Grimly I forced myself to work. But my heart wasn't in it. Chapter Two Business with an agent kept me at the office until about seven, and when we were through I took him for a drink. Since he didn't like noisy pubs we went to the new cocktail lounge, The Copper Beech. The place was empty when we entered. People going for a drink on their way home went to the pubs. The Copper Beech, all glass and chromium end plastic and inflated prices, catered mostly for couples and parties having a night out, from eight o'clock onwards. The agent gulped his beer and departed, and I finished my pint of bitter in more leisurely fashion. I was downing the last drop when a party of kids in their late teens came in, quietly for kids, looked around and marched to the far end of the lounge. They were all in shorts and blouses, end for a moment I thought they were Grammar School seniors. Then I saw that they were all about eighteen or over, too old and far too tall to be school kids. All the men were over six feet, and the girls not much less. With merely a glence at them I was rising to go. In Shuteley in summer we saw hundreds of campers, hikers end cyclists. Then I saw that one of the girls was the girl in the green dress, and another, the only one who was not tall, had blue-black hair. I ordered another pint end sat down again. The bartender rapped on a partition behind him and a waitress in a black frock came to attend to the new customers. There were eight boys end eight girls. They weren't noisy and they evidently intended to keep strictly to themselves, for they sat together in a corner round one table and only one of them spoke to the waitress, giving the order. The others didn't even talk among themselves until she left them. Then they started talking and laughing like any other kids, only more quietly, as if afraid they'd be overheard. The girl I had seen wearing the extraordinary green dress was now clad like the others. She had not looked at me and perhaps wouldn't have known me if she did, because earlier, in the afternoon, she had gone to a lot of trouble not to look at me at all. Now I saw that they weren't exactly like any other group of young campers after all. I wouldn't have noticed anything out of the ordinary if I hadn't had a spur to my curiosity. Nobody else did. As it was, I saw for the second time a curious immaculacy which seemed to be common to them all. Every one of these kids was a glossy, spotless, highly-polished model of a teenage camper. I thought about that and remembered where I'd seen the same kind of glossy unreality before. A pretty girl really on a jungle safari might conceivably spend most of her time in a leopard-skin swimsuit or a white suntop and shorts, though it's unlikely. But unlike actresses in safari movies, she simply could not go on day after day looking as if she'd just stepped from her dressing-room. That was it. That was exactly it. The boys in this group had every hair slick in place. Their shirts were dazzling. There wasn't a spot even on their shoes. The girls weren't in the usual motley collection of loose sweaters, tight sweaters and rumpled shorts. Everything anyone wore had been made to measure, and there wasn't a crease to be seen among the lot of them. A small thing? Certainly -- a small impossible thing. Did these kids have dressing-rooms right outside The Copper Beech? Two or three of the girls were pretty, and one had a one-in-a-million face. Out of any large group of girls you could pick a dozen of more or less uniform prettiness, attractive through the possession of firm young bodies and regular features, well-shaped eyebrows, small noses, soft mouths. But it would be a matter of chance if, even in a hundred thousand girls, you'd find one with both the individuality to make her unmistakable and unforgettable and the beauty to go with it. One girl had the kind of face that could launch a thousand nuclear submarines. She had blue-black hair, very white skin, and was probably the girl who for me had started it all, the girl in the pink suit. But I couldn't be sure. Apart from her beauty, other things set her slightly apart from the rest. She was only about five feet four, easily the smallest in the group. She was pale and all the others were tanned. She might have been a little older than the others. She was treated with a certain slight deference. And despite what I've been saying about them, she made the others look untidy. I sipped my beer, not inviting conversation with the bartender, who was busy anyway. As it happened I'd been sitting facing the far corner when the kids entered, and could therefore go on looking in their direction without showing undue curiosity. I managed to pick up a few words. They were talking about a "duel." A duel, they thought, would be fun. Some argued, said it was a crazy idea. Evidently they'd seen the plaque on one of the old houses round the green. One of the last duels in England had been fought on the village green, between the squire and a wealthy traveller who both fancied the same serving wench. Neither of them got her. They were both fatally wounded, and for thirty years or so (until the incident became romantic, quaint, something to be proud of), the affair was hushed up. There was some reference to "Greg," who was not present. (So there were more of them.) And glances were cast at Snow White when he was mentioned, puzzling glances which I couldn't fathom. Snow White and the giants, I thought. 'Snow White is the fairest in the land.' She had blue-black hair, too. Snow White, dwarf among giants. Watching as casually as I could, I noticed something else. Nobody smoked. And nobody drank beer. It makes sense not to start smoking now that we know what we know. But could you get sixteen sensible kids all in one group? As for the beer question . . . Quite a few of the youngsters had soft drinks. Others had what looked like cocktails, sherry, port, whisky, rum. Obviously they were not teetotallers. Out of sixteen campers, surely at least three or four would drink beer on a hot summer evening? I had finished my beer again. It was a small moment of crisis. Was I to walk boldy up to Snow White and the giants and say: "All is discovered. You are not what you seem," or buy another beer and stay quietly watching them? I did neither. I stood up to go. And as I stood up, Snow White glanced at me and recognized me. I saw it in her face, although the moment after recognition she looked casually around as if she'd merely been giving the place the once-over. But I knew I wasn't mistaken. One thing was certain -- that expression, half startled, half interested, had not come over her face simply became she had seen me in the upstairs window of the Red Lion. For one thing, I hadn't seen her look up. For another, it wasn't just an I've-seen-you-before-somewhere expression. She knew me. She hadn't expected to see me, but the moment she did, she thought at once: 'That's Val Mathers . . . ' and a lot more, I wished I knew what the lot more was. I'd certainly have gone over and spoken to her, but for the fifteen giants. You don't use the "Haven't we met before?" routine when the girl has fifteen friends with her. Instead, I went home. As I closed the garage door after driving home, Dina rushed up to me. She was still in her Cinderella dress, but her arms and legs were swathed in bandages which she had obviously put on herself. "She hit me," Dina panted. "She hit me and scratched me and threw me out." "Now, Dina -- " I began. "She got in through a window and pushed me and hit me and scratched me, pulled my hair and I couldn't stay in the summerhouse." "Forget it, Dina," I said wearily. "It was her fault I couldn't keep iny promise. She -- " "Dina, I'm not interested," I said firmly. "You knew there was a man working in the house. You knew he had to get into your room and the summerhouse later. There was no need for any trouble if you'd done as you were told." "I do what you tell me, don't I? You told me to stay in the summerhouse, only she wouldn't let me." At that moment Sheila came round the front of the house. She looked at me uncertainly, ready to explain, or fight, or refuse to say anything, depending on my attitude. "Dina," I said, "go and get dressed." "Aren't you going to -- " "I'm not going to do anything. Go and get dressed. Now. And no argument." Hurt, Dina not only went but stayed in her room the rest of the evening, sulking. Sheila and I had an unusually pleasant evening on our own for once. I opened a bottle of Rüdesheimer and then a bottle of Niersteiner, and we got pleasantly merry. At last I thought the circumstances were right, and told Sheila that Jota was coming back to Shuteley. They weren't right enough. Sheila's face set hard and she said: "For how long?" "He didn't say." "He's not staying here." "No. He's going to ask Gil -- " "If he visits this house, I'll stay in my room till he's gone." "Sheila, he promised -- " " He promised," she said fiercely. She stood up and began to prowl about, clenching and unclenching her hands. Sheila didn't often hit the roof, but when she did she was inclined to go right through it. "I never told you why I was so wild that time, Val. Not because Jota made a pass at me. If a man like him never made a pass at me, I'd know I'd better take up tatting. Not even because he used your trust to get me in a situation where those horrible things could happen . . . But because when you came back, when you walked in on that . . . " She had worked herself up to such a pitch that for the moment she couldn't go on. Her color was high, her chest was heaving, and I thought it was a long time since I had seen her look so marvellous. Of course I'd never forget that time when I found Jota quite crudely trying to rape my wife. It had been horrible and it had been incredible. I'd always thought, not so much that Jota would never touch Sheila because she was my wife as that if he did feel it coming on, he'd tell me. "Val, I want Sheila. I'm going to have her." That was Jota's way. I'd been afraid of that. I'd never thought for a moment it would happen the way it did -- Jota, having got me out of the way by a brazen lie, which I discovered only because the person I was going to see happened to meet me in the street, fighting coarsely with his best friend's wife, his cousin's wife, like a sex criminal. Sheila, under control again, broke into my thoughts. "You were surprised, weren't you?" she said. That was an understatement. "I couldn't believe it," I said. "But when I did, I -- " "Yes, we're not talking about that. That was all right. You threw him about so effiently I was quite cheered up. Never thought you could do that son of thing, Val. I was proud of you then. And I didn't mind seeing Jota hurt, not in the slightest. That bit of it was fine . . . Let's go back a bit. You were surprised." I waited uneasily, vaguely sensing what she was getting at. "You were surprised became I was fighting," Sheila said. "You were astonished because I was being half killed and still went on resisting. You were certain that Jota merely had to cast a lustful eye on any girl, and she'd immediately surrender with a sense of profound gratitude." It was true, but I couldn't admit it. "I never said -- " "Val, I know perfectly well what you never said. I also know what you did say. Afterwards, when we had to talk, when we had to pretend to be civilized again and work out whether Jota was to be charged with assault, or what -- that's when you gave yourself away: All you were concerned with was Jota. He had to promise. He_ had to go away. _He_ was the one to be convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that nothing remotely like that must ever happen again. And when he accepted all that, you were satisfied." I just looked back at her. "Nothing about me," she said bleakly. "You couldn't trust me. If Jota tried again, next time I'd obviously leap into his arms -- " "I never said -- " "Oh, Val, who cares what you never said? Your whole attitude made it a hundred per cent clear. Jota was the one to handle somehow. I didn't matter at all. Whatever Jota decided was as good as done. You had to work on Jota. I was merely a pawn in the game, if that." I couldn't argue convincingly, because she was working a vein of truth. No girl ever said no to Jota. No girl ever could, whoever she was, whatever the circumstances. And it was entirely correct that my surprise on that horrible night had been due largely to Sheila's desperate resistance. I frankly couldn't understand that. It wasn't as if Sheila and I were all that close, even then. Why had a girl who had never resisted me resist Jota? A diversion was available. "Why did you wait two years to tell me this?" I asked. She sighed and sat down, crossing her legs. All the fire had gone out of her. She wasn't going through the roof this time. "Some things you can't take back, not ever, even if you want to. Two years ago, we might have been on the threshold of a great new understanding . . . Now we know we weren't. You won't have children, though I ache for them. And Dina's getting worse every day." I was grateful to her for phrasing the problem of Dina like that. "Dina's getting worse every day." If she'd wanted to be venomous, there were a thousand other things she could have said about Dina, seven hundred of them not unjust. "Sheila," I said, "I like you." She smiled faintly. "I know. You couldn't quite say 'love,' because you're being sincere tonight. And then, I put you off your stroke earlier when I stopped you saying 'honey.' You'll never call me 'honey' again. You'll be careful, cautious, like a good insurance manager, and from now on you'll call Dina Dina and me Sheila." There wasn't much to say to that, so I went for a brief stroll round the house. Remembering Dina's story about fairies in the wood, I walked down the garden, not expecting to see anything at all. The river Shute, meandering tortuously across flat country and through woods, half enclosed our house in the inner walls of a W bend. As far as I knew the house had never been flooded, though the river had been known to reach the garden.