“We talk about all the reasons why the umpire’s decision to give us out LBW was an absolute atrocity, how many times we nearly found the edge while bowling but didn’t quite, how many times we thought about hooking their fast bowler for six while batting, but decided to duck instead, and whether the Pakistanis really were guilty of ball-tampering in the final test. It’s riveting stuff, at least as interesting as the average teachers’ drinking session, when everyone complains at great length about the iniquities of CPD and how much we all hate the beginning of term—that’s why I always sneak off early to get together with you, if I can.”
“Well, I’m glad I can attract you away from such strong competition,” she said. “That makes me feel really good.”
Unfortunately, that Saturday’s game was an away fixture, and by the time Steve got back to Salisbury Janine was beginning to wonder, audibly, whether she really wanted to spend as much time hanging around waiting for him to favor her with his belated presence. He assured her that winter was not far off now that Autumn had begun, and that the season would be over soon enough. They patched things up on the Sunday, but they didn’t meet up again until Wednesday, when the survival course made little progress, being mostly concerned with nutrition—highlighting the deficiency diseases that might result from inadequate vitamin provision—and the elements of paramedical improvisation, which Steve had previously thought of as “first aid”.
On Thursday, Steve picked Janine and Milly up in quick succession on the way to the AlAbAn meeting. Milly seemed to be in a much more buoyant and frivolous mood than she had been on the previous occasion, presumably because Steve was no longer an unknown quantity and she no longer felt the need to be wary of him. She asked how their survival course was going in a flirtatious manner, and Janine countered by asking Milly, in a much more earnest tone, whether she’d thought any more about going to A level evening classes.
“I don’t know,” Milly said, dubiously. “I don’t really rate the tech, you know. I did a martial arts course last year, remember, and I was a bit disappointed. I wanted to learn to hurt people, but it was more about learning how not to hurt people.”
“A levels aren’t quite the same thing, are they?” Janine said. “You get a much better class of homework.”
“You’re only saying that because you were too scared to let me practice on you.” Milly retorted. “Ali let me throw her—mind you, she’s not much bigger than you are, so it wasn’t hard. If you’d been going out with Steve then I could have borrowed him, and found out whether big people really do fall harder.”
“I’m not exactly a rugby player,” Steve pointed out. “You’d be taller than me if you wore high heels.”
“I think the answer I was looking for,” Milly said, “was: You’re welcome to throw me any time, darling.” She giggled as she said it, revealing that she had a rather infectious laugh
“That might have been the answer you were looking for, darling,” Janine said, stifling the infection that made her want to giggle in her turn, “but if you’d got it, you’d both have been in trouble. You’d do better to set your eyes on Walter Wainwright, Milly—an affair with an older man would do you good, or at least calm you down.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Milly said, breezily. “Amelia looks innocent and harmless, but so did Lucrezia Borgia.”
“According to the head of history at school, Lucrezia Borgia was much maligned,” Steve put in. “She really was sweet and innocent, but horribly exploited by her relatives and direly besmirched by historians.”
“Is the head of history one of the ones you seduced?” Milly asked, clinging insistently to her flirtatious vein. “Jan told me all about your checkered past.”
“Good god, no,” Steve said. “And it’s really not that checkered.”
“Are you going to tell, your story tonight, Mil?” Janine asked—a question that immediately dampened the mood. Milly took some time before muttering a denial. Steve glanced sideways, attempting to judge whether the move had been deliberate, but Janine wouldn’t meet his eye.
They got to the meeting a little earlier than they had the previous week, although Steve wasn’t consciously aware of having pressed the accelerator any more firmly, and had time to watch the greater number of the faithful arrive. Janine drew Milly aside when they’d collected their cups of tea, so Steve slipped into scientific observer mode and studied the AlAbAn regulars—especially Walter Wainwright, who was busy greeting people as they came in. After watching him for a few minutes Steve decided that his initial judgment had been a little hard on Walter Wainwright, even if he did turn out to be an ex-Man from the Pru. On observing him more intently, Steve decided that Walter was neither as much of a lech nor as much of a con man as he’d first elected to believe. Beyond the insistent amiability and quasi-paternal attitude there was an aura of authority and competence, and there was a genuine warmth in the way he addressed people.
Walter Wainwright must have observed Steve observing him, because he came over just as Janine returned from her intimate chat with Milly. “It’s good to see you again, Steve,” he said. “I’m glad you decided to return—I’m always disappointed when people don’t give us a second chance. It’s good to see you too, Janine. I saw your parents on Saturday, and mentioned that I’d seen you. I hope I didn’t put my foot in it—they seemed rather surprised that you’d been to an AlAbAn meeting.”
“I hadn’t had a chance to mention it to them myself,” Janine said, vaguely. “I really must give them a ring some time soon—thanks for reminding me.”
Steve knew that Janine was rather dilatory in the matter of keeping in touch with her parents, although he wasn’t sure exactly why. On the one occasion when she’d taken him to meet them, on a Sunday when he didn’t have a game, they’d all gone to the local pub for lunch. It had seemed to him to be a fairly comfortable experience, as such experiences went, but Janine had been very glad when it was over. Steve had remarked that Janine and her parents didn’t see eye-to-eye on a good may issues, especially the propriety of working as an “office skivvy” for Thomas Cook’s, but they hadn’t seemed to be any harder on her than the average concerned parent Obviously, they’d expected better of her, and would presumably have been more content if she’d had a job more akin to Steve’s, but he’d seen far worse performances at every parents’ evening he’d ever been forced to attend.
“Is there anything you’d like me to say to them if I see them this weekend, my dear?” Walter said, radiating concern, “or anything you’d particularly like me not to say.”
“Nothing at all,” Janine said, with a furtive smile. Steve took this to mean that she was perfectly prepared to let her parents suspect that she might think she’d been abducted by aliens. From her point of view, he supposed, that was probably an alternative preferable to letting them believe that she was in a steady relationship with a man who thought that he’d been abducted by aliens
Steve couldn’t resist saying: “Do Janine’s parents know that you believe that everyone in the world has been abducted at least once, Mr. Wainwright?”
“Call me Walter, Steve,” the old man replied. “And yes, of course they do. I don’t hide my opinions. It wouldn’t do me any good if I tried—it would only lead to people in the pub pointing at me slyly and whispering: That’s nutty old Walter Wainwright—he thinks that everybody in the world’s been abducted by aliens. It’s better to be open about such things, don’t you think?”
“I guess so,” Steve agreed, wondering whether the old man was hinting that he ought to be a bit more