I got out of the car and stretched my limbs about. When I glanced back I saw that Sophie and Boris had also got out and that Sophie was fussing over Boris's appearance.
'Just remember,' I could hear her saying to him. 'No one in the room's more important than you. You just keep telling yourself that. Anyway, we won't be staying long.'
I was about to set off for the house when I became distracted by something at the corner of my eye. Turning, I saw that an old ruined car had been left abandoned in the grass close to where I was standing. The other guests had all left a space around it, as though its rust and general dilapidation might spread to their own vehicles.
I took a few steps towards the wreck. It had sunk some way into the earth and the grass had grown all around it, so that I might not have noticed it at all had the sunset not been striking its bonnet. There were no wheels and the driver's door had been torn off at the hinges. The paintwork had been gone over on numerous occasions, on the last of which the painter appeared to have used house paint before giving up mid-way. Both rear fenders had been replaced by mismatched substitutes from other vehicles. For all that, and even before I had examined it more closely, I knew I was looking at the remains of the old family car my father had driven for many years.
It was, of course, a long time since I had last laid eyes on it. Seeing it again in this sad state brought back to me its final days with us, when it had become so old I was acutely embarrassed my parents should continue to go about in it. Towards the end, I recalled, I had started to invent elaborate ploys to avoid taking journeys in it, so much did I dread being spotted by a school-friend or a teacher. But that had only been at the end. For many years I had clung to the belief that our car - despite its being quite inexpensive - was somehow superior to almost any other on the road and that this was the reason my father chose not to replace it. I could remember it parked in the drive of our little cottage in Worcestershire, its paint and metalwork gleaming, and my gazing at it for minutes at a time, feeling immensely proud. And on many afternoons - particularly on Sundays - I had spent hours playing in and around it. Occasionally I had brought out toys - perhaps even my collection of plastic soldiers - to lay out in the back seat. But more often I had simply built endless imaginary scenarios around the car, firing pistols through its windows, or conducting high-speed chases behind the wheel. Every so often, my mother would emerge from the house to tell me to stop slamming the car doors, the noise was driving her mad, and that if I did it once more she would 'skin me alive'. I could see her again quite vividly, standing at the back door of the cottage, shouting towards the car. The cottage had been a small one but, being deep in the countryside, had stood in a half-acre of grass. A lane went past our gate and on to the local farm, and twice a day a line of cows would go by, driven on by farmboys with muddy sticks. My father always left the car in the drive with its rear pointing to this lane, and I would often break off from what I was doing to watch the procession of cows through the back windscreen.
What we called our 'drive' was just an area of grass to the side of the house. It had never been concreted and in heavy rain the car would stand deep in water - a fact that could not have helped its rust problems and had possibly hastened it to its present condition. But as a child I had found wet days a particular treat. Not only did the rain create an especially cosy atmosphere inside the car, it provided me with the challenge of having to leap over canals of mud each time I got in or out. At first my parents had disapproved of this practice, claiming I was making marks all over the car's upholstery, but once the vehicle was a few years old they had ceased to care about this point. The slamming doors, however, continued to annoy my mother throughout the time we owned the car. This was unfortunate since this slamming was central to the enacting of my scenarios, invariably punctuating key moments of dramatic tension. Matters were complicated by the fact that my mother sometimes went weeks, even months, without complaining about the doors, until I would have all but forgotten they could be a source of conflict. Then one day, when I was completely absorbed in some drama, she would suddenly appear, highly distressed, telling me just one more time and she would 'skin me alive'. On a few occasions this threat had been issued at a point when a door was actually ajar, leaving me in a quandary as to whether I should leave it open once I had finished playing - even though it might then remain open all night - or whether I should risk shutting it as quietly as possible. This dilemma would torment me throughout the remainder of my time playing with the car, thoroughly poisoning my enjoyment.
'What are you doing?' Sophie's voice said behind me. 'We ought to be going in.'
I realised she was talking to me, but I had become so taken up by the discovery of our old car that I murmured something back without really thinking. Then I heard her say:
'What's got into you? You seem to have fallen in love with that thing.'
Only then did I realise I was holding the car in a virtual embrace; I had been resting my cheek on its roof while my hands made smooth circular motions over its scabbed surface. I straightened with a quick laugh, and turned to see Sophie and Boris staring at me.
'In love with this? You have to be joking.' I gave another laugh. 'It's criminal the way people leave wrecks like this lying around.'
They continued to stare at me, so I shouted: 'What a disgusting heap!' and gave the car a few good kicks. This seemed to satisfy them and they both turned away. I then saw that Sophie, despite her show of hurrying me, was still preoccupied with Boris's appearance and had now resumed combing his hair.
I turned my attention back to the car, anxiety mounting that I might have inflicted some damage with my kicks. Closer examination showed that I had done no more than dislodge a few rusted flakes, but I was already full of remorse at having shown such callousness. I made my way through the grass around to the other side of the vehicle and peered in through the rear side window. Some flying object had struck the window but the glass had stayed intact, and I stared through the spiderweb cracks into the rear seat where I had once spent so many contented hours. Much of it, I could see, was covered with fungus. Rain water had pooled in one corner where the seat cushion met the arm-rest. When I tugged at the door, it came open with little trouble, but then became stuck half-way in the thick grass. There was just enough of a gap to enable me to squeeze in, and after a small struggle I managed to clamber onto the seat.
Once inside, it became clear that one end of the seat had fallen through the floor of the car, and I found myself unnaturally low. Through the window nearest my head I could see blades of grass and a pink evening sky. Re-adjusting myself I tugged at the door until it was almost shut again - something obstructed it from closing completely - and, after a few moments, found myself in a reasonably comfortable position.
Before long, a deep restfulness started to settle over me and I allowed my eyes to close for a moment. As I did so, I found a memory coming back of one of the happier family expeditions undertaken in the vehicle, a time we had driven all over the local countryside in search of a second-hand bicycle for me. It had been a sunny Sunday afternoon and we had gone from village to village, examining bicycle after bicycle, my parents conferring earnestly in the front while I sat behind them in this very seat, watching the Worcestershire scenery go by. Those were the days before telephones were routinely owned in England, and my mother had had on her lap a copy of the local newspaper in which people advertising items for sale printed their whole addresses. Appointments had been unnecessary; a family like us could simply materialise at a door and say: 'We've come about the boy's bike' and be shown around to the back shed for the inspection. The more friendly people would offer tea - which my father would decline each time with the identical humorous remark. But one old woman - who had turned out to be selling not a 'boy's bike' at all, but her husband's after the latter's death -had insisted on our coming in. 'It's always such a pleasure,' she had said to us, 'to receive people like yourselves.' Then, as we had sat in her little sunlit parlour with our teacups, she had referred to us once more as 'people like yourselves', and suddenly, in the midst of listening to my father talking about the sort of bicycle most suitable for a boy of my age, it had dawned on me that to this old woman my parents and I represented an ideal of family happiness. A huge tension had followed this realisation, one which had continued to mount within me throughout the half-hour or so we had stayed. It was not that I had feared my parents would fail to keep up their usual show - it was inconceivable they would have started even the most sanitised version of one of their rows. But I had become convinced that at any second some sign, perhaps even some smell, would cause the old woman to realise the enormity of her error, and I had watched with dread for the moment she would suddenly freeze in horror before us.
Sitting in the back of the old car, I tried to recall how that afternoon had ended, but I found my mind wandering instead to another afternoon altogether, one full of pouring rain, when I had come out to the car, to the sanctuary of this rear seat, while the troubles had raged on inside the house. On that afternoon, I had lain across the seat on my back, the top of my head squeezed under the arm-rest. From this vantage point, all I had been able to see from the windows had been the rain streaming down the glass. At that moment my profound wish had been that I would be allowed just to go on lying there undisturbed, hour after hour. But experience had taught me my father would at some stage emerge from the house, that he would walk past the car, go down to the gate and out into the lane, and so I had lain there for a long time, listening intently through the rain for the rattle of the back door latch. When at last the sound had come, I had sprung up and begun to play. I had mimicked an exciting tussle over a dropped pistol in such a way as to make clear I was far too absorbed to notice anything. Only when I had heard the wet tread of his feet go right to the end of the drive had I dared to stop. Then, quickly kneeling up on the seat, I had peered cautiously out of the back windscreen in time to see my father's raincoated figure, pausing by the gate, hunching slightly as he opened his umbrella. The next moment he had stepped purposefully into the lane and out of view.
I must have dozed off for I awoke with a jolt and saw that I was sitting in the back of the ruined car in complete darkness. In a slight panic I pushed at the door nearest me. At first it remained stuck, but then shifted a little at a time until I was able at last to squeeze myself out.
Brushing down my clothes, I looked about me. The house was brightly lit -I could see glittering chandeliers inside tall windows - and over beside our car Sophie was still fussing with Boris's hair. I was standing beyond the pool of light cast by the house, but Sophie and Boris were virtually floodlit. As I watched, Sophie leaned down to the wing mirror to add some finishing touches to her make-up.
Boris turned to me as I emerged into the light. 'You've been ages,' he said.
'Yes, I'm sorry. We ought to be going in now.'
'Just one second,' Sophie muttered distractedly, still bending over the mirror.
'I'm getting hungry,' Boris said to me. 'When do we go home?'
'Don't worry, we won't stay long. All these people, they're waiting to meet us, so we'd better just go in and say hello. But we'll leave pretty quickly. Then we'll go home and have a good evening. Just ourselves.'
'Can we play Warlord?'
'Of course,' I said, delighted the little boy seemed now to have forgotten our earlier altercation. 'Or any other game you fancy. Even if we start playing one and half-way through you want to stop and play a different one, because you're bored or because you're losing, that's fine, Boris. Tonight we'll just change to whichever one you want to play. And if you wanted to stop altogether and just talk for a while, about football, say, then that's what we'll do. It'll be a marvellous evening, just the three of us. But first let's go in and get this over with. It won't be so bad.'
'Okay, I'm ready now,' Sophie announced, but then she bent down to the mirror one last time.
We passed under a stone arch into the courtyard. As we made our way towards the front entrance, Sophie said: 'I'm actually looking forward to this now. I feel good about it.'
'Fine,' I said. 'Just relax and be yourself. Everything will be fine.'
19
The door was opened by a stout housemaid. As we wandered into the spacious entrance hall, she muttered:
'It's nice to see you again, sir.'
Only when I heard her say this did I realise I had been to the house before - that in fact it was the same one Hoffman had brought me to the previous evening.
'Ah yes,' I said, looking around at the oak-panelled walls, 'it's nice to be back again. This time, as you see, I've brought my family.'
The maid did not reply. Possibly this was due to deference, but when I glanced quickly at the woman standing sullenly by the door, I could not avoid sensing hostility. It was then that I noticed, on the round wooden table next to the umbrella stand, my face peering up from amid a spread of magazines and newspapers. Going up to the table, I pulled out what I saw to be the evening edition of the local newspaper, the entire front of which comprised a photograph of myself - taken apparently in a windswept field. Then I spotted the white building in the background and remembered the morning's photo-session on the hilltop. I took the newspaper over to a lamp and held the picture under the yellow light.
The force of the wind was causing my hair to be flung right back. My tie was fluttering stiffly out behind an ear. My jacket was also flying behind me so that I looked to be wearing a cape. More puzzlingly, my features bore an expression of unbridled ferocity. My fist was raised to the wind, and I appeared to be in the midst of producing some warrior-like roar. I could not for the life of me understand how such a pose had come about. The headline - there was no other text at all on the front page -proclaimed: 'ryder's rallying call'.