Twice Shy

The faintest twitch of unease crossed my mind, but I smothered it. Peter's world since Donna took the baby had hardly been one of general common sense and normal behaviour. He had acted pretty well, all in all, for someome hammered from all directions at once, and over the weekend I had felt an increase of respect for him, quite apart from liking.

'If you want to play those programs,' he said, 'you'll need a Grantley computer.'

'I don't suppose…' I began.

'They might amuse William. He's mad on racing, isn't he?'

'Yes, he is.'

'I spent so much time on them. I'd really like to know how they work out in practice. I mean, from someone who knows horses.'

'All right,' I said. But Grantley computers weren't scattered freely round the landscape and William had his exams ahead, and the prospect of actually using the programs seemed a long way off.

'I wish you were still here,' he said. 'All the telephone calls, they're really getting me down. And did you have any of those poisonous abusive beastly voices spitting out hate against Donna, when you were answering?'

'Yes, several.'

'But they've never even met her.'

'They're unbalanced. Just don't listen.'

'What did you say to them?'

'I told them to take their problems to a doctor.'

There was a slightly uncomfortable pause, then he said explosively, 'I wish to God Donna had gone to a doctor.' A gulp. 'I didn't even know… I mean, I knew she'd wanted children, but I thought, well, we couldn't have them, so that was that. I never dreamed… I mean, she's always so quiet and wouldn't hurt a fly. She never showed any signs… We're pretty fond of each other, you know. Or at least I thought…'

'Peter, stop it.'

'Yes…'A pause.'Of course, you're right. But it's difficult to think of anything else.'

We talked a bit more, but only covering the same old ground, and we disconnected with me feeling that somehow I could have done more for him than I had.

Two evenings later, he went down to the river to work on his two-berth cabin cruiser, filling its tanks with water and fuel, installing new cooking-gas cylinders and checking that everything was in working order for his trip with Donna.

He had been telling me earlier that he was afraid the ship's battery was wearing out and that if he didn't get a new one they would run it down flat with their lights at night and in the morning find themselves unable to start the engine. It had happened once before, he said.

He wanted to check that the battery still had enough life in it.

It had.

When he raised the first spark, the rear half of the boat exploded.

CHAPTER 3

Sarah told me.

Sarah on the telephone with the stark over-controlled voice of exhaustion.

'They think it was gas, or petrol vapour. They don't know yet.'

'Peter

'He's dead,' she said. There were people around. They saw him moving… with his clothes on fire. He went over the side into the water… but when they got him out…' A sudden silence, then, slowly, 'We weren't there. Thank God Donna and I weren't there.'

I felt shaky and slightly sick. 'Do you want me to come?' I said.

'No. What time is it?'

'Eleven.'I had undressed, in fact, to go to bed.

'Donna's asleep. Knock-out drops.'

'And how… how is she?'

'Christ, how would you expect?' Sarah seldom spoke in that way: a true measure of the general awfulness. 'And Friday,' she said, 'the day after tomorrow, she's due in court.'

'They'll be kind to her.'

'There's already been one call, just now, with some beastly woman telling me it served her right.'

'I'd better come,' I said.

'You can't. There's school. No, don't worry. I can cope. The doctor at least said he'd keep Donna heavily sedated for several days.'

'Let me know, then, if I can help.'

'Yes,' she said. 'Goodnight, now. I'm going to bed. There's a lot to do tomorrow. Goodnight.'

I lay long awake in bed and thought of Peter and the unfairness of death: and in the morning I went to school and found him flicking in and out of my mind all day.

Driving home I saw that his cassettes were still lying in a jumble on the glove shelf. Once parked in the garage, I put the tapes back into their boxes, slipped them in my jacket pocket, and carried my usual burden of books indoors.

The telephone rang almost at once, but it was not Sarah, which was my first thought, but William.

'Did you send my cheque?' he said.

'Hell, I forgot.' I told him why, and he allowed that forgetting in such circs could be overlooked.

'I'll write it straight away, and send it direct to the farm.'

'OK. Look, I'm sorry about Peter. He seemed a nice guy, that time we met.'

'Yes.' I told William about the computer tapes, and about Peter wanting his opinion on them.

'Bit late now.'

'But you still might find them interesting.'

'Yeah,' he said without much enthusiasm. 'Probably some nutty betting system. There's a computer here somewhere in the maths department. I'll ask what sort it is. And look, how would it grab you if I didn't go to university?'

'Badly.'