He said, 'You look terrible. You'd better go to bed.'

'I can't.'

'It'll do you good.'

'No.' I wasn't disagreeing, exactly, only trying to understand the words.

'Come on, Oliver. It's been a bit bloody for you, I know. But it'll seem better by and by. You mustn't take it too hard.'

I stared at him. Yes, he was like a father, comforting me after I'd been bowled out for a duck. I would laugh when I could remember how to. Jack, my father.

He reached out and held my shoulders in a firm, warm grip. I turned my head and looked at his hand. It was a sinewy, brown, long-fingered hand: a good-looking hand, as far as it went. A charming, secretive hand. I could probably have recalled every occasion on which it had touched me; I had probably listed every one in my diary.

Everything blurred. I was on my feet, staggering out of the room and across the hall, punching a door open with my fists, leaning into a washbasin, watching whisky and bile splatter over the enamel. I was making noises like an animal, like a man sinking in quicksand. I was sliding down the wall because my knees had given way, and I was still retching, and there was the smell of acid, the stale stench of my own stomach. There was vomit on my chin and my trousers. I leant forwards, helpless, and the spasms seemed to go on for ever.

When they stopped, I got painfully to my feet. I bathed my face and rinsed my mouth. I met my own gaze in the mirror, and held it for as long as I could. My eyes were intent and unblinking; I was glad that I could keep them steady.

I went back into the drawing room. Jack looked round at me, and his eyes flicked down to my trousers, taking in the new stains. He said, 'Did you make it to the lavatory in time?'

I found my voice, and it was cool, dispassionate, the kind of voice I could admire. I said, 'Why did you tell me?'

He blinked. He shifted his weight, leaning back against the windowsill, one hand ruffling the ivy leaves as though they could feel his touch. 'You asked me to, Gardner.'

'I asked you not to.'

'Why did you come back to Tyme's End?'

'Because I loved you,' I said. 'Because you'd been kind to me, and I'd been happy. It was very simple. Why did you tell me?'

'Because I wanted you to know.' He smiled a little, watching me, and plucked an ivy leaf, twirling it in his fingers. 'I wanted you to know what kind of man I am.'

'You wanted to destroy me,' I said.

'No.'

'You knew I'd grown to love you. I worshipped you. I wished you were my father. You waited until you were sure, and then you told me.'

'No,' he said again. 'Destroy you? No. I found you, Gardner. I chose you. When Philip introduced you, I recognised you. It was as though I already knew you. Why would I want to destroy you? You're my heir.'

I laughed involuntarily, and thought I might vomit again. 'Your heir? You don't think oh, God. You think I'll take your money, you think I'll take Tyme's End, now that I know this?'

'Yes,' he said. The ivy leaf spun as he rolled the stem between his fingers. 'You're right, Gardner. I did wait until I was sure. I know you'll take my money, and Tyme's End. I know you'll stay here tonight, instead of running to the village inn, and when you wake up tomorrow nothing will seem quite as bad, and the day after that you'll start to remember how you felt about me, before you knew, and by the end of the week you'll be telling yourself that the things I've done aren't so bad, really.'

'No.'

He held my look, and then shrugged, with a curious, self-mocking quirk of the head. 'Won't you ask me why I did them?'

'Very well: why did you do them?'

'I wanted to see what would happen.' I heard myself make a harsh, disgusted noise, like a gasp, and he took a step towards me. 'I did them to see if I could do them. I wanted to know if I'd get away with it. I did them for the same reason that I cheat at croquet: because it's a game, and only a fool plays by the rules.'

'I didn't know you cheated at croquet,' I said.

He laughed, examining the stalk of the ivy he'd picked.

'Why,' I said, and my voice faltered for the first time. 'Why do you want me to inherit Tyme's End?'

The leaf fluttered in his hand like a scrap of dark green damask. 'Ambition,' he said, slowly. 'When I said I'd chosen you . . . I want to know that you'll be mine, even then.'

'I'm not yours now.'

He looked up, and smiled. 'Gardner, if you believe that, you're a greater fool than I thought. Why are you still here?'

'Did you ' I stared at the window. It was dark; I hadn't noticed the time passing. 'Did you ever '

'Not really; I don't go in for loving people much.' A fractional pause. 'That was what you were going to ask, I take it?'

I sat down on the sofa and bowed my head. My father's suitcase looked even shabbier than usual in the electric light. My eyes blurred with fatigue. I said, 'Yes, that was what I was going to ask.'

There seemed nothing more to be said. I could feel Jack's eyes on me, but I didn't look up, and after a while he walked over to the gramophone. I heard a record sliding out of its sleeve, and then the clunk and crackle as he set the turntable going. It was the Danse Macabre. The twelve notes struck quietly, and then Death's solo violin came in, inviting the corpses to dance, the melody as catchy as a music-hall song. Jack whistled softly, sketching the tune. I would have hated him if I hadn't felt so exhausted.

The record finished. He wound the gramophone and put it on again. I thought I would never get it out of my head: the spooky, jaunty rise and fall of the strings, the triumph of Death. I had liked it once.

Jack said, 'Honestly, Oliver, you look done in. Go to bed.'

I shook my head.

'Stop being such a b. f. and go to bed.'

I raised my eyes to his, wondering if I should feel anything, but I didn't. He was right; I should go to bed. There was nothing else to be done.

'Is that it, then?' I asked. 'No more to be said. What will we do tomorrow? Bathe and play croquet and read in the sun?'

He held my look. He said, 'There's nothing to be afraid of.'

'I'm not afraid.' It was true. I was tired; only tired.

Jack glanced at the gramophone and started to whistle again. Then he seemed to remember what I'd said, a few moments ago. 'Yes,' he said softly. 'Since you ask. That's it. Over.' He took the needle away from the record, and the sudden silence seemed to illustrate his point. 'Or as over as anything ever is. I'm afraid no one escapes the past, Gardner; it's simply a question of how long the leash is.'

'It isn't my past, it's yours. It has nothing to do with me,' I said, trying to fan the spark of anger into a flame. 'You're not my father. This isn't my house.'

'Then why don't you leave?'

'I will, as soon as '

'If you were going to leave you would have left already,' he said, almost gently. 'You stayed to ask questions. You won't leave now. The desire to understand comes from the desire to forgive. This is your house, or it will be; and I might as well be your father.'

I thought I could still hear the melody of the Danse Macabre, very faintly, as if it had set up an echo in my brain. I said, 'You can go to bed, if you want.'

He hesitated, and shrugged. 'All right,' he said. 'I'll see you tomorrow.'

'Yes,' I said. 'Goodnight.'

I sat still, while he walked past me. I heard his footsteps going up the stairs, and the solid sound of his bedroom door closing. The noise was familiar. I had got into the habit of sitting on Jack's bed while he changed in the dressing room next door, leaving the communicating door open so that he could call through to me. I remembered being there a few evenings ago. We'd been laughing at something, although now I couldn't remember what it was.

I looked at my watch. It was very late, so late it was early. Jack must have talked for hours. Soon it would be getting light.

I bent to pick up my father's suitcase from the floor, laid it on the sofa beside me and opened it. My clothes were wound into a knot, and my father's picture was creased across the corner. I picked it up and turned it over. There had been a pencil wedged against the photograph, and it had left a dark scrawl across my father's chest. He looked at me, earnest and very young. I wondered whether I would have been different if he had lived; whether I would have been here. Mixed in with a mess of shirt collars I found my diary. I looked at it, trying not to let myself remember, then gave up the struggle and flipped it open, wrestling with a dull ache under my heart.

Played cricket most of the afternoon with much hilarity and then adjourned to the terrace to try to establish the rules, once and for all. (To no avail.) Champagne, again. I changed for dinner and then talked to Jack while he dressed. There was a cartoon he'd found in Punch that looked like Anthony, and we were late coming down because we couldn't stop laughing . . .

Oh, God.

I turned the pages back. Here and there words caught my eye, but I couldn't bear to read any more; I knew what they said.

I looked at the window, seeing my reflection cut into pieces by the lead between the panes of glass. I heard Jack's voice again. I shot them. I sat as still as I had sat then, feeling the tears come into my eyes. Finally, when I blinked, they overflowed and slid down my face.

I closed the book and pressed it between my palms. I wanted to write the truth. I wanted everything he had told me to be there, in black and white. Lest I forget.

But it was impossible, and I knew it. Even if I could have found the words.

I opened the exercise book again, searching through the pages for the first time I'd said I was happy here, for the first time I had used the word love. It came on the 17th of June. I ripped the page out, and the next, on and on until I came to yesterday's scrawl. I ripped that out too, so that there was nothing, after the 16th of June, but a fan of torn margins and a blank page.

I crumpled up the loose pages and put them in the ashtray. Then I set fire to them with Jack's silver lighter. They burned with a brighter, thicker flame than Fraser's letter had although that had been in sunlight, a long time ago. He had been right, after all; I'd thought his turn of phrase exaggerated, even sensational, but he had simply been telling me the truth. I wished I could be grateful for that.

I watched the pages burn. They filled the room with whitish, acrid smoke that billowed in the breeze from the window and overwhelmed the scent of roses. When there was nothing left but ash, I took up the exercise book again, and the pencil. In a shaky, childish hand, I wrote: 21st June, 1936. Tyme's End.

REMEMBER.

I put my face into my hands, and wept.

The hours passed. When I raised my head, finally, the first thing I saw was my father's photograph. It gave me a kind of strength; for the first time in my life, I was glad that he had been ordinary, that he had died along with so many other men. I had never thought that it would be reassuring to imagine him shot down in Flanders mud, but now, somehow, it was.

I took the photograph in my hand, tried to smooth out the crease across the corner, and put it into my pocket. I closed my suitcase and ran my fingers over my father's faded initials. Outside, the sky was getting light behind the trees and the breeze coming through the window was cold and fresh, blowing away the smoke and the sweetness of the night air. I stood up and turned off the electric light. The room was dim, full of steady shadows. The world beyond the window was silent and touched with a silvery violet colour, like a painting.

I looked round, taking in every detail: the gramophone, the overflowing ashtray, the discarded newspaper on the sofa. I thought that perhaps I'd never be so happy, or so unhappy, as I'd been here. I wondered if I should ever see Tyme's End again and even now the thought made me sorry.

I picked up the suitcase and walked out into the hall. I felt light-headed and hazy, as if the world were not quite substantial. I fumbled at the front door, trying to open it quietly; my hands were cold and stiff, and I struggled to make them obey me. I wouldn't have been surprised to see my fingers pass through the latch, like a ghost's. When finally I managed to open the door I knew that despite my efforts I had made a lot of noise. I stood listening, but there was silence. I took a deep breath. The air smelt damp, like grass stains.

I had set my suitcase down, and now I took it up again. In this subtle daylight I could hardly see my father's initials, but I knew they were there. The case was light, but no lighter than it had been when I arrived: wretchedly poor and shabby, but no poorer or shabbier than it had been. It hadn't changed; and neither had I, or not much.

I shut the door behind me and set off down the drive, walking on the verge so that my footsteps didn't crunch on the gravel. I didn't turn and look back, because I didn't trust myself.

I walked through the long grass, feeling the dew soak into my trousers. The birds were starting to sing. I had probably missed the milk train, and it would be hours until the next service; but I could walk to the next station or further all the way to Tunbridge Wells West if I had to. I was in no hurry: all that mattered was that I was on my way home. I felt as if I could walk for ever.

There was a movement in front of me a dark patch among the trees that I took for a raven at first, but then I stopped where I was, staring through the undergrowth. It was larger than I'd thought: the size of a man. I stepped warily sideways, until I could see more clearly. It was a man, hurrying through the trees, ducking low branches, with one hand raised to protect his face. I thought I knew from the gracelessness of his movements who it was, and then he lowered his hand to pluck a bramble off his sleeve and I was sure. It was Fraser. I could hear his breathing from here, a harsh sob in his voice as though he had been running for hours. I drew back behind the trunk of a tree and watched him as he scurried past, only a few feet away. When he reached the edge of the grass he reeled and almost fell over, like a sailor reaching dry land for the first time in a year. He looked over his shoulder, and then in the direction of Tyme's End, and I pressed myself against the bark of the tree, praying that he wouldn't notice me. The moment seemed to last for an hour. Finally he turned away and set off towards the gates. As he moved I caught sight of his face. He was weeping, his mouth open.

I relaxed, staring at his back. I could have called out, but there was nothing I wanted to say to him. I owed him thanks, but I couldn't imagine saying so; in spite of myself, I still despised him.

But what had he been doing here? Perhaps he had come to see Jack; but if so, why had he been running through the trees, in the wrong direction? I looked along the path he had taken, noting the trail of crushed bracken and broken branches. There was nothing there; I had wandered through the undergrowth myself a few days ago, and the way Fraser had gone would lead to nothing but a little grassy clearing and the shed where Jack kept his motorcycle.

I put my suitcase down in the grass and took a few steps along the track Fraser had left. The birds were making a jubilant noise; when I advanced deeper into the trees they carried on singing, thoroughly undaunted by my presence. I followed the trail of trodden greenery, my nose full of the peppery smell of it, like perspiration. I went carefully, making as little noise as I could. If Jack were there . . . But I was certain, or almost, that he wouldn't be. He had wanted to hurt Fraser, to make his humiliation as final and complete as possible; there would be no advantage to meeting him at dawn, away from the house, like a lover.

But Fraser had been here, and he had been weeping as he ran away.

I made my way through the last few yards of bracken and brambles, and stepped warily into the open. Jack kept the grass mown short, and in places it had been worn down almost to bare earth by the bike coming and going. There was a bald trail, almost a path, that led away from me, curving back towards the drive. The shed was a little ramshackle production that might have been designed as a faux hermitage in the days when such things were fashionable, but it was as shipshape as it could be, and the door and window frame had been freshly painted. Jack was careless with most of his possessions, but he treated his bike as if it were animate and needed the best conditions to thrive. I had seen him stable it lovingly, attending to its every need, although he mocked himself for taking such pains.

The shed door was a little way open, swinging almost imperceptibly in the breeze. Jack never left it like that, unless he was inside . . .

I ducked sideways instinctively, out of sight of the shed's little window. Slowly I straightened up again and squinted at the window pane, trying to see past the reflections of trees and sky. I cleared my throat and said, 'Hello? Is someone there?' My voice was flat and thin in the open air. No one answered. I was alone.

I approached the shed like a schoolboy playing at soldiers, my heart beating harder than it should have. Nothing moved, except me.

I stood outside the door, and pulled it gently, to widen the gap between door and door frame. Then I peered inside.

There was nothing there but Jack's bike, covered by a tarpaulin, and the tidy shelves of tools. I hardly knew one end of a bike from the other, so I wouldn't be able to tell if anything was missing, but everything looked perfectly neat, the way Jack would have left it. I could smell something mechanical, like oil. I stood there for a moment, feeling a strange bewilderment. Perhaps Fraser hadn't been here at all; perhaps he'd been running from somewhere else. But the trail of trampled grass and undergrowth had led me here, and someone had left the door open.

It might have been Jack being careless. No doubt yesterday he'd had a lot to think about. But I didn't believe it for a moment.

I went out again into the sunlight and leant against the door, wondering.

I stared into the middle distance for a long time, then I shook myself and turned away. But something caught my attention, and I turned back. There were marks on the white paint of the door: three or four black smears on the edge, as though someone had pushed it open with dirty fingers. I touched them gently, and the dark stuff came off on my fingertips; when I raised them to my nose I smelt something like axle-grease or petroleum.

I imagined Fraser pushing wildly at the door, stumbling out, and forgetting to close it behind him.

He'd had oil on his hands.

I closed my eyes. I could see the bike, covered in its tarpaulin, and the rows of tools. I didn't know anything about bikes; I didn't know how easy it would be to sabotage one, or how likely the rider would be to notice that something was wrong before it was too late. I didn't know what Fraser had been doing, or trying to do.

But I could imagine.