The Golden Hour

by William Nicholson

Genres: Family Life; Literary Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

She loves him. She's happy. But could she be happier? 'Capturing humour in the small, perfectly skewered moments of everyday life, this is a story of small, largely middle-class lives enclave, made golden by the light that Nicholson shines on them' Sunday Times 'Nicholson is a subtle and addictive writer who deserves to be a household name' Observer Maggie and Andrew are lovers who live apart - Maggie in the country, Andrew in town. When Andrew is offered a job close to Maggie, moving in with her is the obvious next step. Or is it? Is this the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with? Maggie panics. She ends their relationship, devastating Andrew. But when he turns the tables on her, she begins to see him differently. Meanwhile, Maggie's Sussex neighbours are living through their own intense dilemmas. The stories of Maggie and other characters entwine in a continuous dance over seven golden days of high summer - a human kaleidoscope that captures how passionate yet mundane, painful yet comic our everyday lives can be. These are seven golden days of summer ... time enough for relationships to change for ever...

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 495

Sample

She comes to the front door just behind him, and notices for the first time that the heels of his shoes are worn on the outer side. Funny the things you still don’t know about someone, even after a year. No, it’s more than a year now. It was a cold spring day when they first kissed, and now it’s high summer. The latch of the door drops into the keep behind her with a solid clunk. Late afternoon sunshine warms her bare face, her bare legs. A summer to remember so far, blue skies over yellow fields, no rain for weeks. They say the trees are showing signs of stress.

Down the narrow lane lined with brambles, the blackberries still too small to pick. Andrew striding ahead, his stocky body proceeding with purpose, though she knows the way and he doesn’t. Then where the lane meets the road he stops and waits, looking back at her. That ugly gentle face, the shine of his rimless glasses, those comical eyebrows. He can make his eyebrows go up and down independently of each other. She laughed when she first saw the trick, and thought perhaps she could love him. It was the way he kept a straight face while being so foolish.

‘I was thinking,’ he says.

Maggie raises one hand and looks away, shielding her eyes from the sun. She hears it coming, the way you know the phone will ring before it rings.

I don’t want this.

This is the shock. She thought she’d made up her mind. Where has this come from?

‘Take a right at the school,’ she says. ‘It’s the field behind the school.’

They hear the distant sounds of the village fête in progress. A loud voice shouting indistinct words. The boom of a brass band. They pass a high hedge that conceals a flint-and-brick early-nineteenth-century cottage in which the windows have been replaced. The new windows are double-glazed, single-pane, plastic-framed, illegal.

‘See those windows,’ she says, pointing through the hedge. ‘That has to be a listed building. That’s a planning violation.’

Andrew looks.

‘Ugh!’ he says.

‘It’s like the house has been blinded. It’s like it’s had its eyes put out.’

This is genuine, she really feels it. Maggie Dutton, conservation officer, champion of oppressed buildings. Who will cry their pain but her?

‘Will you report them?’ says Andrew.

‘Probably not. It’s awkward when you live in the village. And it looks like it was done a long time ago.’

Not a true villager, only renting, the prices in Edenfield way too high for her salary. Two salaries combined would be a different matter, of course. In a week’s time Andrew starts a new job, in Lewes. He’s moving out of his flat in London, moving in with her. So it has been agreed. Arrangements have been made, friends have been told, parents have approved. This is the appropriate next step. And now, for no good reason, outrageously, she doesn’t want it.

He’s looking at her, smiling, but at the same time he’s wrinkling his forehead the way he does, making deep lines between his eyebrows. Why is he smiling?

Because I’m smiling at him. I’m smiling at him because I’m afraid of hurting him. Afraid that if I hurt him too much he’ll leave me and then I’ll be hurt. Or is that what I want? Mum used to say, ‘Don’t you look at me like a naughty puppy.’ And Dad would say, ‘Go on, give her what she wants. You know she’ll get it in the end.’ But what happens when you don’t know for sure what it is you want?

Dad called me ‘dainty’. Christ I hated that, it’s a cruel word. It means pretty but not to be handled too roughly. Not to be handled much at all.

‘So about next weekend,’ he says, not receiving the message.

‘I can’t think about that now,’ she says. ‘Later.’

They head on towards the fête. A mother she doesn’t know passes them, trailing two unhappy children. ‘Well, you can’t,’ the mother’s saying, not looking back. ‘Whining won’t get you anywhere.’

Here’s what happens later. We move in together. And later? We get married. And later? We have children. And later? We get old. And later? We die. And that’s my life.

Ahead of her the high dome of Mount Caburn and the clean line where the land meets the sky. Maggie loves the Downs. Sometimes she climbs the sheep track to the top and stands face on to the wind watching the cloud shadows sail over the sea, and she feels as if she’s escaped time altogether.

I can’t think about that now, Andrew. I can’t talk about it because how can I tell you that later turns into forever and how can I tell you that suddenly I’m not sure I want to be with you forever? Forever scares me. I can do tomorrow. I can do next week. But ask me for more than that and I don’t know what to say to you.

Ashamed of her doubts, she slips her hand through his arm as they enter the school field where the village fête is in full swing. Then she feels she shouldn’t hold his arm, not now. But she doesn’t let go because she doesn’t want to seem to be rejecting him. Because she is.

It’s a lovely fête, small and humble and home-made. A hundred or so local people stand about, stupefied by the heat. Sheep bleat. Dogs bark. Boys shout. The dog show is attracting a crowd, many of them sitting on the straw bales that line the rectangular arena. Owners parade their dogs up and down, competing to win the prize for Dog Most Like Their Owner. One woman in black leggings wears long purple-and-black striped socks. So does her dog. The Wealden Brass Band plays ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina’. The sound of smashing plates punctuates the mellow horns. One pound gets you four balls to throw at the crockery. Little girls race by with painted faces. The sun streams down on fat men in shorts. People line up under the chestnut tree to place their bets on the runners in the sheep race.

Mrs Jones from the village shop is serving tea and lemonade and lemon drizzle cake.

‘You should have heard Billy’s speech,’ she says. ‘He got stuck in the middle.’

Billy is Lord Edenfield, formerly of Edenfield Place, a bulky stooping figure accompanied by a stout woman with black hair and a ringing laugh.

‘Is that Lady Edenfield?’ says Maggie.

‘That’s her. His housekeeper as was.’

The village scandal, except it’s not a scandal at all. Why shouldn’t a lord marry a housekeeper?

‘You should hear how she bosses him,’ says Mrs Jones. ‘She’s got him where she wants him all right.’

Andrew looks across the field and sees Lady Edenfield’s laughing face.

‘I expect she makes him happy,’ he says.

That’s Andrew for you. Always looking on the kind side. Old ladies adore him. Sometimes catching sight of him when he doesn’t know she’s watching, like when he gets off the train at Lewes station and makes his way down the steps to the car park where she waits, engine running, radio playing, she sees him as others see him, a serious young man with a purposeful air striding towards some meaningful encounter. But then he comes close up and somehow he loses focus. Getting into the car he’s already softer, floppier. When he leans across to give her the expected kiss he looks like a teddy bear, which is one of her affectionate names for him, though she’s forbidden him to use it about himself. Teddy bears, after all, are cuddly but not sexy. Teddy bears get left behind on the bed in your childhood bedroom when you grow up and leave home.

Maggie scans the crowd. A total stranger, a friendly looking man in a cream jacket by the Catch-a-Rat stand, meets her eyes and smiles.

Did I invite that?

Thoughts clatter through her mind like dominoes falling. If I’m not moving in with Andrew, then we’ve got no future together. If we’ve got no future, it’s over. If it’s over, I’m single again. If I’m single again, I’m looking for a new man.

Please don’t tell me I’m back on the market.

She feels a wave of panic wash over her. Thirty years old and starting again.

I can’t do this.

After all, it’s not as if anything’s actually been said. Here’s Andrew by her side just like before. No bridges burned. All she said was, ‘Later.’ Except now he knows she’s avoiding the issue, and why would she do that if there isn’t a problem? Barely a word spoken but so much understood.

He gets her a lemonade. He shows no sign that he might be angry with her. Or hurt. Would it be easier if he did? Fleetingly she imagines a different Andrew, one who would swear at her, saying, ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ After all, they have only one week to go. There is a case for urgency. He could stand in front of her, eyes no longer seeking to please, and say to her, ‘Fuck all this talk of later. We sort this out now.’ Except Andrew’s eyes do seek to please. They’re fine eyes, large and amber-brown behind his rimless glasses. When his eyes are on her they’re forever watchful, checking to see what mood she’s in, trying to anticipate her wishes. This has the effect of making her petulant.

I have a bad character.

This was always her mother’s warning to her. ‘You watch out, Maggie,’ she would say. ‘It’s all very well being pretty and getting what you want, but it’ll ruin your character.’

‘They have a sheep race,’ Andrew is saying to her. ‘This I have to see.’

They cruise the rough-cut field. Henry Broad is wandering about looking lost. Maggie barely knows him, but they talked once at a village party and discovered a mutual love of history. He’s bald, with a long worried face and intent eyes.

‘Isn’t this something?’ he says, gesturing round him. ‘We’re back in the Fifties. Retro chic, marinaded in irony.’

Maggie doesn’t follow this at all, but she decides she likes Henry.

‘Whatever you say, Henry.’

‘Can I test my theory on you? You have to name your favourite film, or book, or music.’

‘Is it a trick question?’

‘No, not at all.’

Maggie’s mind goes blank. What music do I like? What films? There’s so much, and yet nothing comes to mind.

‘I can do it,’ says Andrew. ‘Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone’s masterpiece.’

Maggie suppresses a spasm of irritation. This is one of the things about Andrew that she doesn’t like. He keeps lists.

‘Can I have a graphic novel for a book?’

Henry Broad looks baffled. ‘I suppose so. Why not?’

‘Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.’

‘Oh, Andrew,’ says Maggie. ‘No one’s ever heard of that.’

‘Actually it’s a classic, and a huge seller.’

‘Great,’ says Henry. ‘I’m not sure whether that proves my point or not.’

‘What point?’

‘My idea is that we like the art we like because it projects the picture of ourselves that we want to project. So if you secretly love The Sound of Music, you might conceal that and say you like Brokeback Mountain best, because it makes you appear cooler.’

‘I liked both of them,’ says Maggie.

‘Well, I expect I’m wrong.’

Henry drifts away.

‘Were you trying to appear cooler?’ Maggie says to Andrew.

‘I’m not sure,’ he says, furrowing his brow, considering the possibility. Always so scrupulously fair.

Maybe it’s a male thing, this keeping lists of what you’ve read and seen. Or a child thing. Small children are forever asking, What’s your favourite colour? What’s your favourite animal? And now with Facebook everyone has to reduce their personality to a few bullet points. My music. My photographs. My friends.

I don’t want to be on a list.

So what do I want? Who do I want?

Three very pretty girls are running about by a line of straw bales, calling out to the crowd, taking money for betting slips. They’re all wearing very short shorts, long bare legs, bare feet: the three daughters of the local farmer, Martin Linton. Martin himself is knee-deep in sheep in a pen in the shade of the chestnut tree. This is the sheep race.

The oldest of the Linton girls, Lily, is maybe fifteen, but is practically a young woman now, meaning she has very evident breasts. The men standing round can’t keep their eyes off her. The man in the cream jacket too.

I’m over thirty. What chance do I have?

She moves so she comes into Cream Jacket’s eye-line and he gives her a nod, acknowledging that a connection now exists. Maggie turns quickly to smile at Andrew.

‘Are you going to have a flutter?’

‘I have to study the form first,’ says Andrew.

Maggie glances back towards Cream Jacket. He’s moved away.

So is this it? From now on, every man I meet between the ages of thirty and fifty I’m going to flirt with, asking myself: Is he free? Do I fancy him? Does he fancy me?

Maggie knows she’s attractive to men, with her smiling eyes and her sweet face and her petite figure. They always think she’s younger than she is, and usually make the mistake of thinking she needs to be protected. But if it’s big boobs you’re after, forget it.

Andrew’s gone off to examine the runners in the sheep race. Rosie and Poppy Linton are now on either side of him, competing with each other to take his bet.

Jimmy Hall comes shambling up to Maggie.

‘Too bloody hot,’ he says.

His sagging red face shining with sweat.

‘What’s the news, Jimmy?’

Jimmy Hall edits the local weekly newspaper, which means he writes all the stories too. From time to time Maggie has provided carefully worded quotes about conservation matters.

‘We’ve got a film star coming.’ He lowers his voice as if it’s a secret between them. ‘Colin Firth.’

‘Coming here?’

‘Filming all next week. On the Downs. There’ll be crowds.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Oh, you’re too young,’ says Jimmy Hall sadly. ‘He was Darcy.’

Andrew is making a ludicrously thorough inspection of the field. Each of the seven sheep in the race is daubed with a colour on its back. Laura Broad, Henry’s wife, who is standing nearby, is also hesitating over which sheep to back. Looking up, her eyes meet Maggie’s and she smiles. She and Maggie once spent a whole train journey to London talking about how the past lives on for them in things. Laura’s special expertise is in old manuscripts and rare books.

‘Hello, Maggie,’ she says. ‘Heavenly day.’

‘A pound on Lewes Lady,’ says Andrew.

Lewes Lady is the sheep with blue on its back.

‘A pound on Lewes Lady for me too,’ says Laura.

‘Crikey!’ says Martin Linton. ‘It’s a ring! Poppy, shorten the odds on Lewes Lady. The big money’s coming in.’

Laura gives Andrew a smile.

‘You look as if you know what you’re doing,’ she says. ‘I’m sure you’re an expert.’

Andrew puts one finger to his lips.

‘Ssh! Don’t give me away. I’m here incognito.’

Maggie plays along with the joke.

‘Andrew Herrema, the world’s foremost sheep-racing expert.’

Laura laughs. ‘Are you really called Andrew Herrema?’

‘Yes,’ says Andrew. ‘It’s not easy having a name that sounds like a typo.’

‘Any relation to Menno Herrema?’

‘My uncle,’ says Andrew, surprised. ‘Or he was.’

‘Yes,’ says Laura. ‘I heard he’d died.’

So it turns out that Andrew’s uncle was a collector of first editions, and Laura knows all about him.

‘He had the best collection of Golden Age detective fiction ever. Where is it now?’

‘Well,’ says Andrew. He gives a quick glance at Maggie. ‘I’ve got it.’

‘You’ve got it! Are you a collector too?’

‘No,’ says Andrew. ‘All that stuff does nothing for me at all. But my uncle cared about it so much.’

Maggie is surprised and puzzled by that look of Andrew’s. There’s something here that he believes affects her. But what?

Henry Broad joins them.

‘Guess who’s coming to the garden party?’ he says to Laura.

‘Nick Griffin of the BNP. I just heard.’

‘Oh, Lord!’ says Laura. ‘Will there be demos and so on?’

‘I very much hope so,’ says Henry.

Laura explains to Maggie and Andrew, looking apologetic.

‘We’ve been asked to one of the Buckingham Palace garden parties. God knows why. Ten thousand long-serving councillors and us.’

‘And Nick Griffin,’ says Henry. ‘It might even get interesting.’

‘Henry,’ says Laura, ‘I want to ask Maggie and Andrew over for dinner.’ To Maggie and Andrew, ‘How about Saturday?’

‘Fine with me,’ says Andrew.

Before Maggie can qualify this thoughtless response, the sheep race begins. Everyone crowds round the short hurdle-lined track to urge on their favourite. Martin Linton opens the gate and comes out rattling a yellow bucket of sugar beet. The sheep follow. Martin lopes down the track, and the sheep break into a waddle, still packed close together. The crowd starts to shout. The sheep become alarmed, and break into a run. The crowd goes moderately wild. The sheep scramble over the straw bales placed in their way, and so the field spaces out.

‘Come on, Lewes Lady!’ cry Andrew and Laura.

Lewes Lady does not win. Andrew and Laura share a rueful grin.

‘I’m beginning to think you may not be the world’s foremost sheep-racing expert,’ Laura says.

‘Damn!’ says Andrew. ‘Exposed again.’

‘But you’re on for Saturday, then?’

Maggie feels trapped. What on earth was Andrew thinking of, saying, ‘Fine with me’? But of course he spoke to please. His automatic reflex, which is to be obliging, overrode his common sense. So now, because Andrew is such a sweetheart, because everyone loves Andrew, she will have to be the witch, the bitch, the one who gives offence.

‘Let me check my diary when I get home,’ she says to Laura. ‘We’d love to come, I’m just not sure what’s happening next weekend.’

She catches sight of the man in the cream jacket over by the Bonfire Society stall. He has his hand on the arm of the woman beside him, they’re laughing together at something. The sun goes behind a cloud, and all at once it feels cold.

‘Let’s go,’ Maggie says to Andrew.

Too many dogs and children.

As they head back across the field she says, ‘I never knew you had an uncle.’

‘I hardly knew him. Turns out he left me this collection of books. Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, that sort of stuff. I don’t want it at all, but I feel I should honour his memory or something. Apparently the collection’s worth a lot.’

‘Like how much?’

‘Maybe sixty or seventy thousand.’

‘Good God!’

‘I was going to tell you. As a sort of nice surprise.’

Because seventy thousand is house-deposit money. Settling-down money. So I should be grateful and happy. But nowadays we leave it too long. We know each other too well. When the moment comes the excitement’s long gone, and you’re left thinking – is this it? And that means you’re a spoilt bitch. He’s solvent and loyal and kind, what more do you want?

Just – more.

Maggie knows she should ask how it’s a nice surprise, but she can’t. The words won’t come out. A stubbornness has got hold of her and won’t let her go. She feels as if Andrew is making her walk backwards into a windowless room, and even his silence, his not-pursuing of the unspoken topic, is herding her through the doorway. Once inside the door will shut and she’ll never be able to get out again.

His mobile rings. He checks the number and takes the call, with a quick shrug of apology. She hears his calm voice reassuring a panicked client.

‘Have you tried rebooting? Just switch it off at the main switch and then on again.’

This is his work, trouble-shooting problems with computer systems. Five o’clock on a sunny summer evening, no time for anyone to be sitting in front of a screen.

‘I’m not at my laptop right now. Give me half an hour and I’ll call back and log into your system.’

He puts his phone away.

‘Sorry about that.’

Behind them in the emptying field the band is playing ‘My Way’ to the sound of smashing crockery. The sun is out again. The husbands and wives and children and dogs are heading for their cars.

Because of all that she hasn’t said, Andrew understands that something has gone wrong.

‘I shouldn’t have said we were okay for Saturday evening. I wasn’t thinking. But she seems nice.’

‘She is nice. They’re both nice.’

‘I think she wants to talk to me about my uncle’s collection.’

Suddenly, urgently, Maggie wants to be alone. She doesn’t want Andrew to stay for supper, as he usually does. She doesn’t want to have to face the question of what to do next Saturday, because once begun, that discussion has no escape route. Nothing whatsoever has happened, but Maggie feels an extraordinary degree of turmoil. It’s not just her future with Andrew that’s hanging in the balance, it’s her entire sense of herself. Because Andrew is so sure and so generous, she feels tight and mean. Because he’s so steady in his love, she feels incapable of love. She’s appalled at herself for wanting him to go, but that is what she wants. Now. At once. What excuse can she give him? There is none.

‘I’m feeling a bit anti-social right now,’ she says. ‘You know how I get sometimes.’

‘Yes,’ he says.

For a moment it seems like he’ll say more, but he doesn’t. She realises she has no idea what’s going on inside him. He could be angry. He could be disappointed. He could be unaware.

They’re walking back to the cottage.

‘Maybe I should head on back,’ he says. ‘Back to London, I mean.’

At once she feels intense relief. Then in quick succession, gratitude that he’s made it easy, guilt that she’s hurt him, resentment that he makes her feel guilty, and shame that she’s taking it out on him. The usual suspects.

‘I could run you into Lewes. Put you on the 6.20. If you really don’t mind.’

‘Give me a chance to catch up on some work.’

‘If you really wouldn’t mind? For some reason I’ve just run out of energy.’

‘No problem. You get an early night.’

He’s so understanding. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? It’s not as if I want some selfish bastard who only ever thinks of himself. Except somehow in this scenario I get to be the selfish bastard.

Look, here’s what I want. I want a man who’s loving and loyal, but not too eager to please me. I want to want to please him, but I don’t want to have to please him. I don’t want to be possessed like a chattel, but I do want to be possessed like a woman. I want him to love me out of his strength, not his weakness. I want him to adore me, but for his adoration not to trap me. I want him to lead his own life and let me lead mine, but I want us to live our lives together.

Am I making impossible demands? Dad always said I behaved like a spoilt child. So who spoiled me, Dad? How else am I supposed to behave? This isn’t about who lays the table. This is my life. This is happy ever after, if that’s not too much to ask.

So now what? Watch something mindless on TV. Go to sleep lying across the bed. Wake up and not have to smile.

Ask yourself this, Justin. When were you last hit by a genuinely new, really big, game-changing idea? Television still has the power to do that. I’m talking about setting the agenda. Getting everyone buzzing, challenging, taking sides. And it all starts in Vienna, in 1913.

Henry Broad walks home with his wife Laura, his mind buzzing, challenging, taking sides. The route home is familiar and requires no mental attention. He is preparing for his meeting on Tuesday with a Channel 4 commissioning editor, at which he will pitch a new series idea. But no sooner has he begun to address the editor in his mind than he is caught off-guard by the mental image of a large rabbit grazing on his lawn. Not a hallucination, a memory: he saw the rabbit yesterday evening. He is overwhelmed by a surge of anger. How is this possible? The garden is rabbit-fenced. He’s found no breach in the fence, no burrow holes in the long grass of the orchard. And yet they’re getting in. This means they’ll start breeding in the garden. By next spring the rabbits will have taken over.

I truly believe, Justin, that this idea is both original and compelling. Ask yourself—

The low sunlight glints silver on the elm leaves. A cool breeze is getting up. Is this the end of the recent warm spell? What is one to think about global warming? It’s not the science that’s become murky, it’s the morality. You worry about taking plane flights because you want to believe you’re a good person. Then it turns out to be more complicated than everyone supposed, and you take the flights anyway because really there’s no other option, and you’re left feeling a little grubby, a little hypocritical.

And why do I feel this constant louring sense of foreboding? Surely not intimations of mortality. I’m only fifty-four, for fuck’s sake. And I’m swearing more than I used to. Is that part of the general decline of civility, or fear of my own fading vigour? Once upon a time we swore on the name of the Creator. Now we appeal to the great god Fuck.

Will the great god Fuck save me from the coming cataclysm?

Terry Sutton is outside his terrace house washing his car, a red Toyota Corolla. He’s stripped to the waist, revealing that he has tattoos right up his broad back. His hair is shaved close round the sides and left longer on top, like a brush.

‘Not at the fête, Terry?’

‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ says Terry.

‘Those bloody rabbits are still getting in,’ says Henry.

‘See you at home,’ says Laura, walking on briskly down the lane. Laura is bored by Henry’s war on the rabbits.

Terry squeezes out his cloth and straightens up, flexing the aching muscles in his back. The tattoo is an eagle with spread wings, holding the globe of the world in its claws. Beneath it a scroll bears the legend: Pain passes, pride is forever.

‘Seen any droppings?’ he says.

‘A few. In the orchard.’

‘So they’re coming in from the meadow.’

‘Yes,’ says Henry. ‘But how?’

‘Oh, they’re clever little buggers.’

A white Ford Transit pulls up. A small young man in a grey tracksuit gets out. He has blond hair and a boyish face, the skin scarred with the remains of acne. He smacks one hand on the bonnet of the red Toyota.

‘Waste of time cleaning this wreck, Tel.’

‘Tell you what,’ says Terry to Henry. ‘I’ll run the Nipper through your orchard, see what she finds.’

The Nipper is Terry’s dog, a Jack Russell.

‘That would be great,’ says Henry. ‘I’m up in London on Tuesday and Thursday this week. But any time you can make.’

He gives Terry and his friend a nod and heads on home. His thoughts revert to his programme proposal.

Call it the elephant in the room, Justin. The thing we all pretend isn’t there. It’s not just about history, it’s not just about art, it’s about all of us today, and our conspiracy to conceal the truth. The great unmentionable. You know what that is, Justin? We don’t know any more what’s good and what’s bad. We don’t even know what we like. We rely on a small band of experts to tell us what to admire, but we’ve no idea why. And there’s a reason for this, Justin. It started in Vienna, in 1913.

Apparently young people don’t watch television today. It’s all Facebook and apps and smart phones. The days of the great television essays are over. Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation is a museum curiosity, a footnote on the now-defunct twentieth century. And with Civilisation goes civilisation. The dark clouds gather. The storm approaches.

What is this storm? How is it possible to have a feeling of dread and yet have no idea what it is you fear?

Henry comes to a stop at the back gate to his house. There before him lies the small orchard. Beyond it the square lawn with its two handsome flower borders, the flame-orange crocosmia in the last of their glory. Above the border rises the brick terrace, where a grey teak table stands with its attendant chairs, and a big sun-umbrella now mottled with mildew. The last few weeks have been so warm they’ve had meals out on the terrace. The back door stands open, the door that leads into the kitchen, where Laura will even now have begun making supper.

Is this what I fear to lose? This sturdy russet house flanked by elms and limes, protected by lines of ancient hills. Yes, this too shall pass. But not yet, my friend. It’ll see me out.

Pain passes, pride is forever. In your dreams, Terry. Pride is as mortal as all the rest.

The thought brings in its train a low hiss, like the soft rustle from far off that tells you the rain is coming. So is that it, pride? Some damage to my amour-propre, some loss of status? All too likely, but no surprise there. I’ve been anticipating my descent to the scrapheap for so long that I shall feel quite at home there. I see myself stretched out at my ease on some broken-springed sofa, dreaming of ragged-trousered philanthropy. No cause for nameless dread there.

But there it is again, the distant hiss. The terror to come.

He crosses the garden quickly and enters the house by the back door. Laura is on the phone to her sister Diana. Carrie is by the fridge, looking for something to eat.

‘So you’ll be here by lunchtime, then?’ Laura is saying. ‘I’ve asked another couple to dinner.’

Henry touches Carrie’s arm, making her jump. He worries about her, she’s so withdrawn these days.

‘I’m going to get myself a drink. Want anything?’

‘No thanks.’

And she’s gone. All she ever does when she’s home is sit in her room alone and strum on the guitar she’s never learned to play properly. Nineteen years old, surely she should be out with her friends. But you can’t ask. It’s her life.

He pours