Theft Read Free

instructions at me from the other side.
    Well, I had been famous once but now I was just a dogsbody, so what did I expect? I wrapped the free end of the Fiat's cable around the Ford's back axle, an exercise which covered me with mud and perhaps a little cow shit too. Then, returning to my tractor, I dropped it into low ratio and hit the gas. Of course she had left the car in gear so this manoeuvre created two long streaks across the grass and out onto the road.
    I saw no reason to say goodbye. I retrieved the cable from the Ford and drove back to the shed without looking over my shoulder.
    As I returned to my studio I saw she had not gone at all but was walking across the paddock, high heels in her hand, towards my house.
    This was the hour at which I normally drew and as my visitor approached I sharpened up my pencils. The river was roaring like blood in my ears but I could feel her feet as she came up the hardwood stairs, a kind of fluttering across the floor joists.
    I heard her call but when neither Hugh nor I responded she set off along the covered walkway suspended between house and studio, a whippy ticklish little structure some ten feet above the ground. She might have chosen to knock on the studio door, but there was also a very narrow walkway, a kind of gangplank which snaked around the outer wall of the studio and so she appeared in front of the open lube-bay door, standing outside the silk, the river at her back.
    "Sorry, it's me again."
    I affected great concentration on my pencils. "Can I use your phone?"
    At that moment the electricity returned, flooding the studio with bright light. There stood a slender blonde woman behind a veil of stocking silk. She had mud up to her pretty calves.
    "Strong work," she said. "You can't come in."
    "Don't worry. I wouldn't track mud into a studio."
    Only later did I think how few civilians would have put it quite like that. At the time I was concerned with simpler things: that she had not come to buy the property, that she was exceedingly attractive and in need of help. I led her back across the walkway to Jean-Paul's "house of few possessions" where the only real room was a central kitchen with a square table made from Tasmanian blackwood which I was required--his final instruction--to scrub each morning. The table had more character than when Jean-Paul last saw it--cadmium yellow, crimson rose, curry, wine, beef fat, clay--over a month of domestic life now partially obscured by a huge harvest of pumpkins and zucchinis amongst which I now finally located the telephone.
    "No dial tone," I said. "I'm sure they're working on it."
    Hugh began stirring in his room. I remembered that his dog had drowned. It had completely slipped my mind.
    My visitor had remained on the other side of the flywire door.
    "I'm so sorry," she said. "I can see you have more important things to worry about." She was drenched, her short yellow hair all matted, like a little chicken saved from drowning.
    I opened the door.
    "We are used to mud in this part of the house," I said. She hesitated, shivering. She looked like she should be put in a little cardboard box before the fire.
    "Perhaps you'd like some dry clothes and a warm shower?"
    She could not have known what a peculiarly intimate thing I was offering. You see, Jean-Paul's bathroom was on the back porch and here we hairy men were used to showering, almost alfresco, with nothing but flywire separating us from the roaring river, the bending trees. It was easily the best part of our exile. Once we were clean we would climb into that big Japanese wooden tub where the hot water cooked us as red as crayfish while, on a day like today at least, the rain beat across our faces.
    On the public side, by the open stairs--really just a fire escape-- there were canvas blinds and these I now lowered. I gave her our one clean towel, a dry shirt, a sarong.
    "If you use the tub," I said, "you can't use soap in it." "Domo arigato" she called. "I know how to