Evan can Wait: A Constable Evans Mystery by Rhys Bowen

Author:Rhys Bowen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2001-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Ginger had never taken much interest in my work before, apart from telling me that I tasted of slate and needed a bath. “I don’t know why you put up with it, Tref, I really don’t,” she used to tell me. “I wouldn’t do anything I didn’t like.”

“What else could I do?” I asked her.

She laughed. “There’s a war on. There’s labor shortages all over. A girl I work with at the convalescent home, her boyfriend got a job driving lorries down to London. Sometimes it’s sheep and sometimes it’s butter or produce. Either way, they don’t count too exactly and nobody notices if a pound or so of butter goes missing.”

“I don’t know how to drive, do I?” I said. “And no chance to learn either. Who do I know with a car?”

She grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “You’re a defeatist, Trefor Thomas. When I want to do something, I find a way to do it. Like dancing lessons—there’s this bloke at the convalescent home who used to be a ballroom dancing instructor before the war. He’s been teaching me to tango. Lovely, it is.”

I shook her hands from my shoulders. “I told you, I don’t want you mixing with those servicemen, and I certainly don’t want you dancing with one of them.”

She looked at my angry face and started laughing. “If you could only see us, Tref. He’s in a wheelchair, you dope. Had his legs shot off, didn’t he? He tells me the steps and I dance with his wheelchair. It’s a riot. We have good laughs.” She moved closer to me. “And I’m doing it for us, aren’t I? For our future. How am I going to get a job in films if I can’t do all the latest dance steps?”

“Well, I don’t want you dancing with any man with legs,” I said.

For some reason she thought this was awfully funny. “I could dance with you,”she said, moving very close to me. “You’ve got legs, and everything else that matters, too. I could teach you the tango. It’s ever so romantic. You press your body against mine, like this, and our lips are only this far apart, and then we start to sway, like this … .”

She was driving me insane. I could feel the points of her nipples digging into my chest and she was thrusting her leg between mine as we moved. I tried to kiss her but she broke away, laughing. “It’s a dance, Tref. Don’t get carried away.”

“Come on, Ginger, stop teasing. Do you know I’ve been alone all week down that blasted mine, thinking about you?”

“Oh poor sweetie-pie, honey lamb.” She turned her face up and kissed me. “You know, Tref, I’ve been thinking about those paintings.”

“My paintings, you mean? I haven’t had time recently … . .”

“Not yours, you dope. The famous paintings down your mine. It was Pamela’s boyfriend got me thinking—the way he said he could nick a pound or so of butter and they never noticed.

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