It was not the sort of place where anything dramatic should happen.

Gurney Close was a small new cul-de-sac of modern houses, completed in the late spring of 2005. Few of the residents knew much about the man after whom their little road was named. Ivor Gurney was a tragic participant in that war to end wars which ravaged Europe from 1914 to 1918. He survived the slaughterhouse, half genius, half madman, after the shells had shattered the fragile control which directs the human brain.

Ivor Gurney's poetry and music are remembered with affection and reverence by a few devotees in his native Gloucestershire, so that, almost a century after the war which had at once formed him and destroyed him, this little close of detached residences in pink-red brick was named after him. It was a well-meant but rather desperate sort of homage.

A part from its name, Gurney Close was an unremarkable place. These were excellent dwellings, erected by a local builder of good repute. There were only four residences, three detached houses and the bungalow at the far end of the development, which the planning committee said should be included to provide a proper balance and take account of the needs of the elderly.

The new residents were a diverse group, but they found themselves united by that camaraderie which comes from a common experience: in this case, that of establishing themselves in brand-new homes on what had formerly been rough pasture land. The uneven ground, crudely levelled into building plots by the builder's bulldozer, ran down to within sixty yards of the banks of the Wye, one of England's loveliest rivers. But none of the houses had a view of its waters, though the tall oaks between the close and the river provided a pleasant enough backdrop to the little group of new buildings.

The new owners went into each other's homes to study the plastering and the plumbing, to deplore the mistakes the architect had made and which any sensible mortal would have avoided. They shook their heads sadly over the work confronting them as they strove to carve out their small new gardens, and moaned their ritual moans about the way the builder had removed the topsoil and left them to contend with clay and stones.

They met each other in the supermarket in Ross-on-Wye, as they stocked their new built-in fridge-freezers. They came across each other again in the garden centres as they bought roses and bedding plants and strove for some immediate colour in front of the raw new walls. They deliberated together over the shrubs in pots, and then bought flowering cherries and robinias which would soon grow too tall for their modest modern plots.

They called cheerfully to each other across the fences of their gardens, as they filled their new wheelbarrows with stones, buoying each other with a horticultural optimism which was mostly destined for disappointment. They even drank cans of beer and bottles of wine together at the end of the long June days, when their limbs ached and their bodies filled with a not unpleasant lassitude.

It was all predictable and acceptable. It was even, if the truth were told, a little boring, to those not involved. Gurney Close would probably have disappeared quietly into an unchronicled suburbia, if it had not been for those startling events at the beginning of July.

Ronald Lennox fancied himself as an observer of people. He had retired from teaching eight months earlier. This was a relief to him: he had felt out of touch with modern youth for a decade and more, and found control of his pupils increasingly onerous. But with time on his hands after forty years in schools, Ronald found his life unexpectedly empty at first. Then, during the dark months of his first winter of retirement, he had taken much care over the purchase of the new bungalow at the end of Gurney Close. After much heart-searching, he had disposed of most of the furniture in his big semi-detached house in Ross-on-Wye, and moved into his spruce new residence during a heatwave in the first week of June. Ronald Lennox thought he had taken all of these decisions himself, but his grown-up son and anyone else acquainted with the couple knew that they had in fact been taken by his very capable wife, Rosemary.

Ronald's fair hair was silvering and thinning now, a little easier to control than it had been in his youth, but it still usually looked in need of a comb, even when he had just attended to it. He was one of those men upon whom even well-tailored clothes never sit easily. His suits crumpled when they would have settled smoothly upon others; his sweaters always seemed to need a hitch at the top to make them sit properly upon his thin shoulders.

Lennox remained cheerful in spite of these trials heaped upon him by a hostile fate. Nevertheless, he usually appeared rather surprised when events followed the course he had envisaged for them. He was well-informed about most things, though he had never been able to carry his learning lightly. He looked well-meaning, and he generally was well-meaning, but things rarely turned out exactly as Ronald Lennox had planned them.

Rosemary Lennox was as neat and well-organized in her life as Ronald was erratic in his. It seemed that there was never a hair in her neatly coiffured grey locks which dared to stray out of place, however vigorous the activities she undertook. And her head, with its small, pretty features, seemed to set the tone for the body beneath it. Rosemary's once-tiny waist had thickened a little with the years, as was only fitting, but she retained a neat and well-defined figure.

She had been an excellent tennis player in her youth, the reliable partner everyone had wanted in doubles, whether women's or mixed. 'Neat but never gaudy,' her favourite partner had called her, at the dinner to celebrate her retirement from the county tennis scene. Rosemary played a sturdy game still at her local club, and was much in demand on various committees for her common sense and efficiency. She organized the rota which ran the aged and the infirm to hospitals, and helped to staff other medical and day centres.

It was Rosemary Lennox who suggested the street party.

It was ten days after the last of the new residents had moved into Gurney Close. At nine forty on a perfect June evening, they were exchanging notes across their embryo front gardens in the last light of the long day. Rosemary thought afterwards that she had made the suggestion as much to distract Phil Smart as for any merits of its own.

Phil was fifty-one, florid, and with an excellent head of rather unruly grey hair. He was already threatening to become the roué of the new little community. He was eyeing the rear of his next-door neighbour, Alison Durkin, when Rosemary made her suggestion about a party.

It was, Rosemary was forced to admit, a splendidly rounded rear, and the flimsiness of the cotton skirt which the thirty-two-year-old Ally was wearing was entirely appropriate to the heat wave. But Philip Smart's eyes were getting more bulbous by the moment, and the lecherous attention he was bestowing upon Ally's flanks suggested fantasies which were anything but honourable. Rosemary decided that in a man who had a largely sedentary occupation and was running a little to fat, a prolonged attempt to clarify the mysteries beneath his neighbour's skirt might lead to all sorts of cardiac dangers.

And the randy sod must learn to control himself, if Gurney Close was going to be a pleasant place to live.

So Rosemary Lennox said, 'I think we should have a street party.'

'A street party?' Phil Smart wrenched his attention unwillingly away from Alison Durkin's buttocks to his neighbour on the other side.

'A street party,' said Rosemary firmly. It had been a spur-of-the-moment idea, but she spoke now as if it had been the product of many hours of mature consideration. 'We had them to celebrate the end of the war, when I was a small child.'

'A very small child indeed, you must have been,' said Phil Smart, with automatic and highly suspect gallantry.

'I think I was three. So I can't remember the details. But I know we all sat round tables in the street, and had sandwiches and cakes and lemonade.'

'And you're suggesting we should do that?' This was Robin Durkin, who had appeared round the side of his house at the sound of this conversation. He patted his wife's splendid rear absent-mindedly as he passed her, and she straightened up and came to stand beside him. Robin Durkin tried to smile at his worthy older neighbour, but his square face showed his horror at the thought of sandwiches and lemonade. 'To be honest, Rosemary, it doesn't sound like much fun, this street party.'

Robin was a coarse-featured, cheerful man, who had started doing car repairs behind his house in Gloucester nine years ago and now, at the age of thirty-three, employed two mechanics in his own garage. He was swinging a plastic pack on his fingers, and he now passed tins of beer from his fridge to a grateful Phil Smart and Ron Lennox. Rosemary Lennox refused his offer with a smile, but Ally Durkin accepted one readily, pulled the ring-pull, and took a long, appreciative drink directly from the can, like the men beside her. 'Hits the spot, that,' she said, and wiped the froth from her lips with the back of her hand.

Phil Smart found this a captivating performance. The idea of a woman shaped like Ally Durkin who could also drink like one of the boys was a new and beguiling concept to him. Women like that hadn't been around in his young day: Phil was left feeling, as he often did, that he had been born a generation too early. He ran a hand through his abundant hair and gave Ally a broad smile of approval.

Then he dragged his mind back to the notion of intelligent comment. 'I can't say that the idea of sandwiches in the street and lemonade has much appeal for me either, frankly, Rosemary.' He'd just stopped himself from saying 'old girl'. It must be his natural gallantry which made him so sensitive, he supposed.

Rosemary Lennox shrugged. 'Just a suggestion. Thought it would be nice to have a little get-together of some kind, that's all. And we needn't have sandwiches and cakes. We could have beer and wine. And sausages and pork pies, if we felt that was more appropriate.' She tried not to stare at the portion of Philip Smart's stomach which bulged over his belt.

'Now you're talking!' Like many men who exude a professional bonhomie, Phil Smart was not really very sure of himself, and constantly checked other people's reactions, anxious to make certain that he was voicing the general opinion. 'A bit of nosh and a decent booze-up sounds a better idea altogether. Might even develop into the first Gurney Close orgy, with enough alcohol and a following wind.' He laughed rather nervously and looked away from everyone and towards the fresh green leaves of the oaks at the end of the close, fearing that he might be pushing things too far and too fast.

'I can get us a discount on a couple of cases of wine and a few cans,' said Robin Durkin, warming to the idea as he saw a way to assert his importance to this new community. His rather scanty educational qualifications had left him feeling at a secret disadvantage, but he was well aware that he could buy and sell most of the people in this little group. When you were in the garage trade, there were always people who were looking for reciprocal favours. And it would get him off on the right foot with his new neighbours here; there was nothing wrong with letting everyone know that he was a man of influence when it came to getting hold of things.

'We'd better all be honest about this. We shouldn't arrange a communal celebration without being sure that everyone approves of the idea.' This was Carol Smart, who had come out through the open front door of the house and watched her husband's performance with a resigned air. She had forced herself to speak: she had so far found it difficult to join in the communal sharing of troubles, to enjoy the small hilarities which were part of the inevitable consequences of moving into the new houses.

Carol Smart was eight years younger than her husband. She was a doctor's receptionist at a surgery in Hereford, who spent most of her time dealing with the general public. Perhaps that had given her a jaundiced outlook on life, which she treated with suspicion, as if it were constantly trying to waylay her. She was forty-three and still very attractive in her buxom and busy persona, when she allowed herself to be. But she professed herself to be happier with records than with people, and so far she had not found it easy either to relax with her new neighbours or to respond spontaneously to them.

But Rosemary Lennox was already seeing Carol as a challenge. She knew her a little already, because they had been on the governing board of the same primary school for the last year. In that context, she had found Carol both intelligent and perceptive. She had no doubt that Carol Smart should be centrally involved in any celebration involving the occupants of the new residences. For one thing, it was axiomatic to Rosemary that any such occasion should involve everyone; diversity in personalities should be a strength of any community, not a weakness, in her view.

And for another, she was sure that Carol Smart would prove to be naturally retiring, perhaps even a little shy, rather than stand-offish, as the Durkins had already hinted to her that she was. Rosemary said firmly, 'I'm sure you'd enjoy it, Carol. And we'd certainly need you to be involved, if we decide to have the street party. We'd need one of the excellent home-made quiches which Phil says you're so good at, to get the thing off to a good start.'

'And I'm told I do quite a good cheesecake,' said Alison Durkin with a modest smile.

'And of course we must include Lisa,' said Phil Smart cheerfully. They all looked automatically towards the first house in the close, secure in the knowledge that there was no one there at the moment to look back at them.

Lisa Holt had just completed her divorce. This move into a new house was intended to be tangible evidence, to herself and to others, of her determination to make a fresh start in life. The traumas of separation and marriage breakup seemed to have had little visible physical effect upon her. Lisa was a very well preserved thirty-nine year-old. Ms Holt's newly-divorced status would no doubt always have attracted an enthusiastic and conventional libertine like Philip Smart, but her trim figure and shining blonde hair were more immediate attractions for him.

And suddenly, as if riding into a film on a cue, Lisa Holt was with them. In the silence and the heavy heat of the June evening, the sound of the car engine was audible long before the vehicle came into sight. The noise, seeming at first to come faintly through the trees to them from some higher reach of the river, grew steadily in volume, and the little group which had assembled by their new garden gates fell foolishly silent. It was as if the noise held a mysterious significance for them, and was stilling their tongues with some ridiculous spell.

The silence gave the car's driver the entrance of a distinguished visitor. The small, dark-blue Vauxhall Corsa seemed to have been expected for a lengthy period by the time it turned into the close, and one or two of the spectators had to resist an impulse to applaud. Lisa Holt must have been conscious of her audience, but she was in no hurry to acknowledge it. She parked the car carefully near her new front door and made sure the handbrake was firmly on before she undid her seat belt. Then she slid from the car, gathered the various plastic bags containing her purchases, and turned towards the entrance to her house.

Only when she was almost there did she call a cheerful 'Good evening!' to acknowledge the attention of her new neighbours.

It was Ron Lennox who responded. 'Have you got a minute, Mrs Holt?' he said. It sounded a stiff form of greeting, but he was not sure what the correct address was for a newly divorced woman. And Lisa made him a little nervous in any case, as an older man; Ron found his mind leaping back over half a century, to the days when his father had taught him to raise his cap automatically to any adult female. Indeed, his hand moved a little towards his thinly-covered pate, then, as if it were disconcerted to find no hat there, dropped foolishly back to his side.

Lisa came back down the drive and stood at her own gate, only a few yards from the rest of them. They all stood close together but carefully just inside their own boundaries, as if these demarcation lines were a protection against an intimacy which might be embarrassing, either to them or to the people they addressed.