The Boat House

by Stephen Gallagher

  He didn't mind responding to a panic call at such a late hour, especially not when it meant transporting three microwave ovens up to the hall and so getting an advance peek at the preparations. Adele Venetz, the sister that Wayne always thought of as the quiet one, had been sitting at the big rolling-out table as he'd entered the restaurant kitchen. He'd rapped on the open door as he'd passed it, and said, "Who called for International Rescue?"

  And then he'd faltered.

  Adele had looked up at him, not quickly but as quickly as she'd been able. She appeared to have been holding a makeshift icepack to the side of her head and a couple of the cubes had skidded out of reach and begun to melt, almost as if she'd been in too much of a hurry to stretch over for them. From what Wayne had been able to see of her left eye, it had looked as if it had a couple of drops of blood in it.

  "Thanks, Wayne," she'd said, only a little unsteadily, and Wayne had been able to see that questions or even concerned enquiries were definitely not being encouraged. "I hope this won't hold you up too much."

  "Don't worry about me," he'd said, but then he couldn't just leave it at that and so he'd added, "Will you be all right?"

  She'd nodded, barely. "I just need to lie down for a while. Wayne, I'll be grateful if you don't mention this to anybody."

  "Don't worry, total silence," Wayne had assured her and then he'd loaded the ovens into the van and left her to make her way upstairs, touching the wall as she went. And then, restraining himself from a farewell blast on the Dixie horn, he'd set out for Liston Hall.

  With the first of the ovens he'd gone the long way through to the hall's kitchens, taking in the sights as he went. It seemed that the hallway itself was going to be the disco area, with a glitterball and nets of balloons overhead and several of those special-effects lights that would make the walls appear to be dripping with coloured slime. The doors through into two of the biggest reception rooms had been folded back, and a false wall between them opened to reveal what had once been the ballroom and which now, for one night, was a ballroom again. The whole setup had been quiet, almost deserted; there had been music playing, but that had been somewhere far off in the house. Probably Dizzy's gang, keeping out of the way in case the sight of others working made them feel weak.

  The scene in the kitchens had been considerably more lively; as he'd shouldered his way through he'd come upon a spectacle of controlled panic with Angelica presiding. Mixers had been mixing, blenders had been blending, and Angelica had been pushing cloves into the biggest baked ham that Wayne had ever seen. The three local women that she'd brought in as help for the evening had been buzzing around behind her, greasing dishes and setting up trays and napkin-wrapping cutlery.

  "Oh, Wayne," Angelica had said. "You're an angel. Did you speak to Adele?"

  A moment's hesitation told her that he had, and that he'd seen. But all that he'd said was, "She'll be along in about an hour. Just a few things she has to do."

  "You're a good boy, Wayne," Angelica had said, and they'd both known that she was meaning for more than just the errand.

  "I'll even shake paws for a biscuit," Wayne had said.

  Now, as he was waiting, he took a dispirited look around. As much as he could be aware of someone else's problems, his own were the ones that preoccupied him most. All right, so he had a flat, but it wasn't exactly the kind of place that Warren Beatty would have wanted to call home. Behind him in the bathroom stood a chipped old tub slowly filling with water that was the colour of weak tea; the bathroom walls had been replastered and roughened for tiling, but they didn't have any tiles. He'd tried posters, but they curled in the steam.

  Straight ahead were his sleeping quarters, the lounge, the dining area, and kitchen. All of this sounded pretty impressive until you understood that they were combined in the one room. He'd folded his bed back into the sofa, but somehow the sheets always managed to peep out around the edges. The carpet was in two pieces that didn't match and the cooker was a tabletop model, non-functional except for the hotplate, rescued by Ted from an old Dolphin 20 on its way to being broken up. Wayne's going-out stuff, all hung over the back of his one upright chair, had the definite air of being from another world altogether.

  As a seduction suite it had its shortcomings, he reflected as he unzipped his jeans, stepped out of them, and slung them onto the sofa with the rest of the day's rubbish. He was working at a distinct operational disadvantage, but he reckoned that this could be changed.

  Odds could be altered. He was already making his plans.

  In the constabulary house on the south side of Three Oaks Bay, Ross Aldridge was putting a new message onto the outgoing tape in his telephone answering machine. Loren was upstairs, engaged in that long getting-ready process that he'd never quite been able to fathom. He could hear her hairdryer, almost as hard on his nerves as a dentist's drill; it had ruined three attempts to get the message down already, but he didn't want to ask her to lay off for a while in case the uneasy peace was threatened yet again.

  Silence.

  He gave it another try.

  When the message was finished and checked, he went upstairs. Neither he nor Loren liked the house, much; it had been built not too long after the war, and with its small windows and pebbledash it had none of the atmosphere of the 'place in the country' that they'd been hoping for — if anything, it looked more like the married quarters for lower RAF ranks to be found around old and run down airfields. He'd had ideas about them buying somewhere of their own, but so far they'd had to stay as ideas.

  Loren was sitting in a slip before the dressing table mirror. Her hair was pinned back, and she was shaking a blob of some kind of cream onto a ball of cotton wool.

  She said, "I only hope they can leave you alone for one night."

  "They'll all be there," he said. "Nearly everyone got invited."

  "Not everyone." She started to work the cream into the skin around her eyes, staring straight ahead at her reflection as she did it. "Some of them around here wouldn't think twice about dragging you away for no reason."

  "Well, if anything turns up, you can stay."

  "Oh, thanks a lot," she said drily.

  Aldridge made no sign or sound as he went through to the airing cupboard to get himself a fresh towel. These were old grounds, and he didn't want to go over them yet again. He was wondering if there would be many at the party likely to recognise him out of uniform. As he moved back down the short landing toward the bathroom, Loren's raised voice came to him again.

  She said, "I'm going to enjoy myself tonight, Ross. I'm not going to let anything spoil it."

  He stopped in the bedroom doorway. "Yeah. Rub shoulders with the local laird."

  "He'll probably just show his face and then disappear."

  But he could read her too well, and he could see that she was hoping for something more. She was looking for something memorable, probably for the first time in two years, and he didn't want to deny her that.

  He said, "Whichever way, it should be a good party. And it's not a night for trouble."

  There were no sounds of any kind coming from Alina's bedroom, and hadn't been for more than an hour. Pete listened in the hallway for a few seconds, and then he knocked on her door. After a moment he knocked again, harder, and he heard her say Come in.

  He opened the door, but he didn't step all the way through. Alina was over on the far side of the room, sitting at her table with the lamp angled to spill across the pages of the scrapbook that lay open in front of her. The rest of the room was in near darkness. She didn't seem to be looking at the album, at least not anymore; she didn't seem to have made a start at getting ready, either.

  Pete said, "You can go ahead and use the shower as soon as you like."

  She looked up at him, and smiled thinly. "You first."

  "There's only enough for one. You know what the heater's like."

  "But what will you do?"

  "I've got every pan in the place filled up and on the cooker. I'll manage. Y
ou wearing your new dress?"

  "Yes," she said. Again, that smile… as if she was barely managing to conceal some kind of pain.

  Pete said, "Is everything all right?"

  She looked at the book first, and then at him. Her eyes were bleak, reflections of a landscape where nobody walked. "I don't think I'm winning, Peter," she admitted.

  "Winning what?"

  "My own little battle. The fight to stay."

  She was serious. Pete crossed the room and crouched beside her chair. "You're doing fine," he insisted. "You've found a place you like, you've found people you like… you're working and you're not even paying any tax. That's some people's idea of paradise."

  "It's not what I mean."

  "Do you mean the official part?" Pete said. "What have you heard?"

  "Not that, either," she said, and she tapped the side of her head with a forefinger. "I mean, in here. This is where I'm losing it. It's like there's two of me — one who knows what she wants, and the other who tells her what she can have. And she's a lot stronger than I ever thought she could be."

  Alina was looking totally lost; Pete yielded to an impulse for once, and put his arm around her shoulders. She felt small, and as frail as a bird. Wearily, she let herself rest against him.

  He said, "I didn't realise you felt this low. I thought you were really happy at the way things were working out."

  "One of me is," she said.

  He gave her shoulders a squeeze. "Hey, come on," he said. "Brighten up. Get yourself ready, and we'll see how they enjoy themselves in the Big House."

  It wasn't much, but it seemed to work; or at least, it was a start.

  "Do my best, chief," she said with a smile. And as Pete was standing, she reached over and closed the scrapbook.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The party started at nine, and was raging by ten.

  Diane could hardly believe how well it was going, and Dizzy hadn't even put in an appearance yet. Bob Ivie and Tony Marinello were running the bar, having a great time, and making themselves easily popular; they were ignoring Dizzy's Women in favour of the locals, leaving the Sloanes to stand around looking remote and faintly embarrassed in a way that displeased Diane not at all. Bob Ivie's speciality was his Hawaiian Punch, made to a secret Hawaiian recipe which became less secret every time he mixed up another batch before an audience, and which changed in its details anyway. Tony Marinello's speciality was to escape from behind the bar whilst Ivie was holding forth, and to ask any unescorted woman for a dance regardless of her age or her inclination.

  The agency girls were doing an excellent backup job. They were zeroing in on the wallflowers, splitting up couples and effortlessly getting them to mix. There was almost nothing for Diane to do but move around saying hello, accept a couple of dances, and nod amiably to people that she hardly knew. She saw Ross Aldridge, whom she knew slightly from when he'd processed her shotgun license application, and wondered for a moment if the rumour was true about how he and his wife had moved to the area a few months after their baby had died.

  And then she checked her watch. Dizzy would be appearing soon. If everything continued to go like this, there was a fair chance that he'd have the village back on his side for the rest of the summer. He didn't have to change, he simply had to present himself as more of a lovable reprobate than as a spirit of corruption; PR was everything, as long as it didn't cross the thin line over into patronisation. After a quick wave to Ted Hammond across the crowded floor, she managed to catch the arm of one of the hostesses.

  "Everything all right?" she said. She could see for herself that it probably was, but she was starting to feel a little useless here.

  "Everything's going fine," the girl said, not quite so much of a girl when Diane looked at her close-to. She was blonde and doll faced, but her blue eyes gave the impression that she's just about seen everything, and rather more than was healthy for so short a life. "I never worked a crowd as happy as this one with their clothes still on."

  "Anybody been spiking the drinks?"

  "Not from out end. Yours?"

  Diane shook her head. "Not that I know of. Maybe it's just anticipation."

  "Well, they're all high on something. Tonight's not a night they'll forget in a hurry."

  Out in the big hall, the DJ made a smooth change between tracks. He was running what was mostly a 'sixties disco with a sprinkling of classic rock and only a few recent standards. He had big banks of lights and speakers on either side of his console with some lower level relays here in the ballroom; he'd been running some smoke and dry ice earlier, and some of it still hung in the air and gave the lighted area beyond the doorways the effect of some offworld film set.

  She could also see that Pete McCarthy and his waitress had just arrived.

  They'd stopped on their way across the marble floor, both of them blue white in the lights and the fog. She was saying something to him, and he was glancing around and nodding. Alina was wearing a plain white dress that left her back and shoulders bare. She wore no jewellery, and her hair had been simply gathered and tied. Even though she'd told herself that she wasn't going to have any thoughts or feelings on the subject at all, the sight of Alina looking so good made Diane feel just a little bit sick. Maybe there was some envy in it, she could be honest about that. But mostly it was directed toward herself, and whatever it was in her that seemed to respond to some call given out by the least suitable of men; despite what she'd been through in the past couple of years she appeared to have learned precisely nothing. Either she'd imagined McCarthy's interest when there was really nothing there, which on its own would be humiliating enough, or else McCarthy was a no good dissembling two faced piece of garbage, which was slightly better for her self respect but still got her nowhere.

  But she could at least go over and say hello.

  She'd almost started out, but she was stopped by a touch on her arm. Turning around, she found herself facing the dark, handsome-looking woman who'd arrived with Ross Aldridge and whom Diane assumed to be his wife.

  "I just wanted to say something," Loren Aldridge told her, leaning close and raising her voice to be heard over the music.

  Diane tried not to wince. The music wasn't that loud. Loren seemed to have desperation in her eyes, and the good time that she was having was a fierce one. Diane said, "Feel free."

  "I'm having a wonderful evening. This is the best time I've had since I came here. I just wanted you to know."

  "That's good," Diane told her. "Did you dance with Tony yet?"

  "Yes. He's a wonderful dancer, isn't he?"

  "So they say." Diane was starting to wonder if Bob wasn't being a little too liberal with the strong stuff in his Hawaiian knockout juice. She'd have to mention it to him — and pretty soon, if Loren's slightly wild eyed look was any kind of an omen.

  Loren said, "I want you to tell Mister Liston how much I appreciate this. The invitation, and…" She gestured around, lost for a description. "Everything."

  "You can tell him yourself. He'll be down in a couple of minutes."

  "Really?" Loren said. "But I won't know what to say."

  "You could always ask him to dance," Diane suggested. "Someone has to."

  Dizzy's late and short-lived appearance hadn't been planned entirely for effect; the truth was that he was still fairly weak after his illness. He couldn't be expected to manage much more than an hour on his feet, after which he'd be living up to his name, although not — Diane hoped — to his reputation.

  She looked again for Pete, but Pete was no longer there; and now she could hear a scattering of spontaneous applause — applause! and a few cheers and whistles which told her that the host had finally arrived on the scene. People were squeezing by her in the general drift to get a look at him, and she let herself go with the crowd a little in order to see how he was doing.

  He was doing fine.

  He was, she supposed, a minor celebrity in his own right after all, extensively written up in the News of the World and a regu
lar in the Grovel columns of Private Eye. Now he was looking rumpled and approachable, thin and still a little yellow tinged after the hepatitis. Diane couldn't deny his charm, even though she knew more about him than most; he came over as something like a wind-up toy that was apt to go bashing itself into the nearest wall without guidance and protection.

  The agency girls were taking expert care of him. Veterans mostly of conferences and corporate operations where the good time masked a definite hidden agenda, they were steering him through the introductions deftly and with an impressive display of memory. They were supporting him, they were making him look good, and the overall strategy seemed to be working.

  Diane felt a sense of relief. If Dizzy the prodigal was to be received back onto his family's old stamping ground without too much in the way of resentment, her own job would be a lot easier to carry off. The pity of it was that she hadn't made a bigger part for herself in the night's scenario; she was getting polite nods and hellos from people that she already knew slightly, and curious glances from most of the others. It was as if the estate and the valley people were opposing armies under truce, mixing freely but still in uniform.

  She spotted Wayne, over on the fringe of the crowd with his girl. He'd introduced her to Diane about half an hour before. Her name was Sandra, Sandy for short. She wasn't tall and she was slightly heavy, but she had a pleasing face with soft eyes; perhaps she'd never be a beauty, but age would never make her ugly either. She was craning to see over the shoulders of the people in front, and pushing Wayne's hands away as he playfully offered to lift her.

  The music changed to slow numbers. Diane was just thinking that she'd go around to the back and see how the Venetz sisters were getting along with the buffet, when somebody moved in and stood beside her; Pete McCarthy, wearing a more-or-less new jacket and a pleasant smile, his tie already undone. He was alone.