If at First

Greg told Nicole as he climbed into his ancient rowing boat. When the neurohormone hangover had gone, when the memory of Edwards had faded, when he felt human again.
    She untied the pannier and tossed it into the boat after him. ‘Sure, Greg. Take care.’
    *
    Back on land he headed for the pub to forget the kill. The Army had taught him how to handle that as well. How to suspend human feelings in combat, to refuse the blame for all the deaths, the pain, suffering, horror. Greg had never woken screaming like others in the regiment had.
    He knew what he needed, the release which came from drink and women, gluttoning out, sluicing away the memory of Edwards in a wash of basement-level normality.
    He had a good feeling as he walked into the Wheatsheaf at Edith Weston; esper intuition or old-fashioned instinct, it didn’t matter which, the result was the same. Static-charged anticipation. He opened the taproom door grinning.
    The Wheatsheaf’s landlord, Angus, had come up trumps; his new barmaid was a tall, strapping lass, twenty years old with a heart-shaped face, wearing her thick red hair combed back from her forehead. She was dressed in a long navy-blue skirt andpurple cap-sleeve T-shirt. A deep scoop neck showed off the heavily freckled slope of her large breasts to perfection.
    Eleanor Broady. Greg stored the name as she pulled him a pint of Ruddles County, topping it with a shot of Angus’s homemade whisky. It lasted longer that way, he couldn’t afford to knock back pints all night.
    Greg sat back and admired her in the guttering light of the oil lamps. The Wheatsheaf was a run of the mill rural pub, which reverted true to the nineteen-hundreds ideal with the demise of the big brewery conglomerates. Flash trash fittings melting away surprisingly fast once mains electricity ended and beer had to be hand-drawn from kegs again. Either relaxing or monumentally dull according to individual sensibilities. Greg liked it. There were no demands on him in the Wheatsheaf.
    He was wedged in between a group of local farm workers and some of the lads from the timber mill, billeted in the village’s old RAF base. The resident pair of warden dodgers were doing their nightly round, hawking a clutch of dripping rainbow trout they’d lifted from the reservoir.
    Eleanor was a prize draw for male attention. Slightly timid from first-night nerves, but coping with the banter well enough.
    Greg weighed up her personality, figuring how to make his play. Confidence gave him a warm buzz. He was seventeen years older, but with the edge his espersense gave him that shouldn’t be a problem. What amused her, topics to steer clear of, he could see them a mile off. She’d believe they were soul twins before the night was out.
    Her father came in at eleven thirty. The conversation chopped off dead. He was in dungarees, a big stained crucifix stitched crudely on the front. People stared; kibbutzniks didn’t come into pubs, not ever.
    Eleanor paled behind the bar, but stood her ground. Her father walked over to her, ignoring everybody, flickering yellow light catching the planes of his gaunt, angular face.
    ‘You’ll come home with me,’ he said quietly, determined. ‘We’ll make no fuss.’
    Eleanor shook her head, mute.
    ‘Now.’
    Angus came up beside her. ‘The lady doesn’t want to go.’ His voice was weary but calm. No pub argument was beyond Angus; he knew them all, how to deal with each. Disposal expert.
    ‘You belong with us,’ said her father. ‘You share our bread. We taught you better.’
    ‘Listen—’ Angus began, sweet reason.
    ‘No. She comes with me. Or perhaps you will recompense us for her schooling? Grade four in animal husbandry, she is. Did she not tell you? Can you afford that?’
    ‘I worked for it,’ Eleanor said. ‘Every day I worked for it. Never ending.’
    Greg sensed how near to tears she was. Part of him was fascinated with the scene, it was surreal, or maybe Shakespearian, Victorian. Logic and lust urged him up.
    Angus saw him closing on the bar and winced.
    Greg gave him a wan reassuring smile – no violence, promise.
    His imagination pictured his gland, a slippery black lens of muscle nestled at the centre of his brain, flexing rhythmically, squirting out milky liquid. Actually, it was nothing like that, but the psychosis was mild enough, harmless. Some Mindstar Brigade veterans had much weirder hallucinations.
    The neurohormones started to percolate through his synapses, altering and