He stopped by a book-lined alcove to remove his tie completely and to get some air. The books were behind glass, and the reflection that stared back at him showed the face of a stranger. He'd no reason to be anxious, and no right to it either.
So stop it, he told his reflection.
"Ross Aldridge," Ted Hammond announced breathlessly, triumphantly, as he appeared at Pete's side. He was flushed, happy, and in his shirtsleeves.
Pete said, "Who?"
"Name of the local copper that I couldn't remember. He just left. If it's the host you're looking for, he's long gone, too."
"It's tough at the top."
"Well, it isn't so great here at the bottom, most of the time. Do me a favour?"
"What kind of a favour?"
"Dance with one of the Venetz sisters for me."
"Which one?"
"Doesn't matter, but we have to ask both because you can't split them up, see?"
Pete took his jacket off, and hung it on one of the bookcase doorknobs. There was a cloakroom somewhere, but this would do as well. He said, "Okay. But if either one of them gets frisky, you're on your own."
"Deal," Ted Hammond said, and they set off to see if the sisters had joined the party yet.
Sandy was a few months younger than Wayne, but unlike Wayne she'd stayed on at school. Her mother had ideas about her going to university, but Sandy knew her limitations; she planned on a two year course at a catering college, and had diplomatically said nothing about it yet. Wayne, in her mother's view, was more than just an ordinary valley kid; he was a walking symbol of everything that she didn't want for her daughter.
It was a big weight for him to be carrying, but there didn't seem to be a lot that he could do about it. He stayed out of the way as much as he could, and Sandy mentioned him as infrequently as possible.
The one thing that she didn't do was to give him up.
He was walking just ahead of her now, checking out the trail in the darkness. It was mostly soft grass and woodchips here, and she'd stepped out of her shoes and was now carrying them, walking barefoot.
Wayne said, "Feeling any better?" He was referring to the slight dizziness she'd experienced when they'd first come into the moonshadow of the trees.
"Yeah," she said. "A bit. Must have been all those flowers. I'm sensitive to flowers."
"Is that right?"
"And perfume. There's only certain perfumes I can wear."
"Better make me a list for Christmas," Wayne said, and he gave her his hand to help her out onto the lakeside track. She stopped for a moment, and put her shoes back on for walking on the hard tarmac. She was curious as to where they were going, but so far Wayne had refused to say; as far as she knew, this was just one of the estate roads and it led nowhere.
Sandy said, "We'd better not be heading for your place, even if you've been doing it up. Oil and stuff affect me worse than anything."
"It'd take us an hour to get there. This is really close." His shadow touched her lightly on the nose. "You're not going to believe your eyes."
Their destination, Sandy discovered a few minutes later, was the Liston Hall boathouse.
He took out the keys that he'd brought from the office back home, and opened the door. He went in ahead of her and tried the lights; they flickered once, but he seemed to know what to do because he went inside and Sandy heard him thump something, and then all the lights came on. As she stood waiting, she felt again that wave of dizziness that bordered close to nausea, and she put a hand against the rough wall of the boathouse to steady herself. As Wayne returned, she quickly took her hand away; she wasn't going to tell him about this, not if she could help it.
He beckoned her in, and took her to the rail to look over. What she saw under the lights was a boat, a big one in too small a space.
"We're handling the brokerage on it," Wayne explained. "Wait until you see inside."
She had to be careful on the stairway down to the quay, because it was steep and the treads were so narrow. Wayne helped her aboard and then darted ahead, switching on all the lights and then dimming some of them to create an impression of instant welcome. When they reached the after stateroom, he left her prodding the waterbed as he fiddled with the stereo to get some low-level background music. He asked her what she thought.
"It's just like something in a film," she said.
He stood behind her and unhooked her dress; a shrug of her shoulders, and it fell easily to the floor. She shivered a little as its touch ran over her. The room seemed to give a lurch, but she ignored it. She stepped out of the dress and then turned and sat on the bed, rather heavily; smiling at Wayne to show that she was okay, she kicked off her shoes one at a time.
Wayne sat beside her, unbuttoning his shirt. "We can run a video if you want," he said. "There's some really strange stuff in there."
"Things are strange enough, thanks," Sandy said.
She got to her feet again, hooked her thumbs into her white cotton briefs, and took them off. That was everything, not counting the thin gold chain around her neck. Wayne seemed frozen in mid action as she quickly threw back the top sheet of the bed and climbed in; but then he recovered, and started an awkward fight to get his shoes off without actually untying their laces.
Something bumped against the hull, and sent a faint thud all the way through the boat.
"What was that?" she said, half-sitting up and holding the sheet against her.
"I don't know. Driftwood, probably."
"Are we locked in?"
"No," Wayne admitted. He might have lied about it if he'd been able to think more quickly, but the truth was out before he knew it.
"Go on, then, Wayne," she said. "Just to make it safe."
Wayne smiled, and she could see that he was nervous; not of the shadows outside, but of the uncertain country that lay ahead. Once entered, there was no true return. Shirtless and now shoeless, he went out to put the lock on the boat house door.
As soon as he'd gone, Sandy lay back on the waterbed. She heaved a great sigh. She so much wanted this to be exactly right; and perhaps, by the time that Wayne returned, she'd have enough of a grip on herself to ensure that it would be.
A small, sick feeling lay in Wayne like a swallowed stone. It was starting to go wrong, and he couldn't quite work out how or why. The participants were willing and the setting was ideal; they'd been close to it often enough, so what was happening now?
Forget it, he tried to tell himself. Everything's going fine. Everything's going to be great.
He stepped out onto the deck of the Princess, and looked over the side into the water. He checked all the way around the boat — or at least, as far as he could — but he saw no driftwood, nothing. Perhaps it was in the shadows under the overhang, propelled there by the lake swell; but as he was trying to see, the overhead lights blinked once, and then again, and then they went out completely.
The only illumination now was from the dim curtained portholes and the deck light of the boat itself. He called out, "I won't be a minute. Don't fall asleep on me!"
But there was no reply from inside.
Leaving the lit Princess was almost like leaving home, because its glow in the darkness was so warm. He climbed to the upper level, and from the top of the stairs he could see a wide slice of moonlight telling him that he'd not only forgotten to lock the door behind them, in his haste he'd neglected even to close it; he crossed the decking and closed it now, switching the key from the outside to the inside and turning it in the lock. Then he felt his way along the wall to where he knew the faulty junction box to be.
He made a fist and banged on the casing, hard.
There was a loud spat, a brilliant flash of blue that almost burned out his night vision, and a sharp smell of ozone and cinders. Wayne was so taken aback by this that it was a moment before he realised something else; the hand that had touched the box had come away wet.
He couldn't understand it… but he knew that he'd narrowly avoided a serious shock, and ther
e was no way in which he'd be prepared to touch the box again. The Princess had spotlights, he'd turn them around this way when it was time to get Sandy to the door and then he'd go back on his own to switch them off. That wouldn't be easy; even now he was beginning to remember what it had been like when he'd been small and afraid of the dark, unable to sleep without a nightlight.
He decided that he wouldn't tell her about this. Not until afterward, anyway.
Slowly, carefully, he felt his way back towards the stairs. The boards were rough and splintery underfoot. There was a noise as he started to descend; but it was just the boat, moving slightly with the swell of the lake and rubbing against one of those padded joists that stuck out too far from the quayside.
Anticipation was building with every descending step. He was almost trembling with it. His grip on the rail was shaky. On the quay, he almost tripped himself as he went to re board.
Wayne, he heard in a whisper from behind him.
He spun around so fast that he came close to falling over, his heart leaping like a bird in a snare. They weren't alone; and then the next thought was that Sandy must have come up from below and was now standing on the quay, but then that thought died as what he'd taken for her shadow came out from under the stairway.
Relief coursed through him like a shot of heroin.
"Miss Peterson," he managed to say. "What are you doing here?"
But as she came forward he faltered, and his certainty died; it was her, but it wasn't, in a way that he couldn't even have begun to explain. What he seemed to see was something else, something that wore her like a shell, and it was walking towards him. Her skin was blue green and marbled in the reflected lake water, and her eyes were as dull and expressionless as a shark's. He wanted to move, to step back, but nothing seemed to be happening.
This wasn't the choice I wanted to make, Wayne, she said. Please try to forgive me.
And then she reached for him.
Sandy lay still for a while, hoping to feel better; but being flat on her back didn't help, and closing her eyes only made it worse. Finally, she had to give in.
"Sorry, Wayne," she said, although he wasn't around to hear. "Tonight just ain't the night."
Slowly, almost painfully, she got out of the bed and started to dress. By now she'd definitely come to pin the blame on the stuff they'd had to drink; every time she even thought of it she came close to throwing up. It wasn't drunkenness — she'd been drunk twice, and neither time had been anything like this — but something else altogether. She didn't know what her mother was going to say when Wayne finally got her home; she could only hope that things would improve along the way.
Wayne came down the stairs behind her, walking slowly. She didn't turn, not wanting to see his obvious disappointment on top of everything else.
"Another time, okay, Wayne?" she said, doing her best to sound bright and cheerful and hearing the evidence that she wasn't succeeding. "I don't think I'm such a good sailor. Will you zip me up?"
She'd definitely annoyed him. He zipped her dress in silence, and his touch was cold.
Sandy tried to think of something to say, something that would explain how she felt; but the image that formed in her mind was of a punchbowl brimming with vomit, and she knew instantly that she was about to do likewise. Without even looking at him, she dashed for the companionway and the open deck above.
Which was how she came face to face with the phenomenon of the two Waynes.
Wayne number two was sitting — or rather, slumped — in the dining alcove of the deck saloon, and he was leaking all over the expensive looking upholstery. His head was at a strange angle because of the way that he'd kind of subsided into the corner, and his eyes were slightly open. They didn't seem to be focussed on anything in particular. His hair was dark and wet, and plastered down close.
Sandy was so much taken by surprise that her sickness was forgotten. Life had suddenly taken a mis step, and she was completely thrown. She turned around, looking to Wayne number one for an explanation.
Everything caught up with her then, and everything slammed into its proper place.
Alina surged up the companionway toward her, eyes burning like new stars. Sandy drew breath to scream but she was stopped halfway by Alina's clamped-down hand, which filled her mouth and lungs with the rank taste of stagnant water. Quickly, Alina stepped around her so that she could hold Sandy's head in both of her hands; Sandy made a weak attempt to struggle, but it was like fighting a rock.
Alina gently turned her, so that she was facing Wayne again.
I'll take you to where he is, she said. He'll be waiting there for you.
Sandy fought for air. Her vision was starting to blur, with something more than just tears.
Then blackout.
Tom Amis is a carpenter. Seven days a week he works on the new ski lodge in the woodlands overlooking the valley, his private quarters little more than a sleeping bag in a back room behind the new reception area. The bricklayers were the first to leave, followed by the tarmac gang and the plasterers. Amis is a loner, which is just as well. Because Amis is alone.
The owner has been calling by every few days to check on progress, but now is in Barbados. Amis hopes that it's cloudy, but not so cloudy that the owner should come back and start breathing over his shoulder again. Amis has only three definite things in his life; his skills, his van, and his career plan, and all of them seem to have been taking a beating over the past few weeks. Two of his new windows, big ones, have warped and had to be redone. The van has broken down. And by his career plan he should have been finished and out of here by now, instead of which he's way over time on a fixed-price job and his prospects of retirement at thirty-five are receding now even faster than they were before.
It had once seemed like a reasonable strategy for a loner; live cheap, move around, invest everything and then cut loose while still young and really start to live. But it isn't working out. The money's mostly there, but the spirit in him seems to have been leaking away. He's starting to realise that by the time he's in a position to do anything that he wants, there'll be nothing that he really wants to do. He'll be returning to an empty fairground of deserted stalls, with only the faint remembered echo of the music that he's been ignoring.
He's not just a loner any more. He's lonely. But the habit of solitude is something that has to be kicked, like a drug, and Tom Amis isn't sure that he has the reserves. There's a party at Liston Hall tonight; he could have gone, but instead he's here, same as every night, in this hundred year old hunting lodge with its rambling outbuildings and its faulty generator and only a photograph to talk to.
And the radio.
Some nights, he calls up the late show DJ on the request line. He never gives his name, and he always asks for the same dedication. They love that kind of stuff on late night radio. They call him the mystery man with a record for his mystery girl; people have been writing in wanting to know more, women especially, but Amis doesn't have the will to respond. Six months ago he'd have gone for it, maybe written back to some of them, seen it as a way out of the rut that his life had become… but not now. There's no way of explaining the rules of attraction, and Amis is even less expert than most.
He stretches out on his camp bed. The lights flicker to the beat of the generator. He looks at his photograph.
He took it himself, out on the terrace at the lakeside restaurant. Amis doesn't have much in the way of material goods but his camera, like his watch, is one of the best. He ran off almost an entire film that day, mostly on views, but of all the shots this one was the best of them. What does it show?
His waitress.
He stares at the photograph. He knows almost nothing about her.
But he can't get her out of his mind.
He wonders why.
In another town, outside yet another radio station, Pavel Ilyitch returns to his car. It's still in the shadows where he left it, grimy windscreen reflecting the neon tracery of a department store sign on the ne
xt block. Five floors below, somebody is sounding off as the traffic before them makes a slow start at the lights.
Will it be here? Will this be where he finds her?
Pavel levers himself into his car, forcing movement out of a body that longs for sleep more than anything else. The most that he can promise it will be a few snatched hours on the back seat in a quiet place somewhere. This is how almost all of his days have been spent, casting bait, checking behind him, moving on; apart from odd nights in hostels where he can get a bath and about thirteen hours of near-coma to catch up, he's been continuously on the road since the dawn that he stole the car and the cash that has become his fighting fund.
The car is barely recognisable now; so filthy that some kids have finger-written their names in the dirt on the boot. He's had a couple of bumps, as well, one of which has left a long and jagged crease in the body almost from headlight to taillight; that one wasn't his fault, but he drove away from it fast to avoid the questions that would certainly follow. The inside is a mess, even though he's come to look on it as his only home and so tries to keep it straight.
He switches on the interior light and picks up a bundle from the passenger seat. The main part of the bundle is the Daily Mail Yearbook, much-creased and stuffed with notes and odd bits of paper. It's held together by an elastic band which has two ballpoint pens clamped under it. He takes the band off and starts to sort through; he ticks off one more name from the Yearbook's list of radio stations, and then copies its telephone number across onto his checklist. When he's exhausted the list, he isn't sure what he'll do; he's heard of pirate stations and Citizen's Band clubs, but he'll have to find out more.
The idea of giving up is no longer a real possibility. For Pavel, as for Alina, there can be no going back.
He yawns and then he rests an elbow on the steering wheel, his head on his hand. Nobody is around. Nobody will mind if he just grabs a few minutes' rest before he moves on — although rest, for Pavel, has become little more than a bothersome physical requirement with no spiritual element in it. Pavel is driven, and the edge has become his home territory.
The Boat House Page 13