three-quarters of a thigh. Next to the nuts was a calendar used to note the up-and-coming darts tournaments and December’s photograph was of a bullfight in Spain. The nuts and the calendar hung directly opposite Rasher's usual position at the bar. And when Mr Lawrence left him the night before, there he was studying the girl, perhaps remembering his wife, then blinking at the bullfight, and then he gave his minders the slip and went bullfighting on the main road. And the bull got him.
His minders were now in mourning.
The bull, a silver 306 turbo-charged diesel Peugeot, driven by a social worker, had hit him and dragged him fifty yards along the steel railings.
Albert was a late arrival that lunchtime. He arrived only moments before Mr Lawrence. His stoop was more apparent, his shoulders rounder. He'd spent a large part of the night searching the road for the gold that had flown from Rasher's broken body. Albert was a prospector. He'd found a finger, he told them, but it was the little finger, the only one of Rasher's fingers that didn’t sparkle. Sod's law, really.
“We'll have to tighten security,” the colonel said seriously. “They got to him. She got to him. Lured him on to the rocks, or rather, into the road. Beware of the women's sweet song.”
Mr Lawrence interrupted. “She left him.”
“Exactly!” The colonel refused to see the point. “She left him knowing that he would be destroyed. My God, how I hate women. They never fight a single battle face-to-face, bayonet-to-bayonet. They come at you in the night, in the dark, in the back. Listen to an old soldier. Stay away from them. Just like the wops, really. Women and wops have a lot in common.” To a young woman in a hugging black dress behind the bar he shouted, “You there, you with the Polish accent, another drink if you please.' And while she poured it he kept his eyes open for the possibility of poison. He turned as Mr Lawrence put on his hat. “Are you off, then? Is it that time already?”
“Yes, it is. I have an early sitting.”
“The woman?”
Paul must have told him.
“Yes.”
“Good grief! You be careful. Take care. Can't stand any more casualties at the moment. Not until we get some reinforcements. Watch your back.”
“I'll try to.”
He left them to their mourning.
Two customers were waiting for his return. Three if you counted the woman. She stood aside while a young couple chose a painting: ducks flying from a pond surrounded by trees in grand seasonal decay. Even as he wrapped it and wrote their card number on the back of their cheque he cringed at the thought of it hanging anywhere outside a garden shed.
“Ducks!” he said to her once the brass bell had announced their exit. “My best seller. Ducks, and then tigers and horses and dogs and, of course, Oriental women with breasts bared. I ask myself what it is about ducks that make the masses want them flying up their livingroom walls? They ruin hundreds of quite reasonable landscapes. But there you are. Ducks sell.”
He led her into the studio.
“What is it about you today?”
She settled into her pose.
He wagged a finger. “There's something different. Let me guess. You're standing straight. There's a spring to your step. There's a glow to your skin. What's happened? You're messing about with my values.” “What is your favourite colour?”
He shook an irritable head and said sharply, “That’s got nothing to do with it,” and then, after a pause, he relented and all but whispered, “Yellow.” He nodded. “Yes, yellow is good. That’s the colour of the future.”
“I'm sorry. Gosh, you're always so grumpy. Perhaps it's not me at all. Perhaps your temper has changed, your eyes clouded with red. They do look red.”
“Perhaps. Maybe. But if that were the case then things would be darker, not lighter.”
“You've had a bad day?”
“All days are bad. This one is worse.”
“So it's true that the artist suffers.”
“A sense of humour too, along with the spring. That's something else I hadn't bargained for.”
“I want to change my pose. Is that all right by you?”
She slipped that in and took him by surprise. Knife and palette suspended, he stood rooted while his colour darkened.
“Will it mean starting over?” Her eyebrows raised over laughing eyes.
She teasing him, by golly!
Her shrug was a little caress. “If we can change our arrangements so that you're paid by the session, or something like that, it shouldn't much matter. And I do so want you to catch me…just right.” Eventually, a small tremble spread up from his knees and he seemed to come alive again. He said, “Christmas is coming. There won't be much to wrap.”
“There is always Easter,” she said and gave him a broad smile. She sat on the sofa and leant back, lifting her legs up so that her dress fell away to reveal an expanse of thigh. “Something like this,” she said. Her thighs were slim and tanned, brushed with the colour of her copper-brown dress that fell away to expose them. She lay on the sofa, one arm resting on the arm, her legs drawn up, her knees bent, her dress falling away just right. It was, for her, a daring pose. It was impossible not to wonder. Her skin radiated the heat from two glasses of Cadet. He was down to his last bottle of Merlot-Malbec and kept it back for later, for when he was alone again and could brood over the session.
She said, “I wonder what happened to Helen?”
“Mrs Harrison?”
“Yes, Mrs Helen Harrison.”
Twice the sitting was interrupted by customers in the shop. Paul's absence was a nuisance – most inconsiderate of him – and slightly puzzling. He should have been home by now. Mrs Puzey arrived with her family and cleaning equipment and during the next hour while flying dust was cornered and lemon polish stung the air, he hid in the studio and continued with the painting. The woman had gone and left a curious hole.
The painting was coming along. The blocking was complete, the key, the composition, and the shape was pleasing; the sweep of the hip, the depth of one smooth thigh as it curved in against the other, drew the eye to the shadow caused by her dress.
The noise had ceased. The old bell had rung out a beautiful silence broken only by the sounds of tapping on the studio door. The door eased open and Laura glided in. Laura, she glided everywhere. A black streak of cover-girl potential hugged by a tight black skirt. A wide shiny belt bridged her skirt and a loose crimson top. No naked midriff for Laura. Not a hint of that firm, flat landscape with its glittering omphalos. Not that he had any reason to believe that she wore a bellybutton ring but he could fantasize as well as anyone. More to the point, Laura was fashion conscious and mutilation was the fashion. There were none of the flatlands of the Chinese delta about Laura, no paddy fields by gosh, more the lush hills of West Africa, he would say, or some bursting volcano in the Philippines. Somewhere jolly warm, anyway.
Her glossy lips widened into a tropical smile. There was a breathless honesty in Luscious Laura, the black vixen of The British, unusual in women, for there was no threat. No threat at all.
“Mr Lawrence,” she said.
“What is it, Laura?”
“The phone went. You didn't hear it.”
“My hearing isn't what it was. Who was it?”
“Paul, it was. He's gone now.”
“Ah, Paul.”
“He phoned from the hospital. They're keeping him in an extra night for observation and there’s nothing to worry about. He didn't want you to worry.”
“Thank you, Laura. I'll try not to.”
With a flourish she closed the door behind her. The air, still stirred by her breathless words, was touched with Wrigley's Spearmint. Having got used to the idea of Paul's return a slight disappointment drew in with the
