So it was no wonder I didn’t hear him come. He must have eased up on a low throttle and dropped the machine some yards away. She was in my arms, looking up at me with her lips a little open and I was touching the side of her face, whispering her name, content with the first blaze of feeling.
The door of the car opened behind me, and he said, “Get out of there.”
I had seen him mouthing silent, bitter, angry things to himself that morning. Now I heard him. It was a low voice with a thin, blade-like edge to it. I didn’t move fast enough for him so he reached in, caught me by the neck of the jacket, and jerked me out. I went rolling on to the dew-wet grass and felt his boot go into my right side.
He stepped back and watched me noisily coax some breath into my body. What he did not know was that it was not only breath I was accumulating. I just wanted to take a good look at him and work out exactly what I was going to do. In one hand he was swinging a crash helmet by the strap. His leather jacket was open, and his jeans were tucked into black riding boots so highly polished that they took and held the starlight. The night wind just moved the duck-tailing of hair over his ears.
He stood there, and he said, “You tuppenny jerk with a fancy car.”
Katerina was out of the car now, leaning against it, and her eyes, as they went from him to me, were bright, bright and intense, and her face was the same, bright and intense, the look of a woman who knows she is going to enjoy herself.
I stood up, taking my time, and I slipped off my blazer and tossed it to Katerina without looking at her, my eyes on him. He was smiling now and it made his eyes seem even closer together, but I could just see the tip of his tongue touching the inner part of his upper lip. I read it for just a little edge of doubt. He hadn’t liked the way I’d come quietly up from the ground and taken off my blazer.
I let him come to me. He slung the crash helmet at my face and followed it, going with one hand for my throat and swinging the other. I took his wrist and helped him with the swing, dropping as I did so. He went over me and I jerked his arm so that he would remember it for some time in his shoulder joint. As he hit the ground behind me, I swung round and – Miggs’s style – put my foot in exactly where he had used his on me. He didn’t like it but he came up at me fast, got hold of my shirt and then slid his arms round me, trying to lift and throw me. He was strong but he had no technique. I jerked the top of my head into his face and took him at the water-line with my knee. As he broke away and stumbled, I let him have it twice, on the chin and just above the heart.
It finished him. He just lay there wondering what had happened. I stood over him and waited while his breathing evened out.
Then I said, “You chose the wrong kind of jerk. You’ve got two minutes to find your kiddy car and ride off.”
I went over to the car and took my blazer from Katerina. I lit a cigarette and he was still sitting there, sounding like one of the sheep in the mist.
I said, “Your time’s going.”
He got up and went off with the mist rolling around his knees, and he didn’t say a word. He kept his eyes on me for a moment as he passed, and then let them slide to Katerina, but she wasn’t looking at him, she was looking at me.
A few moments later I heard the motor-cycle start; the headlight snapped on, wavering in an unsteady arc, and then he was away down the track.
She came up close to me and the bright, intense look was still in her eyes.
I said, “You enjoyed that?”
She said, “Wunderbar.”
I tossed my cigarette away. She came hard and close to me, and I could feel her hands holding my shoulders through the silk shirt, and her mouth was like a velvet whirlpool. But for me the magic that had been in the back of the car, waiting to sweep me away, was missing. If was not far away but it was not right there, ready to hand and undeniable at that moment. If it had been I shouldn’t have heard the sheep coughing or a curlew crying through the darkness or, when we were both shaking from a kind of shivering that didn’t come from the night mist, would I have opened the front door of the car and helped her into the seat alongside the wheel?
I lit another cigarette, and one for her, and my hands weren’t shaking any longer.
She said, “Wo gehen Sie hin?”
I said, “To a pub for a pint of beer. And speak English.”
She laughed and opened her handbag for her compact, spilling the contents into her lap. She made no attempt to hide it, and I guessed that I had been made a member of the lodge. I picked it up and said, “Where did you get this?” It was an Italian Beretta automatic with a full magazine. The light from the dashboard was not good enough for me to tell whether it was a ·22 or a ·32.
She said, “I buy it from a man in Brighton.”
“Why?”
She stopped powdering her nose for a moment and made a little mouth at me. I wanted to kiss her, but I waited for her answer.
“Because I am in a foreign country, no? For
