wanted if you couldn't make them laugh; if you didn't know all the off-coloured jokes. Would Cora he like that?
George didn't think so. He felt certain that she would mean something to him when they met. He didn't know what their relations would he, but he was sure that meeting her was the most important thing in his life. The longer he waited the more excited he became.
Then as he was about to call for another pint, as the hands of the clock above the bar shifted to eight o'clock, he saw her. She was around twenty and dark. She had on a pale blue sweater and dark slacks and she didn't wear a hat. There was a three-inch-wide red bangle on her wrist. But even without these clues he was quite sure he would have known her. It was as if the finger of destiny had pointed her out to him.
He crossed the bar in two strides, jerked open the door and stepped into the street. He crossed the street, removing his hat, as Cora reached the club door. She stopped when she saw him and stared at him. Her eyes were slate-grey, and had almost no expression when they looked at him
'Are you Miss Brant?' he asked, colour flooding his face. He tried, unsuccessfully, not to look at her breasts. She was flaunting her figure; with every move of her slim body, her breasts jiggled under the soft wool covering. She ought to wear something, he thought.
'Yes,' she said.
'I'm George Fraser,' he went on, aware that his heart was thumping wildly. 'I don't know if Syd ever mentioned me. He asked me to tell you that he'd he late. He's taken the key . . .'
Her eyes travelled over him. He had never experienced such intense scrutiny. He felt that she was even peering into his pockets.
'Of course,' she said, 'I know all about you. But come into the club. We don't have to stand out here, do we?'
Without waiting for his reply, she turned abruptly and walked out of the sunshine and the clean-smelling air into the darkness of the building.
Following her, a helpless victim to the raven hair and slim, jaunty hips that preceded him up the stairs, George went towards his doom.
7
George knew the exact moment when he fell in love with Cora Brant. It happened suddenly, and, to him, as dramatically as a blow in the face. He found it was extraordinary that he could fall in love with Cora in this way. It wasn't George's idea of love at all. He had always imagined that two people fell in love only after they had probed each other's minds, learned each other's habits and outlook and come to know each other so well that the obvious thing for them to do was to live together. That was George's idea of falling in love. He often thought about marriage, and how he would behave when the right girl came along. He had assured himself over and over again that he wouldn't do anything hasty. He had always imagined a leisurely, satisfying courtship that would give him an opportunity of offering his affection slowly, but with increasing warmth, until the girl he had chosen gladly accepted him.
But when it happened with this unexpected, extraordinary suddenness he was dismayed to find that he had no control over the situation nor over his feelings. At one moment Cora was just someone—admittedly exciting and unusual—to talk to and to look at and with whom he hoped to alleviate an hour of lonely boredom; at the next she was someone he was physically and mentally aware of in a most overpowering way. For some unexplained reason he was tremendously moved, wanting to cry: an absurd emotion, which, again, he had never experienced before, and which made him feel tremendously happy and light-headed.
He had only a hazy recollection of what had happened in the club. The room had been thick with tobacco smoke, noisy with jive and strident voices. But he had eyes only for Cora Brant. The people around him and the noise were incidental: a background out of focus. He had been so excited that he still was unable to remember what she had said to him He had only been aware of her presence and his own triumph, and he nursed this triumph with secret and delighted pleasure.
He had bought drinks, and he had been startled that she tackled a pint of beer. The large glass seemed grotesque in her thin, white hand: a claw. He had absently noticed that her nails were scarlet, and her knuckles were a little grubby. And when he looked more closely at her, he realized she was not immaculate in the accepted sense of the word. She was slatternly: her black hair was lustreless, her pale blue sweater was no longer fresh, and there was face powder on her slacks.
But George was not critical. Any woman was a novelty to him, and a girl like Cora Brant was far more than a novelty—she was an exciting experience. Because of the noise of the music and the voices around them, they hadn't said much to each other. George had been content to admire her. He had, of course, explained about Sydney. To make himself heard, he had to lean across the table and shout at her. He found that embarrassing: it was like carrying on an intimate conversation in a crowded tube train. Cora had listened, her eyes on his face, her perfume in his nostrils. She had nodded and shrugged her shoulders, waving to the band as if to say it was no use talking at present.
'We'll go somewhere quieter in a little while,' she had said, and had turned to watch the band.
After that it would not have mattered to George if she had not spoken again during the whole evening. She had actually said that they were going to be together, and he relaxed, rather astonished, but so grateful that he could have wept.
Then later, when the band had left the dais for a short interval, she looked at him and raised her eyebrows.
'Shall we go?' she said, pushing back her chair.
Obediently George followed her down the stairs to the street. The sudden decision to leave, the complete indifference to his own plans, and her take-it-for-granted attitude that he wanted to go with her reminded him of Sydney Brant. That was how he behaved. Both of them knew what they wanted. They led: others followed.
Neither of them spoke as they walked along the pavement together. Cora's small head, level with George's shoulder, moved along smoothly before him, as if she were being drawn along on wheels. She left behind her the faintest smell of sandalwood.
The evening light was beginning to fade. Storm clouds crept across the sky. The air in the streets had become stale, like the breath of a sick man, and sudden gusts of hot wind sent dust and scraps of paper swirling around the feet of the crowd moving sullenly along the hot pavements.
At the corner of Orchard and Oxford Streets, Cora paused. She glanced along the street towards Marble Arch: a street thronged with people all making a leisurely way to the Park.
