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“I’ll be back by then.”

River Street, and there is Willard. He isn’t strolling, like everyone else, in the lethargic afternoon. His short form hurtles along the sidewalk. No concessions must be made to the sun – that would be the rot setting in, he thinks. Will he stop or will he catapult past, without seeing me?

He stops and smirks, and for a second I can glimpse his bustling as only sadly absurd. But what about the day he strapped James, and my own stumbling into that betrayal? I have to be wary.

“How are you, Rachel? You’re looking well. Holidays agree with you, eh?”

What does he mean by that? I mustn’t be so suspicious.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“I hear you met our mutual friend, after all.”

“What?”

“Prairie drums,” he says. “News carries, doesn’t it? That’s what they used to call smoke signals, if my memory of history serves me correctly – prairie drums. No, actually, Angela happened to see you in his car last week.”

“Oh.”

So it was Nick who was at Willard’s the evening I refused to go. I might have met him a month earlier. But it wouldn’t have been any good. I’m always off-balance at Willard’s house, with Angela pouring perfumed graciousness all round.

Angela, naturally, would just happen to see. She is the reverse of those three wise monkeys that used to be a paperweight on my father’s desk. Angela hears all, sees all, and tells the whole works. I must not think this way. I’ve always hated that about Manawaka, but I’ve grown the same, bounded by trivialities.

“He’s a bit of a joker, I thought,” Willard is saying. “Mind you, I’m not suggesting he isn’t a perfectly nice fellow. But he strikes me as not being very serious. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I don’t know him all that well.”

“Never mind, maybe that’ll be remedied, eh?”

As I walk on, I don’t seem to be seeing the street. I can smell the dust that is blown along the sidewalk by the incessant summer wind. I can hear the store awnings fluttering and flapping like the exhausted wings of pelicans. And I can feel, still, the innuendo in Willard’s voice.

Home. As I’m walking up the steps, the phone rings. Mother answers it.

“Who? No, I’m sorry. She’s out.”

“I’m here!”

“Oh. Wait a moment. She’s just come in.”

The receiver is in my hands. Hello.

“Hello – Rachel? Hi. I was wondering if you’re going to be busy tonight?”

“No. No, I’m not.”

“Can I see you, then?”

“Yes. Yes, I guess so. Yes, that would be nice.”

Afterwards, I have to go into my bedroom and close the door. A perfectly ordinary occurrence. I’m not worked up in the slightest. I’m quite glad he phoned, that’s all. It’s not of any real importance.

It’s not only my hands that are shaking. My nerves pull me like a papier mâché doll jerked by a drunken puppet-master. How the boy and girl in the valley would laugh. I won’t do this. I won’t. There’s no sense in it, no reason.

I can be poised, good company, gay. Men don’t like women to be too serious. Is that true, and who told it to me first? My sister, likely. She used to go to every Saturday evening dance from the time she was sixteen. It never bothered her. Or if it did, she never said. She used to tell me what they had said to her, how they had said please please please. I used to wonder if it were all true or if she had embroidered. I guess I never really doubted it was true for her. I wonder how she managed to draw that response from them, invariably instead of occasionally.

Could a person be Calla’s way, without knowing it, only it might be obvious to a man, say, or at least sensed, and then he wouldn’t – no that’s impossible. It’s mad. I must not.

What will I wear?

“The movie doesn’t seem very promising,” Nick says, half apologetically. “Would you just as soon go for a drive?”

He’s wearing a dark-green sports shirt and grey flannels, no tie or jacket. The evening is saturated with heat, and still almost as light as noon. He drives along the highway, out of town, and then on to a side road that dawdles through bluffs of poplar with their