She said, ‘Oh, it’s you!’
‘I’m afraid so. I can go away if you’re expecting anyone else.’
She laughed, ‘Here? Come on in.’ She had been listening to soft, steady jazz on the radio, and had left it on. Not long after that we began to call it ‘modern jazz’, which seems incongruous nearly sixty years later. She had been drinking something like a Martini from one of those parasol-shaped Martini glasses, and offered me one.
When I was sitting opposite her, glass in hand, she asked me, ‘Passing visit, or deliberate?’
‘Deliberate.’ I sipped the drink. The gin and vermouth mix seemed the authentic thing.
‘To what end?’
‘I wanted you.’
She crossed her legs, and tugged the dress over her knees. Her skin was a kind of golden-brown colour.
‘Didn’t we try that a few weeks ago and decide it wouldn’t work? What’s changed?’
‘When I saw the hair on your belly look so fine and soft I knew I had to touch it.’ I didn’t actually mean belly, but it seemed the politer option. Not bad for a conversation stopper, Charlie, but make sure you’re not close enough to cop a slap in the moosh. Her mouth popped open. A nice little round o with just a trace of pastel-pink lipstick.
‘But you’ve never seen me . . . !’
‘Not until a day ago. Now I want to see you again.’
I fumbled in my small pack until I found the envelope I was looking for. Prints and negs. I handed it to her, and she studied the three photographs for a long while before saying anything.
Then, quietly: ‘Where did you get these?’
‘I rescued them. Nancy copped it in that Meteor crash last week. I recovered his photographs because someone suggested that it would be a kind thing to do.’ It wasn’t quite a lie, but I wasn’t sure she would believe the truth.
‘I wondered if that had been him.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She didn’t say any more for a few minutes. She turned the photographs around and looked at them from different angles, but I don’t think she was seeing anything. Maybe memories.
Then she asked me, ‘Are there any more prints or negatives?’
‘Of course not. Not as far as I know, anyway. It’s up to you what you do with them.’
‘. . . and you wanted to see me like that?’
‘I’ve thought of precious little else since I saw them. You can slap me if you like.’
She looked down with a small smile, and shook her head. The gesture was so slight I almost missed it, and I went on, ‘Look, seeing you in those photos was an accident, but one that I’ll never regret as long as I live.’
I followed her out of the room, along a short corridor and into a shady bedroom.
What she said as we began to undress was, ‘Only once.’
We stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. Eventually we lay smoking a cigarette between us, and allowing the sweat to dry on our bodies. From the radio a pianist was steering out ‘On Green Dolphin Street’ – I’ve probably already told you it is one of my favourites.
Jill asked me again, ‘Do you have any more photos?’
‘Of you? No, I told you.’
‘I meant of anyone else.’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you give theirs back, too?’
‘If I can.’
‘. . . and use the same line on them, as you’ve used on me? Carry on where Oliver left off?’ That was interesting.
‘I hope not. But if I do, it won’t mean the same as it did with you.’
‘I didn’t disappoint you then? Sometimes the reality doesn’t match up to the dream.’
I bent to tickle the point of one of her breasts with my tongue . . .
‘. . . and sometimes it exceeds all expectations. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.’
‘Oliver never said that.’
I did it again. ‘Then let me say it for him.’
Later we spoke again. I started with, ‘Can I ask you why you did it? Let Oliver photograph you like that, I mean?’
‘I’ve been asking myself that ever since you produced them. It seemed very natural at the time. Oliver had a way of looking at you that made you want to take your clothes off.’
‘X-ray eyes? Is that what you mean?’
‘No, almost exactly the opposite. Some men strip you naked with their eyes as they look at you. That’s mostly pretty horrid. Oliver just looked at you, and you knew he loved what he saw: it made you want to take your clothes off, and show him the rest. Afterwards he would get his cameras out. I wonder how he did that.’
‘I wonder if he did know he was doing it?’
She snuggled into my shoulder and said, ‘You know? That was a very perceptive thing to say, Charlie.’ Minutes later her breathing became deep and even, just like the snow on the Feast of Stephen . . . and she went to sleep. All men value different characteristics in women, but, if you think about it, a woman can pay you no greater compliment than the simple act of being willing to go to sleep alongside you. Whatever you do, in whatever walk of life, no one ever shows more confidence in you than that. I slept too, and it was later in the evening I left her, and slipped up the road.
Haye with an e laughed when I gave her her photographs.
‘Oh God: that was such a lovely night. Oliver was a very bony man, you know. After you’d made love with him, you were somehow bruised all over.’
‘You don’t mind me having seen them, then?’
‘Of course not.’
‘. . . and it won’t ever help you decide to sleep with me?’
‘Of course not, again. Why should I want to do that? You’re much more fun at
