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Is poured. Jasper raises his glass. ‘Here’s to you, Gordon! I popped down to the South of France for a few days to see my father.’
    ‘I suppose you’ll be posted to some glamorous place soon?’ says Sylvia.
    Jasper spreads his hands, pulls a face. ‘My dear girl, the FO will probably dump me in Addis Ababa, who knows?’
    Gordon drinks his champagne in two gulps. ‘Surely a career diplomat expects to take a bit of the rough with the smooth? Or don’t you see yourself as that? Incidentally how did you get into the FO at your age?’ He eyes Jasper’s hand, which lies on Claudia’s.
    ‘Gordon…’ murmurs Sylvia. ‘That sounds awfully rude .’
    ‘Not rude at all,’ says Jasper, smiling. ‘Astute. You may well ask. Late entry, it’s called. A word or two from the right people helped.’
    ‘No doubt,’ says Gordon. The hands, now, are lightly entwined. ‘And this is for keeps, is it? I understand you’ve had quite a varied career hitherto.’
    Jasper shrugs. ‘I believe in being flexible, don’t you? The world’s much too interesting a place to let oneself get stuck with one aspect of it.’
    Gordon cannot, for the moment, think of anything to say that is sufficiently biting; the champagne is having its effect. Sylvia nuzzles a knee against his. He cannot quite account for the scale of his dislike for this man; Claudia has produced men before, often enough. One has resented them all, naturally. Jasper, for some reason, is of a different order. He helps himself to some more champagne, drinks, glowers at Jasper: ‘Very adroit of you to have a father living in the south of France.’
    Claudia laughs. ‘You’re plastered, Gordon,’ she says.
    The strata of faces. Mine, now, is an appalling caricature of what it once was. I can see, just, that firm jaw-line and those handsome eyes and a hint of the pale smooth complexion that so nicely set off my hair. But the whole thing is crumpled and sagged and folded, like an expensive garment ruined by the laundry. The eyes have sunk almost to vanishing point, the skin is webbed, reptilian pouches hang from the jaw; the hair is so thin that the pink scalp shines through it.
    Gordon’s face always mirrored, eerily, mine. We were not considered alike, but I could see myself in him and him in me. A look of the eye, a turn of the mouth, a shadow. Genes declaring themselves. It is an odd sensation. I have it occasionally with Lisa, who also resembles me not at all (nor her father, for that matter – she might be a changeling, poor thing; has, indeed, all the classic changeling pallor and physical sparsity). But I look at her and for an instant my own face flickers back. Gordon’s hair was thick and fair, not red; his eyes grey not green; at eighteen he was six feet tall, and had that lank, casual, attenuated look of those who go through life with their hands in their pockets, whistling. A golden lad, Gordon. Winning prizes and making friends.
    A handsome pair, they used to say, to Mother. Who murmured, deprecatingly. Not at all the thing, to admire your own children. And anyway Mother had reservations.
    By the time we were both at university Mother was well into her retirement from history. She had drawn south Dorsetaround her like a shawl and blocked out as many aspects of our times as she could. The war, of course, was tiresome. It called for stoicism, though, and stoicism was one thing she was quite good at. She didn’t mind going without petrol and putting up blackout curtains and bathing in two inches of hot water. The departure of cooks and gardeners was endurable, too. What she was retreating from was any profundity of feeling and therefore any commitment more intense than light church attendance and an interest in roses. She had no opinions and she loved no one, was merely fond of a few people, including I suppose Gordon and myself. She acquired a Highland terrier which had been trained to roll over on its back at the command ‘Die for your country!’;