was sympathetic and better still large enough to lend her some clothes until she got home. It was at this point that Eva discovered that she had left her handbag somewhere in the reeds. She remembered having it during the night but it must have fallen off the airbed when she was blowing it up. Well she couldn’t go back and look for it now. She would just have to go on without it and ring Henry up and tell him to come out in the car and get her. He could bring some clothes too. Yes, that was it. Eva Wilt climbed on to the airbed and began to paddle across. Halfway over the airbed went down for the eleventh time. Eva abandoned it and struggled on in the lifejacket. But that too impeded her progress and she finally decided to take it off. She trod water and tried to undo it and after a struggle managed to get it off. In the process the rest of the lemon loungers disintegrated so that by the time she reached the bank Eva Wilt was exhausted and quite naked. She crawled into the cover of a willow tree and lay panting on the ground. When she had recovered she stood up and looked around. She was at the bottom of the garden and the house was a hundred yards away up the hill. It was a very large house by Eva’s standards, and not the sort she would feel at home in at the best of times. For one thing it appeared to have a courtyard with stables at the back and to Eva, whose knowledge of large country houses was confined to what she had seen on TV, there was the suggestion of servants, gentility and a social formality that would make her arrival in the nude rather heavy going. On the other hand the whole place looked decidedly run down. The garden was overgrown and unkempt, ornamental bushes which might, once have been trimmed to look like birds and animals had reverted to strange and vaguely monstrous shapes, rusted hoops leant half-hidden in the grass of an untended croquet lawn; a tennis net sagged between posts and an abandoned greenhouse boasted a few panes of lichened glass. Finally there was a dilapidated boathouse and a rowing boat. All in all the domain had a sinister and imposing air to it which wasn’t helped by the presence of a small church hidden among trees to the left and a neglected graveyard beyond an aid iron fence. Eva peered out from the weeping willow and was about to leave its cover when the French windows opened and a man came out on to the terrace with a pair of binoculars and peered through them in the direction of Eel Stretch. He was wearing a black cassock and a dog collar. Eva went back behind the tree and considered the awkwardness off her situation and lack of attire. It was all extremely embarrassing. Nothing on earth would make her go up to the house, the Vicarage with nothing on. Parkview Avenue hadn’t prepared her for situations of this sort.
Rossiter Grove hadn’t prepared Gaskell for the situation he found when Sally woke him with ‘Noah baby, it’s drywise topside, Time to fly the coop.’
He opened the cabin door and stepped outside to discover that Eva had already flown and had taken the airbed and the lifejackets with her.
‘You mean you left her outside all night?’ he said. ‘Now we’re really up Shit Creek. No paddle, no airbed, no goddam lifejackets, no nothing.’
‘I didn’t know she’d do something crazy like take off with everything,’ said Sally.
‘You leave her outside in the pouring rain all night she’s got to do something. She’s probably frozen to death by now or drowned.’
‘She tried to kill me. You think I was going to let her in when she’s tried to do that. Anyhow it’s all your fault for shooting your mouth off about that doll.’
‘You tell that to the law when they find her body floating downstream. You just explain how come she goes off in the middle of a storm.’
‘You’re just trying to scare me,’ said Sally. ‘I didn’t make her go or anything.’
‘It’s going to look peculiar if something has happened to her is all I’m saying. And you tell me how we’re going to get off here now. You think I’m going swimming without a lifejacket you’re mistaken. I’m no Spitz.’
