A Traitor to Memory

He'd made his escape that way, without inviting Georgia to accompany him and giving her no chance to make the suggestion herself. He called out once again, “P.B.? Come, girl. Time for a walk,” and he was gone before Georgia had the chance to regroup. He knew that she'd assume from his departure that she'd moved too quickly. He also knew that she wouldn't assume anything else. And that was important, Ted realised suddenly. That was crucial: to limit the woman's knowledge about him.

He'd walked rapidly, feeling it all again. Stupid, he told himself, stupid and blind. Hanging about like a schoolboy hoping for a go with the local tart, not seeing her as a tart at all because he was too young, too inexperienced, too eager, too … too limp. That's what it was, all right. Too limp.

He'd charged towards the river, dragging the poor dog behind him. He needed to put distance between himself and Georgia, and he wanted to be away from the flat long enough to ensure her departure in his absence. Even Georgia Ramsbottom would not throw all her chances away by playing her cards the first evening she was holding them. She would leave his flat; she would retire for a few days. Then, when she thought that he'd recovered from their initial skirmish, she would be back, offering a renewal of her sympathetic attention. Ted was certain he could depend upon that.

At the corner of Friday Street and the river, he'd turned left. He strode on the town side of the Thames. The lights along the street pooled buttermilk onto the pavement intermittently and the wind blew a heavy mist in sharp waves that felt as if they rose from the river itself. Ted turned up the collar of his waxed jacket and said, “Come on, girl,” to the dog, who was looking longingly at a sapling planted nearby, possibly with the hope of snoozing awhile underneath it. “P.B. Come.” A jerk on the choke chain did it, as usual. They hurried on.

They were in the church yard before Ted really thought about it. They were in the church yard before he recalled the vision he'd had there on the night Eugenie died. P.B. made for the grass like a horse to its stall before Ted actually knew she was doing so. She squatted wearily and let forth her stream before he had the chance to urge her somewhere else.

Without intending, without thinking, without even considering what the action implied, Ted felt his eyes drift from the dog to the almshouses at the far end of the path. He'd just take a quick glance that way, he told himself, in order to see that the woman who lived in the third house from the right had her curtains closed. If she hadn't and if a light was burning, he'd do her a service and let her know that any stranger passing by could look right in and … well, assess her valuables for a burglary.

The light was on. Time to do his good deed for the day. Ted pulled P.B. away from the tipped gravestone round which she was sniffing and urged her as quickly as he could along the path. It was essential that he get to the almshouse before the woman within it did anything that could embarrass them both. Because if she began to undress, as she had the other night, he could hardly knock on her door, caution her about her indiscretion, and thereby admit to having watched her, could he?

“Hurry, P.B.,” he said to the dog. “Come along.”

He was just fifteen seconds too late. Five yards from the almshouse and she had begun. And she was quick about it, so very quick that before he had time to avert his eyes, she'd whisked her jersey off, shaken back her hair, and removed her brassiere. She bent to something—was it her shoes? her stockings? her trousers? what?—and her breasts hung heavily downward.

Ted swallowed. He thought two words—Dear God—and he felt the first throb of his body's answer to the sight before him. He'd watched her once, he'd stood here once, he'd traced with his eyes those sumptuous full curves. But he couldn't—couldn't—allow himself the guilty pleasure of doing so again. She had to be told. She had to be warned. She had to … had to know? he wondered. What woman didn't know? What woman had never learned about caution and nighttime windows? What woman threw her clothes off at night in a room fully lit without curtains or blinds without knowing that someone on the other side of those few millimeters of glass was probably watching, longing, fantasising, hardening … She knew, Ted realised. She knew.

So he'd watched the unknown woman in that almshouse bedroom a second night. He'd stayed longer this time, mesmerised by the sight of her smoothing lotion on her neck and her arms. He heard himself moan like a pre-adolescent having his first glimpse at Playboy when she used that same lotion on her succulent breasts.