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all, there'd be a little colony of English, enough to hold a
bridge party with After Eight mints.
        Dai gave Y Groes a final rueful
glance before turning into the forestry.
        And in time, he thought, the
little clutch of eggs will turn rotten in the nest.

 
     
    Part Two
     
     
    NOT MEANT TO BE THERE
     
     
     
     

Chapter V
    ENGLAND
     
    Lying back, red hair all over the pillow and the cane headboard, Miranda
applied the
    Zippo to the end of her cigarette and said, "So how was it for you, Miranda?"
        Berry Morelli said,
"Huh?" the sweat on his back was merely damp now, and chilly. It was an
hour before dawn, the bedroom half-lit from the street.
        In a dreamy voice, Miranda
replied," Well, since you ask, Miranda, not too wonderful. I can say, with
some degree of confidence, that I have definitely had better. I suppose, as
rapes go, it was not without consideration
. . ."
        "Rape?" Berry Morelli
sat up. "You said rape ?"
        "Well, if it was meant to
be love-making," Miranda said, "it was distressingly short on the
customary endearments. In fact, now that I think about it, it was entirely
silent, bar the odd sharp intake of breath."
        "Hey, listen I . . ."
Berry leaned over her and helped himself to one of her cigarettes from the
bedside table.
        ". . .And then I began to
detect in the rapist a. . .sort of underlying absence of joy, would that
describe it? One's first experience of pre- coital
tristesse. Or perhaps it was simply lack of interest, which would be considerably less tolerable."
Miranda turned onto her side to face him, looking pale and fragile - which she
wasn't - in the hazy streetlight from the uncurtained window.
        "OK," she said.
"What's eating you, Morelli?"
        Berry hauled the black hair out
of his eyes. The hair was still wet. From the rain, not the sweat.
"Listen, I'm sorry."
        "Oh, please. . . not the
apology. I expect I enjoyed it more than you anyway." She covered up a
breast and stared into space, smoking.
        This Miranda. You could never
figure out if she was deeply wounded or what. Berry rolled out of bed and into his
bathrobe. "You want some tea? He was fully into tea now, no coffee these
days. Very British.
        "No sugar," Miranda
said. "No, wait . . . make that two sugars. I suspect, God help me, that
the night is yet young."
        "I'll fetch a tray.
Black?"
        "Morelli, we haven't all
got the zeal of the converted."
        "OK." While Berry's hands
moved things around in the tiny kitchen, his head was still walking the
streets. There'd been cabs around the hospital but he'd needed to walk. Death did
that to you, he thought. You had to keep moving, proving to yourself you still
could.
        A bad night, in the end.
     
    And he'd lost a friend.
        He couldn't afford to lose a friend
in this country. It only left one, if you didn't include Miranda. Which he didn't,
yet.
        "Biscuits, too, Morelli,"
she called imperiously from the bedroom. Miranda, whom he'd often find in his
bed but whom he hesitated to call his regular girlfriend. Who'd gone home with
him the first time because, she explained, she liked the sound of his name, the
way you liked the sound of Al Pacino and Robert de Niro. There were dukes in Miranda's
family and her aunt had once been a temporary lady-in-waiting to Princess Anne.
Berry liked the sound of Miranda's name too, the way you liked the sound of cucumber
sandwiches and Glyndebourne.
        "Morelli!"
        "What?"
        "Biscuits."
        "Yeah, I heard."
        "The chocolate ginger
things from Sainsbury's. OK?"
    "Right."
    Earlier tonight Miranda's good mood
had blown like a light bulb after she'd produced tickets for Peter Gabriel and he'd
told her he wouldn't be able to make the gig on account of it was Old
Winstone's farewell binge. Old Winstone, his friend.
        She hadn't believed him. "What's
he doing having it on a Sunday night?"
        "All about