Snare Read Free

we’re all alike: romantic and gothic, the three of us –’
    â€˜I want a man,’ Miss Pink said loudly and, since she had managed to silence Esme, went on more quietly, ‘I prefer working with men; their angle is different, and refreshing.’
    Esme was all contrition. ‘I was crowding you. You’ve only known me three days. And here I am, a total stranger, proposing to take more than half your work-load on my broad shoulders. Look, forget I ever proposed the arrangement, at least for the time being’ – she grinned happily – ‘and I’ll forget the crack about a male secretary, right? I’ll leave you now to get down to work, and we’ll meet this evening.’ She thrust past the sofa to the door and paused on the step. ‘We don’t dress, you know, nothing formal.’ Her gaze travelled from Miss Pink’s hair to her brogues. ‘Tweeds would do ,’ she added doubtfully.
    * * *
    Miss Pink walked along the street to take morning coffee with Beatrice Swan, whom she’d met on the foreshore two days ago while watching the waders. An old lady, emerging from the Post Office (which was also the store), had crossed the road and introduced herself. Having chatted about the local wildlife, she had indicated a house she called Feartag and extended the invitation to coffee. Miss Pink, observing the old but beautifully tailored Harris tweed, the leathery skin and serene eyes, sensed a kindred spirit: another loner living out her remaining years on the fringe of the wilderness.
    Feartag was at the far end of the street where the road crossed the river before turning west towards Fair Point. The house had been built just upstream of the bridge and some thirty feet above the water which, in a dry autumn, was merely a stream between boulders. It was approached by a gravel drive between lawns which were still mown. Grass had a long growing season in this climate, where the Gulf Stream lapped the shores.
    Feartag was Victorian; there were sash windows downstairs but the upper storey was in the roof, its dormers whimsically fitted with casements of leaded lights. The roof was purple slate; even the porch had its own neat cap of slates, supported at each corner by knotted trunks of Scots pine. The front door was open on a passage where a bowl of sweet peas stood on an oak table. Above it, on the planked wall, was a narwhal’s tusk of spiralled ivory.
    Beatrice appeared in answer to the knock and, seeing Miss Pink’s interest, remarked that her brother had brought home the tusk from Greenland: ‘The narwhal is called the unicorn of the ocean. Isn’t that lovely?’
    She showed the visitor into a room that extended the width of the house. French windows opened on a terrace and Miss Pink was taken outside to admire tints in the birches opposite and the water chuckling among pink rocks below a stout fence of post and rails. There were two doors at the back of the house, one leading to the kitchen, the other open on a dim room Beatrice called the log cellar. There was a strong smell of sawn timber.
    â€˜We took a tree down,’ Beatrice said. ‘We must get all the logs under cover before it rains, although there’s little sign of that. These autumnal days are delightful, but there’s a nip in the air when you’re out of the sunshine.
    Come inside and we’ll have some coffee.’
    The sitting room was homely, with white walls and old furniture that was mostly oak. The floor was parquet, the carpet oriental, its jewelled shades echoed by paisley cushions on a coral sofa. One wall was lined with book­shelves, but there was also a television set and a record player.
    Beatrice came in with the coffee and they settled to small talk. Miss Pink didn’t mention the brother but after he had, as it were, obtruded twice on the conversation, she wondered how long her hostess could refrain from doing so. ‘We are well above flood