‘I’m single — you don’t mind? I mean, they’re a married couple, aren’t they?’ She pointed to the note on the bell-push.
‘Married?’ Mrs Barnes laughed comfortably. ‘It’s odd, a few years ago we’d have been scandalised. Now we take it for granted. I think she is. Her husband’s… oh, that TV actor?’
Jane looked at her blankly. It had not been so difficult after all, she felt. She wondered why she’d been so nervous about it. A straightforward job. No problems.
She kept up the pretence for another three or four minutes, making elaborate arrangements to phone Mrs Barnes the following week just to check. Not that she would, of course; she had all she wanted.
A drink, she decided.
Even without her interview with Sue her trip had already paid off. She’d something to celebrate and to hell with Bill. Oh, Bill knew his trade all right, no one better, but his inhibitions would always hold him back. Well, now she was in the fast lane and God help anyone who got in her way.
She headed for the four-star hotel by the river, ignoring the little pub which was nearer. Nothing but the best would fit her present mood. At the bar she ordered a large vodka and tonic which she carried over to a corner table. Save for a group of three or four customers who had taken their drinks into the garden, the place was empty, but that suited her well enough. She began to sketch out a couple of paragraphs in her notebook while it was all fresh in her mind. Knowing innuendo — that was the style. Leaving readers to draw their own conclusions.
Two cyclists, a boy and a girl, were fooling around on the river bank just beyond the hotel garden. Their bicycles stood propped up together near the trees where they’d been picnicking.
Sue watched them idly as she sat with her drink at one of the rustic tables. It was a relief to escape from that theatre at last. And from that bloody director with his long-winded theories. Rehearsals had been going badly. For one thing — she couldn’t say this, not even to Mark — it should have been Tim playing Benedick, not the useless idiot they’d chosen. At least Tim had style. And he understood the play. In the early days, cooped up in their bed-sitter waiting for the phone to ring, they’d learned all the great parts: Beatrice and Benedick; Rosalind and Orlando; Antony and Cleopatra… They were going to be a famous Shakespearean partnership, she and Tim.
‘Don’t you think so, Sue?’ Mark interrupted her musings.
‘Er… yes…’ She hadn’t been listening. ‘Of course.’
‘Life has to go on, jellyfish or no jellyfish, I realise that, but all the seaside shows have been cancelled. Think what that means in terms of unemployment. Even here we’re playing to empty houses. Equity should insist on jellyfish relief money being available to theatres, just as to other businesses.’
Mark had been arguing with Adrian and Tony — as usual — about the latest Equity pronouncements. He was a dear, she didn’t know what she’d do without him, but he did tend to go on about it all. Union politics bored her, but he could never understand that. Unlike Tim, who’d always understood her. She still lay awake at night thinking about him, wondering if she’d done the right thing. Oh shit, why did it have to turn out like this?
But Mark had been there when she’d needed someone desperately. He’d been fun too, taking her out of herself. Not inspiring, the way Tim had been — but reliable, which Tim was not. And she could relax with Mark. Yet…
Last night in bed again — everything going the way it should, everything fine until suddenly… Left up in the air, that was the only way to describe it. It shouldn’t matter, she knew that, but it did. Afterwards they’d both lain there silently, brooding.
A piercing scream from the girl cyclist on the river bank jerked Sue out of her thoughts.
‘Help him! Oh, help him, somebody! Help, please!’
The boy had been up to his knees in the water, laughing and protesting as she tried to stop him climbing up again. She’d given him a little push, causing him to stagger back, losing his footing. Then her own laughter suddenly became a scream of horror.
Sue dashed to the fence and scrambled over. Can’t be jellyfish, she told herself anxiously; not in fresh water. The girl was beside herself and about to jump in after him. Sue grabbed her and sent her sprawling across the grass.
‘Not with those bare legs, you idiot!’ she bawled at her. The girl wore flimsy shorts, covering practically nothing. ‘Get hold of a boathook or a broom — anything!’
She looked at the boy thrashing about in the water and gasping for breath. If he wasn’t fished out soon he’d drown, and yet –
No jellyfish, though, none that she could see. She’d have to take the risk. Luckily she had boots on, with her jeans tucked inside them; that was some protection at least. But still she hesitated. For days after that business with Mrs Wakeham in the shop she dreamed of jellyfish. Night after night she’d woken up in a sweat. What if one had swum this far upriver and was lurking somewhere among the underwater weeds?
Behind her she heard the girl sobbing.
‘Where’s that boathook?’ Sue snapped at her. ‘Go and fetch something! Don’t be so bloody useless!’
Whether that had any effect or not, she didn’t wait to find out. Carefully she lowered herself into the river, clutching at the fragile twigs of a nearby bush until she was sure of her footing. With the water well above her knees, lapping at her crotch, she waded towards the boy. His struggles were getting weaker, as though his limbs were seizing up.
What she saw made her swallow with apprehension. They were jellyfish, no doubt about it, but not the big speckled kind she’d met before. These were tiny, some no more than half an inch across, others smaller: thirty of them at least, maybe more. They swarmed over his legs, quite unhurried, as though they knew time was on their side.
Already red weals had appeared on the boy’s skin wherever their tentacles had made contact, but the jellyfish themselves were quite colourless in the water. Almost transparent, in fact. Sue gaped at them, uncertain what to do next.
‘Can you manage, Sue?’ Mark was calling to her. ‘D’you need a hand?’
The boy was drifting with the current. She waded after him, grasping him by the hair to hold his face above water. He was still conscious, she noticed; his lips were moving, yet he seemed quite incapable of helping himself.
‘I’ll get him to the bank, then you pull him out!’ she shouted back, trying to suppress the fear in her voice. She’d just seen yet more red weals — on his neck, this time. ‘Put something on your hands. Gloves, or something!’
‘Why?’
‘Jellyfish!’
Sue made slowly for the bank, tugging the boy along by his hair and praying that those miniature jellyfish would content themselves with just the one victim. Her hands, already reddening from the cold water, seemed terribly vulnerable. She had to fight down an urge to leave the boy to his fate and get out of that river as quickly as she could before they started investigating her.
Mark came splashing towards her. ‘You can’t do this by yourself — Bloody hell!’
He’d noticed the jellyfish. The colour drained out of his lean, angular face; its lines sharpened, betraying his age. He stood there as though hypnotised.
‘Mark, what’s the point of both of us risking it?’ she started to argue wearily, but she gave up.
He’d already hooked his fingers under the boy’s belt and was heading for the bank where Adrian and Tony — good old Adrian and Tony, the only two to come to the hotel bar rather than crowd into that smelly scrumpy pub with the rest of the Much Ado cast — were kneeling on the grassy edge, waiting to pull him out. Sue clambered on to the bank to help.