The Spy I Loved (3 page)

“
She’ll go.”

He
nodded.

“
All right, here goes.” He gave a good pull on the rope and
the thing fired right up, pop-popping away as a small cloud of blue
smoke drifted away on the breeze. “Very nice.”

She was a
little impressed herself, but Mark was very good at was motors.
With some guests she had little choice but to insist on a bigger
boat and an electric starter. She was always a bit shy about
upselling them too aggressively. This guy seemed pretty
competent.

Having
satisfied himself that he understood the machine, he gave her a
cheerful nod. She squatted on the dock, holding her steady, and
watched as he moved forward, removed the bow-line and then he was
in the seat again. Her assessment complete, she let him
go.

“
Thank you.” He lifted a hand.

Mister
Liam Kimball had been released into the wilderness.

Easing
the throttle open, Kimball headed off down their small bay. Once
well away from shore, he turned the prow and then opened her up to
about two-thirds going by the sound of it. He was heading upriver
where there would be a current to bring him home if the engine
died.

Good. The
gentleman had operated a small boat before. He’d rented the cabin
for two whole weeks, which was unusual for a sole occupant. The
option to stay on wasn’t exactly unheard-of.

No matter
how good the fishing was, and it was usually pretty good, very few
men could bring themselves to stay on one lake or one river when
there were thousands, probably millions of rivers in the world.
About half of those rivers were in Canada.

She turned and headed back up to the lodge. There was a small
but colourful family grouping, bellies hanging out, fluorescent
flip-flip sandals and crocs on their feet. They were heading for
the front door. They would be wanting ice-cream, ice-cream,
we all scream for ice-cream.

***

It was
the end of another long day. The smell of barbecued steak,
hamburgers and hotdogs hung in the air of the small resort.
Vehicles came and went, creeping along due to a couple of speed
bumps in front of the store and a fifteen-kilometre per hour limit.
People were heading to town for a night of drinking and country
music or returning on whatever mysterious errands campers created
for themselves out of what she had always suspected was sheer
boredom on their parts.

Lindsey
had always liked people. She had been sitting by the campfire, set
in a steel wheel rim in the ground, chatting and having a pop with
the Chants, a nice old couple who had started off bringing their
children to fish for a week every summer. This had evolved into a
multi-generational affair with adults, children, grandchildren and
teenagers spread over two cabins. All of them were apparently
healthy, cheerful and active.

They had
gotten to know each other pretty well over the years.

She was
just walking back to the lodge. Cabin Seven was the last one on her
right, then a short beach, then came the docks.

Mister
Kimball came out of the rear door of his cabin and she slowed and
turned around to speak to him. It was her way, making everyone feel
welcome and ensuring that they enjoyed their stay.

“
Hi.”

“
Hello.”

He had a
string of fairly good sized fish in his hands. He stood there
looking a bit sheepish. With a nod, he went to the big wooden block
table. The last rays of the sunlit clouds lit his patio, which
faced west. The sun was well down, but sunset went on for a long
time at this latitude. It was one of the compensations. He snapped
on the overhead floodlight.

He lined
them up on the outdoor table provided for all cabins, after taking
them off the string.

“
Looks like you’ve had some pretty good luck.”

Liam was
sun and wind-burned about the face, neck and the deep V where his
khaki bush shirt was undone on the top three buttons. Her eye
lingered at the thatch of hair there then moved on. He nodded,
seemingly intent. She watched his long fingers as he expertly began
to scale the first fish, which looked to be a couple of pounds. It
was a perch, and he’d get a couple of half-decent fillets from
it.

“
Yes. I found some good structure, just off the mouth of a
little bay. I have to admit, I wasn’t taking it too seriously until
I felt that first good tug on the line.” His face took on an
engaging, speculative look.

Those
eyes came around and met her frank and open gaze.

“
I guess I really did need a vacation.”

“
What do you do for a living, Liam?”

“
Nothing too glamorous.” He shrugged in deprecation. “I’m a
translator. I’m in her Majesty’s diplomatic service, which is to
say that I answer emails and phones. I talk to people who aren’t
very good at English or other languages, and try to help whoever
I’m assigned to, to sort of make sense of it all.”

So that’s
what he did in Montreal. He must be at the embassy, or consulate
rather.

She
grinned at the image. It really was like that. Her own electronic
world was getting pretty extensive, what with the phone and the
computer and the TV and the radio all streaming, and rarely turned
off these days. She had virtual friends all over the world. Her own
phone never left her, although she did turn it off
sometimes.

“
It’s all about bandwidth these days.”

He
laughed outright on hearing that.

“
Anyway, ah. I was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown,
and my physician rather insisted that I take time off. My job, like
many in the civil service, has certain benefits. There was some
suggestion that with my years of service…I might even consider
early retirement.”

Early
retirement. Lindsey’s jaw dropped.

He nodded
soberly, cutting the head and tail off of his second fish. He slit
the belly and spread it open to pull out the innards with a quick
swipe of a finger.

“
And?” She was genuinely curious.

They
weren’t retiring him on years of service, it had to be health or
something serious.

Liam
didn’t fit the usual profile of beer, hockey, golf and fishing, the
admittedly stereotyped sort of everyday people she normally saw
come and go from the park. After arriving so well-dressed, he had
gone totally native, wearing cargo shorts with multiple, capacious
pockets. He had nice knees, she decided. His faded brown socks were
fashionably loose, half falling down onto the tops of his scuffed
suede desert boots. His loose cotton shirt had an oriental collar
and Velcro fasteners on a pair of breast pockets. Only the bottom
three buttons were done up. His big black watch with all of its
bells and whistles looked very capable indeed—it took a certain
sort of man to strap something like that on his wrist. It was
adventurous, she thought, seeing the car in a whole new light.
That’s what the car was, that’s what it represented—adventure. No
wonder I find him so compelling. She repressed a slight shudder in
the old midriff.

“
I talked my way into a sabbatical. I get a year off to
discover my
self
—whatever the hell that means. In the meantime, this is my
nervous breakdown and I am determined to get the most out of it…”
He trailed off. “I don’t know if I like trout better than perch,
but I got a few of them too.”

He bathed
them in a bit of cold water from the plastic hose attachment. They
gleamed and glimmered, rosy and speckled, all iridescent on the
sides. He picked one up and showed her, as it coruscated in the
light.

He gave
her a look. Liam was a very nice man, it sort of beamed out of him
at times.

“
I had forgotten what quiet was. For one thing.”

She bit
her lip, and reaching over, touched him on the elbow. She kept
surprising herself, and that probably meant something.

“
Is there anything else you need, Mister Kimball?”

“
Please call me Liam.” His eyes clouded. “Oh. There is one
thing.”

“
And what’s that?”

He
sighed.

“
I kind of hate to bring this up. But I was sort of wondering.
Did you by any chance see anyone, most likely one of the younger
ones, maybe sneaking a look or possibly even getting into my
car?”

***

Dale had
been drinking more. It was getting worse. At one time she could
have denied it, and he probably still would. At one time, if he had
a beer with lunch, it didn’t mean much because it didn’t seem to
affect his performance. Now, he seemed more furtive and yet more
defiant about it. Now it was the three-beer lunch, every day, with
food being an afterthought and surprise naps a common element of
his routine. His absences threw the whole lot onto her and Mark,
the perpetual hired man— a man with no power and no opinion, and no
real initiative of his own. Her uncle was trying to run a business
and make his living, even trying to protect his investment if one
thought of it that way. He was also getting older, becoming more
set in his ways. She had her worries about Uncle Dale, and yet she
had her own plan. It’s not like she hadn’t seen all of this coming.
Drink had always been his solace, his answer to boredom and the
tedium of winter. Booze had become his wife, his girlfriend and his
dog, all rolled into one.

Surely
Lindsey had the right.

She would
go out into the world and eventually she would have her own place—a
home, a man, a baby…she had the right to be her own
person.

Anything
less than that was unfair, and yes, everyone knew that life was
unfair a lot of the time. She wasn’t asking for anything else that
anyone else didn’t seem to have and take for granted.

It seemed
the natural way of things and she didn’t see why she could not or
would not have all of that herself someday. She was sort of
carefully trying to avoid responsibility for Uncle Dale.

This was
a horribly honest thought, one which stirred some dark and turbid
inner waters.

Dale called it
the nesting
syndrome
and she supposed he wasn’t far
wrong either, for human beings were just a slightly more evolved
animal.

“
Uncle Dale?”

“
Yesh?”

Beer was
one thing. Dale had a big glass with ice and probably rye whiskey,
Wiser’s sloshing around in it.

At one
time he would have been going from cabin to cabin, campfire to
campfire, socializing and just making himself available. The way he
was now, it was perhaps better if he sat in his own living room and
stayed there.

He sat
up, reaching for the TV remote control. He had the sound up way too
high for her liking, but he refused to see a hearing specialist.
Dale didn’t like hearing aids. The worst part about it was that
Dale was a really decent man.

“
Sorry, honey, what’s up?”

“
Mister Kimball was asking if we had seen anyone poking around
in his car.”

Uncle
Dale eyed up his glass, its pale colour and diminishing ice cubes
indicative of the need for a refill. He looked up at
her.

“
Oh, God. Yeah, I suppose so—” Not that he could name anyone
in particular or describe which kid had left which nose print.
“Anyway, he should have expected as much. That’s half the fun of
driving something like that.”

He yanked
the lever on the side of his chair, lowering the footrest and
bringing himself to the near-vertical. The Weather Network droned
on.

Lindsey
picked up the remote and turned it down low.

He stared
at it as if mystified by yet another twenty-four degree day with an
overnight low near zero Celsius. It was nothing they hadn’t seen a
million times and yet the people still marveled.

“
He didn’t seem all that upset. He said he never leaves it
locked, as it saves the thief from the trouble of slashing the roof
and just reaching an arm in anyways.”

Dale
snorted and grinned at that.

“
Well. Was there anything taken?” At lot of those old British
convertibles didn’t even have door locks.

She shook
her head.

“
No. It was probably just kids—or teenagers.” There were quite
a few boys about the right age staying at The Pines.

They
might have climbed in just to see what it was like to sit behind
the wheel. The fact that they might leave it out of gear, or take
off the parking brake was of some concern. The land was hilly and
the grounds sloped every which way. It would be easy enough for the
car to roll right down the bank and into the river.

“
Yeah. No harm done, anyways.” He eyed his drink.

What was
interesting about the booze was that it didn’t seem to cheer him
up, neither did Dale cry into his glass. It was an anaesthetic as
much as anything, or an aid for sleeping.

“
Why don’t you go to bed?” Lindsey was ready for sleep
herself, the last refuge of the truly unhappy.