arm, its strap looped over her shoulder.
Cliff called out, "Sorry! I was helping this lady - ," as the woman said, "I've got myself completely lost," with a laugh. She went on, "I'm awfully sorry. He offered ..." She gestured with the map she was holding, as if to explain what was patently obvious: She'd somehow wandered from the public gardens to the administrative building, which Gordon was reroofing.
"I've never actually seen someone thatch a roof before," she added, perhaps in an effort to be friendly.
Gordon, however, wasn't feeling friendly. He was feeling sharp, all edges and most of them needing to be smoothed. He had no time for tourists.
"She's trying to get to Monet's Pond," Cliff called out.
"And I'm trying to get a bloody ridge put onto this roof," was Gordon's reply, although he made it in an undertone. He gestured northwest. "There's a path up by the fountain. The nymphs and fauns fountain. You're meant to turn left there. You turned right."
"Did I?" the woman called back. "Well...that's typical, I s'pose." She stood there for a moment, as if anticipating further conversation. She was wearing dark glasses and it came to Gordon that the entire effect of her was as if she was a celebrity, a Marilyn Monroe type because she was shapely like Marilyn Monroe, not like the pin-thin girls one generally saw. Indeed, he actually thought at first that she might be a celebrity. She rather dressed like one, and her expectation that a man would be willing to stop what he was doing and eagerly converse with her suggested it as well. He replied briefly to the woman with, "You should find your way easy enough now."
"Were that only the truth," she said. She added, rather ridiculously, he thought, "There won't be any ...well, any horses up there, will there?"
He thought, What the hell ... ? and she added, "It's only ...I'm actually rather afraid of horses."
"Ponies won't hurt you," he replied. "They'll keep their distance 'less you try to feed them."
"Oh, I wouldn't that." She waited for a moment as if expecting him to say more, which he was not inclined to do. Finally she said, "Anyway ...thank you," and that was the end of her.
She set off on the route that Gordon had indicated, and she removed her hat as she went and swung it from her fingertips. Her hair was blond, cut like a cap round her head, and when she shook it, it fell neatly back into place with a shimmer, as if knowing what it was supposed to do. Gordon wasn't immune to women, so he could see she had a graceful walk. But he felt no stirring in his groin or in his heart, and he was glad of this. Untouched by women was how he liked it.
Cliff joined him on the scaffolding, two bundles of straw on his back. He said, "Tess quite liked her," as if in explanation of something or perhaps in the woman's defence, and he added, "Could be time for another go, mate," as Gordon watched the woman gain distance from them.
But Gordon wasn't watching her out of fascination or attraction. He was watching to see if she made the correct turn at the fountain of nymphs and fauns. She did not. He shook his head.
Hopeless, he thought. She'd be in the cow pasture before she knew it, but he fully expected she would also be able to find someone else to help her there.
CLIFF WANTED TO go for a drink at the end of the day. Gordon did not. He did not drink at all. He also never liked the idea of becoming chummy with his apprentices. Beyond that, the fact that Cliff was only eighteen made Gordon thirteen years his senior and most of the time he felt like his father. Or he felt the way a father might feel, he supposed, as he had no children and possessed neither the desire nor the expectation of having them.
He said to Cliff, "Got to give Tess a run. She won't settle tonight if she doesn't work off some energy."
Cliff said, "You sure, then, mate?"
Gordon said, "Reckon I know my dog." He knew that Cliff hadn't been talking about Tess, but he liked the way his remark served to cut off conversation. Cliff enjoyed talking far too much.
Gordon dropped him at the pub in Minstead, a hamlet tucked into a fold of land, consisting of a church, a graveyard, a shop, the pub, and