Blame The Dead

'Yes,' I said carefully. 'A cup of tea Would be very nice.'

We sat on opposite sides of the big kitchen table and sipped politely.

'What are you thinking?' she asked innocently.

'Oh… about the weather.'

'Of course.' Her smile got a little mischievous. 'Warm, for the time of year, what? '

'Something to do with a region of high pressure.'

'No cold fronts, then.'

'Strictly warm ones. Or occluded, of course.'

'I never understood what an occluded front was.'

'A mixture of warm and cold fronts.'

She nodded. 'How very wicked it does sound.'

'No, that's just the way it looks on the weather map.

'Does somebody have to draw you a map?'

She smiled innocently again.

And the phone rang.

We stared at each other, eyes steady with false calm. Then she slowly got up and went out to the hall to answer it.

I collected the cups and saucers and teapot and jug and sugar and put them away or stacked them neatly. I don't know why. Instinct, from living alone. Or for something to do.

Then I went out to the hall. She was standing with the phone, listening and nodding. She reached out a hand to me and I held it. Her strong slim fingers twined around mine.

She said into the phone, That's all right, Mr Baker, but you don't have to worry about that side of it."

She lifted my hand and rubbed it gently against her cheek. I moved closer and smelt just the slightest touch of scent; something fragile and fresh, like a broken petal.

'No, Mr Baker, my father's lawyers'll handle all that. I only-'

Baker muttered on. I leaned and started nibbling her ear; she lifted her head towards me.

'Yes, Mr Baker, but the house is still in his name so I couldn't decide that anyway.'

She moved my hand slowly and drifted it across her breasts, caressing herself with me. Her bra under the blouse was very thin; I could feel her nipples hardening slowly.

'Well, Mr Baker, if the tax people really want an answer then they'd better write to the States. I can't tell them.'

I moved my other hand across and down her body.

'All right, Mr Baker. Any time. Goodbye.'

She turned towards me and let the receiver clatter loose on the table and her mouth reached for mine.

It happened there, on the hall rug, a fast frantic rape -except I don't know who raped whom. In a few minutes we were lying side by side in a tangle of rugs and clothes -1- not even naked ourselves.

'Do you think of me as a loose woman now?' she asked dreamily.

'Well, not exactly as a tight one.'

She laughed quietly, then shivered and wrapped herself in a corner of the long-haired white rug. 'Does this all go in your reports?'

'I'm not writing reports for anybody.'

'Ah. You must be a very private detective to employ yourself.'

'I'm not a detective. Can I have a drink?'

I found my trousers and carried them through into the drawing-room. It was suddenly bright in there, although the day beyond the windows wasn't. Just that the hall had a permanent twilight.

I heard her going upstairs.

A quarter of an hour later she came in, looking bright and fresh and now wearing a light-blue cashmere sweater and rather worn blue jeans. She'd tidied her hair a bit, as well.

I had a glass of weak Scotch and water in my hand. 'Can I get you one?'

'No thanks, Jim. Or is it Jimmie or what? I really ought to have asked before.' She actually blushed.

I laughed aloud. 'Jamie, mostly. The Scottish thing.'

'Let's go out and have a drink. I haven't been to a pub in – oh, I don't know…'

'What about the neighbours?'

'We'll find a small village place where nobody'll possibly recognise me.'

So we went. On the way out, at the top of the steps, she stopped suddenly and said, 'Kiss me.'

I did. She was suddenly shaking all over.

We sat in the corner of a small boozer, too small for the brewery ever to bother tarting up, just across the Sussex border, and talked in near-whispers. We were the first there and the barmaid's ear was waggling like a radar aerial only eight feet away.

Lois almost giggled into her cider. 'If wewere committing adultery this would be a great place to get remembered in. The first customers of the evening, my accent and clothes, your city suit – I bet that woman could describe us exactly in court a year from now.'

'Dare say she's done it before. Adulterers probably come from three counties to find somewhere as out-of-the-way and genuinely folksy as this.' It was the true English village pub, all right, with its hard wooden benches, a mean little iron fireplace that was empty anyway, the walls decorated with a bus timetable and the bar with a vase of plastic flowers.

Lois lit a cigarette. 'Where do you live, Jamie?'

'Flat in London. Chalk Farm. Not far from…'

She nodded. 'Why did you leave the Army – you were a career officer, weren't you?'

'Sixteen years, yes. I'd just served my time and I didn't get to bea lieutenant-colonel. I could have hung on, but… promotion gets a bit rare in the Intelligence Corps, after that level.'

'Why?'

'We were specialists; most of our work didn't involve much in the way of command. And the Army wants itself run by people who can command troops. I believe the Air Force has the same bias towards people who can fly aeroplanes – pilots. It makes a sort of sense.'

'What did your wife think of you leaving?'

'That's when we busted up.'

'She wanted you to stay?'

'She wanted me to be colonel.' Then, after a long mouthful of beer-flavoured water, 'I don't know if that's quite fair. I don't think she was all that rank-conscious. Maybe she wanted me to be the sort of person colonels are. Maybe she just married the wrong person.'

'It can happen.'

'To you?'

'Oh, no. Martin was quite right for me – and hope I was for him.'

'Your father didn't think so.'

'Oh, Dad…'

'What had he got against Martin?'

'I think he thought he was a bit of a stuffed shirt. Too English. He wanted me to marry some hot-shot lawyer.' She swigged her cider and changed the subject. 'What else do you do – out of working hours?'

'I visit lovely ladies.'

She laughed her cheery bell-toned laugh. 'I thought that was only in the Une of duty.'

'Strictly above and beyond. And one day I'll finish a commentary on Vegetius.'

'On what?'

So I had to explain about him.

'What makes him so interesting?' she asked.

'He wrote the most complete description of the Roman armies, and that was everybody's ideal army for better than a thousand years after. They all read him: Charlemagne, Richard Coeur de Lion, all the Renaissance princes.'

'Was he a great general himself? '

'No, probably not even a soldier. He was pretty much of a historian in his own day; the Roman army had gone to pieces by this time. Rome itself got sacked a few years later. Prophet without honour and all that.'

'Will you publish this when you've finished it?'

'Oh, yes. I've got a publisher who wants it for a specialist military series. But it'll be a time yet.'

'Will you ever finish it?'

'Course I will.' Maybe I sounded a bit annoyed, because she smiled kindly and put a hand on mine.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I wonder if they've got anything to eat here?'

'A bag of crisps, a pickled egg, and an aspirin, if you're lucky, I should think.'

She laughed again. I said, 'We could find somewhere else to eat.'

'No, let's try here. Are you going back to London tonight?'

The baby-faced innocence with which she could say things like that. I said slowly, 'I suppose not.'

The loving was slower, gentler, calmer. A careful exploration, a memorising of each other's bodies. But at first she was nervous, dodging from shy stiffness to clutching hunger… almost inexperienced, though that couldn't have been it.

And afterwards we lay side by side in her bed, not quite touching each other. The house and the countryside beyond it were very quiet. Funny how I missed the constant noises of the city that you never notice until they're gone, like a forest without birds.