The Piano Teacher. Литагент HarperCollins USD

the bed. She has finished her mysterious bathing ritual, with its oils and unguents, and now she smells marvellous, like a valley in spring. She is sitting at her dressing-table in a long peach satin robe, wrapped silkily round her waist, applying fragrant creams to her face.

      ‘Do you like this one?’ She gets up and holds a long black dress in front of her.

      ‘It’s fine.’ He can’t concentrate on the clothes when her face is so vibrant.

      ‘Or this one?’ A knee-length dress the colour of orange sherbet.

      ‘Fine.’

      She pouts. Her skin gleams. ‘You’re so unhelpful.’

      She tells him Manley Haverford is having a party, an end-of-summer party at his country house this weekend and that she wants to go. Manley is an old bigot who used to have a radio talk show before he married a rich but ugly Portuguese woman who conveniently died two years later whereupon he retired to live the life of a country squire in Saikung.

      ‘Desperately,’ she says. ‘I want to go desperately.’

      ‘You loathe Manley,’ he says. ‘You told me so last week.’

      ‘I know,’ she says. ‘But his parties are fun and he’s very generous with the drinks. Let’s go and talk about how awful he is right in front of him. Can we go? Can we? Can we?’ She wears him down. They will go.

      

      So on Friday, late afternoon, he plays truant from work and they spend the twilight hours bathing in the ocean by Manley’s house. To get there, they drive narrow, winding roads carved out of the green mountain, blue water on their right, verdant hillside on their left. His house is through a dilapidated wooden gate and at the end of a long driveway, beside the sea, with a porch that juts out, and rough stone steps leading down to the beach. He’s had coolers filled with ice and drinks and sandwiches brought down to the sandy inlet. The still-hot sun and the water make them ravenous and they eat and eat and eat and curse their host for not bringing enough.

      ‘Me?’ he asks. ‘I assumed I had invited civilized people, who ate three meals a day.’

      Victor and Melody Chen, Trudy’s cousins, wander down from the house, where they had been resting.

      ‘What are we doing now?’ Melody asks. Will likes her, thinks she’s nice, when she’s not with her husband.

      A woman they have never met before, newly arrived from Singapore, suggests they play Charades. They all moan but acquiesce.

      Trudy is one team’s leader, the Singapore woman the other. The groups huddle together, write words on scraps of damp paper. They put them into the empty sandwich basket.

      Trudy goes first. She looks at her paper, dimples. ‘Easy peasy,’ she says encouragingly to her group. She makes the film sign, one hand rotating an imaginary camera lever.

      ‘Film!’ shouts an American.

      She puts up four fingers, then suddenly ducks her head, puts her arms in front of her and whooshes through the air.

      ‘Gone With the Wind,’ Will says. Trudy curtsies.

      ‘Unfair,’ says someone from the other team. ‘Pet’s advantage.’

      Trudy comes over and plants a kiss on his forehead. ‘Clever boy,’ she says, and sinks down next to him.

      Singapore gets up.

      ‘She’s your nemesis,’ Will tells Trudy.

      ‘Don’t worry,’ Trudy says. ‘She’s idiotic.’

      The afternoon passes pleasantly, with them shouting insults and drinking and generally being stupid. Some people talk about the government and how it’s organizing different Volunteer Corps.

      ‘It’s not volunteering,’ Will says. ‘It’s mandatory. It’s the Compulsory Service Act, for heaven’s sake. Why don’t they just call a spade a spade? Dowbiggin is being ridiculous about it.’

      ‘Don’t be such a grump,’ Trudy says. ‘Do your duty.’

      ‘I guess so,’ he says. ‘Must fight the good fight, I suppose.’ He thinks the organization is being handled in an absurd fashion.

      ‘Is there one for cricketers?’ someone asks, as if to prove his point.

      ‘Why not?’ somebody else says. ‘You can make up one however you want.’

      ‘I hardly think that’s true,’ Manley says. ‘But I’m joining one that’s training out here at weekends, on the Club grounds. Policemen, although I’d think they’d be rather busy if there was an attack.’

      ‘Aren’t you too old, Manley?’ Trudy asks. ‘Old and decrepit?’

      ‘That’s the wonderful thing, Trudy,’ he says, with a forced smile. ‘You can’t fire a Volunteer. And at any rate the one here at the Club is convenient.’

      ‘I’m sending Melody to America,’ Victor Chen says suddenly. ‘I don’t want her to be in any danger.’

      Melody smiles uneasily, but says nothing.

      ‘The government is preparing,’ says Jamie Biggs. ‘They’re storing food in warehouses in Tin Hau and securing British property.’

      ‘Like the Crown Collection?’ Victor asks. ‘What are they going to do about that? It’s part of the British heritage.’

      ‘I’m sure all the arrangements have been made,’ says Biggs.

      ‘The food will go bad before anyone gets it,’ says another man.

      ‘Cynic,’ says Trudy.

      She stands up gracefully and goes towards the ocean. All this talk of war bores her. She thinks it will never happen. They watch her, rapt, as she plunges into the sea and comes up sleek and dripping – her slim body a vertical rebuke to the flatness of the horizon between the sky and sea. She walks up to Will and shakes her wet hair at him. Drops of water fall and sparkle. Then someone asks where the tennis rackets are. The spell is broken.

      

      Over dinner, Trudy declares that she is going to be in charge of uniforms for the Volunteers. ‘And Will can be the model,’ she says, ‘because he’s a perfect male specimen.’

      Colin Thorpe, who heads up the American office of a large pharmaceutical company, looks doubtful. ‘Rather small and ugly, isn’t he?’ he says, although this is more a description of himself than of Will.

      ‘Will!’ Trudy cries. ‘You’ve been insulted! Defend your honour!’

      ‘I’ve better things to defend,’ he says. And the table falls silent. He is always saying the wrong thing, puncturing the gaiety. ‘Er, sorry,’ he says. But they are already on to the next thing.

      Trudy is describing the tailor who is going to make the uniforms. ‘He’s been our family tailor for ages and he can whip out a copy of a Paris dress in two days, one if you beg!’

      ‘What’s his name?’

      ‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ she says easily. ‘He’s the Tailor. But I know where the shop is, or my driver does, and we’re the best of friends. Do you fellows prefer orange or a very bright pink as colours?’

      They decide on olive green (‘So boring,’ the women sigh) with orange stripes (a concession), and Trudy asks who is to measure the men.

      They suggest her.

      She accepts (‘Isn’t there something about dressing left?’ she asks innocently), then says that Will can measure in her stead. Trudy’s frivolity, Will has noticed, has boundaries.

      Sophie Biggs is trying to interest everyone in moonlight picnics. ‘They’re ever so much fun,’ she says. ‘We take a steamboat out, with row boats, and when we reach the islands we row everyone ashore with