The Boat House

THIRTY-ONE

Dizzy Liston tended not to do much of his own driving; this had seemed like a good idea ever since a Marylebone magistrate had taken his license away, some eleven months before. Caution wasn't uppermost in his mind now, however, as he turned the big shadow silent car out onto the valley road. His mind was on the directions that he was now repeating, over and over, fixing them in his memory with continuous rehearsal. Even though he was technically the major landowner at this end of the valley, he knew his way around no better than the average visitor; most of his life so far had been spent at Winchester school, a minor Oxford college, and a series of Mayfair addresses all taken on short leasehold. It was said that the Liston males had stopped taking much of an interest in their home territory around the time that the custom of droit de seigneur had fallen out of use. Most of the land was now in hock, anyway, and the house was halfway to a ruin; Dizzy's plan had been to kick around here for a few months obeying doctor's orders and getting his topspin back, and then head once more for the bright lights leaving Diane in command for good. She'd be charged with the duty of keeping the estate staff in mortal terror and liaising with the forestry people so that Dizzy's cash float would be regularly renewed.

That had been the idea; but the waitress had changed everything.

He saw a gated track just before the village, marked by a boulder painted white at the edge of the road; he took the limo up as far as he could go, and then he left it to walk the rest of the way. What if he was in the wrong place? What if he was in the right place, and she didn't come?

The first question was settled when he came to a slate-built stile, which was exactly as she'd described it to him. The second remained unanswered, because when he scrambled over and walked out into the wooded clearing on the other side of the wall, she wasn't there.

It was part of an estate forest — one of his own, he supposed. The gate and the KEEP OUT notices that he'd left behind ought to be enough to ensure privacy, even so close to the village and at this time of the year. But he didn't want solitude, he wanted to see Alina. She'd promised, so where was she? What was he supposed to do, go down to her tatty little cafe like one of the herd and try to bid for a minute of her distracted attention?

Never, he thought.

But underneath the thought, he knew that if it proved to be the only way, he'd probably do it.

"Well?" she said.

He spun around, spooked like a rabbit. She was standing by the stile, one hand still on the topstone, and she was looking at him; he hadn't heard anything of her approach, anything at all.

He said, "I thought you wouldn't come."

"Why would I lie to you?"

"That's not what I meant. But you've strung me out for so long, I was starting to believe that it would never happen." He was also starting to sound the way he knew that he'd sounded on the phone, but he couldn't help it.

"I'm not so hard to get hold of," she said.

"You want to bet?"

"I'm a working girl, Mister Liston, I can't come running every time you call. Why is it so important to you, anyway?"

This was it; and he knew, without need of omens or evidence, that he was somehow going to mess up the next couple of minutes.

He said, "I don't know what you did to me."

"Me?" Alina Peterson moved away from the stile and into the clearing, not toward him but in a wide circle around him. It was as if she were deliberately staying out of his reach — half taunt, half provocation. She made no sound on the bark and fallen leaves. She said, "I've done nothing."

"That night," he insisted, "at the party. I thought that you'd stay, but you didn't. I tried to call you, and you kept putting me off. What do I have to do?"

"Try explaining what you mean."

He wasn't sure that he could. He said, "I can't stop thinking about you. It's way out of control. I can't relax, I can't sleep. I sit around all the time just wondering how you are, and what you're doing."

She stopped, and fixed him with a hard look. "Are you trying to say that you're in love with me?"

"No," he said bleakly. "I might understand it if I was, but how can I be? We went upstairs, we talked for ten minutes, you disappeared. Nothing works that fast. I'm thirty-five years old, and I've made a fool of myself often enough to know the real thing when I get it. This is something else."

"So now you're asking me for an explanation, and I can't give it to you."

"Do you affect anyone else like this?"

"I don't know. I'm not the one to ask."

She looked away from him now, and moved toward a fallen trunk to sit. The trunk was hollowed out and scorched, lightning-burned. As she took a perch, Liston said, "It's tearing me up, and every day I don't see you it gets worse. If I don't get help, I'm going to crack up."

But she wasn't exactly taking all of his soul-baring with the sympathy that he'd hoped for.

"So see a doctor," she said.

"I don't need a doctor, I need you."

"How?"

"Come and stay with me. I've heard about the place where you're living now, and I can give you better than that. All I'm asking for in return is the chance to get you out of my system."

She looked at him for a long moment, her hands clasped around her knees and something in her expression that might have been amusement. Over on the far side of the wall behind her a stream could be heard, a constant sluicing like rain on the darkest of nights. A breeze sighed, and lightly shook the branches overhead.

"My, my," she said. "How you sweep a girl off her feet with your romantic talk. You may have made it through thirty-five years, Mister Liston, but you don't seem to have learned much about other people. If you can stop looking on the rest of humanity as minor characters in your biography, then perhaps we can start to discuss this. Until then, I don't think there's anything more to be said."

And with that, she got up from the burned log and walked back toward the stile over which she'd arrived. "Alina, please," Liston began as she passed him, not reaching out to stop her even though she was close enough for him to be able to; and she half-glanced back, as if in approval.

"That's a start," she said. "Keep trying."

"Can I call you?"

"No." She reached for the topstone again. "I have to make a few changes in my life around here. When I've made a final decision on what I want to do, then you'll hear from me. Until then you wait, and you say nothing to anyone about this."

He was about to speak, but he quickly changed his mind. Unless he was mistaken, she'd just offered him some hope. He had a profound sense of being like a fish on a line; she was playing him and it was painful, and with every move the hook was biting deeper. It was maddening, frustrating; he was used to women that he could pick up and use, blow off his infatuation like so much steam before letting them go. Alina seemed to know it, and she wasn't going to play it his way; instead, he was going to have to follow the rules that she'd laid down for the occasion.

He didn't understand it.

But he didn't have any choice, either.

She paused at the top of the stile, as if she'd just thought of something; and she said, "Who cut in on the call?"

Liston shrugged. He'd heard the click of the extension, but that happened all the time and everyone in the Hall knew better than to stick around and eavesdrop.

"I don't know," he said.

Alina seemed to think for a moment; and then she lightly swung herself from the stile, and landed without a sound on the other side.

By the time that Dizzy Liston had reached it, she was gone.