the end of the jetty and as she looked they leapt the gap. There was no hope. Baby turned to the controls, put the throttle full on, and as the cruiser surged forward, she scrambled out of the cabin and, still clutching the briefcase, dived over the side. Behind her the cruiser gathered speed. Flames flickered somewhere inside to mark its progress and then seemed to die down. Finally it disappeared into the darkness of the bay, the roar of its motor drowned by the much more powerful roar of the blazing house. Baby swam ashore and stumbled up the rocky beach. Piper was standing on the lawn staring in horror at the house. The flames had reached the upper storeys now, they glowed behind windows briefly, there was the crash of breaking glass as more windows splintered and then great gusts of flame shot out to lick up the sides of the shingle. Within minutes the entire facade was ablaze. Baby stood beside Piper proudly.
'There goes my past,' she murmured. Piper turned to look at her. Her hair straggled down her head and her face was naked of its pancake mask. Only her eyes seemed real and in the reflected glow Piper could see that they shone with a demented joy.
'You're out of your tiny mind,' he said with uncharacteristic frankness. Baby's fingers tightened on his arm.
'I did it all for you,' she said. 'You understand that, don't you? We have to plunge into the future unfettered by the past. We have to commit ourselves irrevocably by some free act and make an existential choice.'
'Existential choice?' shrieked Piper. The flames had reached the decorative dovecotes now and the heat was intense. 'You call setting fire to your own house an existential choice? That's not an existential choice, that's a bloody crime, that is.'
Baby smiled happily at him. 'You must read Genet, darling,' she murmured and still gripping his arm pulled him away across the lawn towards the trees. In the distance there came the wail of sirens. Piper hurried. They had just reached the edge of the forest when the night air was split by another series of explosions. Far out across the bay the cruiser had exploded. Twice. And silhouetted against the second ball of flame Piper seemed to glimpse the mast of a yacht.
'Oh my God,' he muttered.
'Oh my darling,' murmured Baby in response and turned her face to his.
Chapter 13
Hutchmeyer was in a foul temper. He had been insulted by an author, he had proved himself an inept yachtsman, had lost his sails, and finally his virility had been put in doubt by Sonia Futtle's refusal to take his overtures seriously.
'O come on now, Hutch baby,' she had said, 'put it away. This is no time to be proving your manhood. Okay, so you're a man and I'm a woman. I heard you. And I don't doubt you. I really don't. You've got to believe me, I don't. Now you just put your clothes back on again and...'
'They're wet,' said Hutchmeyer. 'They're soaking wet. You want me to catch my death of pneumonia or something?'
Sonia shook her head. 'Let's just get on back to the house and you can be nice and dry in no time at all.'
'Yeah, well you just tell me how I'm going to get us back home with the mainsail in the water. So all we do is go round in circles. That's what we do. Aw come on, honey...'
But Sonia wouldn't. She went up on deck and looked across the water. In the cabin doorway Hutchmeyer, pinkly naked and shivering, made one last plea. 'You're all woman,' he said, 'you know that. All woman. I got a real respect for you. I mean we've got...'
'A wife,' said Sonia bluntly, 'that's what you've got. And I've got a fiance.'
'You've got a what?' said Hutchmeyer.
'You heard me. A fiance. Name of Peter Piper.'
'That little ' but Hutchmeyer got no further. His attention had been drawn to the shoreline. He could see it now quite clearly. By the light of a blazing house.
