‘How much?’
‘What d’you suggest?’
‘I’d be taking a risk.’
‘I’ve taken a few already, getting them. They’re sewer worms. Heard of them?’
She had. For the first time she seemed to notice his two missing fingers; then she glanced up at his face and suddenly flushed with embarrassment. ‘You’re that cameraman, aren’t you? It was in the local paper — and how you’d bought the old fisherman’s cottage up the hill. I’m sorry, I should’ve recognized you.’ Her face reddened again, as though she’d said the wrong thing.
‘What about the skins?’
‘I’ll be frank. It depends how they turn out. I’ll not know till I’ve tried.’ She hesitated. Then, in a rush, she admitted it’d been a bad summer so far, she couldn’t risk laying out money on them, but if he’d accept a percentage — ‘Twenty-five?’
‘Maybe I’ll shop around a bit.’ He began rolling them up again.
‘There’s nowhere else in Westport.’
‘London?’
‘Make me an offer,’ she invited.
‘Fifty-fifty and no haggling. I get the skins, as many as you need, and you do the rest.’ He remembered the worms’ hard little eyes staring intelligently at him in the sewer; there was something satisfying about the thought of fishing them out one by one to be made into decorative belts or women’s evening purses. ‘Only I’d expect you to peddle them around Harrods and Liberty’s, not only down here.’
For a moment she regarded him pensively; then suddenly she grinned with a flash of white teeth, welcoming the challenge. The tip of her tongue appeared for a tantalizing second. ‘My name’s Fran,’ she introduced herself. ‘Frances Whyte.’
‘It’s agreed, then?’
‘Agreed.’
7
In October that year there was a heat wave. The teachers were on strike in Middlehampton, otherwise Tim and Annie would both have been in school. As it was, they walked disconsolately along the unkempt grass verge running the length of the high wall which surrounded The Cedars and wondered what to do. During the summer holidays there’d been no problem. They’d found a spot where they could get over the wall quite easily; the house was shuttered and closed up; no one had bothered them.
To a stranger’s eye, they might easily have been twins. Tim’s hair was straight, and longer than Annie’s; hers was curly. But they were both ten years old, the same height, dressed in identical blue T-shirts and faded jeans. For as long as they could remember they’d lived next door to each other.
The garden of The Cedars had been ideal for them, with plenty of trees as well as lawns, an orchard and a vegetable patch which an old gardener came in to tend once or twice a week. They’d built a rough shelter for when it rained; stole tomatoes from the greenhouse when they were thirsty; connected up the hosepipe when the sun was too hot and pranced about naked in the spray. Occasionally they’d talked about filling the empty swimming pool, but never risked it.
Now the owner was back.
On the first day of the strike they’d gone over the wall as usual but immediately had to duck down behind some bushes at the sound of voices. When they’d peeped out they’d seen a bronzed, active-looking man in light fawn trousers and a black open-necked shirt practising putting shots on the newly-mown lawn. A brand-new Jaguar, vivid red, reflected the brilliant sunshine glaringly on the drive.
‘Something in the City,’ Tim’s father had said, whatever that meant. ‘Stinking rich. Spends his summers swanning around the Med on a yacht.’
Tim and Annie whispered together hurriedly and decided to beat a retreat, but as they moved he spotted them. In a loud, imperious voice he demanded to know what they thought they were doing, didn’t they realize this was private property, they were trespassing, it would serve them right if he set the dog on them. Tim took a step forward, defending himself hotly, declaring they weren’t harming anything, they weren’t stealing, honestly…
A girl appeared behind the man, inquiringly. She wore a black bikini and long, blonde hair down to her shoulders. Beyond, Tim noticed the unaccustomed sparkle of the water in the filled swimming pool.
‘Darling, let them go. They’ve learned their lesson!’ Her voice was soft with a touch of laughter in it; as she looked at Tim and Annie her lips twitched.
‘Right, but don’t let me catch you here again!’ the man bawled, and he stood watching them as they climbed out the same way they’d come in.
As he remembered it two days later Tim’s lips tightened. They’d known it couldn’t last for ever but the man, whoever he was, had no need to shout at him like that. He stared at the wall. Somewhere on the other side… His foot caught in a tangle of grass and fern; he kicked it free, savagely.
‘We ought to get our own back,’ said Annie, speaking his thoughts. ‘And I know how.’
‘How then?’
‘Biters!’ She added: ‘They’d make ’em jump, and nobody could prove it was us.’
She explained her plan.
Tim’s face lit up with a mischievous grin. ‘That’d show ’em!’ he approved grimly. ‘That’d just show ’em!’
‘Make ’em jump!’ Annie repeated.
They dashed back home, excited, for their wellies and fishing nets. Tim appropriated a large glass jar from the garden shed; he tied some string around its neck to make a handle.
‘Where are you off to?’ his mother demanded, leaning out of the bedroom window, her face harassed as usual.
‘Out!’ he called back.
They’d first come across the tiny green worms they’d dubbed ‘biters’ one day back in the Easter holidays when they’d had to look after Annie’s younger sister, Joan. That was a bore as usual, specially when she’d insisted on ‘exploring’. They’d decided on the woods beyond the rubbish dump.
The village where they lived was already part suburb, swallowed up by Middlehampton where their fathers worked. In one direction were farms, with miles of cabbages and row upon row of greenhouses; in the other a petrol station with broken, rusting cars in an oil-stained field behind it, and the municipal rubbish dump which they skirted in Indian file.
Then Joan discovered it was more interesting to play in the stream — in reality, little more than a trickle of water at the bottom of a ditch by the side of the dump. She paddled happily for two or three minutes before they’d had to pull her out screaming. Two green biters had attached themselves to her leg, one on the calf and the other lower down on the ankle.
Fortunately her reaction had been immediate, and they were able to pull them off before much damage was done. They’d had no choice but to take her home, wash the wounds and stick Elastoplast over them; they’d also drilled her not to mention the biters in case they got into trouble for letting her go in the ditch. They’d made up some story about her being cut by barbed wire hidden in the long grass.
‘This is where we saw ’em last time,’ Annie announced, staring down into the water. ‘But I can’t see any now.’
It was a fairly clear spot where the water was almost transparent. Farther along the ditch were a couple of rusting tin cans and a twisted bicycle wheel. A slight breeze came from the direction of the rubbish dump, carrying with it an acid smell of ash and decay.
‘There!’ He began to climb down the sloping side of the ditch to get nearer. ‘Hey, they’ve grown bigger. Whoppers!’
‘Be careful!’
‘They can’t bite through my wellies.’
They found one, about six or seven inches long. Before it spotted them, they’d swooped it up in the fishing net and dropped it into the glass jar.
Another, also by itself.