“I left my bag up on the bridge. Wait here and I’ll see if it’s still there.”
When Maggie walked across the grass and then up the winding path which led to the bridge, she found her legs were shaking. She began to cry, tears pouring out of her eyes and down onto her soaking dress. She found her handbag where she had left it and made her way back to Fell.
He struggled to his feet when he saw her coming. “What happened?” asked Maggie.
“Someone pushed me.”
“Let’s get home quickly,” said Maggie. The dark night was suddenly full of menace. “We’ll need to call the police.”
“No,” said Fell, shivering despite the warmth of the night.
“Why? Someone tried to kill you.”
“I don’t want that Dunwiddy probing into our lives. It could have been some malicious youth, some nutter. I mean, who would know I couldn’t swim?”
“Let’s hurry. I’m frightened.”
Fell put an arm around Maggie’s waist and they hurried homewards. As they reached the town square, Maggie could hear raucous voices quite near and the sound of breaking glass. The youth of Buss, possibly her earlier tormentors, had probably smashed a shop window.
As they reached home, two police cars raced past.
Maggie forced her trembling fingers to deal with the burglar alarm. Only once they were safely inside, with the burglar alarm set, did Maggie’s trembling and shaking stop.
“Let’s get out of our wet clothes,” she said. “Fortunately for us, the river’s unpolluted, so we shouldn’t need tetanus shots. I forgot to switch the hot water on.”
“We’ll put it on now and change into our dressing gowns,” said Fell.
Maggie clutched his arm as he was about to go up the stairs. “Do you believe in God, Fell?”
“I’ve never thought much about it. Why?”
“It seems so odd that I should have been there at the right time.”
“I know. You saved my life and I’ll never forget it.”
“Oh, don’t feel beholden to me in any way,” said Maggie urgently.
Fell smiled at her in a way that made her heart turn over. “Impossible. Let’s get out of these wet clothes.”
“My new dress is ruined and I’ve lost my shoes,” mourned Maggie. “Mind you, I sweated so much in that wretched disco, it’s probably ruined anyway.”
“Which disco?”
“I’ll tell you sometime.”
As Maggie took off her wet clothes in her bedroom and scrubbed herself down with a towel, she decided not to tell Fell that she had endured a miserable evening with Peter. He might feel she was becoming too much a permanent part of his life. She guessed his earlier misery had been caused by disillusionment about Melissa, but was shrewd enough to guess that Melissa might be soon replaced with another dream, another fantasy woman.
Maggie put the old wool dressing gown she had worn since her schooldays on over her nightgown and carefully took out her precious contact lenses, marvelling that they had not been lost in the river, popped on her thick glasses and went downstairs and began to heat up a pan of milk on the kitchen stove.
When Fell joined her, she poured two glasses of hot milk, added a dash of brandy to each, and they carried them into the sitting room.
“It really was the most amazing coincidence,” said Maggie, tucking her legs under her on the sofa. “I mean, I’d left the disco to walk home and there were these youths bothering me. I ran away in the opposite direction and when I knew they weren’t following me, I stopped in the middle of the bridge.”
“Why didn’t Peter walk you home?”
“Oh, he got called out on a story,” lied Maggie quickly.
“Someone must have been following me,” said Fell. “I thought I was the only one by the river. It was all so quiet. I was standing on that wooden jetty when someone gave me a great shove. I struggled to the surface but found myself out in the middle of the river. I’m frightened, Maggie. We’ve got the money. Why don’t we go away for a bit?”
Maggie brightened. With a fantasy as rosy as anything Fell could have concocted, she conjured up a picture of both of them lying on a tropical beach under the palms.
“On the other hand,” said Fell, “there’s a part of me that now knows that if I run away from this, I’ll consider myself a wimp and a failure for the rest of my life.”
The dream burst. “Then we go on,” said Maggie quietly.
“You know, Maggie, I don’t think there can be anyone quite like you.”
Maggie blushed with pleasure.
“I just hope Peter is worthy of you.”
Maggie’s heart sank. She had a sudden vision of Peter when she had last seem him, slumped in a chair under the strobe lights, his mouth hanging open and snoring drunkenly.
“He’s just a date,” she mumbled.
But Fell was not paying attention. “I drew some money out of the bank. I must give you some. You never ask for any.”
“You don’t need to pay me. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Only my life. But I did draw out the money for you before you saved me. Please take some.”
Maggie thought of her dwindling savings and then nodded. “Well, just some for the housekeeping.”
“And a new dress. That pretty one must be ruined.”
“I’ll see if the dry-cleaner’s can do anything with it. Let’s go to bed and then we’ll try that Fred Flint tomorrow.”
They went upstairs and then stood together on the landing. “Good night, then,” said Fell. He had a sudden impulse to kiss Maggie, but turned instead and went into his room. What on earth would Maggie think of him?
Maggie awoke during the night. She heard Fell cry out. She leaped out of bed and went to his room. He was tossing and turning and making those inarticulate strangling cries which people make when they are actually screaming in the middle of a nightmare.
Maggie sat on the end of the bed. “Shhh,” she said. “Maggie’s here.”
The cries ceased and his sleep became calm. She stroked his hair back from his forehead with a gentle hand. She was suddenly engulfed with such a wave of love for him that she felt frightened. How could she maintain an easy, friendly manner towards him with such overwhelming love?
She went back to bed wondering why she should be cursed with such intense feelings. Such love was for poets, not for plain Maggie Partlett.
¦
Every morning they awoke, Fell and Maggie hoped that the stifling weather would have broken, but the next day was as close and muggy as the one before. At least at the beginning of the heatwave there had been days with a slight refreshing breeze.
They had both slept late.
“It seems odd,” said Fell as they set out for the library.
“What does?”
“All last night. Like some awful dream. In fact I had an awful nightmare during the night that men were chasing me to shoot me and then a beautiful woman came into my dream and said, ‘Shhh, it’s all right, Fell’.”
“What did she look like, this woman?”
“Blessed if I remember.”
They walked into the library. Maggie was relieved to see that the pretty librarian was not on duty. Instead there was a middle-aged, motherly woman at the desk. They asked for the voters’ roll and took it over to a desk and sat side by side and began to scan the names, street by street.
“This could take all day,” mourned Maggie, “and I wish it wasn’t bound so that we could take a page each.”
They searched on and then decided to break for a quick lunch.
