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Pepper at an indoor table, they seemed to be surrounded by a kind of aura.
    Diane and the man and woman, probably her father and mother, were talking animatedly between diminishing attacks of panting and studying their wristwatches and the pedometers strapped to their ankles. The young man, however, only sat quietly, leaning back in his chair, his eyes staring blankly in the general direction of the lake. He was definitely, James decided, Diane’s brother—or else gay. There couldn’t be any other explanation of the fact that he was staring at the lake while sitting next to a glowing, panting Diane, whose chest, under her tight sweat shirt was still heaving in a really remarkable way.
    Something suddenly interfered with James’ line of vision, and he refocused to find himself eye to eye with Fiona, the young Englishwoman who worked in the snack bar. Fiona, probably in her mid-twenties, was lean and bitter. She was bitter about England, America, the older generation, the younger generation, The Camp, T. J. Mitchell and the fact that her visa was going to expire at just about the time the weather got really bad in London. James found her even-handed disillusionment vaguely inspirational—an indication that prejudice was not inevitable, except perhaps against life itself. In the past he’d enjoyed chatting with Fiona, but at the moment she was refilling the sugar bowl on his table and in the process blocking his view of the outside world.
    Leaning around her and pointing he asked, “Do you know who those people are?”
    Fiona glanced wearily over her shoulder. “That lot at the table? Do I know that lot? Better than I’d like to, I can tell you.”
    “Why? What’s the matter with them?”
    “Oh well, it’s not just the four of them out there, is it? It’s the other one I could do without. The little one. Baby-sitting they call it. Well, let me tell you, there’s not much sitting to be done. Dodging would be more like it.”
    Suddenly he knew what she was talking about. “Oh, you mean Jacky?” he asked.
    “That’s the one. Good name for him, too. Another Jack the Ripper, someday, I wouldn’t be surprised.” Fiona was wiping up spilled sugar so fiercely that the table jittered.
    Deftly rescuing his Dr. Pepper, James asked, “You mean you baby-sit at the Jarretts’?”
    She sighed. “Regularly,” she said. “Every Saturday night.”
    “You’d think one of them could do it sometimes,” James said sympathetically. “One of the other kids, I mean. They look old enough.”
    “You would think so, wouldn’t you. But, oh no, not a bit of it. All four of them have to go out every Saturday night. The cook won’t do it, either. Got it written right into her contract when she went to work for them, good job for her. No baby-sitting.” Fiona was sounding bitterer by the moment.
    “Well, why do you do it if you hate it so much?” James asked. “They couldn’t make you do it.”
    She sighed. “It’s the money,” she said. “I’m helping my mum buy a new flat in Camden Town, and the Jarretts do pay bloody well, I’ll say that for them.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I make more money dodging Jacky for three hours than that old skinflint Mitchell pays me for a whole day.” Still sighing, Fiona retired behind the counter.
    When James noticed that the Jarretts were preparing to leave, he stood up abruptly, put his glasses in his pocket, reconsidered, sat down again and put his glasses back on in order to watch them jog away. When they were out of sight, he asked Fiona where they lived. “I know it’s on Gettysburg,” he said. “Is it number sixteen?”
    “Sixteen? No, that’s the other Jarretts. The Duncan Jarretts. The Dunkin’ Jarretts, I call them. Always in the water. This lot’s the hunting Jarretts.”
    “Hunting? What do they hunt for?”
    “What don’t they? You should see the poor things hanging around the walls in that cabin of theirs. Cabin!” She rolled her eyes upward.