Turquoiselle Read Free

been old BBS,
(nickname Bugger Back-Scratcher), who could be officious and over-detailed, so
that returning the Third Person, and putting in the receipt and card from
dinner, took nearly half an hour. The London traffic was augmented too by some
maintenance work near the park; Carver had wondered if this was a cover for
something else, as roadworks so often were. Whatever it was had caused more
delay. As he finally gained the approach to the village, his watch showed
almost 1 a.m.
    He
doubted Donna would still be up. He hoped she would not be. Mother Maggie had
probably come over. They would have watched TV and drunk wine, (or orange juice
for Donna perhaps, if she thought she was pregnant). Maggie tended to come by
cab for such evenings, and to take a cab back to her own place at Beechurst before
eleven, and then Donna, alone, wandered about, had a bath and went to bed, read
and fell asleep with the bedside lamp turned on full – to welcome or chide, as
she said, when he arrived “hours” after. Of course, sometimes it was hours after,
three or four in the morning. “Mag thinks you have a girlfriend,” Donna had
said.
    “Oh,
does she?”
    “Yes.
But I don’t.”
    “That’s
all right then.”
    “Do
you?” she asked at once.
    Carver
had shaken his head. “No.” No , he thought. Donna was more than enough.
    As
he drove into the village, the car sliding slow now, with a long soft feral
purr, he saw dim yellow in the curtained side window of The Bell. The purring
note might be a signal the engine, as before, was about to play up. And The
Bell was having another lock-in late drinking session.
    Carver
pulled over and parked in the yard. He did this now and then, Ted at the Bell
did not object.
    “Oh,
it’s you, mate,” said Ted, letting him cautiously through under the porch like
a secret lover. “What’ll you have? Usual?”
    “Thanks,
Ted.”
    “Long
old day for you, up town?” Ted asked the ritual question.
    “Yes.
Too long.”
    “Here
you are, then. Lock Heim.” Ted added the Jewish good wish with his emphatic
regulation phonetic misspelling.
    “Cheers.”
    Carver
drank the black coffee in a corner of the bar, away from the rest of the small
group who were habitually here during a lock-in, and after harder stuff, not
always limited to alcohol.
    He
would spend a quarter of an hour, leave the car and walk the rest of the way.
By doing that he could be home about 1.30. She must be asleep by then for sure.
Donna slept easily and deeply. He would not wake her. The spare room was fine.
     
    A
bird was singing in the lane, up among the trees with the stretch of fields
behind them; there was unbroken woodland on the other side, behind the house.
Despite this nocturnal aria it was not a nightingale, though musical enough. A
blackbird, very likely, but roused by what? The lane’s few and isolated street-lamps
had failed to come on tonight; often they did not work.
    No
lamps showed in the house. Occasionally Donna did turn them out, even in the
hall and inside the glassed-in front door. Only a security bulb flared on
therefore as he got near, as it did anyway for every fox, badger or
neighbourhood cat.
    Carver
unlocked the entrances, using another three keys, here, one for the glass panel
and two for the main door.
    Having
gained the inner doorway, he glanced out again, and noted the night staring
back at him as the security bulb extinguished: the primal and unnegotiable
darkness. Quietly he shut outer and inner doors.
    Living
sound sprang up without warning, not twenty feet away in the unlit enclosure.
    For
a moment Carver, if anyone could have seen, became an invisibly distended and
sparkling electric wire of attention. But in another moment, just before the
lightning strike came of all the hall lights bursting on together from a master
switch, he had relaxed, shrunk down again into an uninterested traveller re-entering
his home.
    “Where
the fuck have
you been ?”
Donna screamed, standing between the main