And when those cars broke down — which, many of them being underserviced and badly prepared, they tended to do with an inevitability that amazed only their owners — they demanded instant service from the staff of an auto marine yard that was already being run under the strain of some of the heaviest lake traffic that it had ever experienced.
He hefted the old tin kettle. It was half full, and still warm. He set it on the stove to heat up again.
"How do you do it?" he said, picking up the cereal boxes and shaking to see which was the least empty.
"Do what?"
"You work longer hours than I do, you walk all the way there and back, and you don't even sleep at nights. I'd really like to know what's keeping you going."
She gave a slight shrug. "I don't even think about it," she said. "Why do you mention it now?"
"Forget it," he said, and he gathered up the cereal box and a bowl and everything else and headed out through the house to breakfast alone on the covered terrace.
She appeared after a couple of minutes, and set one of the cabin's old china mugs alongside him.
"I made your tea," she said.
He looked down into the mug.
"You always make it black," he said.
"Only because you took the milk," she said.
He looked at her. He'd never seen her looking better; her eyes were bright and her hair shone and her skin glowed like a small child's. Pete, by contrast, was feeling as if he'd been broken into pieces and badly reassembled.
He looked away.
He hadn't intended to sigh, but he did it anyway.
"What's the matter?" she said, moving around him and half-hitching herself onto the wooden rail so that he couldn't avoid her again; and Pete felt embarrassed, because he knew that he was acting with just a touch of stupidity.
"Nothing," he said. "Really, nothing. I'm sorry. It's just the pressure of the work, I think it's wearing me down."
But he knew that this was only a part of the answer. Late at night, when Alina was out and he was unable to sleep, he'd find himself thinking that maybe — just maybe — he could pick up a phone at this hour and dial the old number, and his mother would answer the same as always. Not at any other time, but only then; that particular hour of the night when the rest of the world seemed to have closed down and the morning stood at a distance almost beyond imagination. But he'd no phone in the house, and to leave the house would be to break the spell; and so he'd lie there, and after a while he'd be further twisted by the certainty that she was waiting somewhere, waiting on the other side for a call that would never come.
That had to be it, didn't it? For what else could have bypassed his defences, what else could have burrowed so far under his skin?
"I know what you need," Alina said.
"Really."
"Yes, really. Listen to me, I'm serious." But she was smiling, so it was that kind of serious. Behind her was a backdrop of Spring woodland, sunlight and shade moving in a gentle morning breeze.
She said, "You've been on your own for too long. You need someone. I don't mean someone like me, just being around, I mean you really need someone to be close to. People who've lost, they become vulnerable. Believe me, I know."
"What are you leading up to?"
"Mrs Jackson. From the Estate. I heard how you danced with her on the night of the party. She'd be perfect for you, Peter."
He could only stare.
She said, "Doing what I do, I hear all kinds of things. About everyone. She had a husband, they say he used to 'knock her around'. If that means what I think it means then she needs someone like you, too. You're one of the kindest people I ever met. I know that probably embarrasses you, but it's true. You ought to give her a chance to see it in you. That's my idea, I can help it to happen if you want me to. What do you think?"
Pete said nothing for a moment.
And then he stood up.
"For Christ's sake," he said, and he stalked back into the house leaving everything behind.
After a few moments, she appeared in the doorway to his room as he rummaged for a spare work shirt.
She said, "People having a conversation usually stay in the same building."
He turned to her.
"You really don't know what you're saying, do you?"
"Tell me."
"Forget your matchmaking. Don't even think about pushing me together with anyone because it isn't going to happen. It isn't going to happen because they look at me and they look at you and they put two and two together and what they come up with tells them, back off. You think you get to hear all the gossip down there but, believe me, there's talk going on that you obviously don't even dream about. I'm the kindest person you ever met? Yeah, well, so much for the good that it's done me. I'll tell you what, I'll have them put it on my gravestone. Here lies Mister Nice Guy, but who gives a shit anyway. I mean, look at you. You're out every night like fucking Dracula, or something. And me, I might as well have rabies. If that's where kindness gets you, I'm going to kick pigeons. Even Hitler had a fucking girlfriend, and who's got a good word to say about him?"
He was sorry immediately, of course, but too much of the truth had come out for him to want to take any of it back; so he sat heavily on the bed and he looked away from her and he rubbed at his still-tired eyes, anything to avoid meeting her gaze and then having to concede his embarrassment. Now it was as if his anger had blown away into the air, like so much steam.
She sat beside him, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Oh, Peter," she said.
She didn't seem to be offended. It was a voice of sadness, almost of pity. He looked at her then and her face seemed to be saying, I understand; and then he tried to speak, but the sense of it somehow skipped away from him like a stone across water.
"Listen to me," she said. "I'm sorry it came to this, and I want to set it right. I'm going to leave you. I'm going to leave you soon, but first I want you to understand how much you've done for me."
"I just blew up," Pete said, giving in to it as he'd known that he would. "I'm sorry. This isn't necessary."
"Yes it is, and that's why I'm moving out. I don't mean this minute, probably not even today. But as soon as I can, I will. I won't even tell you, I'll just go. You'll see me around, but after a while I'll just be someone you once knew. I wish I could get out of your life forever, but I don't think that's possible any more. You see, I have to stay in the valley — I've started to make it my home, and every time you leave a home you die, just a little. And there's only so much life in any of us… use it all up and we're gone, even though we're still walking around. That could have happened to me already, if it wasn't for you — you brought me here and you set me up and suddenly I was in a place where I felt I could belong again."
She stood up and, walking out of the room, left him there.
Well. This was exactly what he wanted. Wasn't it?
Wasn't it?
He could hear her moving around elsewhere in the house. After a minute, he got up and followed the sounds to her room.
Her door was open.
"I appreciate what you're saying," he said, as she looked up from folding some of her clothes for the drawer. "But something about all this bothers me."