'Yah! I mean, can you believe it? Wearing sodding nose-studs and looking after my four-year-old...'

'What did you do?'

'Well I had it out with the Headmistress, of course. Told her we'd take all our children away unless she did something.'

'Yah, too bloody right.'

'Saw the girl again last week, as it happens : working in Willie Low's, stacking the shelves.' They simpered together.

'And what about your lad, Fraser?' her husband enquired. 'How's he getting on?'

'Oh he's a hell of a boy' Fraser said, proudly. 'The sort of boy who'll make his mark, whatever he puts his mind to.'

'Ha! Ha! Like his dad, eh? What does he play in the scrum?'

Fraser's smile froze.

'Ah well,' he explained, 'you have to understand that you can't do everything at Stratheden. There's so much to choose from. He has a lot of other interests...'

'Not football, I hope. It's so important to promote rugby, you know. Football's alright for the Jocks of this world, but I'm amazed how few schools play rugger these days.'

'Not football, no' said Fraser. 'God, not bloody likely.'

'That's where old Arbuthnott's gone wrong, you see. Sending his son to the wrong kind of school.'

'Has he really?'

'Didn't you know? Started the kid at the local state-school.'

'Oh God!' groaned the woman opposite. 'I don't believe it!'

'What they don't understand,' said Sophie softly, 'is the proper training they miss out on. I do like things done properly. I mean, manners are what distinguish us from the beastly crowd.'

Caroline might have agreed, but she was having problems concentrating. Her eyes kept glancing across the marquee, her mind drifting slowly away from it all. Around her, the clamour of talking and music, the buzz of new gossip, and yawn of charming manners; the tables belaboured under identical baskets of flowers; and the women vying for attention in a startling conformity of evening dress.

'I hear poor old Jerry has put his estate on the market. About 50,000 acres : it should fetch a fair price, I would say...'

'I'm told you've got a new factor, an English chap?' Fraser enquired.

'Yes. Came up from London. Got a degree in estate management. We're laying off some of the ghillies. Need to rationalise business, you know...'

'Oh Sophie!' squealed her sweetest friend. 'Is that Sally Chisholm? Do you see the ghastly dress she's wearing : Zandra Rhodes again.'

'And the same Andrew Logan brooch that she wore last year...'

'Poor child.' They smiled at each other in glee.

From table to table, distant conversations and tense composure were sustained and controlled in the extended rôle-plays of adulthood : eyes set carefully, strained laughter, confirming their faith that all remained well with the world, their world. Complacent veneer of charm and grease and backless smiles.

Caroline noticed that her glass was empty again. Her own control was slipping, struggling : she was thinking back to how she felt, as she prepared to come out to this Summer Ball.

Her life seemed caught in a state of suspension : waiting, waiting for Andrew's return. While inside, she was dying for release and love : longing to be held and cared for, longing to know if it was real between them... just wanting to love him. As she looked in the mirror, she had found herself dreaming - it was all she could do. And there in her dreams, she showed how she felt.

'I can't wait, can't wait to see him again' she thought to herself. She could hear Fraser stalking somewhere below in the empty Castle, and felt lonely and fearful. For so many years she had felt alone. Fraser had failed her, repeatedly. In her own home, she had suffered a lonely despair.

Then she thought of Andrew. It was as if she had known him all her life : their gentle rapport; the converse of intellect, like the chatter and soft free flow of a stream. She was breaking apart for a special friend, where she could belong. She felt as if his kindness, alone, could hold her together.

Looking at her tired and wasted body, she longed for someone to hold her, to touch her, as he had done all those years before. She remembered how it used to be - just to sleep beside him, and to know his strength, its stillness and depth. She ached in her body to be with him again. All these arid years... the hurt was raw... but she would be alright. He could make her alright.

She hardly believed, after all this time, that he had come back. It was real, again, in the garden, between them. Subconscious conversing with quiet subconscious : surely he met her at the deepest level, where her need resided, her hurt, her tears... and the tears flowed honestly once again. She needed this life at the feeling level.

But in coming out, with Fraser quiet and moody by her side, those thoughts had then receded and the tense mental control resumed once more. Her feelings strained to leap out in the open : she firmly held them down. Below the dry and brittle surface, she felt as if her mind was breaking up, and the vacuous noise of harsh disdainful chatter hummed and buzzed inside her head like irritant flies.

She became aware of a question put to her.

'Pardon? I'm sorry?'

'I said, she's just like you.' Fraser impatiently.

'Who?'

'Roberta!' Why did he bother...

'On the contrary, Fraser, the girl's like you.' He frowned.

Caroline surveyed the crowd around her, dancing, talking, drinking, eating. There were people looking towards her, she sensed it; and talking about her, talking and laughing. But when she caught their eyes, they smiled with such professional poise. The atmosphere of smoke and perfume choked, enclosed, enveloped her. The artifice, the shallow unreality of it all : she felt entrapped by it. Looking across the laden tables, she viewed the rich excess of food : it sickened her... mushrooms in garlic, prawns in chilli, cold pork and redcurrant, chicken kebabs, chilled spinach quiche, and a west-coast paella; kiwi fruit sorbet, and strawberry pie... then salmon, everywhere wide plates of salmon...

She noticed her glass was empty again. Well then, she would drink, she would drink and forget. Peering through dancing crowds past half-forgotten faces, she could see Ellie at a corner table; talking, giggling, waving her lively hands in gay discussion.

Her friend was laughing freely, Dominic West - the love-struck golfer - close and fond beside her. He was only in his mid-twenties, yet there was a dark poise and maturity - a certain quietness of spirit which reminded her of Andrew. They leaned against each other and seemed... attached : their eyes responsive and alive.

Rankin the Chief Constable was raising himself, lumbering over Ellie's table, and taking his leave.

'Sorry to slip away so soon, but these are unusual times, ye ken.'

'Not at all, not at all,' said Sir John. 'No doubt you will soon have these bandits locked up.'

The Chief Constable smiled darkly, nervously.

'We shall renew the search in the morn, and set a cordon around all Moidart. They shalln't get away.'

'With a million pounds for information, no doubt a few Highlanders will soon be bleating if they know anything.'

But the police-chief was already halfway to the door. As he departed he was joined by an army officer and several young men in suits who had waited in the shadows of the tent.

Everyone was buzzing about the missing man.

'Poor chap!' laughed Ellie. 'I wonder if he actually wants to be found! Has anyone thought of that?'

'I shouldn't if I was him,' said Dominic.

'It might do us a service if he didn't show up' a woman snapped harshly. 'I'm sure I could never trust his judgment.' It was Sir John's wife. He smiled coldly, keeping a tense distance from her; and seemed to control himself with a straight-backed detachment, shirt starched and hair in place... subverted only by twitches of his moustache and a suppressed sneer, though there was a look in the eye that seemed also to betray darker compulsive emotions.

'He's been a problem, there's no doubt. The man needs to grow up. He's forty-bloody-eight, for God's sake. All this feelings stuff and introspection. It's just so damned unmanly.' He looked at the group around him, apologetically. 'I don't know. There's a lack of self-restraint. He's been too dashed familiar with the lefties for my liking. Let's hope when he gets out of this, that we see a return to duty...'

Dominic placed his glass on the table and seemed to struggle with these remarks. So he answered directly with unaverted eyes.

'I can't help thinking there is a deeper duty than duty to one's country, and that is duty to yourself, being able to acknowledge who you are without deceit. I'm not sure he guards his image all that well, but I respect his honesty and frankness.'

Ellie's eyes shone and she nestled closer. But Sir John was privately appalled. The biggest threat always derived from those people who would not buy in, who threatened to subvert the tribe's mythology. This witless airman, that missing dreamer - they were two of a kind. He responded with his usual veneer of charm, and subtle condescension. The backless smile. The eye that sees the wall behind you. A cold, freezing impersonality accustomed to containing impropriety. And below - within himself - the suppressed and unacknowledged fear of those upon the margins who could challenge the myth, the self-deception : who threatened a person with the recognition of his own moral depravity.

As he continued in controlled conversation, maintaining proper distance and self-restraint, he privately noted Dominic West, measured him icily with his grey eyes, committed him to memory for future reference.

'The trouble is,' he laughed charmingly, 'too much feeling and emotion is misplaced. It's just a sign of immaturity. Most people grow out of it in time.' The devaluation of feeling and its natural consequence : the loss of imagination and creativity in a dull monoculture that entertains, appeases, and confirms the status quo. And behind this safety and anaesthetized culture, the subconscious fear of crisis and collapse, of anarchy and the unpredictable instinct, of feeling and barbarism, of threatened loss of ownership and privilege.

'Most people grow out of it in time' he said.

'You're so right,' his wife agreed. Always, the pressure to conform to rôles, and the party-line, and the cerebral will.

'Take poor Lindsey,' she whined. 'Her daughter Antonia just ran off and joined some Bible-bashers south of Oban. Some kind of cult. The girl is living in a virtual hovel.' The stigma of the periphery.

'Is she happy?' Dominic asked.

Sir John looked back at him, genuinely stupefied. The point was she had chosen to forsake her family's way of life - everything that that entailed.

'Never mind,' he remarked calmly. 'She'll soon grow out of it. I mean, I'm all for religion, don't get me wrong, but it must be kept in its proper place.' Yet West made a mental note of the woman's name... Antonia... he told himself to pray for her : to be happy. Why not? He poured Ellie another drink and they smiled fondly.

'Thank you, Dominic!' she said brightly. 'Here's to happiness in heaven above and happiness on earth below.' It made light of the whole matter.

At this moment, there was a clatter and curse, as Sir John felt himself pushed forward, almost into the arms of his wife.

'The fuck! Ah didnae see ye there!'

MacUaig the barman had backed his way in, carrying an extra supply of drinks : cheerful and boyish in the face of cold, hard stares of disapproval. He grinned to them all and declared in a friendly voice, 'They said ye cuid dae wi' some more o' the red,' nodding to the box tucked under his arm.

'Well put them down over there, man...' Sir John replied, impatiently.

The barman surveyed the tables, crammed with unimaginable surfeit of food. No explanation in the imperious command as to where 'there' was.

'Over there, boy! Damn, I'll do it myself...' Sir John snatched the consignment of wine. 'Have you got a cork-screw?'

The barman smiled.

'Ah wisnae tellt aboot a' that. Prehaps ah cuid gae an' fetch a waiter...'

'Oh, get out!' And away he shambled across the dance-floor, lurching towards unsuspecting ladies, who leapt aside as he passed their way, as if he was electrically over-charged or imbued with a dread and foul contagion.

'Your average Jock,' Sir John resumed, with the charm and good humour reserved for his friends, 'wants whisky, a satellite dish, and the dream of a win on the lottery. Let him have that and he'll be happy - but give him control of his own affairs, and he's hopeless, inept...'

'They are just so vulgar,' his wife said sweetly, shaking her head between pity and scorn. 'So very, very tasteless and vulgar.'

'Mind you, there's been quite a revival of interest in Gaelic and Celtic Studies, you know.' Ellie made the proposition brightly.

Sir John laughed wearily, without great feeling.

'My dear, reviving the Gaelic culture is like giving the kiss of life to a corpse. They dream of a way of life that expired. It was superseded hundreds of years ago, because it made no economic sense.' He shook his head, apparently amused. 'There's too much romanticised rubbish talked about it. Like Bonnie Prince Charlie's escapade, it's out of touch with the real world. There's simply no money to make it work - just handouts and subsidies.'

'But is money what holds communities together?' Dominic asked, speculatively.

'Apparently yes,' Ellie replied. 'Take the Highland Clearances : that was economics at work. Through lack of money, a whole way of life was dispersed to the furthest ends of the earth.'

'Then money is what destroys communities,' laughed her friend.

'Market forces, old boy! Market forces!' Sir John felt on safe and familiar ground. 'The whole fable of the Highland Clearances is a dubious myth. It was simply the passage from dependency to self-sufficiency. It was all a logical progress towards further growth and development. If you left the country to that little barman and all his mates, there'd soon be chaos and shambles. It would only be a matter of time before we were back in the Bronze Age again.'

'Don't you think,' said his wife, 'that people like that are children? Their lives are dreams and emotions and fanciful hopes.' Her husband quickly recovered the argument.

'Just remember this fundamental principle of democracy,' he laughed with a twitch. 'People want to be governed. Recognise that, exploit that, and the centre will always hold. The fact is we have a natural governing class, that holds things together, keeps barbarity at bay, knows what's best...'

'Maybe there are no simple answers,' said Dominic West, 'but there are so many needs that don't even seem to be understood down at Westminster.'

Sir John shook his head, and looked for alternative company, from the corner of his eye.

'The thing is,' he sighed in scarcely concealed frustration, 'we can't be expected to take responsibility for everyone's problems all the time. The best we can do is help each person stand on his own two feet, by maintaining a system for economic growth. That's why the Union is vital to all our interests : otherwise you're ceding power to socialists and demagogues who think dependency is a virtue.'

'Excuse me my dear,' said his wife with a smile, 'but you did promise the Bishop you'd see him about his Restoration Fund.'

And they left, with a stern and proper resolve to support the crumbling fabric of the Episcopalian Church. There was, after all, a place for God in a tasteful corner of the scheme of things.

Ellie raised her eyebrows at the handsome airman. 'I don't think he wanted to hear what you had to say, sweet chum!' He placed a vol-au-vent in her mouth.

'It seems to me,' said West, 'that the fate of a country is far too important to be determined by others... you can't play games with people's aspirations and hopes and lives... people need to be involved, taken seriously... not treated like children.'

Ellie tried to reply, but her mouth was entangled in pastry, and the young man smiled at this happy end to such gravity.

Caroline Maclean fingered the unused spoons and knives in front of her, and tried to arrange them neatly. She felt them at her fingertips as she watched her friend and Dominic : longed for their freedom, their happiness. Couples danced discreetly in the half-light, turning tightly to avoid the mishap of physical contact with those around them. Elderly women of a practical nature discussed their children's careers, while their husbands frequented the bar or spoke to the younger people by their side about the terrorists and their hapless victim.

'I gather there were six of them' she heard across the dance-floor. Then waves of laughter swept the voice away, as groups of young women gathered and squealed, watched on by older friends and relatives : these teenagers giving social expression to their parents' lost spontaneity and youth.

Through the wheeling figures, and smoke, and noise, Caroline saw her, and tensed inside. At the far end of the marquee, which led off toward the Hotel, Rona Malcolm was standing, in control. Her sharp eyes cutting across the tent, she directed waiters to expectant groups, pointed to tables, and mixed with the guests.

In contrast to the almost statutory evening gowns - Bruce Oldfield, Catharine Walker, and the occasional Amanda Wakeley - in careful blacks and reds and silky crêpe, Rona exuded confidence and independence. Her auburn hair, almost stormy dark in the half-lit shadow, was slicked back wet and brash. And she wore satin hipster trousers, petrol-blue, with a fitted shirt which was Gucci too. Caroline despised her for it all. She could almost smell the woman's perfume, accustomed to it on her husband's shirts.

Turning her head tensely toward Fraser, she saw that he was looking at Rona too, and in his eyes was the thunderous dark compulsion that had been unleashed, unknown to her, that afternoon. He inhabited a world that was his own, in which she had no share, no part; and a sudden flood of anger threatened to overwhelm her vain pretence. Rigidly, she straightened her annoying hair, pushed a plate central between two glasses, then reached for her drink and swallowed it all.

From his moody longing, Fraser heard her words break in and interrupt.

'I'm just going to powder my nose' she snapped tightly, then rose and stepped back from him, drawing away. He watched her walking uncertainly across the tent, brushing past laughing couples, and bumping against a woman who jumped back crossly. Fraser frowned, and he found his eyes traversing the wheeling crowds, to Rona again - her eyes in that very moment met with his, and flashed softly, fondly, but with urgent desire. Then dancers crossed and obscured their view. Looking back, he glanced toward his wife, but she was gone.

Ellie however, picking up her friend's distress mid-conversation, kissed Dominic on the brow and followed Caroline through to the ladies' room. She found her standing there alone : gazing ahead in front of the mirror, but finding no-one there in the blank reflection staring back at her.

'Hey! What's the matter?' her friend asked, eyes wide and sorry.

Caroline slammed her hands down on the hard mirror.

'The woman! That's the matter!'

Ellie could see how much she had drunk, from the lack of focus in her eyes.

'Take it easy. You've been through this before with him.' She reached towards her, but Caroline pulled away.

'People are talking... I know they are...' She looked up, her face pinched. 'What are they saying?'

Ellie looked down, hesitating.

'Well? What are they saying? I want to know...'

Her friend shrugged, and tried to make light.

'Oh, apparently he chucked her in the swimming pool today...' Caroline frowned in disbelief.

'He told me he was going fishing.' She felt her anger surging and it tasted bitter. 'It's obscene.'

'They were probably only larking about.'

'Listen,' she shouted. 'Do you know who Charlie is? You know - I told you - on the postcards she keeps sending?'

Ellie gritted her teeth.

'His pet mouse?' she guessed in vain.

'My husband's dick. Charlie is her name for my husband's dick.'

Ellie seemed genuinely troubled and sad at such unnecessary hurt and spite. She gazed at Caroline, who was fumbling with her dress, her hair, mechanically.

'But that's not the real thing upsetting you, is it?' she asserted, softly.

As Caroline hesitated, her friend picked a loose strand of hair from her dress.

'It's Andrew, isn't it? He's awoken feelings...'

Caroline opened her mouth to speak but, before she could, three raucous youngsters burst in through the door.

'Cheer up,' said Ellie. 'Come and meet Dominic.' Then she led her past the younger women, who stared after them with amused contempt.

In fact, the moment Caroline had left the marquee, Rona Malcolm had pushed through the crowds and approached the table where Fraser was sitting. She was determined and resolute : she wanted commitment. So that's what she'd have. She objected to seeing her, Caroline, next to him : so dreary, so depressing, just negating his life.

Fraser looked up to see the young woman standing there, suave and alert. Now she was closer, he made out the man's Rolex on her wrist, the beige fingernails - and a single stone, the one he had given to her a fortnight before. 'I want it' she had told him then, and when he bought it, he fulfilled her hopes, her belief in his wild and basic abandon.

Yet what she really sought and desired was a public acknowledgment of their attraction. She wanted some affirmation of ownership and belonging.

'Ah Mr Maclean, will ye gi' me the next dance?' Then aside to the other guests at the table - 'It would be ungracious if I didnae show my appreciation for all this salmon. Mr Maclean has been so generous to this Hotel over the years. Have ye no, Fraser?'

He felt the electricity between them, as she stood there, so assured and given. In the stillness of her unaverted eyes, he found again the afternoon's sharp tension and its unresolved desire.

'Will you excuse me,' he said as he rose. 'No gentleman could disdain this lady's hospitality.' His friends smiled back, and watched them closely as Rona took his hand and led him into the crowd of dancing couples.

'Yeee!' she thought : she had longed for such public recognition... and he gave it to her... she could hardly believe it. As she felt his reckless desperation, she wanted to kiss him for it. In his dinner-jacket he seemed broad and strong, looked dark and potent : and she found him so physically attractive, that desire within her wanted to squeal.

'You beautiful man! God! You are so desirable'

She meant what she said.

'Don't we make an incredible couple?' she asked.

'And tell me, Rona, why you really asked me to dance?' he rebutted her fondly.

'Because I want you,' she answered. 'I want to fuck you.' She stared. 'To fuck you!' She widened her eyes in fun and smiled sexily and very sweetly.

The evening felt sultry, the heat in the tent making Fraser's large body so moist and relaxed. He smelt the familiar intimacy of her perfume, and all the curvaceous softness of her body. She looked delicate, beautiful - this woman that he had struck - and his desire was aroused again. He felt it, and she knew he did.

As they danced, he could feel her hand drop to his bum and rest comfortably there. Her still defiant eyes penetrated far within him, saying 'because I want to' in silent challenge. He felt her raw and unashamed desire - and she seemed wild to him... free, unashamed and wild as nature.

As the band changed to a slower rhythm, 'I want to kiss you' she softly murmured.

'Not now,' he replied firmly. 'Not in front of these people now.'

'Fuck them,' she laughed, looking around at them all with contempt.

He felt her pressing her body and breasts close against him, blatant, familiar. She hung her arms around his neck and looked straight at him face-to-face.

'It's my birthday this week,' she muttered.

'I know,' he said. 'Do you think you will get any presents?'

'I want to tell you something,' she began. 'I want to whisper.'

She reached her mouth to his ear and breathed.

'You're going to take me to Paris, Fraser.'

'How do you reckon on that?' he said.

'Just tell her you're going on business.' She kissed him.

'Will I fuck!' he declared proudly. But she clung to him close.

'And when we return, come and live with me, and set yourself free! Oh Fraser,' she groaned, 'you know that you want it. You want to be my love partner. You know that you do. And I will love you up till you go quite mad...'

She gave a little-girl look.

'Just take me to Paris and let us be free!'

She felt soft and gentle to him, in his arms. He felt dizzied by her seductive presence and caress : his own desire in insurrection, his own emotional need in revolt... the need to be physical, and to be himself. He looked around him at the social gathering, so bound, contrived : and his being yearned for release from constraint. He ached to be himself, and acquiesce in her unreasonable demands.

'Alright' he said, and she let him go. They looked again in each other's eyes : desire now still, like a quiet presence. 'Alright' he repeated, and felt relieved.

The music stopped, and partners stepped aside and made up little groups. Rona's eyes went darting sharply, sought out Caroline, and returned to Fraser. She smiled inside. As some friends of Fraser came and talked, Rona made a point of standing beside him, sharing in the converse, thrilling within.

Ellie had introduced her friend to Dominic, and he rose and pulled out chairs for them both.

'I've been longing to meet you again,' he said warmly. 'Ellie talks so much about you.'

They sat at the table. He seemed thoughtful and kind, in complete contrast to her boorish husband.

'Could you pour me a drink?' she asked the young man. He complied with a smile.

While Ellie and her friends resumed their laughter, Caroline scoured the marquee for her husband : looking for Fraser in vain at his table, focusing poorly as her vision billowed and blurred with the crowds in the swirling company. Then she saw them both, and she lost her breath. Her body felt suddenly rigid and stiff, and reaching for her glass, it spilt in her lap on the way to her mouth. She finished the rest, then nervously started to pat her dress dry; her eyes mechanically returning to Fraser and a cluster of friends, with her at his side.

She knew, then, the imminent collapse of pretence. While her fingers frenetically ordered the table, straightened her dress, repositioned her glass, the buzz in her head became clamorous and wild, and the tension in her limbs grew untenably strained.

As the music began again, she saw Rona leading her husband, in glimpses and flashes through the fluctuating crowd; saw them dancing together in an indistinct haze, and her hand on his shoulder, together as one. Laughter around her, rang loud in her head, and it felt - in that moment - directed at her.

A stranger approached with a casual sneer, and blocked the view to her husband beyond. She stared down at her hands and felt brittle and lost.

The woman, herself a little bit drunk, smiled coldly and smirked.

'This is Caroline Maclean, the daughter of Sir Walter Clifford...'

'Ah!' she said charmingly. 'I've heard about you! And how is your husband!' She simpered and her lip curled, as she helped herself to the Champagne bottle. 'I gather he made quite a splash for himself...'

Caroline stopped listening. Her son, Alasdair, was running toward her. Running through the sunshine, throwing out his arms. He leapt and she watched him, as he was caught... was caught... in the hands of that woman - in Rona's bronzed arms - as she lifted him high.

Tears flooded loose, and she wailed 'No!', her elbow and forearm sweeping in front of her. There was a shattering of glass and flying fragments, as Caroline smashed the forks and spoons across the table, and reeled to her feet.

Ellie attempted to hold her friend back, but she pulled herself free, and lurched blindly across the reeling dance-floor. Strangers recoiled as she knocked into them, and she toppled and fell sideways into somebody's back. Sir John, dancing at arm's length with his wife, was unbalanced and pressed into her appalling bosom. Ellie and Dominic rose to their feet in pursuit...

'You!' she screamed. 'I want words with you!' She pushed some more dancers aside, and the crowd scattered apart in dismay.

Rona, releasing Fraser, turned to his wife and Caroline struck her a violent blow which sent her backwards into the musicians. The dancing stopped and a group of men grabbed Caroline to hold her back, as Rona clambered to her feet. The younger woman showed no emotion.

'Go on then, tell them about Charlie!' Caroline shouted. 'You slut! Why don't you tell them who Charlie is?'

Rona stared back, with cool disdain.

'I'm sorry?' she asked, her lips set tight.

'You know. Charlie. My husband's dick!'

The entire company seemed to shudder and gasp, seemed to pull away back, aghast and angry.

'I'm sorry,' said Rona to her silenced guests. 'I think she's had too much to drink.'

Caroline pulled to break free from them all. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

'You're always chasing Charlie, aren't you? And you think that once you've found him, you'll be happy...'

Rona suppressed a sneer and smiled instead, though she tasted blood.

'What gives you the right to spoil everyone's evening? I haven't a clue what you mean,' she said. Fraser stepped forward, furious and grim.

'Grow up, Caroline' he snarled at his wife, who was still entangled in three men's arms.

At this, Ellie turned to the table nearest the platform and picked up a glass. 'Could I borrow your drink?' she demanded briskly.

'You arsehole' she whispered and threw it at Fraser. He raised his hand in a fierce reaction, but found it held and suspended in flight by the iron fist of Dominic West.

'Let me take her home,' Fraser insisted. 'She's drunk too much. I'll put her to bed.' He shook himself loose and seized his wife's gaunt and slender arm.

'Coming with me...' she heard him say. 'Made me look a complete fool...' She was crying bitterly, her pretence caved in. Complaint and censure echoed around her, then laughter and comments. Flashes of grotesque and sneering faces approached and receded. She crashed against a large display of flowers, as Fraser pulled her roughly away. 'Bit young for the menopause...' she heard a man sneer. 'Disgraceful display.' Friends leapt aside to make a path before her, and backed away darkly with averted eyes. 'Excuse me...' Fraser was saying. 'Excuse me. Too much champagne...' and he bundled her out.

'Come on. Let's go' said Ellie to her friend. 'I'm sick of this.' He held her tight.

While looking on, in disguised delight, Rona picked up a serviette and dabbed the blood from the side of her mouth. Adopting a patronising air, she defended Fraser to those around her. 'It's such a shame,' she said to them. 'They say his wife is quite unhinged and he leads a hellish life at home.'

'There's madness in the family,' Sir John confirmed. 'Her aunt was locked away for years.'

As the music resumed, Rona looked on, and knew a triumphant thrill sweep through her body. She smiled knives grimly, angrily, and instructed the waiters to clear up the glass and get the table relaid at once.

An hour later, charm and a waxy veneer of respectability had been restored. Sir John was all smiles, engaged with the Lord Lieutenant and his wife. His body set in a military gait and his eyes steely, he discussed the needs of the Highlands with fixed determination. The disturbance had set his moustache twitching more nervously, but no-one perceived the latent violence of his smiles, least of all himself.

'There's a strong case for building a road,' he was saying, 'from Glencoe over Rannoch Moor.'

'Would it not disturb the wild-life?' asked his friend.

'No! No!' he laughed. 'But it makes economic and strategic sense. There's a growing danger of a terrorist threat in these wild retreats. We've seen it this week. They only have to take out half a dozen links - a viaduct at Orchy, the Drummochter Pass - and a people in revolt could do the rest. If we needed to control the Highlands, a road over Rannoch would make much sense. It's the same when it comes to Knoydart.'

'I gather the Knoydart Estate may come up for sale?'

'Quite so. If it does, the MOD must consider it this time as a training ground. People have tried to run it as a sporting enterprise, but the profit-margins just aren't there. Besides, speaking as a military man, I say we need to start thinking strategically.'

The cold look in his eye, metallic : the look of fear suppressed by will. Behind him a troupe of youngsters giggled and screamed, a generation off its guard.

'You see, old boy' said Sir John in a hushed aside, arm over the other man's shoulder, 'it would only take a loss of nerve at Westminster - a loss of control on the council estates in Yorkshire, say - and we would be virtually left to look to our own defences...'

'Like the Ancient Britons, y'mean? When Rome collapsed?' said the bleary-eyed old gentleman.

'Precisely.' Behind his cheery façade, was a lurking savagery and resort to arms : Sir John, the most charming and violent of men.

The need for control : a tense 'not letting go' For behind all this reason, the fear of collapse : that subconscious horror - buried, unacknowledged, but always there - of the nightmare world... the under-classes... threatening to spill out and overwhelm... unthinkable menace... fragments... chaos.

A few moments later, a Celtic invasion had commenced.

Breaking loose from the Public Bar at the back, Old Duncan's collie had followed a trail of quiche and found its way to the tent. It was not the dog's presence, however, which triggered dismay - but the smiling arrival of Jimmy MacNichol, squeezing past ladies, nodding politely.

'Excuse me, excuse me,' he appealed pleasantly, cap on the back of his head and the top four buttons of his shirt undone. 'We've lost the wee bugger, an ah've come tae fetch him!'

He was followed by Grouse, panting and heaving in pursuit, cigarette precariously hung from his lips, and hair greased back much in the manner of Sir John himself.

'By Christ!' he puffed. 'Some dog eh? The fuck!' Scowling women grabbed hold of their gowns, and pulled them away, as if to avoid some kind of sordid contamination.

'Alright darlin'?' said Grouse to one of them, moving her aside, and 'Excuse me, beautiful!'

'There's the wee bastard!' he shouted at length, and the carefree men made their way through the press, trying to crawl between dresses and table-legs, whistling to the cowering collie beyond, who had somehow reclaimed a discarded steak... 'By fuck! Just wait till we get the wee shite! Come oot, y'wee cunt.' The young ladies retired.

One of their men, with leadership qualities, reached at the collar and dragged the dog out. Grouse slipped on the leash and then shouted 'Oooh! Christ!'

Jimmy MacNichol put his arm round the man and grasped his unwilling, unresponsive right hand. The shepherd's eyes sparkled with the sunshine of summer, and he thanked the man gladly before removing the dog.

Grey, pallid faces watched to make sure that they had all gone.

A woman pulled out a handkerchief and brushed the shoulder of her friend's dinner-jacket.

'Oh my God!' she complained. 'What a vile little man. Did you see how he touched you? And that ghastly dog...'

Rona looked on, chewing her tongue in acute discomfort. A number of people were casting glances in her direction. But the music soon drowned out the uproar, and the night grew late in a shawl of cigar-smoke; smelt of make-up and heat; and tables with discarded napkins and scarcely-touched plates of beans in soured cream, aubergine dip, lobster, apricot-stuffed lamb slices, stilton and avocado mousse, asparagus in orange sauce, tuna and pasta salad, and cheesecakes, rolled breast of veal, chillied peas, and more salmon, turkey drumsticks in peppers and cream, mange-tout salad, haddock and courgettes, raspberry bombe, Drambuie fruit salad, damson jelly and a range of cheeses. To the very end, an excess of food; and excess, too, of charming manners : and yet, somehow, an intangible dearth of any feeling and human kindness...

As Ellie lay in bed, beside a panda she had got for her seventh birthday, she remembered an earlier conversation.

'You know that girl, Antonia, who ran off?'

Dominic, lying by her side, nodded dreamily and smiled.

'Well do you think she went a bit too far?'

'She's just a Christian, like myself' he answered. 'I suppose they'd complain about my beliefs.'

'If they knew, they'd say you were a religious nut as well.'

'I know... it's predictable.'

A silence. Ellie again...

'You don't seem very religious, Dominic.'

'Oh, I am' he laughed. 'But it's not to do with buildings, rules, or moral stances... they get in the way.'

'Surely you have to believe in something?'

'Faith is believing in things as yet unseen... like a longing for something beautiful... a hope...'

Ellie thought for a moment and laughed.

'So are you going to try to convert me?'

'On the contrary, I think I prefer the unreconstructed model. But there is, in us all, a place of silence, a place of beauty : where we reside with our best desires.'

'Yet religion seems to cause so much division...' she said, dreamy.

'I don't think Jesus wanted that. But the system, the structures, the dogma that's been built around him... it's crazy to me. You can't contain beauty or know it all : it contains you, if you want it at all; enfolds you, if you let it in.'

She snuggled down in his gentle arms.

'Goodnight, Dominic' she said, brightly.

'Goodnight, Ellie. Sweet love, goodnight.'

The light went out and it was silent and dark. Some moments later, Ellie was in fits of giggles in the deep of the night. Some happy remembrance of loveliness had seized her again and she wanted to share it. She wanted to share her joy with him.

* * *