Ben Sunninghill … ‘But you are, Ben! I mean, you’ve got the loveliest smile. It makes you … shine. And it’s so … laughy.’
‘Got to have a sense of humour with a face like this,’ Ben agreed. ‘What about the nose? I could have it straightened, but not shortened, regrettably. Because, like most people, I do need the actual nostrils at the tip.’
Helen snorted into her wine glass. ‘And you’ve got the loveliest eyes, Ben! I mean, they’re so naughty. And kind.’ She smothered her mirth, her eyes moist, and waved at little Dundee. ‘Like getting me him.’
Ben smiled. ‘I’m glad.’
Helen wiped the corners of her eyes. ‘And,’ she said brightly, ‘you’ve got all your hair!’
‘All over,’ Ben agreed.
‘It shows virility!’
‘I tell the girls that, but I’m just told. I’m a fire-hazard.’
She laughed at him: ‘Oh, Ben …’
He smiled, then picked up the new doorlocks and the coil of electrical cable. ‘Well, I’ll fix the locks and extend that generator switch to your bedroom. To outwit the spooks.’
Helen brought her mind to this change of subject.
‘Oh, that’s very kind of you, but Clyde said it’s best where it is.’
Ben said: ‘You’re the one who lives here all alone each night with the spooks, not Clyde. It’s just a simple override switch, so you can shut down the generator from your bedroom when you go to bed. Clyde will still be able to start it and stop it from the kitchen.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘Why didn’t he know that?’
‘Maybe Clyde’s not a smart-ass like me.’
Ben changed the locks while Helen got her laundry together. Then she fed Dundee while Ben started work on the switch. The puppy wolfed down his food. ‘Like he’s never had meat before!’ she called happily from the yard.
‘Probably hasn’t, living with Jack Goodwin.’
‘Oh, he’s gorgeous!’
‘Jack or Dundee?’
‘Dundee! Oh, Jack’s a real miser. And a terrible gossip. “Radio-Jack”, we call him – tell him anything and it’s all over the Outback by nightfall. Who’s a beautiful boy, then?’
‘Me. Ask my mother.’
‘Oh, you ass!’ She came back into the kitchen, holding a glass of wine. ‘Oh, dear … I’m having a lovely day. Now then – got any laundry you want done? Smart-ass.’ She burst into giggles.
Ben picked his wine glass up from the floor and took a sip. ‘No, thank you, only dirty people need machines to do their laundry. I did mine by hand this morning.’
‘Well, it can’t be very dry. Where is it? In a plastic bag in your saddle-bag?’
‘Right.’
‘Right, and where is it?’
‘Just behind the saddle.’
‘I mean the bike, you fool. Even I can figure out where the saddle-bag is once I find the bike. But I didn’t see it when I came back from Billy’s.’
‘Outside your front door. Black, you can’t miss it, the only black 1000cc Harley-Davidson there.’
‘Oh, you ass!’ She marched to the front of the house. She ferreted through his saddle-bag and found the wet clothes. She took them to the line in the yard, and hung them up. Socks, underpants, vests, shirts. Then she took one shirt down again and returned to the kitchen.
‘Well, this garment needs strong machinery.’ She stuffed it into the washing-machine with her own laundry.
‘Thank you. But you can’t start up the generator to do the washing while I’m working on these wires.’ He added: ‘You could, but you’d have to bury me soon afterwards.’
‘Standing up beside Oscar?’
‘So the grave would have to be a bit deeper, and that ground’s hard. Not that much deeper,’ he admitted reasonably.
She prepared lunch while he led the cable along the kitchen walls and down the passage, tacking it to the skirting board. He bored a small hole in the doorframe and fed the wire through into her bedroom.
It was not very feminine; it seemed a worn, hard-up sort of room. On the far bedside table was a framed photograph of a man, doubtless Clyde: Ben peered across at it, but couldn’t make out much. On the dressing-table near the door was a photograph; four children. Taken recently, Ben thought. The boy, Tim, looked about sixteen: he was a strapping, good-looking lad; short hair, a generous open face, white even teeth – he was going to be what Americans call a ‘hunk’. The three girls were all pretty, with neatly combed blonde shoulder-length hair and generous mouths like their mother; the little one, Cathy, was going to be a beauty. Ben glanced around the room. The double-bed was neatly made. The rugs on the floor were patchy. The wardrobe door was open, he could see dresses hanging, the shelves jumbled with underwear. Below lay a muddle of high-heeled shoes, several mauve pairs among them. So she likes mauve? It would suit her, too her blue jeans suited her, with her blue eyes and blonde hair. One pair looked very sexy, with thin leather straps that she would wind around and tie above her ankles. He felt a desire to tiptoe across and pick them up. He could imagine them on her. Her toenails painted red? Oh dear, dear … The dressing-table was old and chipped. The little jars and bottles of lotions and creams and perfume had a frugal, husbanded air. He felt sure most of them were almost empty, kept for the last smear or drop. Between the dressing-table and the wardrobe was the bathroom. He glanced towards the kitchen, hesitated, then went to the door and looked inside. Untiled walls, an old tub with claw-and-ball feet, the enamel worn away near the plug. An overhead shower with a dull plastic curtain. A toilet. A bidet, obviously recently installed because the cement around its base looked newish. Some towels, a big, damp bathmat, a broken laundry basket. And, on the floor beside the basket, a pair of panties. They lay there with an air of abandonment, as if she had just stepped out of them.
Ben Sunninghill looked at them. They were red, and lacy. And see-through, and brief. He had an almost irresistible desire to tiptoe inside and pick them up. To feel them between his fingers, to hold them to his face …
‘Gotcha!’
He jerked around. Helen was in the bedroom doorway, smiling, Dundee in her arms. ‘Lunch is ready when you are!’
Ben recovered himself, and said easily: ‘I was considering the best place for this override switch. Here by the bathroom door, which is easy for me, or by your bedside? That way is easy for you, but I’ve got to lead the cable right around the room.’
Helen considered the problem tipsily. ‘Bedside makes sense, provided you’ve got enough cable. Then I haven’t got to get out of bed in all my nakedness when I’ve finished reading, hit the switch, dash back, trip over the rug, bark my shins, cuss, scramble up in the dark, feel for the bed, et cetera.’
Ben
