'Lucky she didn't get her beak round it or she'd have gone through it to the bone. They're very vicious, you know.'
Churchill was aware that the company had just increased by one, perhaps two. While Ross-Donaldson peered at the injured finger, a cloud of scent and a rustle of skirts approached from somewhere in the rear. The hand in question was gently grasped by another one, thin, cool and dry, the owner of which Churchill took in as of medium height, dark hair, pale complexion and no particular age. There was elaborately cut clothing and earrings and necklaces, too.
Ross-Donaldson said, 'Lucy, may I present a brother-officer of mine, Lieutenant James Churchill of the Blue Howards? Churchill, this is Lady Hazell.'
'How do you do, Mr. Churchill.' Lady Hazell gave the hand she was holding a couple of shakes and went on holding it. 'It's not much use trying to see anything in here,' she added truthfully. 'Let me take you along to the bathroom.'
Still holding his hand, she led him to a far comer of the room and up a narrow staircase with linoleum underfoot and crumbling plaster on the walls. On the next floor, in virtually complete darkness, she drew him across a couple of yards of what felt and sounded like bare boards, then switched on a light so comparatively bright that Churchill blinked.
They stood in what was indeed a bathroom, for it contained a bath, and in addition a washbasin and w.c. But he found it hard to imagine anyone bathing here willingly. A dank-looking rug covered some of the floorboards, its design indistinguishable. Two disused pots of paint stood in a corner beside an equally disused lavatory brush, and along the sill below the uncurtained window were half a dozen jam-pots, most of them empty, one or two holding an inch of pale-brownish liquid. The light-bulb was unshaded.
In the two seconds he spent taking this in, Churchill felt, Lady Hazell had been taking him in. She gave no sign of how he had fared when she said pleasantly, in her faintly hoarse voice,
'I'm afraid things are in rather a mess. We don't use this part of the house a great deal. Now let me have a look. I must apologize for poor Sadie's behavior. She's been over-excited and I'm afraid she rounded on you when you were being the only brave and helpful person there. That's life. But this doesn't look too bad, thank God. Does it hurt very much?'
Churchill had had much more than two seconds to take Lady Hazell in. He found her a good deal better than he had expected, in several respects. To begin with, she was no more than thirty-five, if that; he had assumed that the onset of promiscuous polyandry could not be expected before the later forties. Then, she was slightly above the quite sufficiently attractive level promised by Ross-Donaldson; her complexion turned out to be white and clear rather than pale, with strongly marked black eyebrows and abundant lashes. And although her figure was obscured by the various artifices of her clothes, neither it nor they seemed too bad. Best of all, her manner was quiet to the point of docility. He knew very well that this might easily change later, but he was glad that so far she had not sprung at him with the kind of erotic snarl he had imagined when Ross-Donaldson first started describing her.
'What? Oh. No, it's… fine, thank you.'
The blow had been right at the limit of the parrot's reach, and in fact most of the tear in the skin had already stopped bleeding.
'Good. But I think we ought to disinfect it, and bathe it and so on. Now…'
She opened a wall-cupboard, the glass of which was cracked and foxed, revealing a hundred or more unstoppered bottles, uncapped tubes and lidless tins. After a brief search she took out a small bottle of beetroot- colored liquid.
'Mercurochrome. Just the thing. Let's wash the cut out first, though.'
Now she turned on one of the taps at the basin. A loud shuddering groan filled the room, dwindled to a whimper and was quiet. Water splashed, trickled, splashed again.
'It'll run hot eventually, you'll find. I expect you'd like me to leave you to yourself, Mr. Churchill. I think there's some plaster in the cupboard. Be sure to help yourself to a drink, won't you?'
Before leaving, she gave him a glance that clearly meant something, though he could not have said what. Perhaps he had already failed some vital test and would never be allowed near her again. He put one of his uninjured fingers under the tap, which was now delivering a steady but cold flow, and considered. Had he been meant to set about pulling her dress off the moment they arrived up here? And if so, would that have been taken just as a required show of keenness, to be noted and taken up later, or would one thing have been allowed to lead to another? And if so, where? In here? Then keenness was hardly the word. Or had Ross-Donaldson been pulling his leg about the whole thing? One could never be sure with him.
And what was that about helping himself to a drink? Were there some dregs of medicinal brandy somewhere in the cupboard? He looked, but soon gave up. The risk of toppling bottles into the basin was too great, and any dregs he might find in this context would be unappealing.
The water from the tap had settled into a state between cool and lukewarm. He washed his finger, working up a little lather from a sliver of household soap, and dried it on his handkerchief. After some thought he poured mercurochrome onto it. There was no special result apart from a bright red stain on the skin. The plaster he decided against. He used the w.c., smoothed his hair back in the mirror, lit a cigarette and slowly groped his way down the stairs.
The room he had left could never look quite empty, but within a few seconds he was sure there were no people in it. He listened. Immediately there was the sound of a car being started and driven away. It was not, as he feared just when it began, the sound of a jeep. He went quietly through the hall to the front door, opened it and looked out. The jeep was standing on its own where it had been left, and a tail-light was receding along the drive. He shut the door and listened again. There was absolute silence. He walked across thick carpets to the foot of the stairs. From here it was quite plain that the figure on the tapestry he had noticed on arrival was human after all, a girl in a long white dress reclining at the edge of a pool or stream. Nothing was to be seen up the stairs.
Back where he had just come from, he heard the parrot stirring in its cage. On his way over to it he noticed a tray with bottles, glasses and an ice-bucket. He understood now about being told to be sure to help himself to a drink. Grinning, he mixed himself a gin and tonic with ice. What little he had gathered of the men here earlier had not appealed to him much. They had certainly been sent packing; even now it could not have been much more than five minutes since Lady Hazell had left him in the bathroom, which meant among other things that he could not have been inside the house more than a quarter of an hour. This seemed to him very surprising. However-how much longer was he going to be on his own, and how was he going to fill in the time?
