She was leaning over the rail, staring out at the smoke trail of some ship on the horizon. I leaned over the rail a couple of yards from her and stared at the smoke trail too. Then I lit a cigarette and half turned, watching a man beyond preparing to make a cast. She paid no attention to me. She was a biggish girl but there was nothing out of proportion. Her profile was good and she had a long, generous mouth and her skin was sun-brown, the kind that made me want to put out a finger-tip and touch it. I put her through all the tests: bikini, baggy old sweater and trousers, and lying on a bed with her violet eyes half shut. She came out with full marks. I knew I was going to be disappointed if this was not Katerina Saxmann.
The man cast and there was a sound like tearing calico. Her head turned from me to watch the fall of the line. I lost her profile but got the firm length of the side of her neck. When she came back into profile I was leaning on the rail a foot from her.
I said, nodding at the water, “Pretty neat, eh?”
She nodded, looked at me, and I saw that it was more a dark blue than violet in her eyes. She went on looking, sizing me up, and I did what any young man would have done. I adjusted the knot of my tie with just a touch of nervousness.
“My father was mad about fishing,” I said. I knew the routine. I’d learned it years before at Weston-super-Mare and places like that. If it isn’t kept running you are lost. Pile more words in, and then you can stand on them securely because you’ve got to have a base, you’ve got to warm up the emptiness which is always cold and cautious around strangers, even when neither wants to be a stranger. “Not this kind, of course. Fly-fishing. Trout up on Dartmoor. They don’t come very big, but they give a lot of sport.” The fly-fishing touch was good because it gave a little class. Wilkins, for instance, really believed that coarse fishing was coarse.
“Dartmoor?”
She was hooked, but then maybe she had made up her mind before she ever got on to the pier that she wanted to be. In the one word the foreign accent was clear, giving a moment’s magic to the word.
“Yes. Devon. Heather, wild ponies, some deer, too. And all these streams, where he used to fish. Used to have holidays there when I was a kid. Now – Brighton’s more my line. You on holiday?”
“No, I work here.” She smiled, and the mouth was warm, generous, a squarish kind of mouth which could have been too much for some faces.
“Pity,” I said, the lines coming pat from some old routine. “Beautiful girl like you shouldn’t have to work. Take a week off, and I’ll guarantee you’ll forget there ever was such a thing. Take the old car and have ourselves a good time.” Half my mind was groaning with the thought that there were people who did this kind of thing in earnest, even me not so long ago.
“Old car?”
“Well, not so old really. It’s a Jag. Cream. Just the right colour to go with that dress.”
She was wearing a green dress and I nodded at it, keeping my eyes at breast level. I was aware of the skin behind my ears pricking, and I’d known that before, and knew also that it was out of place here, because this was a job.
She laughed then, just a little edge of sound, maybe because she didn’t want to disturb the anglers, and she said pleasantly, “You are trying to pick me up?”
Instinct took over. It was a line not to be wasted, and I said, “That’s it. If you stay dumb, you stay alone.” I took out my cigarette case, black leather from Dunhill’s, and an Oriflamme lighter. I deliberately muffed the lighter at her cigarette so that I could keep her head bent over my hands for a few seconds longer. A seagull went over, and gave me a laughing scream. I had her perfume in my face, and the momentary touch of her hand on mine as she steadied the lighter to her cigarette. She withdrew in a cloud of smoke that the wind whipped away instantly, leaving the dark blue eyes on me.
She said, “You are funny.” There was a lot of accent in the last word. It sounded like phoney.
“We’ll have dinner somewhere,” I said. “Run out into the country. Somewhere nice. Dance maybe. Carver’s the name. Rex.”
She said, “It’s late. I must go to work.”
I said, “Tonight? I’ll pick you up. Just say where.”
She gathered herself together in a going-away movement and I thought for a moment that she was going to brush me off with a generous smile and a misty look, but she said, “Half-past six.”
“Where?”
“Outside the Ship.”
“I’ll be there.” Before she could move, I went on, “I don’t know your name.”
“Katerina,” she said.
“It’s a lovely name. Katerina what?”
She smiled. “Katerina. Isn’t that enough – for now?”
“You bet it is. May I walk to work with you?”
“No.”
She was away from me and moving round the side of the pavilion and the no had been very definite. I leaned back against the rail and watched her go, half of me professional and half of me a cocky, bright young man on holiday with a cream Jaguar and a pocket full of money.
Two yards from me an angler took a
