A Change of Pace by Virginia Budd Page A

meeting the cousin? Which cousin, anyway? Diz glanced sharply at his mother, remembering Mr Bone. He hoped she wasn’t getting peculiar.
    *
    It was more or less dark by the time they set out for Hopton Manor the following Saturday. Bet was right, everyone had agreed to go in the end. Admittedly, she’d had a bit of a struggle with Diz over his party outfit, in the course of which he’d threatened once again not to attend. He’d appeared downstairs in jeans and an army surplus shirt, and it was only after repeated threats from her and much cajolery from his sister that he was finally won over and agreed to change into his only suit; last worn, he reminded them bitterly, at his father’s funeral.
    Nell had been reduced to tears over her outfit. At considerable expense and after much soul-searching, she’d gone mad and purchased herself a jade-green two piece of a somewhat way-out design, only to be told at the last minute by Bernie that it made her look like someone in a pantomime. Tearfully refusing ever to be seen in the outfit again, she ended up wearing a rather sexy cocktail frock borrowed from Pol. Pol herself naturally looked exactly right in a soft tweed dress which must have cost the earth, and a pearl choker.
    As a result of all this Bet was left with little time to spend on her own appearance. Too late, she noticed a soup mark on her red dress, and her mascara brush had somehow gone all gooey, causing her eyelashes to stick together. But it couldn’t be helped, and after one last, despairing look in her rather murky bedroom mirror — the others having commandeered the one in the bathroom — she hurried downstairs to join the Redfords.
    ‘Bet, did you know you’ve smudged your mascara? You should have done your face in my bathroom, that bedroom of yours is a positive black hole. I can’t imagine why —’
    ‘Oh shut up, Pol. Who’s going to look at me anyway?’
    As the crow flies, Hopton Manor, set in a shallow valley on the far side of the wood, was only a mile from the Rectory; however, by road it was nearly three. The drive gates were imposing enough, their effect slightly marred by the fact that they were propped open with an aluminium dustbin. The drive itself was full of potholes and seemed to go on for miles. The house, when they reached it at last, a crouching mass in the gathering dark, looked vaguely Queen Anne. However, as no welcoming light shone from its elegantly proportioned windows — not even a cheery gleam from a lantern in the porch — it was hard to make out what it was like. In point of fact the whole place looked utterly dead. Had they come on the wrong night? Somewhere quite near an owl hooted, and from the woods behind the house came the harsh, mournful bark of a mating fox.
    Trespassers, they tiptoed across the gravel to the front door, the sound of their feet on the stones painfully loud in the all-enveloping silence, and huddled in the porch while Diz boldly grasped the ancient doorknocker — there didn’t seem to be a bell — and gave several loud raps on the front door.
    Nothing happened.
    ‘Bet, are you sure you’ve got the date right?’ Pol hugged her fur coat. ‘Of course I’ve got the date right. Miss Westover definitely said Saturday.’
    Actually, Bet was beginning to have doubts about this. ‘Give the knocker another go, Diz,’ she hissed, ‘someone must be there.’ Diz obediently did as he was told. ‘Is anybody there?’ he shouted into the unresponsive darkness. At that moment the door opened and he was propelled abruptly into a vast, cluttered hall, lit, it appeared, by a single forty-watt bulb.
    ‘Good evenings?’ A tall, extremely handsome manservant encased in tight, perfectly cut black trousers and a dazzling white jacket stood before them, the expression on his face one of chilling disapproval. ‘Mrs Brandon and party from the Rectory — WE HAVE BEEN INVITED,’ Pete shouted in his best talking-to-foreigners voice. ‘Si si.’ The