“That’s right,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

She continued powdering her face. It was a social mask I was looking at now, a churchgoing and sherry party face; it was impossible to believe that there had ever been any tears in those large brown eyes.

When she’d finished powdering her face she picked up the scent bottle. She held it to the light; there was still a little left. She turned away from me, and holding the neck of her dress away from her, let the scent trickle down between her breasts. I looked at her without tenderness; for no reason she had gone away from me. Her body was still there beside me, just as the cloudless blue sky was still there outside. But I meant no more to her than I did to the sky; she had gone away from me.

She didn’t speak until we were driving along Poplar Road. Looking away from me, she said: “Please circulate this time.”

“What the devil do you mean?”

“Please don’t talk shop to Daddy all the time. Or run after that Haxey woman.”

“Hauxley,” I said. “Not that I knew she was coming.”

“If you had known, you’d have been a damned sight more eager about the party, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh God, I met her once. Just once for two minutes.”

“You wish it had been for longer, don’t you? I’ve seen you staring at her in church, I’ve seen the dreamy look on your face. And she’s seen it, too. She’s not a fool, that one.”

“She’s not aware of my existence,” I said.

“Like Eva Storr isn’t aware of your existence. It was her last time. And Jean Velfrey before that. You divide your time between my father and the woman you happen to fancy—”

“I won’t say a word to any woman. Or your father. Not one bloody word.”

Susan muttered something which I didn’t catch, my attention having been transferred to negotiating the turn into Brown’s drive; the entrance was so narrow that I had to take the corner wide so as not to scrape the wings. But this was the only instance in which he’d scrimped; the house was the biggest on Poplar Road, which meant the biggest in Warley, if one left out the Wales man­sion and Sindram Grange. And the grounds of the Wales man­sion and Sindram Grange, though big enough by any reasonable standards, would have been swallowed up, even in combination, by Brown’s. And their builders had only run to sandstone; for Brown only the best Bolton Woods ashlar had been good enough.

I parked the car outside the main entrance, just behind a dusty Vauxhall Wyvern which I recognized as Mark’s. As I helped Susan out of the car I said lightly: “My God, it’s time he washed his jalopy.”