Daniel Martin
Games.’
    ‘We’ve still had the fun.’
    Now she props her chin on her hands, and surveys him. Then without warning she stands and walks back to the champagne bottle and picks it up by the golden neck. She brings it beside him, then once again without warning swings her arm and tosses the bottle out into the river. It splashes, sinks, bobs back to the surface a moment, then sinks again, and for good.
    He stares up at her. “Why did you do that?’
    Looking at the river, at the place where the bottle sank, she says, ‘Are you and Nell going to marry, Dan?’
    He searches her oblique face.
    “Why on earth do you ask that?’
    She kneels beside him, avoiding his eyes. ‘I just wondered.’
    ‘Has Nell said we aren’t?’
    She shakes her head. ‘You both seem so secretive about it.’
    ‘Do you realize you’re the first girl I’ve been out alone with, apart from Nell, for at least eighteen months?’ He pushes her arm lightly. ‘Oh Jane, come on, love, for Christ’s sake… you may be transatlantic orphans, but you don’t have to play the heavy sister. I mean why else should I be so desperately looking for a job here next year?’
    She slips him a little oblique smile. ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘Nell feels marriage and final years don’t go together. So do I. And getting formally engaged is’ He breaks off, covers his eyes. ‘Oh Christ. A brick. The man has dropped a brick.’
    ‘So vieuxjeu?’
    ‘Oh God.’
    ‘No. Be honest.’
    ‘You know what I meant.’
    ‘We’re freaks?’
    ‘Of course not. Just that… well, you’re not Nell. And Anthony’s not me.’
    She bows her head in acceptance. ‘I see.’
    He eyes her, then sits up. ‘Jane, is this why we’re out together?’
    ‘In a sort of way.’
    ‘You absurd old thing.’
    ‘Mother hen.’
    ‘Anthony knows?’
    ‘He suggested it.’
    He gives a sniff of amusement towards the hills.
    ‘I get it. When he comes back tomorrow, he’s going to sneak off alone with Nell. It’s a bloody conspiracy.’
    ‘Converting the heathens.’
    ‘I suppose he can’t help it. I must say I thought better of you.’ She smiles. He adds, ‘I wonder where they’ll find their corpse.’
    ‘Idiot.’
    He leaves a pause. ‘On the matter of secrets… are you going to let him convert you?’
    ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet, Dan.’
    ‘You ought to have met my father. That would have put you off the whole shoot for life.’
    ‘Should one judge faith by people?’
    ‘I still hope Anthony doesn’t succeed.’
    “Why’s that?’
    He stares across the river at the clouded west. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. Not even Anthony. Living in the shadow of a church. It forces you to hide so much, you can’t imagine if you haven’t been through it. The unreality of it. Like what you were saying about Oxford. Only far worse. Not even the fun.’ He stared across the river at the dark hills. ‘I could become a thousand things, but I’ll never be a Christian again as long as I live.’
    Spoken like a true Oedipus complex.’
    Their eyes meet, and they smile, then both look down, with that acute self-consciousness of young adults, ever sensing new situations, new knowledges, new awarenesses; drowned in self-interest, blind to all but each new moment’s tendrils. He looks at his watch. ‘They should have got through by now. I’ll go and look.’
    He walks back into the field a few yards out from the willows, scanning eastward for dark figures. After a moment she comes beside him, searching also. She speaks without looking at him.
    ‘I think Nell’s very lucky, Dan. That was something else I wanted to say.’
    ‘No luckier than Anthony.’
    She whispers, ‘All these lucky living people.’ And then, before he can decide what a certain wistful dryness in her voice can have meant, she speaks more normally and points. ‘There!’
    At the far end of the field, further to the south than they had expected, five figures appear from the willows: two in uniform,

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