She glanced up into the mirror, once again appraising her own face and shoulders in the less flattering sunlight that streamed into the canteen. Her eyes were sharp as a stropped razor, but the skin around them was clear and fresh as rose petals without the first sign of wrinkling.
'You will wear well, my dear,' Hortense had told her, 'if you use the gin and don't let it use you.' She had been right, Lil decided. She looked as she had when she was sixteen years old.
She shifted her gaze from her own face, and swept the canteen. The mirror was imperfect, and the silvering was beginning to go in dark spots, slightly distorting the young face that was watching her intently. Her gaze flicked over it, and then came back.
The boy was blushing as he studied her avidly, that was the only thing that had caught her attention. Now when she looked at him again she realized he was probably under-age, and she already had trouble with the Committee. He wore a boy's cloth cap on the back of his head and he was very obviously still growing, his Norfolk jacket straining around the sturdy arms and across the shoulders.
Too young and certainly penniless. She had to get him out fast, and she turned quickly, her fists on her hips, her blond head cocked aggressively.
'Good afternoon, Miss Lil.' Ralph was stunned by his own audacity at addressing this heavenly presence directly. 'I was about to buy my friends a round of drinks. We should be honoured if you would take a glass with us, ma'am.' Ralph slapped the counter with a sovereign, and Lil uncocked her head and raised one hand from her hip to touch her hair.
'I like a big spending gent.' She flashed the little diamond in her front tooth at him and nodded to the barman. He would pour from her special bottle labelled Booth's Gin but filled with rain water from the galvanized tank beside the backdoor.
Suddenly she realized that the boy was bonny, with a strong jaw and good white teeth. Now that his blush had subsided, his skin was clear and smooth as her own, and his eyes a penetrating emerald green. And the eagerness and freshness that he exuded was so different from that of the hairy diggers, caked with red dirt and smelling like goats, that formed her usual clientele.
Let the boy pay for his round of drinks, and there would be time to get rid of him after that. In the meantime his transparent adoration. was amusing and flattering.
'Lill, me darling.' Barry Lennox leaned across the counter and she did not flinch from his breath. 'Give me your pearl-like little ear.'
Smiling her bright smile she held her ear to his lips, and cupped her hand in an exaggerated pantomime of secrecy.
'Are you working tonight, Lill? 'I'm always ready for a quick rattle of the dice with YOU, my sweet. You want to go right now or finish your drink?'
'No, darling, not me. How would you like to be first to put the saddle on an unbroken colt?'
Her eyes flicked to Ralph's face again, and her hard bright smile softened thoughtfully. He was a lovely boy, and for the first time since her cavalryman had left her in Cape Town she felt the prickle of her loins and bitter sweet catch in her throat, so that she did not trust her voice entirely.
'It's still early, Lil, and business isn't good this time on Sunday, Lil dearie.' Barry Lennox wheedled and chuckled beerily at the same time. 'He is a pretty boy, and I should charge you for the pleasure, but I'll just let you make me a special price instead.'
Lil's throat cleared instantly and the languid expression disappeared. Her reply was crisp.
'I'll not charge you school fees, Barry Lennox, just the usual ten guineas.'
Lennox shook his head. 'You are a hard one, Lil. I'll send him to you, love. But just one thing, make it good, make it something that he will remember if he lives a hundred years.'
'I don't teach you to dig diamonds, Barry Lennox,' she said, and without looking back swept from the canteen.
They heard the door of her bedroom bang, and Ralph stared after her in dismay, but Barry Lennox put an arm around his shoulders and as he talked quietly, punctuating each sentence with a throaty lewd chuckle, all the colour fled from Ralph's face.
'Come in.' Her voice reminded Ralph of the gentle contented cooing that the plump wild pigeons made at sunset in the top branch of the camel-thorn tree above Zouga's camp.
With his hand on the brass doorknob, he lifted his feet one at a time and polished the toe-cap of his boots against the back of his trouser leg. He had doused his head under the tap of the rainwater tank and combed his hair while it was still wet, sleeking it away from his forehead, and the droplets had run down his neck, turning the dust on his darned shirt collar into damp red mud.
He glanced down at his hand on the doorknob, saw the black rinds under his finger nails and lifted it quickly to his mouth, trying desperately to pick out the dirt with his eye tooth.
'Come in!' The command was repeated; but this time there was no cooing of pigeons, but a sharp imperious command, and Ralph lunged for the door handle. There was no resistance, the door flew open, and Ralph went with it. He entered Diamond Lil's boudoir like a cavalry charge, tripped on the frayed edge of a cheap oriental carpet and sprawled headlong across the brass bed.
There was a Chinese lacquer screen across one corner of the small violently furnished room, and over the top of it rose Diamond Lil's magnificently sculptured blond coiffure.
'Oh,' she said sweetly, the sharp slanted eyes widening with amusement. 'Are you going to start without me then darling?'
Ralph scrambled untidily to his feet like a puppy with oversized paws and stood to attention in the middle of the floor, holding his cloth cap to his stomach with both hands.
From behind the screen came the most evocative sounds he had ever heard. The rustle of lace and cloth, the clink of china and the gurgle of water poured from a The lacquer screen was ornamented with oriental lug figures, women bathing in a willow-screened pool with a waterfall in the background. The women were all naked, and the artist had lingered on their physical charms. Ralph felt his ears and neck heating again, and hated himself for
