herself into this moderately svelte little armful. He wished two years had done as much for him.
‘My giddy aunt, you’re – aren’t you Jimmy Solvent, or someone?’ the girl said.
‘Solent. Wish I was solvent. Fancy your remembering my name!’
They clasped each other’s hands.
‘My dear, I had a perfectly silly crush on you once. You used to look so sweet on the back of a motor bike!’
‘Cross my heart, I still do,’ Jimmy said, sliding in the nicest possible way round the fringe-cut, who stood there nonplussed by this turn of events. ‘This, forgive me, is Rose English; Rose English, this English rose is Jill Hurn.’
‘And this,’ Jill said, swinging up the charm bracelet in the direction of the scowling youth, ‘is my boy friend, Teddy Peters. You’d better come in. Were you looking for Rupert, because he’s not here. He’s in Holland.’
‘Each to his destiny,’ Jimmy said easily, forging into the hall. ‘Actually Rose and I came to ask you if we could have a swim. It seemed a shame for a couple like us to waste a bath like yours on a night like this.’
With Jill leading and Teddy following, they had reached a living room at the back of the house. A teleset radiated dance music softly from somewhere upstairs. Jill switched on a light on a corner table; in the illumination flowing over her face, Jimmy saw she was too heavily made up and a trifle spotty. All the same, it was a good attempt for – what? – sixteen, she would be no older. She headed for an expensive cocktail cabinet, moving with a copybook grace.
‘You must have a drink,’ she said. ‘Daddy and Mummy are out.’ That was a slip, although it told Jimmy nothing he had not already guessed. To readjust the role she was playing (and that little lout Teddy wouldn’t have noticed the slip, Jimmy thought), Jill sloshed whisky into three glasses, squirted soda at them and doled them out like Maundy money. She reserved something else for herself; perhaps a Pepsi-Cola.
Jimmy took his glass, looking askance at Rose, wondering just how she was feeling. She took a sip and said, ‘What a lovely room you’ve got here’ – which greatly cheered Jimmy; even half stewed, he could see it was a ghastly, ostentatious room.
‘It’s beautiful,’ he lied. ‘Your chandelier must have been particularly expensive. And your Jacobean radio – gramophone.’
‘Let’s get back upstairs, honey,’ Teddy said, speaking for the first time since his setback on the porch. Turning to Rose, he added, with a sort of rudimentary parody of Cagney courtesy, ‘We were dancing.’
‘How heavenly,’ Rose said gravely. ‘I love dancing.’
Jill, tilting her tightly covered rump like a snub-nose, was edging Jimmy into a corner. He was content to be edged until the vital question was answered; this now popped impolitely out of him again: ‘Can we have a swim?’
She did not answer at once, being busy breathing somewhat industriously.
Her eyes were ludicrously wide. Her perfume was as painful as a trodden corn, and then she smiled. The performance would be better in a year; in eighteen months you would not be able to tell it from the real thing. Perhaps, indeed, there wasn’t a real thing: only a series of undetectable