old-fashioned style that she is, to get out of his shop, his eyes are shifting around in an undecided way.
Lise takes her foot off the desk, stands, slips into her shoes, shakes the skirt of her dress and asks him, ‘Do you like the colours?’
‘Marvellous,’ he says, his confidence plainly diminishing in confrontation with this foreign distressed gentlewoman of intellectual family and conflicting appearance.
‘The traffic’s moving. I must get a taxi or a bus. It’s late,’ Lise says, getting into her coat in a business-like manner.
‘Where are you staying, lady?’
‘The Hilton,’ she says.
He looks round his garage with an air of helpless, anticipatory guilt. ‘I’d better take her in the car,’ he mutters to the mechanic nearest him. The man does not reply but makes a slight movement of the hand to signify that it isn’t for him to give permission.
Still the owner hesitates, while Lise, as if she had not overheard his remarks, gathers up her belongings, holds out her hand and says ‘Good-bye. Thank you very much for helping me.’ And to the rest of the men she calls ‘Good-bye, good-bye, many thanks!’
The big man takes her hand and holds on to it tightly as if his grasp itself was a mental resolution not to let go this unforeseen, exotic, intellectual, yet clearly available treasure. He holds on to her hand as if he was no fool, after all. ‘Lady, I’m taking you to your hotel in the car. I couldn’t let you go out into all this confusion. You’ll never get a bus, not for hours. A taxi, never. The students, we have the students only to thank.’ And he calls sharply to the apprentice to bring out his car. The boy goes over to a brown Volkswagen. ‘The Fiat!’ bellows his employer, whereupon the apprentice moves to a dusty cream-coloured Fiat 125, passes a duster over the outside of the windscreen, gets into it and starts to manoeuvre it forward to the main ramp.
Lise pulls away her hand and protests. ‘Look, I’ve got a date. I’m late for it already. I’m sorry, but I can’t accept your kind offer.’ She looks out at the mass of slowly-moving traffic, the queues waiting at the bus-stops, and says, ‘I’ll have to walk. I know my way.
‘Lady,’ he says, ‘no argument. It’s my pleasure.’ And he draws her to the car where the apprentice is now waiting with the door open for her.
‘I really don’t know you,’ Lise says.
‘I’m Carlo,’ says the man, urging her inside and shutting the door. He gives the grinning apprentice a push that might mean anything, goes round to the other door, and drives slowly towards the street, slowly and carefully finding a gap in the line of traffic, working his way in to the gap, blocking the oncoming vehicles for a while until finally he joins the stream.
It is also getting dark, as big Carlo’s car alternately edges and spurts along the traffic, Carlo meanwhile denouncing the students and the police for causing the chaos. When they come at last to a clear stretch Carlo says, ‘My wife I think is no good. I heard her on the telephone and she didn’t think I was in the house. I heard.’
‘You must understand,’ Lise says, ‘that anything at all that is overheard when the speaker doesn’t know you’re listening takes on a serious note. It always sounds far worse than their actual intentions are.
‘This was bad,’ mutters Carlo. ‘It’s a man. A second cousin of hers. I made a big trouble for her that night, I can tell you. But she denied it. How could she deny it? I heard it.’
‘If you imagine,’ Lise says, ‘that you are justifying any anticipations you may have with regards to me, you’re mistaken. You can drop me off here, if you like. Otherwise, you can come and buy me a drink at the Hilton Hotel, and then it’s good night. A soft drink. I don’t take alcohol. I’ve got a date that I’m late for already.’
‘We go out of town a little way,’ says Carlo. ‘I know a place. I brought the Fiat, did you see? The front seats fold back. Make you comfortable.’
‘Stop at once,’ Lise says. ‘Or I put my head out of the window and yell for help. I don’t want sex with you. I’m not interested in sex. I’ve got other interests and as a matter of fact I’ve got something on my mind that’s got to be done. I’m telling you to stop.’ She grabs the wheel and tries to guide it into the curb.
‘All right, all right,’ he says, regaining control of the car which has swerved a little with Lise’s interference. ‘All right. I’m taking you to the Hilton.’
‘It doesn’t look like the Hilton road to me,’ Lise says. The traffic lights ahead are red but as there is very little traffic about on this dark, wide residential boulevard, he chances it and skims across. Lise puts her head out of the window and yells for help.
He pulls up at last in a side lane where, back from the road, there are the lights of two small villas; beyond that the road is a mass of stony crevices. He embraces her and kisses her mightily while she kicks him and tries to push him off, gurgling her protests. When he stops for breath he says, ‘Now we put back the seats and do it properly.’ But already she has jumped out of the car and has started running towards the gate of one of the houses, wiping her mouth and screaming, ‘Police! Call the police!’ Big Carlo overtakes her at the gate. ‘Quiet!’ he says. ‘Be quiet, and get into the car. Please. I’ll take you back, I promise. Sorry, lady, I haven’t done any harm at all to you, have I? Only a kiss, what’s a kiss.’
She runs and makes a grab for the door of the driver’s seat, and as he calls after her, ‘The other door!’ she gets in, starts up, and backs speedily out of the lane. She leans over and locks the other door just in time to prevent him from opening it. ‘You’re not my type in any case,’ she screams. Then she starts off, too quickly for him to be able to open the back door he is now grabbing at. Still he is running to catch up, and she yells back at him, ‘If you report this to the police I’ll tell them the truth and make a scandal in your family.’ And then she is away, well clear of him.
She spins along in expert style, stopping duly at the traffic lights. She starts to sing softly as she waits:
Inky-pinky-winky-wong
How do you like your potatoes done?
A little gravy in the pan
For the King of the Cannibal Islands.
Her zipper-bag is on the floor of the car. While waiting for the lights to change she lifts it on to the seat, unzips it and looks with a kind of satisfaction at the wrapped-up objects of different shape, as it might be they represent a good day’s work. She comes to a crossroad where some traffic accumulates. Here, a policeman is on duty and as she passes at his bidding she pulls up and
