She took a deep draw on the cigarette and let the smoke trickle up the front of her face like a veil, and she dug one toe deep in the sand.
“Why? For two reasons. One, personal. I like you very much. I like the look in your eyes. I like the things you do. I like it when you touch and kiss me. I like everything about you. So, is nice to have you come everywhere with me.” She put out a hand and just touched my bare foot. Business nearly broke down at that moment.
“One good personal reason,” I said. “Now the other.”
“Also, personal perhaps. You look at me – what you see? Beautiful body, nice to get into bed with? That’s all most men want. But me, I want more. So, being a poor girl, I work for myself to get those things. Mrs Vadarci can show me how.”
“Has she said so?”
“In a way. She talks a lot, and sometimes she says things.”
“What sort of things?”
“Some you won’t like.”
“Try me.”
“She is ... how you say....” She put the tips of her fingers to her brow, “... seeing the future ... das Medium.... She tells me things about me.”
“What things?”
“I am special ... there is a destiny for me. Soon now my life changes. Everything which is me now, my beauty ... this good body ... this thing inside me which makes me feel life is good – I soon have the life outside which goes with it. Money, a great house, and everyone know me ... like it is that everyone know of Brunhild or Helen of Troy....”
“You believe that?”
“There is harm in believing it? I would like that. Also there is another thing – I get married.”
“You don’t need a fortune-teller to tell you that.”
“But to someone special. More than special. Someone splendid like me.”
“No name given?”
“No. Except that he is tall and blond and strong and like a god.”
“You believe all this malarky?”
“Malarky?”
“Nonsense. You believe it?”
She smiled. “I don’t know. But it is nice to think about. You are jealous about this man?”
“Naturally.”
“There is no need. Always I will like you.”
“Good. Now let’s come down to the real business. A lot of people are interested in Mrs Vadarci and where she is going. But you and I are keeping an open mind about everything. Right?”
“Right.”
“Like you, I’m a poor boy with nothing but a splendid body, a zest for life, and an eye to the main chance.”
“Please?”
“If I can see a way of making something on the side out of this job, I’ll take it. So will you. After all, the Helen of Troy business may not come off. But if we help one another there could be a nice profit. And, when it’s all over, we could find some place where we could spend it.”
“Why you think there must be a profit in it?”
“Because too many people are interested in Mrs Vadarci. Something is going on ... somewhere along the line there must be something or some information which is worth a lot of money. Now, do we do a deal or not?”
Slowly she uncurled her arms and legs from the foetal position and lay back on the sand, staring up at the sky. Little flecks of quartz and felspar made a stippling along the smooth curve of her flanks. I sat entranced, wondering who the hell would ever bother about money at such a time and place, but then common sense whispered coldly that there is always a moment when you get out of the warm bed, shiver as your feet hit the cold linoleum, and there isn’t a shilling in your trouser pocket for the gas fire.
“How we do this deal?”
“You see that I don’t lose track of Mrs Vadarci. And we keep our eyes and ears open. The moment will come. Okay?”
She turned her head towards me, and her eyes had that deep, misty violet haze.
“Okay,” she said. “We work something out.”
She rolled on her side towards me, flipped a hand behind her back to brush sand from her shoulder-blades and then reached up for me. As her arms came up the bikini slipped free from her breasts.
Her lips were about mine, open and eager, and my hands were holding her and I didn’t care if every word she’d uttered had been a lie. All I knew was that I wanted her, no matter what she was, no matter what lay ahead. I loved her, and if love wasn’t the right word then there was no right word. And close to me, I could feel the same wildness leaping in her, and knew that the same fire that burned beneath my hands as I moved them over her also burned in hers as they moved over me.
Then, close by, a transistor radio began to play, loud, breaking the idyll into a thousand noisy pieces.
I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair....
And send him on his way....
I rolled over and sat up. Walking down the beach a few yards away was Frau Walter Spiegel. She had on a red bathing cap, a nylon leopard-skin swimsuit, and her legs and arms and back looked like grey dough. She set the transistor down carefully on the edge of the strand and waded in. Then, when she was a few yards out, she turned towards us, half squatted, and splashed a little water over her shoulders. She then collapsed backwards in the water, and once or twice she waved a friendly hand at us. If I’d had a rifle I would willingly have shot her and left her to the buzzards.
CHAPTER NINE
SHORE EXERCISE FOR SIEGFRIED
Time ran out. Frau Spiegel splashed and wallowed in the shallows. I smoked four cigarettes and held Katerina’s hand. The transistor went through all the crumby old theme songs
