“How do you know?”
“They put it back the wrong way round. Maybe they were cross because there was nothing in it except his address and a copy of our bill to him for expenses.”
She went out.
Half an hour later the desk phone rang.
Wilkins said, “There’s a woman on the phone for you. Won’t give her name.”
I said, “Put her through.”
There was a click, and a voice said, “Rex?”
I said, “Yes?”
She said, “This is Katerina.”
I heard the click of Wilkins’s phone being replaced. She only eavesdropped when she had instructions.
I said, “What do you want?”
She said, “To see you, of course....” And then she laughed. I waited until she had finished, wondering whether I was going to take Wilkins’s advice and stay out of this. As her laughter died, I said, “Where and when?”
She came round to my flat the following evening.
I decanted a bottle of Château Latour and smacked out a steak wafer-thin for the Diane. There were a dozen roses in a brass bowl on the table and my best wine glasses. While I worked away like a little beaver, squaring the cushions and clearing the junk into a cupboard, a tug going up-river hooted at me for being such a fool, and a motor-cycle roaring underneath my window reminded me of Dino. (Some weeks later Wilkins, who always has an eye for such miscellanea, handed me a cutting from the Evening Standard which had given four lines to the death, in a motor-cycle pile-up, of one Eduardino Mantinelli on the A23 at Patcham just outside Brighton. I guessed that he had been trying out how fast you have to go to forget.)
I had it all planned: a few drinks, a few easy records, and summer evening talk while I did the steak Diane, and then, after we’d eaten, some honest talking. I was as happy as a sandboy at the prospect of seeing her again. Wilkins should have seen me. I liked cooking, too – when I could keep it simple and well out of the Robert Carrier class.
The taxi drew up outside and I had the door open for her to come up the stairs and into my arms like a homing pigeon. I kissed her, swung her inside, and went on kissing her while I slammed the door with my foot. When I let her go she collapsed into the armchair, legs thrust out, arms hanging limply over the sides, handbag swinging from one hand, and smiling up at me.
“It’s hot,” she said. She was wearing a nice dress, white silk, with a deep square neck that showed her brown throat and just the promise of her breasts, and she was wearing her hair loose and – maybe it was the shaded light in the room – her eyes had taken on that deep violet mist. It was then that my heart made a record for bumping, and I knew that I didn’t care a damn if I were being hooked. I was prepared for a while to swim on the end of the line.
“You look as cool as a Nereid,” I said.
“Is that something nice?”
“Kind of mermaid, I think.”
She nodded, approving, looked at the bottles on my sideboard, and said, “I want plenty of gin in a big glass, half a slice of lemon. Then fill up with soda and ice.”
Fixing it for her, and a whisky on the rocks for myself, I said, “How did you know my address in London?”
She fished in her handbag and flicked one of my business cards on to the table.
“You told me a lie about what you did, Rex.” She scolded me with her lips.
“And you pinched that from my jacket while I dealt with Dino?”
“Yes.”
I handed her the drink and she raised it, said, “Prosit,” and really began to punish it.
I said, “Cheers,” and just sipped mine. The record player made pleasant, subdued noises in the corner and I watched one of her feet moving with the rhythm.
She had three drinks before dinner and, as far as I could see, they did not begin to touch her. With the second one she got up and wandered about the place, looking at my bits and pieces, and then going into my bedroom, calling things to me in the kitchen. Who looked after me? Mrs Meld from next door. Why did I have such a big double bed? Because it was here when I came. Why did I put sixpenny pieces in a whisky bottle? Saving up for my holiday. Who was Elizabeth Trant? Put the telephone pad down and don’t be nosey.
She came and leaned against the kitchen doorway and watched me taking the skins off some tomatoes.
She said, “How you have this kind of business, Rex? I don’t imagine it for you.” I loved the way she said it.
“It must have been the cheap kind of literature I went in for as a boy. Sexton Blake, Nelson Lee.”
“I never heard of such books.”
“Never mind. Then one day I had fifty pounds to spare and I was feeling rash so I plunked it all on a horse.”
“And it won?”
“Yes. Then I put all I’d won on another, and so on. I did it several times.”
“And each time it wins?”
“Yes.”
After dinner and coffee, she sat in the big armchair and I squatted on the carpet at her feet. We had both done ourselves pretty well. I like a girl who doesn’t play with her food or drink – especially when I’ve prepared it. She had her hand on the back of my neck, her fingers making little pulling movements at my hair, and I was running my hand along her leg from the knee down to her toes. She had kicked off her shoes.
After a while, I said, “We’d be more comfortable in the big bed.”
She leaned forward, pulled my face around to her, and kissed me. When she had finished she slid her lips from my mouth and ran them over my face,
