The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

Camilla went on grumbling as they carried up their bags, unpacked, and made futile efforts to render the battery cage habitable. But when they ventured into the lower regions, in search of advice about an evening meal, she was the one who accepted the offer of a cup of tea condemning them to a tête-à-tête with Noreen in the Guests' Lounge and TV Room. Mine hostess brought tea and fairy cakes (one per guest). Later she brought the baby, eight-month-old Roisin, suffering from the colic; told Camilla the names of her other children; confided the state of her husband's business. Camilla tasted the admiration in Noreen's eyes, and drew more of it to herself insensately, out of habit, like a pianist running over her scales: she couldn't help it. She really meant no harm. Why are you dressed as a boy? she wondered. Wouldn't you be more comfortable in a nice print frock and an apron? Thus the wheel of fashion turns, and it gets harder and harder to find the true wilderness experience. Peasants the world over have Coca-Cola and Internet access. But their lives (sadly enough, agreeably enough) are no less empty. An attractive stranger is still fascinating, same as she ever was.

Noreen jigged the grizzling baby with businesslike indifference. Camilla admired the family photographs (Noreen in a huge white dress that would have looked better on a pick-up truck, clasping her red-faced builder to her side). Sheridan sat there in his black biker jacket and his black jeans, one long leg crossed over the other, saying little, grinning secretly. "Jaysus," remarked Noreen, in astonishment. "It seems like we've been friends for ever! And will you look at the time. Jonas'll be home and no dinner cooked!"

They went out to eat at a roadhouse with pretensions (Noreen exhorting them from the doorstep to be careful of "the drunk driving"). In the morning Camilla declined to rise for the Full Irish Breakfast. Folded between sickly polyester surfaces, the smell of bad laundry in her nostrils, she listened to middle-aged Americans tramping heavily down the stairs. She could tell by the sound of their voices that there was nothing worth getting up for in that dining-room. I won't stay another night, she thought. I won't . A quarter-hour later, a tap on the door: Noreen with a tray of tea and wheaten bread. "Are yez poorly?" asked the young housewife, gravely concerned. "He says I'm to tell you he's gone out to take a look around the possibilities. He says you'll know what he means."

"Sheridan's a photographer," said Camilla. "He loves the light here. How nice of you to bring me the tea. You shouldn't have. I'm so sorry to be a nuisance."

So Noreen stayed, and talked, and stayed, and told terrible stories about rude unreasonable tourists (Camilla having deftly established that she and Sheridan were actually neither English nor American). Downstairs baby Roisin's grizzling rose to a roar. Camilla heard her, but Noreen didn't. When she left at last her round eyes were as bright as stars, she turned at the door for a lingering glance: came back and patted Camilla's toned and slender forearm with shy, blundering tenderness.

"You have a good lie-in, Camilla. Ye'll be right as rain."

It's so simple, so harmless, such a breeze, to elicit the kindness of strangers. The wheaten bread, poisonously tainted with an overdose of soda, was crumbled, uneaten. Camilla sat up in bed, licking her lips and smiling. She negotiated the battery cage to reach the tiny ensuite, and crouched on the edge of the bath that doubled for a showerstall, which was the only way to get a good look in the mirror above the basin.

"I'm not a bad person," she murmured.

Whatever possesses anyone to build a bathroom with a light from the north? An unkind light, clear and shadowless, that picks out every tiny pore. But this is not a luxury hotel. An Irish B&B is not designed to coddle the guest's sensitive amour-propre . Passing trade, never passing this way again, too much attention to detail would not be cost-effective. A fine ruthlessness , thought Camilla, indulgently, as she applied her make-up. She could afford to be indulgent. She was feeling much better, all the draining little experiences of yesterday soothed.