'It's true,' Anthony said. 'You only have to watch and you'll see.'

Sir Ralph, jovial in a Prince of Wales checked suit and a yellow rose in his buttonhole, came up and said he'd better make a fool of himself like everyone else. Martin said that it was jolly good of him, sir. He made a great thing of not understanding the rules and then attracted quite an audience when he actually played, with immense skill and swiftness, topping all three previous scores. He straightened up and clapped Martin on the shoulder.

'I like to outwit a legal brain when I can.'

There was a ripple of polite laughter. Sir Ralph, saying he'd better buy an improper book from Mrs Macaulay, took his small crowd with him. When he was out of earshot, Martin said, 'I want you to go away. Now. Just go. Wherever you are you make trouble, and I don't want you making it here. Just get the hell out, will you, now-'

Anthony took a step away.

'You want me to go because then you think you won't have to face the fact that your wife is a dyke.'

Martin fixed his eyes on Sir Ralph's checked back stooping over Mrs Macaulay's bookstall.

'If I wasn't in the Unwins' garden, I'd smash your fucking face in.'

Anthony sighed.

'Smash what you like. It doesn't change facts. No one but you could possibly have lived with such a set-up and not noticed. But then, you only ever have seen what you wanted to see.'

Several people were approaching.

Anthony lingered for a second as if contemplating saying more, but then he said, 'Bye,' quite lightly and moved away towards the drive. Martin straightened up and looked at his customers. They seemed to him miles away. Then the first one, Sir Ralph's tractor driver, wearing a T-shirt which said 'If you hate sun and sex... don't come to Greece' across the chest, said, 'What do I have to get to beat the boss?'

'A great man,' Martin said, in mild reproof. His voice sounded perfectly ordinary.

'Watch me, then,' the tractor driver said. He held out a pound coin. 'Watch me beat 'im then.'

It was almost completely dark in the drawing room. They had been sitting there for hours while the light faded and the scent of the lilies John Murray-French had planted years before came pouring in through the open windows. There were just Alice and Martin. Clodagh had gone home after the children had been put to bed. She would not stay for supper, she said, they knew where she was if they needed her. They had been silent for ages now, quite silent since Martin had stifled a brief bout of weeping and declined to let Alice comfort him. He had been very polite. He had been polite all evening. Alice wondered if she had ever found him as lovable as she did now. She said to herself, 'He is being wonderful,' and was full of admiration.

'You can't comfort him,' Clodagh said, before she left. 'It's arrogant to think you can.'

He had uttered one cry of reproach. He had turned to her in the half-dark and said, 'How could you?' And she knew he meant not only how could you do this to me, but how could you fall for a woman, have sex with a woman?

So she had leaned forward and said, trying to help him to see what was so crystal clear to her, 'But you see, it wasn't because Clodagh was a woman. It was because Clodagh was Clodagh. Can't you see?'

He'd given a little grunt.

'I like everything I have better because of her,' Alice said, and then, with the idiotic confidence of her happiness, in the midst of it all, added, 'Even you. I like you better because of Clodagh.'

That was when he had cried. Not for long, though. He had blown his nose with great decisiveness and after that they had stayed quiet in their chairs in the deepening darkness. Balloon had come in and made a few enquiring remarks and had jumped on Martin's knee and been thrown off, with quite unfamiliar fury, and so had stalked out again, aggrieved. At long last Martin said, 'What about the children?'

She turned her head towards him.

'What about them?'

'Well-' He shifted in his chair. 'You and Clodagh, influence and things. You know-'

'No!' she shouted. 'I do not know. Clodagh adores them. So do I. We are two loving adults, not aggrieved minority group proselytizers-'

'Shh,' he said, calming her. 'Shh. Sorry. I didn't mean - I mean, I thought-' He stopped. Then he said more firmly, 'Do they know?'

"They know I love Clodagh and she loves me. They love Clodagh. They don't know about adult love because they are all under eight.'

There was another pause. Then Martin said, 'I could never reach you. Could I? Never. Just at the beginning a bit-'

'Please-'

'I remember thinking, taking you out to dinner once at some fearful joint in Marlow, I'll propose to her, and I was longing to, and then I suddenly realized I had the power to wait, so I did. I was so happy. I suppose it was the only time I had the upper hand.'

'I did love you,' Alice said. 'I do. I do love you.'

'But not in love-'

There was a little silence.

'No,' Alice said. 'Not in love. Never with anyone.'

'Till - now,' he said painfully.

Till now.'

He gave a little grunt. Then there was a thump and she realized, from where his voice came from, that he had stood up.

'I'm going to bed.'

'Martin-'

'Don't worry,' he said, forcing a little bark of laughter. 'I'll do the decent thing. I'll sleep in the spare room.'

'You've been so - marvellous-'

'Long way to go yet-'

'Not tonight.'

'No,' he said. 'Not tonight.' And then he went softly across the dark room and opened the door and a faint gleam of light from the landing above illumined him in the doorway.

'Good night,' Alice said. Try and sleep.'

'You too.'

The door closed. She put her head back. In a minute she would telephone Clodagh, but for now she would sit there with her eyes shut and think of Martin and of the affection and admiration he aroused in her, which led, inevitably, to her feelings for Clodagh which had made all this possible, all this joy and richness and sadness, all this life. Whatever was coming now, Alice told herself, she could manage. Every muscle of her emotions was in condition to comfort and cope and see some way forward. She stretched her arms out in the darkness and flexed her fingers. The bridge - such a bridge - was crossed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Anthony rang Cecily and told her he was going to Majorca for two weeks; a friend had lent him a villa.

'Where are you ringing from?'

'London.'

'I thought you were at Pitcombe-'

'I was. I left on Saturday. You can have too much village life.'

'Anthony,' Cecily said. 'What have you done?'

'Nothing-'

'Then why are you going to Majorca?'

'Because I'm a natural sponger, as you know, and I'm being given a fortnight's shelter in return for repainting a loggia. Luxury shelter, mind you.'

'I don't doubt it. How was everyone at Pitcombe?'

'Fine,' Anthony said heartily.

There was a pause, and then Cecily said, 'Well, off you go. And mind you do paint the loggia.'

'Trust me,' Anthony said and put the receiver down.

Cecily went out into the garden. Her white border was looking spectacular; it had taken eight years to achieve. She had planned it, she remembered, to celebrate Natasha's arrival, her first grandchild. She went down the length of it, stooping and peering, whipping out the odd grass that had seeded itself among the lupin spires, but she wasn't really concentrating. She was thinking about Anthony. About Anthony and Alice and Anthony's going to Majorca. When she had left Vienna, she had thought she would never be caught up, heart and soul, in human things again. She had gone on feeling like that, all through the early years of her marriage, even through Anthony's and Martin's childhoods, and when gardening took her over, it seemed to her quite natural that it should, quite natural that something passionate but platonic should fill up the vacuum she had endured since she left Vienna. But ironically, the gardening had brought her back to a hunger for humanity; it seemed, quite simply, to have led that way. She told herself that it was far too late to reach Richard and that her sons were both, in their separate ways, alien to her - Anthony too unreliable and dangerous, Martin too conventional. And then came Alice, and because of Alice Cecily could make the connection, really make it, not just long to with Martin and Anthony - and she would have with Richard too, if he had allowed her anywhere near him. And now here she was, more than three times the age she had been when she left Vienna, as trapped in the intensity of family feeling as she had ever been in romantic and erotic love. Such feeling was, she discovered, pulling dead tufts off an artemesia, quite as intense and obsessive as her earlier passion had been. She could scarcely credit the number of wakeful nights and restless days that those very people she had resigned herself to being unsuited for - a natural accident, she would say - had caused her.

At the end of the white border there was a bower. It was made of golden hops trained around an arched trellis and it contained a stone seat with a back like an acanthus leaf. It had been photographed - twining goldgreen fronds, lichened stone, clumps of grey-leaved, white-flowered rock rose - for a dozen books on English gardens. Even now, on a grey day without the brilliance of blue sky behind the brilliance of the hop leaves, it was a satisfaction to look at. Cecily stood in front of it for some time, and considered how long it was since she had had a really creative idea. It was almost as if you could pour your creativity into people or into your work but seldom into both. There simply wasn't enough for both. Men knew that. Men didn't even try to cover both. She could weep, she thought, standing there in front of her acanthus seat, she could simply weep at the frustration of this division, this unwanted intrusion into the wholeness of herself ...