The Boat House

FOUR

After hearing him out, she'd reached across the table as if to take his hand. But she'd touched his sleeve instead, a stand-in gesture for two people who didn't know each other well enough for the real thing; and then, five minutes later, they'd been walking back to the car. It had come home to Pete how awesomely alone she must be; and after the day that he'd had, he could feel himself sliding into perfect harmony with her outlook.

An outsider, and an outcast. They made a neat kind of set.

This time, he dug out his old road atlas from under one of the seats and took no chances with his navigation. It should take no more than a half hour to get to where they needed to go. After leaving her, and by driving through most of what was left of the night, he could still get back to the valley by dawn.

They did a slow drive past before they pulled in. Pete flicked on the Zodiac's interior light to check the address on the paper that Mike had given to him, and it was right. The Russian woman was looking out of the window. Just back from the road, standing in their own grounds, were a series of linked low rise apartment blocks. Probably a mid-seventies development; service flats with the most perfunctory of services.

She said, "Why would you do this?"

There was only one answer he could think of.

He said, "Why did you ask me for a ride?"

There was a big suburban hospital just across the way and, judging by some of the nameplates against the entranceway buzzers, the flats were occupied mostly by single medical staff. The key loaned by Mike opened the main door. The apartment was three floors up. There was no lift.

They climbed to the topmost landing, and found the number they wanted. The hallway lights cut out on a timer just as Pete was getting the door open, but by then they were as good as inside.

With a glance back at him to be sure that she was doing right, she went in ahead.

So, this was the accommodation that his brother had lined up for him. Actually, it wasn't too bad. A short passageway led to a pint sized sitting room with some plain contract furniture. It had the look of a reasonably sized room in a cheap hotel with the back wall cut into an arch and the sleeping area divided off by a folding screen partition. There was no phone.

He went around switching on all the lights, and checking the kitchen taps for water; she moved to the window where the curtains stood half open, and looked out.

Pete said, "You should be okay for a few days, but after that I don't know what will happen. It ought to be better than just being on the road. You can work out what you want to do from here."

"You don't know what this means to me," she said quietly, without turning around.

"I know," Pete said, moving up to take a look out from beside her. "I'm a saint."

They were at the back of the building. Three floors below were sloping gardens of borders and bushes, and a lit zigzag path that led down to a parking lot with a few cinderblock garages. Some of these appeared to have been rented by residents, but most seemed to leave their cars in the open. The Zodiac was down there amongst them.

All seemed as calm and unthreatening as it was possible for a night to be.

"I don't even know your name," she said.

"Pete. Peter McCarthy."

"Alina Petrovna."

He didn't know exactly how it happened. It was as sudden and unexpected as a rockfall. One moment they were standing side by side, the next she was hugging him so hard that he could barely draw breath. He didn't know what to do. He held her awkwardly, like a teenager with his first ever dance partner. And he patted her shoulder, as if to say, There, there, everything's going to be fine.

Trying to make light of it, he said, "We shouldn't be doing this. I hardly know you."

The pressure lessened. She looked up into his eyes.

Her own, he saw, were sad and remote.

"Believe me," she said. "You wouldn't want to."

An hour later, he was still with her. She was on the hard sofa and he reckoned that she was asleep, but he couldn't be sure. There was a duvet cover in the bedroom — no linen, just the white cotton shell of the duvet itself — and she didn't stir when he brought this through and laid it over her. He'd already turned off most of the lights.

He knew that he ought to slip out quietly. Leave her, walk away. He'd already done more than most people ever would.

But he kept turning the strange syllables of her name over and over in his mind.

And, for the second time and without any prompting, he found himself wondering what they'd make of her in the valley.

He couldn't even think of taking her back with him, that much was certain. Imagine the complications. Everyone would jump to the wrong conclusion, even Ted Hammond; especially Ted Hammond, who worried over Pete like a mother hen. He kept hinting at how Pete, though hormonally sound, wasn't getting any younger, while the supply of eligible women in the valley was meagre at its best. There was the passing-through traffic of summer, but Pete didn't find that he was much tempted by the seductive signals of bored rich women — or rather, bored women with rich husbands — of a certain age. The men came to play with their big boats, their wives cast an eye along the dock and saw Pete. Maybe it was the way that he had to clamber aboard and ram in the pump nozzle when they called by for fuel, started them thinking and gave them all kinds of ideas. He didn't exactly have to beat them off with a stick, but some of them were so upfront it could be embarrassing. They tended to have tight, well kept figures, expensive bleach jobs, and the skin tone of a crocodile handbag after a lifetime's forced tanning. Thanks, but no thanks.

Somebody like Diane Jackson, though… that was a different proposition entirely. She was a Mrs, but as far as he'd been able to ascertain her husband had long ago been booted out into the street with his hat thrown after him. She'd arrived in the valley only a few months before, to work on the Liston Estate at the head of the lake. She lived in the big house, she sometimes came down to the yard on Estate business. They'd kind of eyed each other and although nothing had exactly happened yet, there was something in the air that said that it might. Something like the highlycharged sense of impending lightning.

Or maybe he was kidding himself.

Maybe, for all that he'd been thinking, he really wasn't anything more than a walk-on in the drama of her life. A couple of lines to say, not even a name to be remembered. Whatever the case, he could be sure of one thing; come home with a good-looking stranger in tow, and his chances with said Mrs Jackson or anybody else would nosedive within hours of the gossip mill getting to work.

Ah, well. Then it would be back to his daydreams of Deborah Harry and a baby oil massage, and wait until some other prospect might open up in his life.

Alina's hand was out from under the cover and turned slightly, so that the inside of her arm caught the faint electric light from the almost-closed bathroom door. The edge of her sleeve had fallen back to show a line of tiny, puckered scars down the soft part of her forearm. He frowned. There was always the possibility that she was actually an addict, and that the rest of it had been a lie; but these were white and long-healed, more likely a permanent record of an abuse that had once been inflicted upon her.

So it probably was all true. He didn't doubt it now, and hadn't really needed this evidence to persuade him.

"I only wish I could do something more," he whispered, mostly to himself.

And she heard him.

"You don't know what you're saying," she said from the darkness. She spoke softly, but she sounded as if she was fully awake. "But it doesn't matter. After tonight, you won't see me again."

"What do you mean?"

She raised herself onto one elbow, and the duvet slid from her shoulder. "I mean that I'd hurt you. I'm like a rusalka."

"A what?"

"You'd say, a heartbreaker. I have it on the best authority."

He moved around the sofa, and crouched down before her. As once before, her face was in shadow with only the slight, bright flicker of her eyes to betray her attentiveness.

He said, "Listen, don't worry about me. I can look after myself."

"That makes no difference. I'm not just an ordinary runaway, it's not that kind of a situation at all. I could be the worst thing that could ever happen to you. I use people, and then I betray them. It's not a choice that I make. But it happens, again and again."

He shook his head, half smiling. "I don't understand you," he said.

"That's right," she said. "You don't."

At which point, there was a sharp knock at the apartment's door.

Alina shot upright, any hint of drowsiness gone, as tense as a hunted cat getting a scent of the pack. "It's probably nothing," Pete said, rising, but as he turned to go to the door he could sense her wary, watchful presence behind him. The fact of it was, he was a little uneasy himself. When it came down to it, he'd no right to be here other than on Mike's say-so, and that could prove to be an authority of little substance. And then when the shit that he'd handed you hit the fan, Mike was the kind of person who'd shrug and then offer to sell you a washcloth.

A woman stood outside.

She seemed surprised to see Pete. She was around forty, trim and well preserved, anxious-looking and in a dressing gown. She said, "I'm sorry. I saw the light and I thought… I thought Doctor Singer had come back."

"I'm a close friend of his," Pete improvised quickly.

"Oh." she hesitated. "I'm sorry to ask, but…"

"Is something wrong?"

She picked her words carefully, uncertain of being misunderstood by someone she didn't know. "Well… there's a strange character hanging around outside. I'm not sure, but he seems to be looking in all the windows."

Pete felt himself unwind a little. A peeper? Here was something that he could handle, much better than being put on the spot as a squatter. He said, "Just give me a minute," and he stepped back inside. Alina had switched on the table lamp next to the sofa; she looked rumpled but alert, and presumably she'd heard what had been said.

"I have to go out for a few minutes," Pete told her. "Will you be all right?"

"Of course," she said, and she glanced at the woman in the doorway.

"I'm sorry," the woman said. "I won't keep him long."

Alina nodded briefly, as if to show that she didn't mind. Pete told Alina to lock the door behind him, just in case; and as they went out into the stairwell, Pete couldn't help reflecting on the woman's attitude. She'd been deferring to Alina.

Borrowing her man.

They went down to the next floor.