The Boat House

FIFTEEN

"So where does she go every night?" Wayne said as the two of them sat in the empty hull of a partly restored cruiser on the Saturday morning, but Pete could only shrug.

Wayne knew about Alina. Pete's guess was that everybody in the valley knew something about her by now, and nearly all of them would know that she was staying in his house. Nobody apart from Wayne had mentioned it to him, though, which probably meant that while their mouths were shut their minds would be running in overdrive. Well, they'd had a few weeks of mystery, of secrets kept and of wrong conclusions avoided. His hope had been that she might have moved on before the word got around, no chance for gossip and so no awkwardness, but his sense of firm control in that area seemed to have slipped away from him. It wasn't that he minded her presence; and he didn't mind her company, on those occasions when he actually spent time with her.

He simply wished that he didn't have to contend with the unspoken supposition that the two of them were hiding up there on the Step and banging away like a couple of baboons, which he saw in the eyes of more than one person who wished him good morning when he went into town to pick up his mail.

The truth of it was that he was even less certain of her now than he'd been at the beginning; how she thought, the way she might react as the world around her changed. It seemed to be something beyond language, beyond culture; it was a more profound sense of the alien, of their lives as separate rivers with uncrossable ground in between. He could hardly begin to imagine what it must be like for her — everything severed, no turning back, the entire texture of her life abandoned for the deep terror of the new. Little wonder that her scrapbook of photographs appeared to be her dearest possession, or that she prowled the landscape at night like an unquiet spirit. Two evenings back Pete had found his front door open to the darkness, and the porch light on; rain had been falling outside in a continuous silver curtain and in the sheltered area at the top of the steps, Alina's shoes had lain discarded. If there had been a moon that night, the clouds had been keeping it hidden.

"I don't know for sure where she goes," he admitted to Wayne. "I don't even know when she sleeps."

"And she's going to the big party on Saturday?"

"So she says. You bringing Sandy?"

"If it works out." Wayne made his 'desolate and misunderstood' face. "Her mother's having another Wayne hating week." And then he glanced at Pete. "Nothing compared to your problems, though, is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, two women on a string, and at your age."

"I haven't got anybody on a string. Alina's just a guest in the house, she's not a personal masseuse."

And Diane Jackson? Well, Pete decided to say nothing on that subject. Back at the village Post Office he'd sorted out the usual junk mail which never made it past the door of the shop and found that he was left with one real, honest to God letter. He'd opened the envelope and a piece of white card had slid out.

It was a formal invitation for the big party at the Hall; not a specially printed card, but the kind sold over the stationery counter with spaces for the date and the names to be handwritten in. This one was a joint invitation; alongside Pete's name was that of Alina Peterson, the Russian girl's newly adopted identity.

The handwriting, he could only assume, was that of Diane Jackson.

Damn, he'd thought.

Diane always tried to keep her weekends for spending with Jed, but because of the rain they had to spend the early part of the day in their own below stairs lounge, watching the Saturday morning cartoons on television. She'd hoped to be able to take him out, perhaps for a longish walk through the forest where they could hope for a glimpse of a deer, but at its heaviest the downpour would have called for wetsuits rather than waterproofs. And he seemed happy enough.

Jed was coming up to five years old, very bright but also very quiet… so quiet that she worried sometimes, wondering if there were things wrong that he wasn't telling her. He was small for his age, dark, large eyed — in fact he seemed to be all Diane and almost nothing of his father. About twice a day, she'd ask herself whether this move had been right for him. Jed had watched his parents' marriage break up and had never said a word; he was hardly likely to start making his feelings known now.

So she watched him closely, and she tried to read the signs, and when he seemed to be wanting something special she did her best to see that he got it. Jed's idea of doing something special was to be allowed to help her out on the estate, almost as if he was afraid that he'd find himself abandoned if he didn't make himself useful. Diane told herself that this was just a kind of paranoia on her part, an over apprehension that came from reading too many doctor articles in women's magazines, but it didn't make her any less uneasy.

But what could she expect? She'd taken him from the town and the friends that he knew and she'd brought him to this great, dusty mausoleum of a place where he didn't even like to run around because the echo of his footsteps sounded too much like someone faceless who was following too close. He spent two thirds of his day at a school ten miles away, and the rest of the afternoon looking through the older children's comics at Mrs Neary's until Diane picked him up at five. Aimless and with no company, what kind of a life was that?

Too much like her own, she was beginning to suspect.

By negotiation when the rain had stopped, the proposed deer spotting walk became a combined walk and trap shoot. Jed liked to pull the level which fired the clays into the air while Diane would blast away and try to improve her shooting. It took him both hands and all his weight, but at least it was exercise. They loaded the launcher and a box of black clays into the back of the Toyota, and drove up an old gated track to the little used range.

The range was a clearing in the forest with some open sky beyond, along with a couple of huts and an open frame for the would be marksman to stand. They brought out the launcher and fastened it to its base, and Diane spread out some plastic sheet for Jed and weighted it with the box of clays. She'd wrapped him up so well against the weather that he could hardly be seen in the middle of all his clothing. Around them was the silence of the dense conifer wood, a moment of stillness held forever in time while the rest of the world moved on outside.

Jed did everything by the book, sounding the warning horn before every pull and staying well clear of Diane and the gun. The launched clays zipped across the window of sky, and Diane followed each with a two foot lead before squeezing the trigger.

And then, if everything ran true to form, the undamaged clays would sail down to a landing somewhere out of sight.

Diane scored five hits out of twenty, which was the limit that she'd set herself because of the cost of the cartridges. Afterwards they went scouting for clays that could be re used; some cracked on landing, but others had come down whole. Diane carried the box, and Jed filled it. The trees around them stood tall and straight, like a phantom army. The ground sloped, strewn with fine moss and bark so soft and spongy that their footprints took minutes to disappear. The earth had been churned up black where forestry vehicles had passed through during the week, and there were cut and trimmed logs waiting for collection alongside the track.

"It's raining again," Jed said, looking up at the sky.

"Must be coming our way," Diane said. "We'd better hurry."

The rain put an end to their chances of a walk not that they'd have been likely to spot a deer anyway, after the noise made by the horn and the gun. They drove back to the hall, and Diane grilled a beefburger for Jed and put it on a bun. He insisted on tackling it with a knife and fork. Diane sat on the opposite side of the refectory table and watching him, chin in hand, as someone with nothing better to do might watch somebody mending a clock.

"You might as well pick it up," Diane said at last. "You're getting it everywhere."

"No," Jed said, with some determination as he attacked the bun from the other side.

"It's allowed, picking a beefburger up."

"No."

There was silence for a while as Jed ploughed on. And then Diane said, "So how's the school?"

"All right."

"Only all right?"

"The games are all strange. Everybody keeps touching everybody." He made a yuck face, and then carried on.

Diane gave a slight, wry smile, and looked at the rain on the window.

It was still raining steadily when she'd put him to bed, after a last half hour of television and a couple of chapters of Stig of the Dump. She stood at the beaded glass and looked out into the gathering darkness.

And, without really meaning to, she found herself wondering what Pete McCarthy might be doing.

Probably having big fun with that Russian waitress.

Damn, she thought.