‘How do you lash the end of your punts’ mooring ropes?’ I asked.
‘Eh?’ said the boatman, puzzled.
‘Do you lash the end of the ropes to stop them unravelling?’
‘Oh, I get you. No, we splice ’em. Turn the ends back and sort of weave them in. Lashing’s no good as it comes undone too easily.’
I unwound the punt’s mooring rope from the Flying Linnet’s stern cleat. ‘This one is coming undone, though.’
‘Let’s see that,’ he said suspiciously, and I gave it to him. He twisted the frayed unravelling strands in his strong dirty fingers and hovered in what I guessed to be a fairly usual mixture of fury and resignation.
‘These bleeding vandals... excuse me, ma’am,’ he apologized to Joan. ‘These so and sos, they tie up to a tree, see, or something, and come they want to push on, they can’t undo the knots if the rope’s wet, and they just don’t bother, they cut through the rope and off they go.’
‘Does that often happen?’
‘Every summer, we has this trouble now and then.’ He pulled the rope up straight, measuring its length with his eye. ‘There’s a good four or five feet gone off this one, I shouldn’t wonder. We’ve been talking of switching to chains, but they can get into holy terrors of knots, chains can. Here,’ he added to Keeble, ‘you’d better have another punt, one with a better rope.’
‘This one will be fine,’ Keeble said, fastening it on again. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow.’
He towed the punt down to Henley and right into the garage-like boathouse which kept the English summer off the Flying Linnet. The punt was secured alongside by Peter and his father and everyone disembarked along a narrow boardwalk carrying things like the remains from lunch, newspapers, bathing towels, and in my case, wet clothes and a loaded jacket, out through the boathouse and into Keeble’s Rover, which was parked on a neat square of grass at the back.
Peter’s main care was for his precious camera, again hanging round his neck on its cord.
‘I suppose,’ I said idly, ‘you didn’t happen to take a photograph up there by the weir? You didn’t happen to get a shot of those people in the punt?’
He shook his head, blinking like his father.
‘Gosh, no, I didn’t. I don’t suppose actually I would have thought of taking one, not when everything was happening, do you think? I mean, it would have looked a bit off if you and Mr Teller had been drowning and I was just standing there taking pictures and so on.’
‘You’ll never be a newspaperman,’ I said, grinning at him.
‘Wouldn’t you have minded, then?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘But, anyway,’ he said mournfully, ‘I couldn’t, you see, because I finished the film at lunch-time and I didn’t have another one, so even if there had been a fire or something I couldn’t have taken it.’ He looked at his camera thoughtfully. ‘I won’t finish up any more films in the middle of the day, just in case.’
‘A fire,’ I agreed seriously, ‘would anyway make a much better picture than just people drowning, which they mostly do out of sight.’
Peter nodded, considering me. ‘You know, you’re quite sensible, aren’t you?’
‘Peter!’ exclaimed his mother in unnecessary apology. ‘That’s not the way to talk.’ And she wasn’t much pleased when I said as far as I was concerned he could say what he liked.
Keeble drove round to the station car park, where Lynnie and I transferred to the Austin.
‘I’ll ring in the morning,’ Keeble said, standing half out of his respectable car.
‘Right.’
‘Take care of Lynnie.’
‘I’ll do that.’
Lynnie kissed her parents goodbye, but her father more warmly, and made a face at Peter as the Rover rolled away out of the gate. Then she climbed into the Austin, waited until I was sitting beside her, and stretched out her hand to the ignition.
She was trembling again.
‘Shall I drive?’ I said mildly, making it absolutely her own choice.
She put both her hands in her lap and looked straight out through the windscreen. Her face was pale above the orange dress.
‘I thought you were both dead.’
‘I know.’
‘I still feel churned up. It’s silly.’
‘It’s not silly. And I expect you’re fond of Dave Teller.’
‘He’s sent us presents and things, since we were little.’
‘A nice man.’
‘Yes.’ She sighed deeply and after a pause said calmly, ‘I think it would be better, if you really don’t mind, if you drive back.’
‘Of course I will.’
We changed places, and went back to London with more cars passing us than we passed. At Chiswick roundabout I said I would drive her to her flat and go home by taxi, but with a sideways laughing glance she said no taxi would stop for me in her father’s clothes, and that she was feeling better and could quite easily do the last lap herself: so I rolled round the few corners to Putney and stopped outside my own front door.
Summer dusk filled the quiet streets. No one about. Lynnie looked out of her window upwards at the tall house, and shivered.
‘You’re cold,’ I said, concerned for her bare arms.
‘No... I have a cardigan in the back... I was just thinking about your flat.’
‘What about it?’
‘It’s so... empty.’ She gave a half laugh, shrugging it off. ‘Well, I hope you won’t have nightmares, after today.’
‘No...’ I collected my things and got out of the car, and she moved over into the driver’s seat.
‘Will they have saved any dinner for you at the hostel?’ I asked.
‘Not a hope,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But I expect there’ll be some cake and milk about, there usually is.’
‘Would you care to eat with me? Not up there,’ I added hastily, seeing the beginnings of well-brought-up suspicion. ‘In a restaurant, I mean.’
‘I’ve my mother to thank for my beastly mind,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘I really am rather hungry, and I don’t see at all why I shouldn’t have supper in your flat, if you’ve got any food.’ And without more ado she got out of the car and locked it, and stood expectantly beside me on the pavement.
‘There are some tins,’ I said, reflecting. ‘Wait here just a second, would you. I just want to have a look round the back.’
‘Round the back?’
‘For burglars,’ I said sardonically. But I went to look, as usual, at the powder-coated bottom flight of the fire escape. No one had been up or down all day.
Lynnie climbed the stairs to the fourth floor as easily as before, and having checked via a well-placed paper clip that my door hadn’t been opened since I had shut it that morning, I put the key in the lock and let us in.
The green plastic lampshade in my sitting room scattered its uncosy glare over the tidy room, switching the soft grey light outside into sudden black, and evoking the forlornness of institution buildings on winter afternoons. It wouldn’t be much trouble, I thought, to go out and buy myself a red shade in the morning, and see if it propagated rosy thoughts instead.
‘Sit down,’ I suggested. ‘Are you warm enough? Switch the electric fire on if you’d like it. I think I’ll go and change, and then we can decide about going out.’
Lynnie nodded, but took things into her own hands. When I came out of the bedroom she had already investigated my meagre store cupboard and had lined up a packet of soup, some eggs, and a tin of anchovies.
‘Soup, and anchovies on scrambled eggs,’ she said.
‘If you’d really like that,’ I said doubtfully.
‘I can’t cook much else.’
I laughed. ‘All right. I’ll do the coffee.’
There were burnt specks in the eggs when she had finished, which harmonized nicely with the scraped off over-done toast and the brown anchovy strips, and there had been a slight over-emphasis on pepper.