It was typical of her, Packer thought. Although his legs were much longer than hers, she somehow always managed to keep several paces ahead of him, whether they were entering hotels, restaurants, aeroplanes, or just walking in the street. Perhaps it was something to do with breeding, he decided gloomily.
His face was set to the window, already streaked with rain, and he looked out at the familiar postcard views of canals, houseboats, belfries, the replica of Van Gogh’s swing-bridge. At least they had been spared a morning in the Rijksmuseum, filing through those rooms full of gloomy Dutch Masters. For although Sarah worked as what she called a ‘personal secretary’ to the director of a Bond Street art gallery, she showed no interest whatever in art. He often wondered what she was interested in — between the narrow giddy social life she led among her select friends in West End clubs during the week, and at country house parties at weekends. What Packer called the Backgammon-Bollinger Brigade.
He was honest enough to realize that part of her attraction for him — perhaps the greater part — lay in her exclusiveness. In the early days after they had first met, when she had still shown some passion for him, she had taken him to a famous London shop and bought him a silver pen. Sarah Laval-Smith had paid by cheque, and when the assistant politely asked for her name and address on the back, she had pointed, with chilling arrogance, to the inscription at the top of the cheque. The name of the bank matched that of her signature.
He turned his head, enough to see her neighbour trying to talk to her. She was giving the man that wide alluring smile which she reserved for strangers. Owen Packer had long discovered that her sulks and wilful petulance were inflicted only on her intimates: a bitter privilege which he had learned to endure.
A girl had stood up in the front of the boat and was intoning a list of names and places, in Dutch, English, French, and German. It was raining hard by the time they reached the Grutsmolen. ‘Here, ladies and gentlemen, you see one of the most famous windmills in Holland. As you will know, Holland has many hundreds of windmills. But the Grutsmolen is one of the largest and best preserved.’
Packer caught a glimpse of Sarah’s neat profile beside the plump bespectacled face under the pork pie hat. Very deliberately she lowered her large tinted glasses on to the end of her nose and gave Packer a wink. Like the spectacles, her eyes seemed a little too large for the rest of her face, which was of a startling prettiness, fine-boned and feline, with a fresh-skinned innocence that belied her natural self-confidence and aggression. Yet it was her eyes that remained her most striking feature: very dark, and sloping at an odd angle, as though a photograph of her had been cut exactly in half then put together again fractionally out of line. They gave her a sly, muckle-mouthed expression that was not conventionally beautiful, but extraordinarily attractive. For Owen Packer this attraction lost nothing in the knowledge, as her current consort, that much of her allure depended on artifice, including a set of false eyelashes and a broad colour scheme of skilfully applied eyeshadow.
When the boat stopped, Packer tried to take her arm, but she evaded him and reached the quayside well ahead of him. He caught up with her as she stood huddled, urchin-like in her rain-spattered beret, under the canvas awning. ‘Still being followed?’ he asked, with a forced grin.
She looked away. ‘The man next to me said there are some wonderful tulip nurseries about two miles from here.’
‘Bully for him. And you’re ready to walk there in this pissing rain?’
‘Why do you always have to sound so cross?’ she pouted. ‘You stay here and look at your windmill, and I’ll take the bus. There’s one every ten minutes. I’ll see you back at the hotel this evening.’
‘Thanks,’ said Packer. He made an ineffectual attempt to kiss her, but she ducked artfully away.
‘Please, my make-up!’ she cried. ‘The rain’s done enough damage as it is.’ She turned, smiling. ‘Now go along and have a good look at your lovely windmill. It’ll cheer you up.’
‘I’m perfectly cheerful,’ he said. ‘I’m cheerful enough to take a running jump into the canal.’
She shrugged and adjusted the angle of her beret. ‘You’ve been in a foul temper ever since you got up. I just hope you’re nicer this evening.’
He watched her walk over to the bus. The man in the pork pie hat was already aboard. Packer didn’t wait to see if she sat next to him again, but turned and walked towards the mill.
Follow the rule book, he thought grimly: if I start a quarrel now, it’ll just get worse. Though it couldn’t be much worse than it was at the moment. This weekend expedition had gone badly from the start. The plane had been three hours late leaving, and Packer had mislaid his passport and traveller’s cheques just before take-off. ‘God, you’re hopeless!’ she’d cried. ‘However did you become a Captain in the army?’ ‘I wasn’t in the army,’ he’d replied, ‘I was on special duties.’ ‘Oh, how exciting and mysterious!’ she’d taunted him, with her spiteful laugh. As with art and windmills, she appeared to have no interest in Packer’s past career.
He entered the
