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together and then the plants stumbled and went off at a tangent of stepped chords.
    ‘Try K sharp,’ I said. I fed a little chlorous acid into the tank and the Columbine followed her up eagerly, the infra-calyxes warbling delicate variations on the treble clef.
    ‘Perfect,’ I said.
    It took us only four hours to fill the order.
    ‘You’re better than the Arachnid,’ I congratulated her. ‘How would you like a job? I’ll fit you out with a large cool tank and all the chlorine you can breathe.’
    ‘Careful,’ she told me. ‘I may say yes. Why don’t we rescore a few more of them while we’re about it?’
    ‘You’re tired,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and have a drink.’
    ‘Let me try the Arachnid,’ she suggested. ‘That would be more of a challenge.’
    Her eyes never left the flower, I wondered what they’d do if I left them together. Try to sing each other to death?
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow perhaps.’
    We sat on the balcony together, glasses at our elbows, and talked the afternoon away.
    She told me little about herself, but I gathered that her father had been a mining engineer in Peru and her mother a dancer at a Lima vu-tavern. They’d wandered from deposit to deposit, the father digging his concessions, the mother signing on at the nearest bordello to pay the rent.
    ‘She only sang, of course,’ Jane added. ‘Until my father came.’ She blew bubbles into her glass. ‘So you think I give them what they want at the Casino. By the way, what do you see?’
    ‘I’m afraid I’m your one failure,’ I said. ‘Nothing. Except you.’
    She dropped her eyes. ‘That sometimes happens,’ she said. ‘I’m glad this time.’
    A million suns pounded inside me. Until then I’d been reserving judgment on myself.
     
    Harry and Tony were polite, if disappointed.
    ‘I can’t believe it,’ Harry said sadly. ‘I won’t. How did you do it?’
    ‘That mystical left-handed approach, of course,’ I told him. ‘All ancient seas and dark wells.’
    ‘What’s she like?’ Tony asked eagerly. ‘I mean, does she burn or just tingle?’
     
    Jane sang at the Casino every night from eleven to three, but apart from that I suppose we were always together. Sometimes in the late afternoons we’d drive out along the beach to the Scented Desert and sit alone by one of the pools, watching the sun fall away behind the reefs and hills, lulling ourselves on the rose-sick air. When the wind began to blow cool across the sand we’d slip down into the water, bathe ourselves and drive back to town, filling the streets and café terraces with jasmine and musk-rose and helianthemum.
    On other evenings we’d go down to one of the quiet bars at Lagoon West, and have supper out on the flats, and Jane would tease the waiters and sing honeybirds and angelcakes to the children who came in across the sand to watch her.
    I realize now that I must have achieved a certain notoriety along the beach, but I didn’t mind giving the old women – and beside Jane they all seemed to be old women – something to talk about. During the Recess no one cared very much about anything, and for that reason I never questioned myself too closely over my affair with Jane Ciracylides. As I sat on the balcony with her looking out over the cool early evenings or felt her body glowing beside me in the darkness I allowed myself few anxieties.
    Absurdly, the only disagreement I ever had with her was over her cheating.
    I remember that I once taxed her with it.
    ‘Do you know you’ve taken over five hundred dollars from me, Jane? You’re still doing it. Even now!’
    She laughed impishly. ‘Do I cheat? I’ll let you win one day.’
    ‘But why do you?’ I insisted.
    ‘It’s more fun to cheat,’ she said. ‘Otherwise it’s so boring.’
    ‘Where will you go when you leave Vermilion Sands?’ I asked her.
    She looked at me in surprise. ‘Why do you say that? I don’t think I shall ever leave.’
    ‘Don’t tease me, Jane. You’re a