She'd taken her sandals off and her feet were wet. Her frock was up over her knees.
'Hussy,' I called down from the bank. I was still delighted about the mines. 'I can see all up your legs.'
'Cripple,' she said angrily. 'I heard you limping. I told you to be careful.' She was mad again. 'Did you fall?'
'Now, don't start, Janie lovie,' I said. Why do women keep getting so mad when they should be all worried? I honestly don't get it.
'Don't you lovie me, Lovejoy.'
'Where's Algernon?'
She looked up curiously. I'd tried to sound casual.
'Off on a bike. He told you.'
'Of course,' I said, easy still. 'So he did.'
She pulled herself up the river bank and stood inspecting me.
'Stop looking at me like that,' I complained. 'I feel for sale.'
'What happened up there, Lovejoy?'
'Nothing.'
I'd better have a look at it.' She pulled my torn trouser away from my side. 'Dear God.'
A family passing to their car exclaimed and tutted sympathetically. I moved away from Janie's fingers.
'Don't show my bum to everybody.'
'We'd better call at a chemist's for some ointment.'
Inside the car was hot. Janie put the air-conditioner on.
'Where to, b'wana?' she asked. I put my head on her.
'Love,' I said, 'I just don't know.'
That night I couldn't sleep. When that happens I always think, well, so what? Okay, so I'll be a bit tired next day. All the better rest you get the night after. There's no need to be so distressed as some people get. But Janie was tossing and turning too. Maybe it was the lingering effects of my grub.
Fitful patches came, blurred and then left me starkly conscious. I've heard that people mostly worry about work during the dark hours. With me it's faces. They came gliding into my mind like characters from a Kabuki play. Some just wouldn't go. Helen, for instance. Maybe I'd imagined her down at the shops yesterday, result of a subconscious longing, perhaps. We'd been very close but only briefly. The stress of competing for the same antiques had torn - well, snipped -us apart. What was she doing here? The antique shops, possibly. But 'possibly' also means possibly not. Then Kate the Wicked Sister, with her single-minded message not to help Nichole. Not surprising, really, because womankind occasionally has been known to be slightly tinged with the sin of jealousy, so it's said. But how could I possibly help Nichole, when she insisted on going about with that murdering pillock Rink, instead of a lovely hunk like me? Algernon's too thick to be anybody's ally, I told myself, isn't he? Isn't he? I got up at one point and padded in my pyjamas to peer through the back-door glass towards his bungalow. No lights. Well, three in the morning. But was he in there? Or maybe he was stealing back that very second to Big Izzie, having seen something I hadn't. I cancelled that possibility and slipped back into bed. The idea of Algernon stealing any-where's an absurdity. Even when he brews up it's like a fife band. Janie stirred. I let my legs get warm before closing in on her.
Then there was Rink the Fink. No good wondering why a rich man like him wanted to bother with a possible find of possible valuables. Greed knows no rhyme or reason. I've actually seen a real live millionaire cover his face and weep uncontrollably in a famous Bond Street auction for carelessly missing a Penny Black—admittedly these stamps aren't all that common, but you can find them if you look carefully. I got up again.
There was no light from the hillside. I sat in an armchair after pulling the curtains back.
Who was actually doing the watching? Or was there nobody there at all? I had this feeling again. Supposing Rink had two watchers, twelve-hour shifts. Possible, but how the hell would they contact Rink if I made a sudden dash anywhere? Some form of field transmitter? I gazed out into the darkness. Maybe the watcher and me were looking directly at each other, unseeing. Unless he had one of those night telescopes. Was he smoking out there? You can see a match at five thousand yards. That's what the sergeant used to say, on his belly in the mud, refusing to let the lads smoke two whole leech-ridden days before the ambush. I moved the armchair uneasily. There's something really rather nasty about being looked at when you don't suspect. It's a sick feeling.
Janie was trustworthy, though. I pondered a long time about Janie. Wealthy, lovely, attractive, and humorous. Exactly what the doctor ordered. You have to trust the woman you sleep with, don't you? I mean, if you can't trust the woman you sleep with, whom can you trust? I mean to say.
It was so dark outside. I could just see the skyline. There were some stars. The forecast said it might rain before dawn.
Yet Janie never trusts me. She keeps saying so. Still, that was easily accounted for -
women aren't very trusting people by nature. They are a very unusual sex, when you think of it. I don't think they'll ever be the same as us, reasonable and even-tempered.
What lingered unpleasantly in my mind about Janie was her husband. We'd never spoken about him, not properly. And she'd never mentioned him since that night except once to say, when I'd asked, 'Yes, that was my husband you heard. He only stayed a minute.' She goes back to him, though, most of the time. Whenever he returns from abroad she zooms home, the dutiful wife. And what was happening between them now was anybody's guess. I didn't even know where she was supposed to be this very moment, with a sick auntie at Broadstairs or what. I suspected she'd made him believe she was legitimately absent on some benevolent enterprise. But husbands get philanderers followed. They're known for it.
Lastly, Beck. Well, maybe the fact that I'd whittled him for the odd doubloon had filtered down through his cerebral cortex by now and he was doing his avenger thing.
Most unlikely, really. Beck was a sort of positive Algernon, a mad bull compared to a gormless spaniel. He'd have crashed in here the minute the ferry docked: Lovejoy, you swine, did you whittle me?
