'So we did some half-assed research and it turns out that thirty years is pearl, but, as you know, the average grad income doesn't really stretch that far, so we weren't really in the pearl way of things ...' Meredith laughed maniacally. 'And then Chris thought of this poem and then I like clid my arts and craft thing and anyway here it is: see it's like a framed, fabricy, type poem thing -I don't know.'

Kiki felt the warm teak frame delivered into her hands and admired the crushed rose petals and broken shells under the glass. The text was sewn in, like a tapestry. It was the most unusual present she could have expected from these two. It was lovely.

'Full fathom five thy father lies; Gfhis bones are coral made, Those are pearls that were his eyes -' read Kiki circumspectly, aware that she should know it.

'So, that's the pearl thing,' said Meredith. 'It's probably stupid.' 'Oh -it's so gorgeous,' said Kiki, skim-reading the rest to herself in a quick whisper. 'Is it Plath? That's wrong, isn't it.'

'It's Shakespeare,' said Christian, wincing slightly. 'The Tempest. Nothing ofhim that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change, Into something rich and strange. Plath stripped it for parts.'

'Shit,' Kiki laughed. 'When in doubt, say Shakespeare. And when it's sport, say Michael Jordan.'

'That is totally my policy,' agreed Meredith.

'This is really gorgeous. Howard will love it. I don't think it comes under his representational art ban.' 'No, it's textual,' said Christian testily. 'That's the point. It's a textual artifact.' Kiki looked at him inquiringly. She wondered sometimes whether Christian was in love with her husband.

'Where is Howard?' said Kiki, revolving her head absurdly round the empty room. 'He'll just love this. He loves to hear that nothing on him doth fade.'

Meredith laughed again. Howard re-entered the room with a clap of his hands, but then the bell rang once more. 'Bloody hell. Could you excuse us? Like Piccadilly Circus in here. Jerome! Zora?' Howard cupped a hand to his ear like a man waiting for a response to his fake bird call. 'Howard,' tried Kiki, holding up the frame, 'Howard, look at this.'

'Levi? No? Have to be us, then. Just excuse us one minute.'

Kiki followed Howard into the hall, where together they opened the door to the Wilcoxes, one of the rare, genuinely moneyed Wellingtonian couples of their acquaintance. The Wilcoxes owned a preppy clothes chain store, gave generously to the college, and looked like the shells oftwo Atlantic shrimp in evening wear. Right behind them came Howard's assistant, Smith J. Miller, bearing a home-made apple-pie and dressed like the neat Kentucky gentleman he was. They were all ushered into the kitchen to do their best with the completely unsuitable social pairing of old-school Marxist I02.

English professor Joe Rainier and the young woman he was presently dating. There was a New Yorker cartoon on the fridge that Kiki now wished she had taken down. An upscale couple in the back of a limo. Woman saying: Ofcourse they're clever. They have to be clever. They haven't got any money.

Just go through, go through: brayed Howard, making the signal for directing sheep across a country road. 'People in the living room, or the garden's lovely...'

A few minutes later they were alone once more in the hall.

' mean, where's Zora -she's been going on about the bloody parry for weeks and now neither hide nor hair -'

'She's probably gone to get some smokes or something.'

' think at least one of them should be present. So people don't think we keep them in some kind of child sex prison camp in the attic..

'I'll go and deal with it, Howie, 0 K? You just get everybody what they need. Where the hell is Monique? Wasn't she meant to be bringing somebody?'

'In the garden jumping up and down on bags ofice: said Howard impatiently, as ifshe might have figured this out for herself 'Bloody ice-maker fucked up half an hour ago.'

'Puck.'

'Yes, darling, fock.'

Howard pulled his wife towards him and put his nose in berween her breasts. 'Can't we just have a parry here? You and me and the girls?' he asked, tentatively squeezing the girls. Kiki drew back from him. Although peace had broken out in the Belsey household, sex had not yet returned. In the past month Howard had stepped up his flirtatious campaign. Touching, holding and now squeezing. Howard seemed to think the next step inevitable, but Kiki had not yet decided whether tonight was to be the beginning of the rest of her marriage.

'Uh-uh...' she said softly. 'Sorry. Turns out they're not coming.'

'Why not?'

He pulled her close to him again and rested his head on her shoulder. Kiki let him. Anniversaries will do that. She gripped a clump of her husband's thick, silky hair in her free hand, The other hand held Christian and Meredith's present, still waiting to be appreciated. And just like this, with her eyes closed, and with his hair escaping her fingers, they could have been standing in any happy day of any -of these thirty years, Kiki was not a fool and recognized the feeling for what it was: a dumb wish to go backwards, Things could not be exactly the same as they had been, 'The girls hate Christian Von Asshole,' she said finally, teasingly, but let him rest his head on her bosom. 'They won't go to anything he goes to. You know how they are. I can't do a thing about it.'

The bell rang. Howard sighed lustily.

'Saved by the bell,' whispered Kiki. 'Look, I'm going upstairs. I'm going to try to get the kids down. You answer that -and slow down on the drinks, OK? You gotta hold this whole shebang together.'

'Mmm: Howard hurried to the door, but then turned just before he opened it. 'Oh -Keeks -' His face was childish, apologetic, completely inadequate. It made Kiki suddenly despair. It was a face that placed them right alongside every other middle-aged couple on the block -the raging wife, the rueful husband. She thought: How did we get to the same place as everybody else?

'Keeks ... Sorry, darling, just ... I need to know if you invited them?'

'Who?'

'Who d'you think? The Kippses.'

'Oh, right ... Sure. I spoke to her. She was...' But it was impossible either to make a joke of Mrs Kipps or to give her to Howard in a nutshell, the way he liked people to be served to him. 'I don't know if they'll come, but I invited them.'

And again with the bell. Kiki went off towards the stairs, leaving the present upon the little table under the mirror. Howard answered the door.

'Hey.'

Tall, pleased with himself, pretty, too pretty like a conman, sleeveless, tattooed, languid, muscled, a basketball under his arm, black. Howard kept hold of the half-open door.

'Can] help you?'

Carl had been smiling, now he stopped. He'd come from playing hall on Wellington's big, free, college court (you just walked right in and acted liked you belonged there); midway through the game Levi had called him and said the party was tonight. Strange date to pick for a party, but then each to their own. The brother had sounded kind of funny, like he was pissed about something, but he was definitely real adamant about Carl coming down here. Sent him the address,like, three times. Carl could have gone back home to change first, but that would have been an epic round trip. He'd figured that on a hot night like this, no one would care.

'Hope so. I'm here for the party.'

Howard watched him put both hands either side of his ball so that the slender, powerful contours of his arms were outlined in the security light.

'Right ... this is a private party.'

'Your man, Levi? I'm a friend of his.'

'] see ... um, look, well, he's...' said Howard, turning and pretending to seek his son in the hallway. 'He's not about just now... But ifyou give me your name, I'll tell him you stopped by...' Howard jerked back as the boy bounced his ball once, hard on the doorstep.

'Look,' said Howard rudely, '] don't mean to be rude, but Levi shouldn't really have been inviting his ... friends -this is really quite a small affair -'

'Right. For poet poets.'

'Excuse me?'

!O5.

'Shit, I don't know why I even came here -forget it: said Carl. He was off immediately down the drive and out the gate, a proud, quick, bouncy walk.

'Wait -' called Howard after him. He was gone.

Extraordinary, said Howard to himself, and closed the door. He went into the kitchen in search ofwine. He heard the bell go again, and Monique answer, and people come in, and then more people right behind them. He poured his glass -the bell again -Erskine and his wife, Caroline. And then another crowd could be heard relieving themselves of their coats just as Howard thumped the cork back in the bottle. The house was filling up with people he was not related to by blood. Howard began to feel in the party mood. Soon enough he relaxed into his role oflife and soul: pressing food upon his guests, pouring their drinks, talking up his reluctant, invisible children, correcting a quotation, weighing in on an argument, introducing people to each other twice or thrice over. During his many three-minute conversations he managed to be committed, curious, supportive, celebratory, laughing before you had finished your funny sentence, refilling your glass even as beaded bubbles still winked at the brim. If he caught you in the action of putting on or looking for your coat, you were treated to a lover's complaint; you pressed his hand, he pressed yours. You swayed together like sailors. One felt confident to tease him, slightly, about his Rembrandt, and he in tum said something irreverent about your Marxist past or your creative-writing class or your eleven-year-Iong study of Montaigne, and the goodwill was at such a pitch that you did not take it personally. You placed your coat back on the bed. Finally, when you again persisted with your talk of deadlines and morning starts and made it out ofthe front door, you closed it with the new and gratifying impression that not only did Howard Belsey not hate you -as you had always previously assumed -but, in fact, the man had long harboured a boundless admiration ofyou which only his natural English reserve had prevented him from expressing before this night.

At nine thirty, Howard decided it was time to give a little speech in the garden to the assembled company. This was well received.

By ten, the intoxication of all this bon vivant business had reached Howard's petite ears, which were quite red with joy. It seemed to him an especially successfi.)l little party. In truth it was a typical Wellington affair: always threatening to fill up but never quite doing so. The Black Studies Department's gtaduate crowd were out in force, mostly because Erskine was well loved by them and they were, anyway, by the far the most socialized people at Wellington, priding themselves on their reputation for being the closest replicas on campus to normal human beings. Along with large talk they had small talk; they had a Black Music Libraty in their department; they knew, and .could speak eloquently of, the latest trash television. They were invited to all the parties and came to all of them too. But the English Department was less well represented tonight: only Claire, that MarxistJoe, Sinith and a few female Cult of Claire gtoupies who, Howard was amused to see, were throwing themselves at Warren, one after another, like lemmings. Warren had clearly joined the list of things of which Claire approved -therefore they wanted him. A circle of strange young anthropologists Howard didn't think he knew remained in the kitchen all night, hovering by the food, fearful of going anywhere where there was not an abundance of props -glasses, bottles, canapes -with which to fiddle. Howard left them to it and adjourned to the garden. He walked the rim of the pool, happily holding on to his empty glass, as the summer moon passed behind blushing clouds and all about rose the agreeable animal sound of outdoor conversation.

'Strange date for it, though,' he heard somebody say. And then the usual response: 'Oh, I think it's a wonderful date for a party. You know it's their actual anniversary, so ... And if we don't reclaim the day, you know ... then it's like they've won. It's a reclaiming, absolutely.' This was the most popular conversation of the night. Howard had had it himself at least four times since the clock struck ten and the wine really kicked in. Before that no one liked to mention it.

Every twenty seconds or so, Howard admired a pair of feet as they thrust up through the skin of the water; the curved back that followed, and then the slim brown form in the water doing another speedy, almost silent lap. Levi had evidently decided that ifhe must stay at this party, he might as well get a work-out. Howard could not figure out exactly how long Levi'd been in the pool, but, as his own speech had ended and the applause faded, everyone had noticed at the same time that there was a lone swimmer, and then almost everyone had asked their neighbour whether they recalled Cheever's story. Academics lack range.

'I should have brought my swimsuit: Howard had overhead Claire Malcolm saying loudly to somebody.

'And would you have swum ifyou had?' came the sensible reply.

Without any great urgency, Howard was now looking for Erskine. He wanted Erskine's opinion on his earlier speech. He sat down on the pretty bench Kiki had installed under their apple tree and looked out on to his parry. The wide backs and solid calves of women he didn't know surrounded him. Friends of Kiki from the hospital, talking among themselves. Nurses, thought Howard definitively, not sexy. And how had his speech gone down with women like this, non-academic, solid, opinionated, Kiki supporters -for that matter, how had it gone down with everyone? It had not been an easy speech to give. It was, in effect, three speeches. One for those who knew, one for those who didn't know, and one for Kiki, to whom it was addressed and who both did and didn't know. The people who didn't know had smiled and whooped and clapped as Howard touched upon the rewards oflove; they sighed sweetly when he expanded on the joys of marrying your best friend, also the difficulties. Encouraged by this moonlit attention, Howard had strayed from his prepared script. He segued into Aristotle's praise of friendship, and from there to some aper*us of his own. He spoke of how friendship expands tolerance. He spoke of the fecklessness of Rembrandt and the forgiveness of his wife, Saskia. This was close to the knuckle, but none of it seemed to be greeted with any undue attention by the majoriry of his audience. Fewer people knew than he had feared. Kiki had not, after all, told the whole world ofwhat he had done, and tonight he was more grateful for this fact than ever. Speech concluded, the applause had settled snug around him like a comfort blanket. He had hugged the two American children available to him hard around their shoulders, and felt no resistance. So that's how it was. His infidelity had not ended evetything, after all. It had been self-pity to think that, and self-aggrandizement. Life went on. Jerome showed him that first, by having his own romantic cataclysm so soon after Howard's the world does not stop for you. At first, he had thought otherwise. At first he had despaired. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before -he had no idea what to do, which move to make. Later on, when he retold the story to Erskine -a veteran ofmarital infidelity -his friend had gifted him with some belated, obvious advice: Deny everything. This was Erskine's long-term policy, and he claimed it had never failed him. But Howard had been discovered and confronted in the oldest way -a condom in the pocket of his suit -and she had stood before him holding it between her fingers, alive with a pure contempt he had found almost impossible to bear. He had many choices before him that day, but the truth had simply not been one of them, not if he wanted to retain any semblance of the life he loved. And now he felt vindicated: he had made the right decision. He had not told the truth. Instead he said what he felt he must in order to enable all of this to continue: these friends, these colleagues, this family, this woman. God knows, even the stoty he ended up giving -a one-night stand with a stranger -had caused terrible damage. It broke that splendid circle of Kiki's love, within which he had existed for so long, a love (and it was to Howard's credit that he knew this) that had enabled everything else. How much worse would it have been had he told the truth? It would only have packed misery upon misety. As it stood, a few of his closest friendships had been imperilled: those people Kiki had spoken to were disappointed in him and had told him so. A year later, this party was the test of their respect for him, and now, realizing that he had passed the test, Howard had to restrain himself from ctying with relief before each new person who was kind to him. He had made a silly mistake -this was the consensus -and should be allowed (for who among middle-aged academics would dare to throw the first stone?) to remain in possession of that unusual thing, a happy and passionate marriage, How they had loved each other! Everybody thinks they're in love at twenry, of course; but Howard Belsey had really still been in love at forty embarrassing but true. He never really got over her face. It gave him so much pleasure. Erskine often joked that only a man who had such pleasure at home could be the kind of theorist Howard was, so against pleasure in his work. Erskine himself was on his second marriage. Almost all the men Howard knew were already divorced, had begun again with new women; they told him things like 'you get to the end of a woman', as if their wives had been pieces of string. Is that what happened? Had he finally got to the end of Kik.i?

Howard spotted her by the pool now, crouching next to Erskine, both of them talking to Levi, who held himself up in the water with his strong folded arms upon the concrete. They were all laughing. Sadness sidled up to Howard. It was so strange to him, this decision of Kiki's not to pursue him for every detail of his betrayal. He admired the strength of her continued emotional willpower, but he didn't understand it. Had it been Howard, no force on earth could have stopped him knowing the name, the face, the whole history of touches. Sexually, he had always been an intensely jealous man. When he met Kiki she had been a woman of only male friends, hundreds of them (or so it had seemed to Howard), mostly ex-lovers. Just hearing their names, even now, thirty years later, plunged Howard into a blue funk. They saw none of these men socially with any regularity, and that had been Howard's doing. He had bullied, threatened and frozen them all out. And this was despite the fact that Kik.i had always claimed (and he had always believed her) that love started with him.

Now he put his hand over his empty glass to decline some wine Monique was trying to give him. 'Monique. Good party? Have you seen Zora?'

'Zora?'

'Yes, Zora.'

'I don't see 'er. Before I see, not now.'

'Everything going 0 K? Enough wine and so on?'

lIO 'Enough of everything. Too much.'

A few minutes later, by the doors into the kitchen, Howard spotted his unsubtle daughter hovering by a trio of philosophy graduates. He hurried over to effect her entry into this circle. He could do this kind ofthing, at least. They stood leaning against each other, father and daughter: Howard feeling the alcohol and wanting to say something sentimental to her; Zora oblivious. She was focused on the conversation between the grads.

'And of course he was the great white hope. '

'Right. Great things were expected.'

'He was the darling of that department. At twenry-two or whatever.' 'Maybe that was the problem.' 'Right. Right.' 'He was offered a Rhodes -didn't take it up.' 'But he's doing nothing now, right?' 'Nope. I don't even think he's attached to anywhere at the moment. I heard he had a baby -so who knows. I think he's in Detroit.' 'Which is where he came from ... Just one of these brilliant but totally unprepared kids.'

'No guidance.'

'None.'

It was a very average piece of Schadenfreude, but Howard saw how Zora was compelled by it. She had the strangest ideas about academics -she found it extraordinary that they should be capable of gOSSip or venal thoughts. She was hopelessly naive about them. She had not noticed, for example, the fact that philosophy graduate number two was involved in a study of her chest, out on messy display this evening in an unreliable gypsy top. So it was Zora whom Howard sent to the door when the bell went; Zora who opened the door to the family Kipps. The penny did not drop immediately. Here was a tall, imperious black man, in his late fifties, with a pug dog's distended eyes. To his right, his taller, equally dignified son; on the other side, his gallingly pretty daughter. Before conversation, Zora waded around in the visual information: the strangely Victorian get-up of the older man -the waistcoat, the pocket-handkerchief -and again that searing glimpse of the girl , the instantaneous recognition (on both sides) ofher physical superiority. Now they moved in a triangle behind Zora through the hallway as she babbled about coats and drinks and her own parents, neither of whom, for the moment, could be found. Howard had vanished.

'God, he was right here. God. He's around here some place ... God, where is he?'

It was an ailment Zora inherired from her father: when confronted with people she knew to be religious she began to blaspheme wildly. The three guests stood patiently around her, watching Zora's fireworks of anxiety. Monique passed by and Zora lunged at her, but her tray was empty and she hadn't seen Howard since he'd been looking for Zora, a fact that took a tediously long time to explain.

'Levi in the pool -Jerome upstairs,' offered Monique in sulky mitigation. 'He says him not coming down.'

This was an unfortunate reference.

'This is Victoria,' said Mr Kipps, with the measured dignity of a man taking control of a silly situation. 'And Michael. Of course, they already know your brother, the elder brother.' His Trinidadian basso profundo sailed effortlessly through the sea of shame here, pressing forward into new waters. 'Yeah, they totally already met,' said Zora, neither lightly nor seriously, and so falling somewhere unsettling in between.

'They were all chums in London and now you will all be chums here,' said Monty Kipps, looking out impatiently over her head, like a man constantly on the lookout for the camera he knew must be filming him. 'I really should say hello to your parents. Otherwise it is rather like being smuggled in the wooden horse, and I come as a guest, you see, bearing no dubious gifts. Not tonight, at least.' His politician's laugh left his eyes unaffected by the action.

'Oh, sure...' said Zora, laughing along blandly, joining him in the fruitless stationary staring. 'I just don't know where... So are you all ... I mean, have you all moved here, or?'

I12.

'Not me: said Michael. 'This is purely holiday for me. Back to London Tuesday. Work calls, sadly: 'Ab . That's a shame: said Zora politely, but she wasn't dis appointed. He was striking, but wholly void of sex appeal. She thought, strangely, of that boy in the park. Why can't respectable boys like this look more like boys like that?

'And you're at Wellington, yeah?' asked Michael, without betraying any genuine curiosity. Zora met his eyes, made small and dull behind corrective glass, as her own were.

'Yeah ... went to my dad's place ... not very advenrurous, I guess. And it looks like I'm going to be an Art History major, acrually: 'Which is, of course: announced Monty, 'the field in which I started. I curated the first American exhibition of the Caribbean "primitives" in New York in 1965. I have the largest collection of Haitian art in private hands outside of that unforrunate island: 'Wow. All to yourself -that must be gteat: But Monty Kipps was dearly a man aware of his own comic potential; he was on guard against any irony, attentive to its approach. He had made his statement in good faith and would not allow it to be satirized retrospectively. He gave a long pause before he replied. 'It's satisfYing to be able to protect important black art, yes: His daughter rolled her eyes. 'Great ifyou like Baron Samedi staring at you from every comer ofthe house: It was the first time Victoria had spoken. Zora was surprised by her voice, which, like her father's, was loud and low and forthright, out of sync with her coquettish appearance.

'Victoria is currently reading the French philosophers .. : said her father drily, and began to list contempruously several ofZora's own lodestars.

'Right, right, I see .. : murmured Zora through this. She had drunk one glass of wine too many. One extra glass made her like this, nodding in agteement before a person's pOint was finished, II3.

and always aiming for exactly this tone, that of the world-weary almost European bourgeois, for whom, at nineteen, all things were familiar.

' . .. And I'm afraid it's making her hate art in a dull way. But hopefully Cambridge will straighten her out.'

'Dad.'

'And in the meantime she will audit some classes here -I'm sure you'll run across each other, from time to time.' The girls looked at one another without much enthusiasm at the prospect, 'I don't hate 'art", anyway -I hate your art: countered Victoria. Her father patted her shoulder soothingly, a move she shrugged off as a much younger child might, 'I guess we don't reaIly hang much stuff around the house: said Zora, looking around at the empty walls, wondering how she got on to the one topic she had wanted to avoid. 'Dad's more into conceptual art, of course, We have totally extreme taste in art like most of the pieces we own, we can't really show in the house, He's into the whole evisceration theory, you know -like art should rip your fucking guts out.'

There was not time for the fallout from this, Zora felt a pair of hands on her shoulders. She couldn't remember ever being more pleased to see her own mother.

'Mom!' .

'You been taking care of our guests?' Kiki stretched out her inVitingly podgy hand, glittering with bangles at the wrist. 'It's Monty, isn't it? In fact, I think your wife was telling me it's now Sir Monty...'

The smoothness with which she proceeded from here impressed her daughter. It turned out that some ofthose much maligned (by Zora) traditional Wellington interpersonal skills -avoidance, denial, politiC speech and false courtesy -had their uses, Within five minutes everybody had a drink, everyone's coat had been hung, and small talk was proceeding apace.

'Mrs Kipps , .. Carlene, she's not with you?' said Kiki.

'Mom, I'm just going to . , . excuse me, nice to meet you: said II4.

Zora, vaguely pointing across the room and then following her own finger. 'She didn't make it?' repeated Kiki. Why did she feel so disappointed?

'Oh, my wife very rarely attends these things: said Monry. 'She doesn't enjoy sodal conflagration. It's fair to say she is more warmed by the home hearth.'

Kiki was familiar with this way of torturing metaphor that the self-consciously conservative occasionally have -but the accent was incredible to her. It flew around the scale -somewhat like Erskine's but the vowels were given a body and depth she had never heard before. Fair came as Fee-yer.

'Oh ... that's a pity... she seemed so sure she was going to come.'

'And then later, she was just as sure she would not.' He smiled, and in the smile was a powerful man's assurance that Kiki would not be silly enough to push the topic any further. 'Carlene is a woman of changeable moods.'

Poor Carlene! Kiki dreaded the idea of spending even one night with this man with whom Carlene must spend a lifetime. Fortunately there were many people Monty Kipps wanted to be introduced to. He quickly demanded a list ofSignificant Wellingtonians, and Kiki obligingly pointed out Jack French, Erskine, the various faculty heads; she explained that the college president was invited while failing to explain that there wasn't a chance .in hell that he would come. The Kipps children had already disappeared into the garden. Jerome -much to Kiki's annoyance -remained skulking upstairs. Kiki accompanied Monty through the rooms. His meeting with Howard was brief and arch, a stylized circling of each other's more extreme positions -Howard the radical art theorist, Monty the cultural conservative -with Howard corning off the worse because he was drunk and took it too seriously. Kiki separated them, manoeuvring Howard towards the curator ofa small Boston gallery who had been trying to catch him all night. Howard only half attended to this small worried man as he pressed him on a proposed Rembrandt lecture season that Howard had promised to IIS.